Adventures in Criticism by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
page 84 of 297 (28%)
page 84 of 297 (28%)
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apart from neighbouring Englishmen."
The loss on my side, to be sure, would be immensely the greater, were it not happily certain that I _can_ make something of Scotsmen; can, and indeed do, make friends of them. The Cult of Burns. All the same, this disability weighs me down with a sense of hopeless obtuseness when I consider the deportment of the average intelligent Scot at a Burns banquet, or a Burns _conversazione_, or a Burns festival, or the unveiling of a Burns statue, or the putting up of a pillar on some spot made famous by Burns. All over the world--and all under it, too, when their time comes--Scotsmen are preparing after-dinner speeches about Burns. The great globe swings round out of the sun into the dark; there is always midnight somewhere; and always in this shifting region the eye of imagination sees orators gesticulating over Burns; companies of heated exiles with crossed arms shouting "Auld Lang Syne"; lesser groups--if haply they be lesser--reposing under tables, still in honor of Burns. And as the vast continents sweep "eastering out of the high shadow which reaches beyond the moon," and as new nations, with _their_ cities and villages, their mountains and seashores, rise up on the morning-side, lo! fresh troops, and still fresh troops, and yet again fresh troops, wend or are carried out of action with the dawn. Scott and Burns. |
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