The Walt Whitman Archive
Complete Prose Works
Probably no man that ever lived—a friend has made the
statement—was so fondly loved, both by men and women, as Robert Burns. The
reason is not hard to find: he had a real heart of flesh and blood beating in his
bosom; you could almost hear it throb. "Some one said, that if you had shaken hands
with him his hand would have burnt yours. The gods, indeed, made him poetical, but
Nature had a hand in him first. His heart was in the right place; he did not pile up
cantos of poetic diction; he pluck'd the mountain daisy under his feet; he wrote of
field-mouse hurrying from its ruin'd dwelling. He held the plough or the pen with
the same firm, manly grasp. And he was loved. The simple roll of the women who gave
him their affection and their sympathy would make a long manuscript; and most of
these were of such noble worth that, as Robert Chambers says, 'their character may
stand as a testimony in favor of that of Burns.'" [As I understand, the
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foregoing is
from an extremely rare book published by M'Kie, in Kilmarnock. I find the whole
beautiful paragraph in a capital paper on Burns, by Amelia Barr.]