As a pure poet, Robert Burns had neither the time nor the desire for other literary forms. For The Scots Musical Museum, edited by James Johnson between 1787 and 1803, he wrote “Notes on Scottish Song,” wherein he tried to collect all the information he could about the poetic tradition of his native land. He suggested possibilities for authorship, identified the poems’ native regions and the occasions of their composition, cited fragments and verses of traditional songs, and set forth critical comments and engaging anecdotes.

Following the publication and success of the 1786 edition of his Poems, Burns set off on a series of trips that carried him over much of Scotland. Narratives of two of those journeys, Journal of a Tour in the Highlands Made in 1787 and Journal of the Border Tour, eventually found their way into print in 1834.

Robert Burns’s most significant poetry was written in what may loosely be termed Scots—the northern dialect of English spoken regularly by Scottish peasants and informally by Scottish gentry. When the poet attempted to write in standard eighteenth century British English, he came forth as a different person: stiff, conventional, and genteel, seemingly trying too hard to find his place within the poetic tradition of his day. No matter what the dialect, however, literary historians have termed Burns a “pre-Romantic,” a poet who anticipated William Wordsworth, gave new life to the English lyric, relied heavily upon literary forms and legends peculiar to the Scottish folk culture, and (certainly the most Wordsworthian quality of them all) wrote in the actual language of the common people. Few realize, however, that the pre-Romantic label is based primarily on Burns’s songs, while the bulk of his poetry was written in the forms favored by the majority of eighteenth century poets. He also wrote satire, verse epistles to friends and fellow poets, and even a variation on the mock-epic narrative (“Tam O’Shanter”). An argument could easily be advanced that Burns ranks as a first-rate practitioner of those forms.

Nevertheless, as a writer of satire, epistle, and mock-heroic, Burns does not belong entirely to the neoclassical mainstream which followed John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and Oliver Goldsmith. With his dialect and intricate stanza forms, his poems evinced a heartiness and exuberance, and even a certain “roughness.” Burns had little use for Horace, Homer, and the other models for English neoclassicism; instead, he turned to a clearer tradition that had been established during the so-called golden age of Scottish poetry by the major Scottish Chaucerians: Robert Henryson (1430-1506), William Dunbar (c. 1460-c. 1525), and Gavin Douglas (c. 1474-1522). Following the efforts of Allan Ramsay (1686-1758) and Robert Fergusson (1750-1774)—earlier Scottish poets who had collected the ancient poems and had written new ones based on the older models—Burns committed himself to the bards and songs of his native land. He refined the work of his eighteenth century predecessors, but he was also perceptive enough to learn from them and to retain characteristic subjects, forms, stanza patterns, and language.

No matter how academic, the discussion of Burns’s poetry seems never to circumvent his songs. Almost to a line, those short pieces have gained wider fame and prompted more discussion than have his longer poems. Burns wrote more than three hundred songs on every subject imaginable within the context of late eighteenth century Scotland. Within the confines of those songs, Burns gave himself almost totally to the emotions of the moment; he reached out, touched the essence of rural Scotland, and brought it lyrically to life. He gave his readers the excitement and the genuineness of love, work, friendship, patriotism, and even inebriation (a point...