Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

46 CRITICISM AND CREATION. [ll.
some change in national sentiment. I shall take but
two instances.
The long struggle between the Stewart kings and the
new order of things, from Charles I till the days of
Prince Charles Edward, how faithfully is it reflected in
the Jacobite songs and lyrics ! At first jaunty, trucu-
lent, haughtily anti-plebeian, they then change into a
pathetic wail of nameless singers for a lost cause and
a departing glory, till at last they lend to the songs of
Burns, of Lady Nairne, and of Walter Scott tender
tones of imaginative regret for a vanished time.
I suppose no lover of English poetry would willingly
part with what Burns and Cowper have contributed to
it. But what would have become of Burns, if, before
pouring forth his passion-prompted songs, he had taken
counsel with some learned critic, who told him that
ere he allowed himself to sing, he must first know the
best of what the world had felt and sung before him }
Indeed, after he had flung forth in his own vernacular
those matchless songs, which have made the whole world
his debtor, when he came to know the literati of his time,
and to read more widely in English literature, he ac-
knowledged that, had he known more, he would have
dared less, nor have ventured on such unfrequented by-
paths. Wider knowledge, that is, would have paralysed
his singing power.
Again : Cowper was a scholar, and in his youth had
seen something- of what London could show him. In