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Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson
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poetry. But the dialect of Burns was fitted to deal with any
subject; and whether it was a stormy night, a shepherd's
collie, a sheep struggling in the snow, the conduct of
cowardly soldiers in the field, the gait and cogitations of a
drunken man, or only a village cockcrow in the morning, he
could find language to give it freshness, body, and relief.
He was always ready to borrow the hint of a design, as though
he had a difficulty in commencing - a difficulty, let us say,
in choosing a subject out of a world which seemed all equally
living and significant to him; but once he had the subject
chosen, he could cope with nature single-handed, and make
every stroke a triumph. 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.
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