Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 5, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume II

II
SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS
To write with authority about another man we
must have fellow-feehng and some common ground
of experience with our subject. We may praise or
blame according as we find him related to us by
the best or worst in ourselves ; but it is only in
virtue of some relationship that we can be his
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 con-
junction with talents that we respect or virtues that
we admire. David, king of Israel, would pass a
sounder judgment on a man than either Nathanael
or David Hume. Now, Principal Shairp's recent
volume, although I beheve no one will read it with-
out respect and interest, has this one capital defect —
that there is imperfect sympathy between the author
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