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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Though Burns enunciated no critical precepts on the comedy of love, he composed much of his best poetry not only within the eighteenth-century sanction of aggressive wit but also according to the tradition of humor as it later became associated with the distinctively Romantic expression of the comic spirit. Illustrative poems and letters reveal his mirthful delineation of human affection. With extraordinary insight into the realities of amatory experience, he treated a rich variety of subjects—the multifarious joys and problems of courtship, unrestrained passion, adultery, unwed parenthood, marriage, artificial conventions and morals, alcoholic stimulation, and defiance of social hypocrisy. His sympathy with the essential seriousness of love counterbalanced a perceptive awareness of human frailties; his basically empathic approach to the dilemmas of love often coalesced with portrayals of ludicrous situations or character traits that invited laughter. It was the fusion of these seemingly antithetical elements that impressed his nineteenth-century admirers, and this outstanding achievement has become increasingly significant in the light of more recent psychological analyses.
1 Stuart M. Tave's The Amiable Humorist (Chicago, I960), which surveys comic theory of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, clearly demonstrates what meager attention Romantic critics paid to Burns's humorous treatment of love.
2 “On Wit and Humour” (1818), The Complete Works of WUliam Hazlitt, ed. P. P. Howe (London, 1930–34), vi, Ii.
3 “John Paul Frederick Richter” (1821), The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, ed. David Masson (Edinburgh, 1889–90), xi, 270.
4 Jean Paul Friedrich Richter“ (1827), The Works of Thomas Carlyle, ed. H. D. Traill (London, 1896–99), xxvi, 17.
5 “On the Genius and Character of Hogarth” (1811), The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. ?. V. Lucas (London, 1903–05), I, 86.
6 The Letters of John Keats, ed. Hyder E. Rollins (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), i, 193.
7 Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconsciotts (1905), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, tr. and ed. James Strachey (London, 1953–64), viii, 232.
8 In addition to several references to Beattie's poems, he alludes to Beattie's “Essay on Truth” in “The Vision” (Duan ii, st. vii). Burns approved of George Thomson's plan to have Beattie write an introductory essay on Scottish music, presumably because of what the latter had already written about it in his “Essay on Poetry and Music” (The Letters of Robert Burns, ed. J. DeLancey Ferguson, Oxford, 1931, ii, 148). Since the “Essay on Laughter” was often printed with Beattie's other essays, Burns probably knew it.
9 Essays (London, 1779), p. 438.
10 Essays, pp. 301–305, 380–383.
11 Letters, I, 108.
12 The Poetry of Robert Bums, ed. W. E. Henley and T. F. Henderson (Edinburgh, 1896–97), I, 251–252. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, all subsequent references to Burns's poetry cite volume and page of this edition.
13 Letters, i, 332.
14 See the edition of James Barke, Sydney Goodsir Smith, and J. DeLancey Ferguson (New York, 1964), pp. 69–70.
15 Letters, II, 135.
16 Jokes, p. 110.
17 The Songs of Robert Burns, ed. James C. Dick (Hatboro, Pa., 1962), p. 196.
18 Jokes, pp. 182–188.
19 Jokes, pp. 90–119.
20 Robert Burns's Commonplace Book 1783–1785, ed. James C. Ewing and D. Cook (Glasgow, 1938), pp. 7–8.
21 See Letters, I, 8; ii, 271.
22 B Letter of 20 March 1799 to Southey, The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. ?. V. Lucas (London, 1935), i, 152.
23 Journal entry for 13 Dec. 1813, The Works of Lord By on: Letters and Journals, ed. Rowland E. Prothero (London, 1898–1901), ii, 376–377.
24 “Bums” (1828), Works, xxvi, 283.
25 “The Study of Poetry” (1880), The Works of Matthew Arnold (London, 1903–04), iv, 32–40.