Poets he has often had in his eye in the following pieces; but
rather with a view to kindle at their flame, than for servile
imitation."

To be more specific, Burns found the model for his _Cotter's Saturday
Night_ in Fergusson's _Farmer's Ingle_, for _The Holy Fair_ in his
_Leith Races_, for _Scotch Drink_ in his _Caller Water_, for _The Twa
Dogs_ and _The Brigs of Ayr_ in his _Planestanes and Causey_, and
_Kirkyard Eclogues_. In later years Burns grew somewhat more critical
of Ramsay, especially as a reviser of old songs; but for Fergusson he
retained to the end a sympathetic admiration. When he went to
Edinburgh, one of his first places of pilgrimage was the grave of him
whom he apostrophized thus,

O thou, my elder brother in misfortune,
By far my elder brother in the muse!

And he later obtained from the managers of the Canongate Kirk
permission to erect a stone over the tomb.

The fact, then, that Burns owed much to the tradition of vernacular
poetry in Scotland and especially to his immediate predecessors is no
new discovery, however recent critics may have plumed themselves upon
it. Burns knew it well, and was ever ready to acknowledge it. What is
more important than the mere fact of his inheritance is the use he
made of it. In taking from his elders the fruits of their experience
in poetical conception and metrical arrangement, he but did what
artists have always done; in outdistancing these elders and in almost
every case surpassing their achievement on the lines they had laid
down, he did what only the greater artists succeed in doing. It is not