prevented them from exercising that strictness of control which was necessary to correct error and suppress mediocrity. The idea sometimes comes across our minds, that the fortunes of our great Scottish poet might indeed have been very different, if his fate had connected him with a spirit so frank, so independent, so liberal, and so enterprising, as that which animated a dear and lamented friend of our own, of whose name it can never be necessary to make express mention in the pages of Maga. We should probably, in such a case, have reaped still richer fruits than we possess from the genius of Burns; and we might not have had the pain of seeing his more mature productions dishonoured, by an association with many rude and shapeless efforts that ought never to have seen the light.
It is our purpose, in one or two articles, to apply the flail and the fanners to the lyrical works of these two national poets, labouring, to the best of our capacity, to separate the wheat from the chaff, the solid and salubrious material of the staff of life from the husks and refuse with which it is too intimately commingled. We shall treat of these two eminent writers in connexion, not that we think them altogether equal or similar to each other; but because each has justly earned for himself the name of a national poet, as well as a wide possession of general popularity, and each has much in his writings to praise, and not a little to reprehend.
We begin with Burns; and we shall first of all notice some of those songs which we think faulty or indifferent, and which, therefore, we could have wished might have remained in the author's repositories, as conveyancers say, undelivered at the time of his death. Let it be observed, that we have not the horror that some people entertain about posthumous publication. It may sometimes be an evil when intrusted to indiscreet hands, but, if judiciously conducted, it is psychologically curious, and critically very valuable. It is of infinite importance to literary students to see the crude conceptions of a man of genius in the very bud, or only half blown, and thence to learn the degrees by which excellence may be attained. From such revelations the timid may acquire confidence, and the rash caution. The comparison between the compositions thus found to have been delayed or suppressed, and those finished works of genius which have finally received their author's approval, must prevent any injury to public taste, and must even tend to its improvement. It is a very different thing when an author, in his own lifetime, is tempted to put out of his hands productions which have not yet received the last polish of the file, or which may, perhaps, be incapable of taking it; and we greatly deplore any system of things that tends to such a result. It is itself a flagrant violation, and its example involves a wide-spread disregard of that rule of "being perfect," which, in different though not discordant ways, ought equally to be the aim of the poet and the Christian.
Let it not be supposed that, in the review of Burns's songs which we are now to attempt, the proposal to point out his faults implies any indifference to his excellences, or any want of admiration for his high and manly genius. Much that we are here to write, will show how reverently we think of him; and a criticism upon that part of his compositions, which, on the whole, we think the most vulnerable, can never imply that we are blind to the innumerable beauties which are scattered throughout his works. The pathos, the humour, the strong judgment, the lively fancy, the terse diction, which characterise all Burns's masterpieces, and which are to be found alike in his best songs as in other parts of his poetry, make it impossible that criticism, fairly and impartially conducted, can have any other result than that of raising the estimate of his powers while placing it upon a firmer foundation. It is because he was a man of high genius, and because he exerts over all men, and more especially over his countrymen, the dominion that genius is heir to, that we desire to point out, along with his merits, those errors from which we could have wished him to be free. Assuredly, we would willingly accept of another such man, (though, when shall we look upon his like again?) even with all the faults which we are about to condemn. But if another such should ever arise, we would desire to make him more perfect than his predecessor in care, and diligence, and taste: and we still more would labour to recommend these qualities
