CORRESPONDENCE.

Hokitika Guardian, 5 September 1922, Page 4

CORRESPONDENCE.

BURNS’S STATUE INSCRIPTION (To the Editor). Sir.—Will you kindly give space ill your paper for a lover of the poetry of Robert Burns to express bis opinion thn'b the lines that you quoted, in your last Friday’s issue, are not, perhaps, (he most suitable that could be chosen to inscribe on the poet’s monument:-' Of the four lines that you printed, the last two are, probably, the ones that are considered, by the general, to be the most Burns-like; and neither of them can fairly lie called Burns’s own. The last one assuredly cannot.

In tlio year 1770. the greatest of Irish i«iets, Oliver Goldsmith, published “The Deserted Village,” in which, as every schoolboy—not to mention Macau ley’s fifth-form boy-—-knows, occurs the couplet.

“Princes and bards may flourish or may fade.” “A breath can make them, as a breath has made.” Compare with Burns’. “Princes and Lords are hut the 1 breath of Kings.”

In 1732-4, Alexander Pope published his “Essay on Alan” in which may lie found (Epistle IV. line 247) : “An honest nnpi’s the noblest work of God.”

It is true that in most editions of Burns’s works this last line is given with inverted commas. Tennyson wrote of Burns:—“l hold that there never was immortal poet if he he not one.” Thus one great poet of another—and not unsuitable for the inscription. T am etc., J. L. W. H.