SCOTLAND’S NATIONAL BALD.

Evening Star, Issue 16335, 30 January 1917, Page 7

SCOTLAND’S NATIONAL BALD.

TO THE EDITOR, Sir,—An article in the ‘Star’ on Thursday evening, under the Above luad, is a fine appreciation of Burns, the poet and the man, and certainly this democratic bard had ry big lump of the last-named quality in his disposition. Concerning the writers statement ‘‘that Burns wasiankcd as an uneducated poet,” perhaps after all he v.-as greater than many who have had nil academical training and a classical environment, because very often the man with culture overmuch becomes warped in his vision, and his poems lack tire universal ring. Walt Whitman, who sang the songs of American Democracy, wrote some poems that might truthfully he called unconventional, and perhaps 'would not be appreciated by a, certain class of people described by au Australian Premier “as individuals who make a great fuss at seeing an inch of a woman’s underskirt, but remain unmoved at a mountain of misery.’’ Yes, they get shocked at things that don’t matter; yet wc read that J. M. Symmous, tho distinguished scholar and essayist, admits that tho reading of Walt Whitman’s poems prevented him from becoming a prig ; and this is where Burns’s poems are appealing. He did not mince matters; and quite right, too. Robert Burns paid the price, as all do who dare, to do their own thinking, and not accept tho complacent, comfortable, and orthodox view, not forgetting that his ofiicial superiors, who employed him. said " You arc to work, not to think.” Ah ’ must it not have been galling for this heroic soul to suffer those insults, and coming, too, from mediocrities in proportion to him. . As Carlyle has stated: “As if Thought, Power of Thinking, were net, at all times, in all places and situations, in the world, precisely tho thing that was wanted.” An American critic has expressed tho opinion “ that Burns’s prayer that wc might ‘ see cursels as others see ns’ was weak.” The answer could minister only to man's vanity. It would show him, only what others think him to bo, not what he is. In judging a poet of Burns’s calibre we must lake him in the big. This poet had a.u education innate in tho man that no university curriculum can t offer, and he would indeed he a soulless beiiifr who cannot appreciate the poems or songs of Scotland's democratic singer; and much of the humane knowledge forming . tho groundwork of his poems he got—- . where? Why, . . . In glory, and in joy. Behind his plough, upon the- mountain 1 side. -i . Yes, Burns was a. battler for brother- } hood.—l am, etc.,

Elliott January 26. i t~ _