The real Burns is of course in his Scotch poems.  Let us boldly say that of much of this poetry, a poetry dealing perpetually with Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners, a Scotchman’s estimate is apt to be personal.  A Scotchman is used to this world of Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners; he has a tenderness for it; he meets its poet half way.  In this tender mood he reads pieces like the Holy Fair or Halloween.  But this world of Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners is against a poet, not for him, when it is not a partial countryman who reads him; for in itself it is not a beautiful world, and no one can deny that it is of advantage to a poet to deal with a beautiful world.  Burns’s world of Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners, is often a harsh, a sordid, a repulsive world; even the world of his Cotter’s Saturday Night is not a beautiful world.  No doubt a poet’s criticism of life may have such truth and power that it triumphs over its world and delights us.  Burns may triumph over his world, often he does triumph over his world, but let us observe how and where.  Burns is the first case we have had where the bias of the personal estimate tends to mislead; let us look at him closely, he can bear it.

Many of his admirers will tell us that we have Burns, convivial, genuine, delightful, here—­

  “Leeze me on drink! it gies us mair
    Than either school or college;
  It kindles wit, it waukens lair,
    It pangs us fou o’ knowledge. 
  Be’t whisky gill or penny wheep
    Or ony stronger potion,
  It never fails, on drinking deep,
    To kittle up our notion
               By night or day."[109]

There is a great deal of that sort of thing in Burns, and it is unsatisfactory, not because it is bacchanalian poetry, but because it has not that accent of sincerity which bacchanalian poetry, to do it justice, very often has.  There is something in it of bravado, something which makes us feel that we have not the man speaking to us with his real voice:  something, therefore, poetically unsound.

With still more confidence will his admirers tell us that we have the genuine Burns, the great poet, when his strain asserts the independence, equality, dignity, of men, as in the famous song For a’ that and a’ that—­

“A prince can mak’ a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a’ that;
But an honest man’s a boon his might,
Guid faith he manna fa’ that! 
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their dignities, and a’ that,
The pith o’ sense, and pride o’ worth,
Are higher rank than a’ that.”

Here they find his grand, genuine touches; and still more, when this puissant genius, who so often set morality at defiance, falls moralizing—­

“The sacred lowe o’ weel placed love
Luxuriantly indulge it;
But never tempt th’ illicit rove,
Tho’ naething should divulge it. 
I waive the quantum o’ the sin,
The hazard o’ concealing,
But och! it hardens a’ within,
And petrifies the feeling."[110]