Worcester morning daily spy., 1898-01-26

to live together. Clansman and Came
roman have learned to face a common
| foe. Scotland is Scotland yet, greater in
union than in independence, a force
wherever her sons may go for freedom
and for order
That this is true today, that the world
recognizes, not the mythical Dugald
Dalgetty but the real Colin Campbell
ay, and if blood be better than birth
place the real Charles George Gordon
as the typical Scottish hero. that there
even exists today a Scottish pride of
race is due not to a statesman not to q
soldier, but to the poet of the Scottish
people, Robert Burns.
The strait Jacket that once so dwarfed
literature is exhibited in the criticism
of Burns by certain persons in his own
day, who declared that the Ayrshire
farmer could not be a poet because he
never wrote a tragedy.
Critics say that the frolicsome verses
of Halloween are a masterpiece of pop
ular verse They are. Students say
that no man. before or since has so
blended wit with FOLKLORE as in Tam
O'Shanter." 1t is true. The cynic picks
out 1.-The jolly beggars' as a marvel of
satire worthy of Butler or Swift at
their best None will deny it. The mu-
sicians of Europe find my love is like
a red, red rose a pearl among lyrics.
Whose heart has not throbbed to its
melody? Even the dour face of Carlyle
relaxed as he gloriied Burns power of
descriptive verse in the Winter night"
1t has never been equalled except per-
| haps in our own Whittier's Snow
bound" His tender sympathy for the
meanest thing that feels, the beautiful
lines to the "Auld mare Maggie ITO
the wounded hare ITO the field
mouse ITO the mountain daisy"
have touched the heart, not of Words
worth only, but Of the world.
Scottish bards, Campbell, Montgomery
and the Ettrick Shepherd at the head of
Them mourned him. Halleck, Holmes
and Longfellow in America have echoed
the melodious praises of Wordsworth in
England, and the wreath woven by
Emerson the optimist lies beside that of
Carlyle the cynic.
Great because he knew how to be SIM
pie, the master of kings was the servant
of the people.
The tragedy of Burns unhappy life
makes it impossible to write for him an
epitaph. Yet we may truly say that the
genius of Burns was the genius of his
people. Burns is in Scottish literature
what Lincoln is in American history
The work of each was guided by the
mighty spirit that is not of man, nor of
class but of a nation Macpherson
North Briton, Scott was Borderer, but
Burns was a Scotsman.
Born scarce a dozen years after Gull
loden, he came to a land whose people
had been well-nigh beaten to the earth
by a century of warfare, internal feud,
religious persecution and massacre. The
history of Scotland stretching backward
for a century beyond the birth of Burns
is yelled in smoke and STEPPED in blood.
The awful marrying, torture and murder
of the unhappy wings of the west by
| Bloody Claverhouse," better known to
history by the strange irony of fate
under the jocular title of Bonnie Dun
dee, had been followed by the no less
terrible massacre of the McDonalds at
! Glenco, and the prescription of the Nc
Gregors and Rob Roy. The union with
England, unpopular alike with wings
and Jacobites had twice been followed
by rebellion, civil war and bloody repres-
sion. 1t had become even crime, for
hidden by law to wear the tartan. The
national spirit seemed dead, and as