Burns's

his passions, his dissipations, his excesses of many kinds, need not be denied and can not be excused. He himself would be the last to palliate them. Religious Nevertheless, they can be forgiven, and there

Nature

is no need that they should be unduly emphasized. We can afford to accept his poetry as it is, thanking God for such a genius, and committing to His infinite mercy all that was faulty in the nature of one of the greatest of His poets. If we have any touch of Burns's own sympathetic nature, we shall see that beneath the stormy surface of his life there was a true human heart and a genuinely religious spirit. Religious cant, hypocrisy, and pretence he hated with the fervor of a generous nature and ridiculed with all the power of his humor and his scorn. For true religion he displays nothing but reverence and sympathy. It is in such a spirit that he depicts the scene in The Cotter's Saturday Night, as

Kneeling down, to Heaven's Eternal King,

The saint, the father, and the husband prays.

He knew well, moreover, that

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs.

Speaking more directly for himself, he thus sums up the

matter:

When ranting round in pleasure's ring,

Religion may be blinded;

Or, if she gie a random sting,

It may be little minded;

But when on life we're tempest-driv'n

A conscience but a canker,

A correspondence fix'd wi' Heav'n,

Is sure a noble anchor !

The general tenor of his life and of his poetry allows us to believe that Burns did have that "anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast."

Burns's marked and forceful individuality underlying all his actions, his strongly individualistic convictions under

dividualism

lying all his thought, are not difficult to discover or to Burns's In- appreciate. He preached Individualism, directly in such poetry as A Man's a Man for a' that and certain passages of The Cotter's Saturday Night, indirectly in the essential tone and spirit of all his poetry. He gave in his own person a splendid example of Individualism. This ploughman and son of a poor Scotch peasant broke through the restrictions of his lowly rank and made his name known to the ends of the earth. He shook off the classical fetters that other men had not been able entirely to break, and spoke his free and fearless word to an age that must needs listen. He left his plough in the furrow and consorted with the greatest men of his time on equal terms, proud and independent as the best, and then went back to his plough again. He made men forget his humble origin as he challenged social rank and privilege, religious formalism and insincerity, political tyranny and oppression.

ual Genius

More even than all this was the strongly individual character of his poetic genius and work. He was a lyric His Individ poet, the greatest pure singer that England had yet seen. His song was full of exquisite music, but it was full also of that deeper thing in lyric poetry, warm and genuine human passion. Here were "tears and laughter for all time." Here was that "spark o' Nature's fire" which to him was better than all learning, full compensation for all toil, because it could "touch the heart." His homely Scottish dialect has become forever a classic speech because it has been touched by his genius. No English poet has ever come closer than he to the daily lives of men; for wherever the English language is spoken, his songs have been sung for a hundred years, and their music does not yet die away. Wordsworth spoke most truly :

Deep in the general heart of men,

His power survives.

CHAPTER XIV

THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1800-1832)

Individualism

THE eighteenth century was for the most part an age of authority and of classicism. Toward the close of the century had come the triumph of new and directly antagonistic principles, preparing the way for a great and original literary period during the earlier years of the nineteenth century. The Age of Wordsworth was to be distinctively and preeminently the age of Individualism. It was an age of great individual The Age of geniuses, many of them creating splendid bodies of literary work and establishing their places among the foremost writers of the literature. It was an age of great individualistic achievement; for although its writers were all moved in the main by the same general spirit, the work of each of the great leaders was surprisingly distinct and peculiar. It was an age of great individualistic ideas; for Individualism was in the air, was rapidly permeating the whole mass of society, and was passing on from a mere democratic principle to a concrete realization in actual democracy. The literary expression of this individualistic spirit was in large measure a further development of tendencies which we have already traced. Romantic literature was advanced and broadened by men like Scott, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. The poetic treatment of nature was brought by Wordsworth to its greatest depth and significance. The recognition of the worth, the dignity, and still further the rights, of the common man affected the work of many writers, and developed in some cases into a decidedly revolutionary sentiment. Emotion prevailed in literature as it had never