We may praise or blame according as we find him
related to us by the best or worst in ourselves; but it is
only in virtue of some relationship that we can be his
judges, even to condemn. Feelings which we share and
understand enter for us into the tissue of the man's
character; those to which we are strangers in our own
experience we are inclined to regard as blots, exceptions,
inconsistencies, and excursions of the diabolic; we conceive
them with repugnance, explain them with difficulty, and raise
our hands to heaven in wonder when we find them in
conjunction with talents that we respect or virtues that we
admire. David, king of Israel, would pass a sounder judgment
on a man than either Nathaniel or David Hume. Now, Principal
Shairp's recent volume, although I believe no one will read
it without respect and interest, has this one capital defect
- that there is imperfect sympathy between the author and the
subject, between the critic and the personality under
criticism. Hence an inorganic, if not an incoherent,
presentation of both the poems and the man. Of HOLY WILLIE'S
PRAYER, Principal Shairp remarks that "those who have loved
most what was best in Burns's poetry must have regretted that
it was ever written." To the JOLLY BEGGARS, so far as my
memory serves me, he refers but once; and then only to remark
on the "strange, not to say painful," circumstance that the
same hand which wrote the COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT should have
stooped to write the JOLLY BEGGARS.
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