convivial and somewhat gross existences with pith and point.
In Ramsay, and far more in the poor lad Fergusson, there was
mettle, humour, literary courage, and a power of saying what
they wished to say definitely and brightly, which in the
latter case should have justified great anticipations. Had
Burns died at the same age as Fergusson, he would have left
us literally nothing worth remark. To Ramsay and to
Fergusson, then, he was indebted in a very uncommon degree,
not only following their tradition and using their measures,
but directly and avowedly imitating their pieces. The same
tendency to borrow a hint, to work on some one else's
foundation, is notable in Burns from first to last, in the
period of song-writing as well as in that of the early poems;
and strikes one oddly in a man of such deep originality, who
left so strong a print on all he touched, and whose work is
so greatly distinguished by that character of "inevitability"
which Wordsworth denied to Goethe.

When we remember Burns's obligations to his predecessors, we
must never forget his immense advances on them. They had
already "discovered" nature; but Burns discovered poetry - a
higher and more intense way of thinking of the things that go
to make up nature, a higher and more ideal key of words in
which to speak of them. Ramsay and Fergusson excelled at
making a popular - or shall we say vulgar? - sort of society
verses, comical and prosaic, written, you would say, in
taverns while a supper party waited for its laureate's word;
but on the appearance of Burns, this coarse and laughing
literature was touched to finer issues, and learned gravity
of thought and natural pathos.