The didactic tendency reaches its height in the _Epistle to a
Young Friend_. Here there is no personal confession, but a conscious
and professed sermon, unrelated, as the last line shows, to the
practise of the preacher. It is, of course, only poetry in the
eighteenth-century sense--

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed--

and as such it should be judged. The critics who have reacted most
violently against the attempted canonization of Burns have been
inclined to sneer at this admirable homily, and to insinuate
insincerity. But human nature affords every-day examples of just such
perfectly sincere inconsistency as we find between the sixth stanza
and Burns's own conduct; while not inconsistency but a very genuine
rhetoric inspires the characteristic quatrain which closes the
seventh.


EPISTLE TO A YOUNG FRIEND

I lang hae thought, my youthfu' friend,
A something to have sent you,
Tho' it should serve nae ither end
Than just a kind memento; [sort of]
But how the subject-theme may gang,
Let time and chance determine;
Perhaps it may turn out a sang,
Perhaps turn out a sermon.

Ye'll try the world soon, my lad,