17. His best poems are lyrical, and he is himself one of the foremost lyrical poets in the world. His songs have probably been more sung, and in more parts of the globe, than the songs of any other writer that ever lived. They are of every kind-- songs of love, war, mirth, sorrow, labour, and social gatherings. Professor Craik says: “One characteristic that belongs to whatever Burns has written is that, of its kind and in its own way, it is a perfect production. His poetry is, throughout, real emotion melodiously uttered, instinct with passion, but not less so with power of thought,-- full of light as well as of fire.” Most of his poems are written in the North-English, or Lowland-Scottish, dialect. The most elevated of his poems is +The Vision+, in which he relates how the Scottish Muse found him at the plough, and crowned him with a wreath of holly. One of his longest, as well as finest poems, is +The Cottar’s Saturday Night+, which is written in the Spenserian stanza. Perhaps his most pathetic poem is that entitled +To Mary in Heaven+. It is of a singular eloquence, elevation, and sweetness. The first verse runs thus-- “Thou lingering star, with lessening ray, That lov’st to greet the early morn, Again thou usher’st in the day My Mary from my soul was torn. O Mary! dear departed shade! Where is thy place of blissful rest? See’st thou thy lover lowly laid? Hear’st thou the groans that rend his breast?” He is, as his latest critic says, “the poet of homely human nature;” and his genius shows the beautiful elements in this homeliness; and that what is homely need not therefore be dull and prosaic.