SOURCE: "The Background of Burns: Eighteenth-Century Scotland," in The Russet Coat: A Critical Study of Burns's Poetry and of Its Background, Robert Hale & Company, 1956, pp. 7-27.

In the following excerpt Keith describes Scotland's Golden Age, a time of nationalism and rich intellectual life; Edinburgh's reception of and influence on Burns; and why Burns's limited reading and self-education caused him to focus on satire and song.

The eighteenth century, into which Burns had the amazing good fortune to be born, was Scotland's Golden Age, when everywhere her latent talents were unfolding, and the sun rose towards the high meridian of her literary achievement. Not only that—it was the bright breathing-space between two centuries of religious intolerance—in different ways, both equally repellent. With the close of the nightmare seventeenth century, the Killing Times were over. No longer did the Edinburgh crowds mill round the gallows in the Grass-market...