The genius of Burns, of
course, is far indeed below the level of that of the author of the
Shakespearean plays. But that author and Burns have this in common
with each other (and obviously with Homer), that their work arises
from a basis of older materials, already manipulated by earlier
artists. Burns almost always has a key-note already touched, as
confessedly in the poems of his predecessor, Fergusson; of Hamilton
of Gilbertfield; in songs, popular or artistic, and so forth. He
"alchemised" his materials, as Mr. Greenwood says of his author of
the plays; turned dross into gold, brick into marble. Notoriously
much Shakespearean work is of the same nature.
The education of Burns he owed to his peasant father, to his parish
school (in many such schools he might have acquired Latin and Greek;
in fact he did not), to a tutor who read with him some English and
French; and he knew a modernised version of Blind Harry's Wallace;
Locke's Essay; The Spectator, novels of the day, and vernacular Scots
poets of his century, with a world of old Scots songs. These things,
and such as these, were Burns's given literary materials. He used
them in the only way open to him, in poems written for a rural
audience, and published for an Edinburgh public. No classical, no
theatrical materials were given; or, if he read the old drama, he
could not, in his rural conditions, and in a Scotland where the
theatre was in a very small way, venture on producing plays, for
which there was no demand, while he had no knowledge of the Stage.
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