Meanwhile, something may be said of the present selection, if only to explain it. The title _Songs and Lyrics_ has been chosen in preference to _Songs and Poems_, that the reader, having been warned, might have no cause for feeling aggrieved at the absence of a number of pieces which are constants in other collections, however variously made up. The term “lyric” has, by one notable example of its use and by subsequent custom, become the accepted general name for poems of many kinds having for their common characters only the quality of expressing feeling or reflection (or the quality, in the case of an anecdote or incident, of producing feeling or reflection) and comparative brevity. It includes readily _O Were I on Parnassus Hill_ and the _Lament for Glencairn_; that astonishing rapture of words and humour and gusto the _Address to a Haggis_, and that wise and tender yet withal scathing _Address to the Unco Guid_. But it cannot be made to cover such an exact description of local custom as _Halloween_; such a satirical and controversial description of local events as _The Holy Fair_ and others of its kind; nor even _Death and Doctor Hornbook_, effective though it is and instinct with the poet’s humorous malice. These things are splendid as literature, are indeed unequalled of their kind; but their quality is mainly intellectual rather than poetical in the more absolute sense, and the interest which they appeal to (and appeal powerfully) is not mainly our interest in poetry. In any case they are in all the collections, and I have considered that by their omission on this occasion it would be possible to render a service to Burns, and to lovers of poetry, which has not yet been rendered. A selection, I have thought, might be made in which the Poet himself, and not the social scenery of which he was a curious observer, nor the alien matters with which he took up, should be the pervading presence in the book, making it continuously lyrical, personal, and human. This, it was obvious, would mean some uncustomary omissions. But experiment has proved that it means also a sudden enlargement of the range of choice among things truly and beautifully poetical. The poetic wealth of Burns seems, indeed, not diminished but enriched by the surrender of that part which issues rather from the general energy of his genius than from those faculties of the soul in which he is distinctively a poet. Certainly there is no dearth, either of value or variety, the range of Burns over the different forms and occasions of poetry being, upon the whole, unique. Shakespeare implicitly contains everything, yet he has contributed to but a few of the forms; while the moderns (like Wordsworth) who have attempted to exemplify the different varieties of poetical composition are lyrically or morally monotonous. _Cælum non animum mutant._