in mere inventiveness and novelty but in first-hand energy of
conception, in mastering for himself the old thought and the old form
and uttering them with his personal stamp, in making them carry over
to the reader with a new force or vividness or beauty, that the poet's
originality consists. In these respects Burns's originality is no whit
lessened by an explicit recognition of his indebtedness to the stock
from which he grew.

His relation to the purely English literature which he read is
different and produced very different results. Shakespeare he
reverenced, and that he knew him well is shown by the frequency of
Shakespearean turns of phrase in his letters, as well as by direct
quotation. But of influence upon his poetry there is little trace. He
had a profound admiration for the indomitable will of Milton's Satan,
and he makes it clear that this admiration affected his conduct. The
most frequent praise of English writers in his letters is, however,
given to the eighteenth-century authors--to Pope, Thomson, Shenstone,
Gray, Young, Blair, Beattie, and Goldsmith in verse, to Sterne,
Smollett, and Henry Mackenzie in prose. Echoes of these poets are
common in his work, and the most frigid of his English verses show
their influence most clearly. To the sentimental tendency in the
thought of the eighteenth century he was highly responsive, and the
expression of it in _The Man of Feeling_ appealed to him especially.
In a mood which recurred painfully often he was apt to pride himself
on his "sensibility": the letters to Clarinda are full of it. The less
fortunate effects of it are seen both in his conduct and in his poems
in a fondness for nursing his emotions and extracting pleasure from
his supposed miseries; the more fortunate aspects are reflected in the
tender humanity of poems like those _To a Mouse_, _On Seeing a Wounded
Hare_, and _To a Daisy_--perhaps even in the _Address to the Deil_. He