of Gilbertfield; in songs, popular or artistic, and so forth. He
"alchemised" his materials, as Mr. Greenwood says of his author of
the plays; turned dross into gold, brick into marble. Notoriously
much Shakespearean work is of the same nature.

The education of Burns he owed to his peasant father, to his parish
school (in many such schools he might have acquired Latin and Greek;
in fact he did not), to a tutor who read with him some English and
French; and he knew a modernised version of Blind Harry's Wallace;
Locke's Essay; The Spectator, novels of the day, and vernacular Scots
poets of his century, with a world of old Scots songs. These things,
and such as these, were Burns's given literary materials. He used
them in the only way open to him, in poems written for a rural
audience, and published for an Edinburgh public. No classical, no
theatrical materials were given; or, if he read the old drama, he
could not, in his rural conditions, and in a Scotland where the
theatre was in a very small way, venture on producing plays, for
which there was no demand, while he had no knowledge of the Stage.
Burns found and filled the only channels open to him, in a printed
book, and in music books for which he transmuted old songs.

The bookish materials offered to Will, in London, were crammed with
reminiscences from the classics, were mainly romantic and theatrical;
and, from his profession of actor, by far the best channel open to
him was the theatre. Badly as it paid the outside author, there was
nothing that paid better. Venus and Adonis brought "more praise than
pudding," if one may venture a guess. With the freedom of the
theatre Will could soar to all heights and plumb all depths. No such
opportunity had Burns, even if he could have used it, and, owing to a
variety of causes, his spirit soon ceased to soar high or wing wide.