6o V. THE BOILING-POINT OF LOVE-HEAT.
of a nebulous new sun. He is a mystic because he can sacrifice everything at the altar of his feeling. With Byronic fever and enthusiasm he can die for his ideal..
Burns had been the seer of pre-Raphaelitism half a century before it was officially declared. He is the precursor of Turner and Burne-Jones, of Ruskin and Morris, as the idealizer of the fresher aspects of nature and life. He can live visionary hours with a Words- worth's cuckoo, converting the earth we pace into "an unsubstantial faery place." He is a Rossetti of the unlettered folk, and can realize in his unsophisticated way how — " Heaven holds breath and hears The beating heart of Love's own breast." What else .is Vidya,pati ? Are not the following also the words of Radha ? " When I sleep I dream, When I wauk I'm eerie. Sleep I can get nane For thinking on my dearie." Burns' supreme wish is given below : " Let fortune's gifts at random flee. They n#ver shall draw a wish froe me, Supremely blest in love and thee, In the birks of Aberfeldy."
This supreme bliss, this ecstasy, this " short story of a perfect moment that has neither past nor future," is not to be understood by everybody but only by the " initiates," and is therefore the vision of a mystic. It is too intense, too hot, too impetuous for the worldlywise, for the bread-and-butter philosophers, for the utilitarians.
