Sir,--Among men of Genius,and especially among Poets,there are some to whom we turn with a peculiar and unfeigned affection;there are others whom we admire rather than love.By some we are won with our will,by others conquered against our desire.It has been your peculiar fortune to capture the hearts of a whole people--a people not usually prone to praise,but devoted with a personal and patriotic loyalty to you and to your reputation.In you every Scot who IS a Scot sees,admires,and compliments Himself,his ideal self--independent,fond of whisky,fonder of the lassies;you are the true representative of him and of his nation.Next year will be the hundredth since the press of Kilmarnock brought to light its solitary masterpiece,your Poems;and next year,therefore,methinks,the revenue will receive a welcome accession from the abundance of whisky drunk in your honour.It is a cruel thing for any of your countrymen to feel that,where all the rest love,he can only admire;where all the rest are idolators,he may not bend the knee;but stands apart and beats upon his breast,observing,not adoring--a critic.Yet to some of us--petty souls,perhaps,and envious--that loud indiscriminating praise of "Robbie Burns"(for so they style you in their Change-house familiarity)has long been ungrateful;and,among the treasures of your songs,we venture to select and even to reject.So it must be!We cannot all love Haggis,nor "painch,tripe,and thairm,"and all those rural dainties which you celebrate as "warm-reekin,rich!""Rather too rich,"as the Young Lady said on an occasion recorded by Sam Weller.
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware That jaups in luggies;But,if ye wish her gratefu'prayer,Gie her a Haggis!
You HAVE given her a Haggis,with a vengeance,and her "gratefu'prayer"is yours for ever.But if even an eternity of partridge may pall on the epicure,so of Haggis too,as of all earthly delights,cometh satiety at last.And yet what a glorious Haggis it is--the more emphatically rustic and even Fescennine part of your verse!We have had many a rural bard since Theocritus "watched the visionary flocks,"but you are the only one of them all who has spoken the sincere Doric.Yours is the talk of the byre and the plough-tail;yours is that large utterance of the early hinds.Even Theocritus minces matters,save where Lacon and Comatas quite out-do the swains of Ayrshire."But thee,Theocritus,wha matches?"you ask,and yourself out-match him in this wide rude region,trodden only by the rural Muse."THY rural loves are nature's sel';"and the wooer of Jean Armour speaks more like a true shepherd than the elegant Daphnis of the "Oaristys."Indeed it is with this that moral critics of your life reproach you,forgetting,perhaps,that in your amours you were but as other Scotch ploughmen and shepherds of the past and present.Ettrick may still,with Afghanistan,offer matter for idylls,as Mr.Carlyle (your antithesis,and the complement of the Scotch character)supposed;but the morals of Ettrick are those of rural Sicily in old days,or of Mossgiel in your days.Over these matters the Kirk,with all her power,and the Free Kirk too,have had absolutely no influence whatever.To leave so delicate a topic,you were but as other swains,or,as "that Birkie ca'd a lord,"Lord Byron;only you combined (in certain of your letters)a libertine theory with your practice;you poured out in song your audacious raptures,your half-hearted repentance,your shame and your scorn.You spoke the truth about rural lives and loves.We may like it or dislike it but we cannot deny the verity.
