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. The SATURDAY NIGHT may
or may not be an admirable poem; but its significance is
trebled, and the power and range of the poet first appears,
when it is set beside the JOLLY BEGGARS. To take a man's
work piecemeal, except with the design of elegant extracts,
is the way to avoid, and not to perform, the critic's duty.
The same defect is displayed in the treatment of Burns as a
man, which is broken, apologetical, and confused. The man