Excerpt from The Burns Centenary Poems: A Collection of Fifty of the Best Out of Many Hundreds Written on Occasion of the Centenary Celebration, Including the Six Recommended for Publication by the Judges at the Crystal Palace Competition, Many of the Highly Commended, and Several Prize Poems Richly endowed with the gift of song, he became through that the bosom friend and teacher of the people, and did much to purify and refine the literature Of his age. Prior to his day the ballads recited and sung in cottage and hall were of the most objectionable kind, but the coarse old words soon died out before the purer sentiments to which he for ever wedded the plaintive music of his native land. Beneath his inspiration the rude Doric assumed new forms of beauty, and with a purer morality, acquired all the tenderness and grace of a classic tongue. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.