This union, however, has its drawbacks when
we come to consider the songs as literature; for to present them as
here in bare print without the living tune is to perpetuate a divorce
which their author never contemplated. No editor of Burns can fail to
feel a pang when he thinks that these words may be heard by ears that
carry no echo of the airs to which they were born. Here lies the
fundamental reason for what seems to outsiders the exaggerated
estimate of Burns in the judgment of his countrymen. What they extol
is not mere literature, but song, the combination of poetry and music;
and it is only when Burns is judged as an artist in this double sense
that he is judged fairly.
CHAPTER IV
SATIRES AND EPISTLES
Fame first came to Burns through his satires. Before he had been
recognized by the Edinburgh litterateurs, before he had written more
than a handful of songs, he was known and feared on his own countryside
as a formidable critic of ecclesiastical tyranny. It was this reputation
that made possible the success of the subscription to the Kilmarnock
volume, and so saved Burns to Scotland.
Two characteristics of the Kirk of Scotland had tended to prepare the
people to welcome an attack on its authority: the severity with which
the clergy administered discipline, and the extremes to which they had
pushed their Calvinism.
In spite of the existence of dissenting bodies, the great mass of the
population belonged to the established church, and both their
spiritual privileges and their social standing were at the mercy of
the Kirk session and the presiding minister.
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