preface
sland, and once more tried farming for three years. continued ill-success, however, led him, in 1791, to abandon ellisland, and he moved to dumfries, where he had obtained a position in the excise. but he was now thoroughly discouraged; his work was mere drudgery; his tency to take his relaxation inbauchery increased the weakness of a constitution early urmined; and he died at dumfries in his thirty-eighth year.
it is not necessary here to attempt to disentangle or explain away the numerous amours in which he was engaged through the greater part of his life. it is evnt that burns was a man of extremely passionate nature and fond of conviviality; and the misfortunes of his lotbined with his natural tencies to drive him to frequent excesses of self-indulgence. he was often remorseful, and he strove painfully, if intermittently, after better things. but the story of his life must be admitted to be in its externals a painful and somewhat sordid chronicle. that it contained, however, many moments of joy and exaltation is proved by the poems here printed.
burns poetry falls into two main groups: english and scottish. his english poems are, for the most part, inferior specimens of conventional eighteenth-century verse. but in scottish poetry he achieved triumphs of a quite extraordinary kind. since the time of the reformation and the union of the crowns of england and scotland, the scots dialect had largely fallen into disuse as a medium for dignified writing. shortly before burns time, however, allan ramsay and robert fergusson had been the leading figures in a revival of the vernacular, and burns received from them a national tradition which he succed in carrying to its highest pitch, bing thereby, to an almost uniquegree, the poet of his people.
he first showedplete mastery of verse in the field of satire. in “the twa herds,” “holy willies prayer,” “address to the unco guid,” “the holy fair,” and others, he manifested sympathy with the protest of the so-called “new light” party, which had sprung up in opposition to the extreme calvinism and intolerance of the dominant “auld lichts.” the fact that burns had personally suffered from the discipline of the kirk probably ad fire to his attacks, but the satires show more than personal animus. the force of the invective, the keenness of th
it is not necessary here to attempt to disentangle or explain away the numerous amours in which he was engaged through the greater part of his life. it is evnt that burns was a man of extremely passionate nature and fond of conviviality; and the misfortunes of his lotbined with his natural tencies to drive him to frequent excesses of self-indulgence. he was often remorseful, and he strove painfully, if intermittently, after better things. but the story of his life must be admitted to be in its externals a painful and somewhat sordid chronicle. that it contained, however, many moments of joy and exaltation is proved by the poems here printed.
burns poetry falls into two main groups: english and scottish. his english poems are, for the most part, inferior specimens of conventional eighteenth-century verse. but in scottish poetry he achieved triumphs of a quite extraordinary kind. since the time of the reformation and the union of the crowns of england and scotland, the scots dialect had largely fallen into disuse as a medium for dignified writing. shortly before burns time, however, allan ramsay and robert fergusson had been the leading figures in a revival of the vernacular, and burns received from them a national tradition which he succed in carrying to its highest pitch, bing thereby, to an almost uniquegree, the poet of his people.
he first showedplete mastery of verse in the field of satire. in “the twa herds,” “holy willies prayer,” “address to the unco guid,” “the holy fair,” and others, he manifested sympathy with the protest of the so-called “new light” party, which had sprung up in opposition to the extreme calvinism and intolerance of the dominant “auld lichts.” the fact that burns had personally suffered from the discipline of the kirk probably ad fire to his attacks, but the satires show more than personal animus. the force of the invective, the keenness of th