The Chronicle. PUBLISHED DAILY LEVIN. WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 1913. ROBERT BURNS.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 28 May 1913, Page 2

The Chronicle. PUBLISHED DAILY LEVIN. WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 1913. ROBERT BURNS.

Jn an article based on the unveiling of ;i statue to Robert Burns, at Tiniaru. the Petone Chronicle passes some illuminating criticisms on the great Scottish poet. It is with pleasure that we reprint this article in praise of that poet of line fouling and kindly, impulse, of Waywardness and loyal heartedness; a strong Weak man whose fame is enshrined ms firmly in the hearts of the Sassenaelis as it is in the hearts of his countrymen. The Chronicle asks ''Why lias Ireland .allowed the laurels of Moore to wither, and why has the classic genius of. .Milton laded into a magnificent abstraction, while tlio hays of the Ayrshire ploughman are still fresh and green? As far as the orthodox Scot is concerned, to ask why Burns hears the, palm would he like asking why the sun shines. Occasionally the heretic .Southron hazards the suggestion that Burns's hold on fame is merely the compelling force of Doric unileiiled un a yielding language, which, with the main emoluments open to the race thut speaks it, has always been taken by Caledonian violence. By nativity or origin Scotland has laid claim to such diverse notabilities as Pontius Pilate. King Arthur. Ossian, Knox, and Gladstone, and it is seldom tlwit the English archbishoprics are out of Scottish occupation, while either the Premier or the leader of the British Opposition is invariably a Scot. Such a nation, argues the heretic, has no delicacy as to superimposing its own poet on the foremost basis of Kngilsli literature. The shrewd observer, however, sees "more to it" than this. Burns, despite- those regrettable personal smirches which the lustration of a century's worship has not washed away was doubly a pioneer poet of humanity and a forerunner of the new Nature School that broke up the crystallised affectations intervening between Milton and Wordsworth. A ploughman, yet. for a season at least, the darling of the fashionable and intellectual world of Edinburgh he bridged in his own person the gulf between peer and peasant, and asserted with a native grace the right of literature, to rank with the noblest of the time. "A man's <a man for a' that" struck the keynote of Scottish individuality, and the glorifying of such oft-seen trifles as a held mouse and a mountain daisy gave perception to a million readers groping amid poetic artificialities of a dying school.. The naive humour And insight of "The Twa Dogs," and the matchless felicity of "Tain o' Shanter," with the roystering vim of "The -lolly Beggars." and the vitriolic satire of "Holy Willie," joined to the homely, reverent moralities of "The Cotter's Saturday Night," formed a national cycle that found its mark in the hearts of the Scottish people. but not least. Burns had the gift of lyric magic which endures when the merely topical or didactic has shivelled into the limboo of .superseded things. He did not always use this gift, but a thing like "My Love is Like a Red. Bed Rose" is for all time. Still it i> as the singer of a sturdy democracy, and the exponent of the eternal humanities, hoth shrined in vigorous Scottish mould, that Burns holds his ground yet; and it is in these capacities he lias created the Burns cult which flourishes so well in this, the democratic land of its adoption. Burns, in brief, is less a personality now than he is a principle of sturdy independence and boundless patriotism.