None but a churl would wish this enthusiasm abated. But why is it all
lavished on Burns? That is what gravels the Southron. Why Burns? Why
not Sir Walter? Had I the honor to be a fellow-countryman of Scott,
and had I command of the racial tom-tom, it seems to me that I would
tund upon it in honor of that great man until I dropped. To me, a
Southron, Scott is the most imaginative, and at the same time the
justest, writer of our language since Shakespeare died. To say this is
not to suggest that he is comparable with Shakespeare. Scott himself,
sensible as ever, wrote in his _Journal_, "The blockheads talk of my
being like Shakespeare--not fit to tie his brogues." "But it is also
true," said Mr. Swinburne, in his review of the _Journal_, "that if
there were or could be any man whom it would not be a monstrous
absurdity to compare with Shakespeare as a creator of men and inventor
of circumstance, that man could be none other than Scott." Greater
poems than his have been written; and, to my mind, one or two novels
better than his best. But when one considers the huge mass of his work,
and its quality in the mass; the vast range of his genius, and its
command over that range; who shall be compared with him?

These are the reflections which occur, somewhat obviously, to the
Southron. As for character, it is enough to say that Scott was one of
the best men who ever walked on this planet; and that Burns was not.
But Scott was not merely good: he was winningly good: of a character
so manly, temperate, courageous that men read his Life, his Journal,
his Letters with a thrill, as they might read of Rorke's Drift or
Chitral. How then are we to account for the undeniable fact that his
countrymen, in public at any rate, wax more enthusiastic over Burns?
Is it that the _homeliness_ of Burns appeals to them as a wandering
race? Is it because, in farthest exile, a line of Burns takes their
hearts straight back to Scotland?--as when Luath the collie, in "The