That is one reason, no doubt. But there is another, I suspect. With all his immense range Scott saw deeply into character; but he did not, I think, see very deeply into feeling. You may extract more of the _lacrimæ rerum_ from the story of his own life than from all his published works put together. The pathos of Lammermoor is taken-for-granted pathos. If you deny this, you will not deny, at any rate, that the pathos of the last scene of _Lear_ is quite beyond his scope. Yet this is not more certainly beyond his scope than is the feeling in many a single line or stanza of Burns'. Verse after verse, line after line, rise up for quotation-- "Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird That sings beside thy mate; For sae I sat, and sae I sang, And wist na o' my fate." Or, "O pale, pale now, those rosy lips I aft hae kissed sae fondly! And closed for aye the sparkling glance That dwelt on me sae kindly! And mouldering now in silent dust The heart that lo'ed me dearly-- But still within my bosom's core Shall live my Highland Mary." Or, "Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met--or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted." Scott left an enormous mass of writing behind him, and almost all of it is good. Burns left very much less, and among it a surprising amount of inferior stuff. But such pathos as the above Scott cannot touch. I can understand the man who holds that these deeps of pathos should not be probed in literature: and am not sure that I wholly disagree with him. The question certainly is discutable and worth discussing. But such pathos, at any rate, is immensely popular: and perhaps this will account for the hold which Burns retains on the affections of a race which has a right to be at least thrice as proud of Scott.