with critical observations and biographical notices, by Robert Burns

XV
It would be uncandid to suppose that the Editor
has here been actuated by a wish to detract from the
merit of Burns. He conceived that nothing which
might serve to elucidate the progress of his gigantic
mind could be useless or uninteresting. Burns
wished not to shroud himself up in any mysterious
obscurity. He felt no jealousy that the closest in-
spection would in the least diminish his reputation.
We see him continually pointing to the productions
with which his earliest years were most familiar;
thus affording us, in a great measure, the means of
ascertaining how much of his excellence we owe to
the efforts of those who had preceded him, and how
much to the inspiration of his own vigorous mind.
The path he trod was so unfrequented, and lay so
much out of the common road, that without his as-
sistance we should never have traced it. We saw
with admiration a rich and unexpected harvest of
original poetry; and we could not discover from
whence he had collected the seeds that had shot up
to such maturity. We find, however, that many of
the thoughts which appear in him with such lustre
were derived from others ; and even that some of his
most sublime and pathetic poems owe their origin to
models of a similar description, however inferior.
To the Farmer's Ingle we owe the Cottar's Satur-
day Night : to the rude and artless offspring of for-