The hopelessness of the difficulty is amusingly, if rather distressingly, illustrated by this letter.  Here again you have the best will in the world.  Nothing could be kindlier than “J.B.’s” tone.  As a Scot he has every reason to be impatient of stupidity on the subject of Burns:  yet he takes real pains to set me right.  Alas! his explanations leave me more than ever at sea, more desperate than ever of understanding what exactly it is in Burns that kindles this peculiar enthusiasm in Scotsmen and drives them to express it in feasting and oratory.

After casting about for some time, I suggested that Burns—­though in so many respects immeasurably inferior to Scott—­frequently wrote with a depth of feeling which Scott could not command.  On second thoughts, this was wrongly put.  Scott may have possessed the feeling, together with notions of his own, on the propriety of displaying it in his public writings.  Indeed, after reading some of his letters again, I am sure he did possess it.  Hear, for instance, how he speaks of Dalkeith Palace, in one of his letters to Lady Louisa Stuart:—­

“I am delighted my dear little half god-daughter is turning out beautiful.  I was at her christening, poor soul, and took the oaths as representing I forget whom.  That was in the time when Dalkeith was Dalkeith; how changed alas!  I was forced there the other day by some people who wanted to see the house, and I felt as if it would have done me a great deal of good to have set my manhood aside, to get into a corner and cry like a schoolboy.  Every bit of furniture, now looking old and paltry, had some story and recollections about it, and the deserted gallery, which I have seen so happily filled, seemed waste and desolate like Moore’s

’Banquet hall deserted,
Whose flowers are dead,
Whose odours fled,
And all but I departed.’

But it avails not either sighing or moralising; to have known the good and the great, the wise and the witty, is still, on the whole, a pleasing reflection, though saddened by the thought that their voices are silent and their halls empty.”

Yes, indeed, Scott possessed deep feelings, though he did not exhibit them to the public.

Now Burns does exhibit his deep feelings, as I demonstrated by quotations.  And I suggested that it is just his strength of emotion, his command of pathos and readiness to employ it, by which Burns appeals to the mass of his countrymen.  On this point “J.B.” expressly agrees with me; but—­he will have nothing to do with my quotations!  “However excellent in their way” these quotations may be, they “are not those that any Scotsman would trust to in support of the above proposition”; the above proposition being that “Burns appeals to the hearts and feelings of the masses in a way that Scott never does.”