Again, his absolute mastery in his
art enabled him to express each and all of his different
humours, and to pass smoothly and congruously from one to
another. Many men invent a dialect for only one side of
their nature - perhaps their pathos or their humour, or the
delicacy of their senses - and, for lack of a medium, leave
all the others unexpressed. You meet such an one, and find
him in conversation full of thought, feeling, and experience,
which he has lacked the art to employ in his writings. But
Burns was not thus hampered in the practice of the literary
art; he could throw the whole weight of his nature into his
work, and impregnate it from end to end. If Doctor Johnson,
that stilted and accomplished stylist, had lacked the sacred
Boswell, what should we have known of him? and how should we
have delighted in his acquaintance as we do? Those who spoke
with Burns tell us how much we have lost who did not. But I
think they exaggerate their privilege: I think we have the
whole Burns in our possession set forth in his consummate
verses.
It was by his style, and not by his matter, that he affected
Wordsworth and the world. There is, indeed, only one merit
worth considering in a man of letters - that he should write
well; and only one damning fault - that he should write ill.
We are little the better for the reflections of the sailor's
parrot in the story.
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