common people. Direct and simple, its diction was still capable of
carrying intense feeling, a humor incomparable in its archness and sly
mirth, and a power of idealizing ordinary experience without effort or
affectation. The union of these words with the traditional melodies,
on which we have so strongly insisted, gave them a superb singing
quality, which has had as much to do with their popularity as their
thought or their feeling. This union, however, has its drawbacks when
we come to consider the songs as literature; for to present them as
here in bare print without the living tune is to perpetuate a divorce
which their author never contemplated. No editor of Burns can fail to
feel a pang when he thinks that these words may be heard by ears that
carry no echo of the airs to which they were born. Here lies the
fundamental reason for what seems to outsiders the exaggerated
estimate of Burns in the judgment of his countrymen. What they extol
is not mere literature, but song, the combination of poetry and music;
and it is only when Burns is judged as an artist in this double sense
that he is judged fairly.




CHAPTER IV

SATIRES AND EPISTLES


Fame first came to Burns through his satires. Before he had been
recognized by the Edinburgh litterateurs, before he had written more
than a handful of songs, he was known and feared on his own countryside
as a formidable critic of ecclesiastical tyranny. It was this reputation