In his “Commonplace Book,” Burns records his eager desire to write verse that shall make “the fertile banks of Irvine, the romantic woodlands & sequestered scenes on Aire, and the healthy, mountainous source, & winding sweep of Doon emulate Tay, Forth, Ettrick, Tweed, &c.” And his love of Nature was limited in scope to just these scenes of which he speaks. He had no interest in mountains or the sea. Mr. Douglas calls attention to the fact that, “living in full face of the Arran hills he never names them.”[505] He was as narrow in his limits and as vividly local in the Nature he chose to represent as was Cowper, but what he loved he loved with intensity. In the beautiful and picturesque scenery about Ayr he found poetic inspiration. To William Simson he said, The muse, nae poet ever fand her, Till by himself he learn’d to wander, Adown some trottin burn’s meander, An’ no think lang; and in “The Brigs of Ayr” he says the simple bard may learn his tuneful trade from every bough. Burns’ knowledge of the Nature about him was abundant and exact, and he was keenly critical of any note of falsity in the poems of others. He objected to the “Banks of the Dee” because of the line, And sweetly the _nightingale_ sang from the _tree_. “In the first place,” he said, “the nightingale sings in a low bush, but never from a tree; and in the second place, there never was a nightingale seen or heard on the banks of the Dee, nor the banks of any other river in Scotland. Exotic, rural imagery is always comparatively flat.”[506] Again he said of another song, “It is a fine song, but for consistency’s sake, alter the name ‘Adonis.’ Was there ever such banns published, as a purpose of marriage between _Adonis_ and _Mary_? These Greek and Roman pastoral appellations have a flat, insipid effect in a Scot song.”[507] He gives especial praise to Rev. Dr. Cririe, because “like Thomson,” the poet had “looked into Nature for himself,” and had nowhere been content with a “copied description.”[508] When Burns wrote a descriptive poem of set purpose he was comparatively commonplace and uninteresting as in “The Fall of Foyers” or “Admiring Nature.” His best descriptions come in, by chance as it were, in the midst of some vivid human interests. One of the most beautiful is a stanza in “Halloween”: Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays, As thro’ the glen it wimpl’t; Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays, Whyles in a wiel it dimpl’t; Whyles glitter’d ta the nightly rays, Wi’ bickering, dancing dazzle; Whyles cookit underneath the braes, Below the spreading hazel, Unseen that night. Work so perfect as this is rare in any age. The beauty of the poem is simply the beauty of the stream itself.