Alexander Keith
Published: 2015-06-17
Total Pages: 87
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Excerpt from Burns and Folk-Song "There is nothing new or mysterious in Burns," says Professor Elton, "except his perfection." The valuation, just in the broadest sense, can be stated with still greater economy. Save that it was individual and peculiar, Burns's perfection was not new. There had preceded him descriptive poets, narrative poets, satiric poets, lyrical poets - all of whom were and are worthy of being classed as perfect by reason of one or more of their poems. In none, however - if we agree to exclude Shakespeare - was perfection so mysterious in its origin or so faithful to its own high standard. That perfection, and not, as some would have it, his personal imperfections, real or imaginary, is the secret of his immortality; its mystery the secret of the world's persistent concern. The biggest brain in Scottish national literature is undoubtedly Scott's, but we do not celebrate his birth at every anniversary; most of us have forgotten the date of his entry into the world, if, indeed, we ever knew it. But Scott was an imperfect, a tantalisingly imperfect, genius; Burns was, when he liked, the unerring master of his art. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.