Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery

“ There is something for everybody in Burns. He has a heart even for vermin; he has pity even for the arch-enemy of mankind. And his universality makes his poems a treasure-house in which all may find what they want. Every wayfarer in the journey of life may pluck strength and courage from it as he pauses. The sore, the weary, the wounded will all find something to heal and soothe. ”

“ When we see that the greatest and choicest images of God have had their weaknesses like ours, their temptations, their hour of darkness, their bloody sweat, are we not encouraged by their lapses and catastrophes to find energy for one more effort, one more struggle? Where they failed, we feel it a less dishonor to fail; their errors and sorrows make, as it were, an easier ascent from infinite imperfection to infinite perfection. ”

“ And why, one may ask, is not the same treatment measured out to Burns as to others? The illegitimate children of great captains and statesmen and princes are treated as historical and ornamental incidents. They strut the scene of Shakespeare and ruffle it with the best. It is for the illegitimate children of Burns, tho he and his wife cherished them as if born in wedlock, that the vails of wrath are reserved. There were two brilliant figures both descended from the Stuarts who were alive during Burns’ life. We occupy ourselves endlessly and severely with the offenses of Burns ”

“ But the life of Burns, which I love to read with his poems, does not consist in his vices. They lie outside it. It is a life of work and truth and tenderness, and tho like all lives it has its light and shade, remember that we know all the worst as well as the best. ”

“ Man, after all, is not ripened by virtue alone. Were it so, this world were a paradise of angels. No. Like the growth of the earth, he is the fruit of all seasons, the accident of a thousand accidents, a living mystery moving through the seen to the unseen ”

“ Burke leads the way by seniority; then come Fox, and Goethe, Nelson and Mozart, Schiller, Pitt and Burns, Wellington and Napoleon, and among these Titans Burns is a conspicuous figure—a figure which appeals most of all to the imagination and affection of mankind. Napoleon looms larger to the imagination, but on the affection he has no hold. It is in the combination of the two powers that Burns is supreme.
The clue to Burns’ extraordinary hold on mankind is possibly a complicated one. ”

“ It sometimes seems to me as if the whole eighteenth century was a constant preparation for a constant working up to the great drama of the Revolution which closed it. The scenery is all complete when the time arrives—the dark volcanic country, the hungry, desperate people, the firefly nobles, the concentrated splendor of the court ”

“ To a man, who had shone supreme in the most glowing society, and who was now an exciseman in a country town, with a home which can not have been very exhilarating, with the nervous system highly strung, the temptation of the warm tavern and the admiring circle there may well have been almost irresistible. ”

“ There is an eternal controversy which it appears no didactic oil will ever assuage as to Burns’ private life and morality. Some maintain that these have nothing to do with his poems; some maintain that his life must be read in his works; and again some think that his life damns his poems, while others aver that his poems can not be fully appreciated without his life. Another school think that his vices have been exaggerated, while their opponents scarcely think such exaggeration possible. It is impossible to avoid taking a side. ”

“ His tenderness was no mere selfish tenderness for his own family, for he loved all mankind, except the cruel and base—nay, we may go further and say that he placed all creation, especially the suffering and depressed part. ”