Himself at the confluence of the
two streams, the national and the local, he pays his tribute to two sets
of originals, talks with equal reverence of names known to us like Pope
and Gray and Shenstone and names unknown which belonged to local
"bards," as he would have called them, who wrote their poems for an
Ayrshire public. If he came upon England as an innovator it was simply
because he brought with him the highly individualized style of Scottish
local vernacular verse; to his own people he was no innovator but a
fulfilment; as his best critic[5] says he brought nothing to the
literature he became a part of but himself. His daring and splendid
genius made the local universal, raised out of rough and cynical
satirizing a style as rich and humorous and astringent as that of
Rabelais, lent inevitableness and pathos and romance to lyric and song.
But he was content to better the work of other men. He made hardly
anything new.
[Footnote 5: W.E. Henley, "Essay on Burns." Works, David Nutt.]
Stevenson in his essay on Burns remarks his readiness to use up the work
of others or take a large hint from it "as if he had some difficulty in
commencing." He omits to observe that the very same trait applies to
other great artists.
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