master of wordmanship, and indeed of all literary arts and
technicalities, had not unnaturally dazzled a beginner. But
it is best to dwell on merits, for it is these that are most
often overlooked.

BURNS. - I have left the introductory sentences on Principal
Shairp, partly to explain my own paper, which was merely
supplemental to his amiable but imperfect book, partly
because that book appears to me truly misleading both as to
the character and the genius of Burns. This seems
ungracious, but Mr. Shairp has himself to blame; so good a
Wordsworthian was out of character upon that stage.

This half apology apart, nothing more falls to be said except
upon a remark called forth by my study in the columns of a
literary Review. The exact terms in which that sheet
disposed of Burns I cannot now recall; but they were to this
effect - that Burns was a bad man, the impure vehicle of fine
verses; and that this was the view to which all criticism
tended. Now I knew, for my own part, that it was with the
profoundest pity, but with a growing esteem, that I studied
the man's desperate efforts to do right; and the more I
reflected, the stranger it appeared to me that any thinking
being should feel otherwise. The complete letters shed,
indeed, a light on the depths to which Burns had sunk in his
character of Don Juan, but they enhance in the same
proportion the hopeless nobility of his marrying Jean. That
I ought to have stated this more noisily I now see; but that
any one should fail to see it for himself, is to me a thing
both incomprehensible and worthy of open scorn. If Burns, on