In knowledge of man, Burns strikes us with wonder unspeakable, when we consider the narrow circle in which he lived, and the early age at which he died. A single song is like a compressed drama; and within the circle of these songs we have impulses from every stage of life, from the perturbations of youth to the chill of age. To every shade of sentiment and affection; to every change and turn of inward experience, to every oddity and comicality of feeling, he has given a voice of musical and energetic utterance. Man, and man directly—man in the play of all his passions, is, with Burns, the great object of interest. The descriptive and the picturesque for their own sake have therefore no place in his writings. A picture with him is never more than the drapery of a passion. The chivalric past has none of his veneration; and the past, in any form, only kindles him when he associates it with the movements of humanity or the struggles of liberty. The conflicts of feudalism, the rivalry of dynasties, the gorgeous falsehoods of departed ages, had no enchantment to warm his fancy or to rule his pen. In this respect, the writings of Scott and those of Burns are as opposite as are their characters. The brilliancy of descriptive narrative glows over the poems of Scott—the strong life of passion throbs in those of Burns. Even in the record of a tour this contrast is observable. Scott has the eye of an antiquarian and a map-maker united. Burns glances along as if space were a tiresome obstruction to his fiery nature: Scott surveys every baronial castle, and notes all its chronicles. Burns raves with inspired fury on the field where the invader was struck down, where “tyrants fell in every blow.” Scott imagined that genius owed homage to rank; Burns gave the obligation another version, and conceived that rank should do reverence to genius. Peasant-born, he was too proud in his humanity to covet titles: almost morbidly jealous of individual independence, hereditary aristocracy was not to him poetically impressive; its outward glare provoked his scorn, and its deeper abuses sickened his imagination. Two most _human_ qualities in all poets are pre-eminent in Burns—I mean pathos and humor.