high. They bear, as such compositions should, the impression of free
spontaneity, and indeed often read like sheer improvisations. Yet they
are sprinkled with admirable stanzas of natural description, shrewd
criticism, delightful humor, and are pervaded by a delicate
tactfulness possible only to a man with a genius for friendship. They
are usually written in the favorite six-line stanza, the meter that
flowed most easily from his pen, and in language are the richest
vernacular. His ambition to be "literary" seldom brings in its jarring
notes here, and indeed at times he seems to avenge himself on this
besetting sin by a very individual jocoseness toward the mythological
figures that intrude into his more serious efforts. His Muse is the
special victim. Instead of the conventional draped figure she becomes
a "tapetless, ramfeezl'd hizzie," "saft at best an' something lazy;"
she is a "thowless jad;" or she is dethroned altogether:

"We'll cry nae jads frae heathen hills
To help or roose us, [inspire]
But browster wives an' whisky stills-- [brewer]
They are the Muses!"

Again the tone is one of affectionate familiarity:

Leeze me on rhyme! It's aye a treasure, [Blessings on]
My chief, amaist my only pleasure; [almost]
At hame, a-fiel', at wark or leisure,
The Muse, poor hizzie,
Tho' rough an' raploch be her measure, [homespun]
She's seldom lazy.

Haud to the Muse, my dainty Davie: