It has to be allowed that the original genius of Scotland was riot called forth by the Scottish philosophy, nor, it may be added, by the Scottish colleges.The truth is, it is not the province of colleges, or of education even, to produce originality: their function is to guide and refine it.Robert Burns owed little to school training, and nothing to college learning; still such a man, with so much profound sense mingling with lust and passion, could have appeared only in a state of society in which there was a large amount of intelligence.His father was a thoughtful man, with a considerable amount of reading, and {270} the mother's memory was filled with Scottish songs.After mingling in the literary circle of Edinburgh, he testifies that he had found as much intelligence and wit among the jolly bachelors of Tarbolton, as among the polished men of the capital. It is to the credit of the Scottish metaphysicians,-- such as Lord Monboddo, Ferguson, and Stewart, -- that they paid the most delicate attention to the young poet when he came to Edinburgh in 1786.He strove to understand the Scottish metaphysics with {271} only imperfect success. Alison's, "Essay on Taste" made known to him the theory which refers beauty to association of ideas, and Burns yields his theoretical assent, while evidently doubting inwardly.He writes: " That the martial clangor of a trumpet had something in it vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime, than the twingle-twangle of a jew's-harp; that the delicate texture of a rose-twig, when the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of dawn, was infinitely more beautiful and elegant than the upright stalk of the burdock, and that from something innate, and independent of all association of ideas, -- these I had set down as irrefragable orthodox truths until perusing your book shook my faith." It is an interesting circumstance that young Walter Scott met with Burns in Edinburgh, in the house of Adam Ferguson, and was struck with his dark, expressive eye, and with his combined humor and pathos.Scott did not owe much more than Burns to the Scottish philosophy.But he was a pupil of Dugald Stewart's, and may have owed to him and his college training, that power of clear exposition and order by which his prose works are distinguished above those of most men of high imaginative genius.
