Scotland/Scots > Life of Robert Burns

LIFE OF
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anecdotes, and take down remarks, in the old law
phrase, without feud or favour.—Where I hit on
anything clever, my own applause will, in some
measure, feast my vanity; and, begging Patroelus’
and Achates’ pardon, I think a lock and key a
security, at least equal to the bosom of any friend
whatever.”
And the same lurking thorn of suspicion peeps
out elsewhere in this complaint: “ I know not
how it is ; I find I can win liking—but not re¬
spect.”
“ Burns,” says a great living poet, in comment¬
ing on the free style, in which Dr Currie did not
hesitate to expose some of the weaker parts of his
behaviour, very soon after the grave had closed on
him,—“ Burns was a man of extraordinary genius,
whose birth, education, and employments, had
placed and kept him in a situation far below that
in which the writers and readers of expensive vo¬
lumes are usually found. Critics upon works of
fiction have laid it down as a rule, that remoteness
of place, in fixing the choice of a subject, and in
prescribing the mode of treating it, is equal in ef¬
fect to distance of time ;—restraints may be thrown
off accordingly. Judge then of the delusions which
artificial distinctions impose, when to a man like
Doctor Currie, writing with views so honourable,
the social condition of the individual of whom he
was treating, could seem to place him at such a
distance from the exalted reader, that ceremony
might be discarded with him, and his memory sa¬
crificed, as it were, almost w'ithout compunction.
This is indeed to be crushed beneath the furrows
•weight!' *
Mr Wordsworth’s letter to a friend of Burns, p. 12.