In the peasant class
in which he was born and reared, the fierceness of the struggle for
existence has crowded out some of the more beautiful qualities that
need ease and leisure for their development. The virtues of chivalry
do indeed at times appear among the very poor, but they are the
characteristic product of a class in which conditions are more
generous, the necessaries of life are taken for granted, and the
elemental demands of human nature are satisfied without competitive
striving. When a peasant is chivalrous he is so by virtue of some
individual quality, and in spite of rather than because of the spirit
of his class. Burns was too acute and too observant not to gather much
from the social ideals of the ladies and gentlemen with whom he came
in contact, and what he gathered affected his conduct profoundly; but
at times under stress of frustrated passion or mortified vanity he
reverted to the ruder manners of the peasantry from which he sprang.
So have to be accounted for certain brutalities in his treatment of
the women who loved him or who had been unwise enough to yield to his
fascination.
Other characteristics belong to him individually rather than to his
family or class or nation. He was to an extraordinary degree proud and
sensitive. He reacted warmly to kindness, and showed his gratitude
without stint; but he allowed no man to presume upon the obligations
he had conferred.
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