B,'s life and death was going on in a country
by-place in Scotland!
Burns's correspondence, generally collected and publish'd since his
death, gives wonderful glints into both the amiable and weak (and
worse than weak) parts of his portraiture, habits, good and bad luck,
ambition and associations. His letters to Mrs. Dunlop, Mrs. McLehose,
(Clarinda,) Mr. Thompson, Dr. Moore, Robert Muir, Mr. Cunningham, Miss
Margaret Chalmers, Peter Hill, Richard Brown, Mrs. Riddel, Robert
Ainslie, and Robert Graham, afford valuable lights and shades to the
outline, and with numerous others, help to a touch here, and fill-in
there, of poet and poems. There are suspicions, it is true, of "the
Genteel Letter-Writer," with scraps and words from "the Manual of
French Quotations," and, in the love-letters, some hollow mouthings.
Yet we wouldn't on any account lack the letters. A full and true
portrait is always what is wanted; veracity at every hazard. Besides,
do we not all see by this time that the story of Burns, even for its
own sake, requires the record of the whole and several, with nothing
left out? Completely and every point minutely told out its fullest,
explains and justifies itself--(as perhaps almost any life does.) He
is very close to the earth. He pick'd up his best words and tunes
directly from the Scotch home-singers, but tells Thompson they would
not please his, T.'s, "learn'd lugs," adding, "I call them simple--you
would pronounce them silly." Yes, indeed; the idiom was undoubtedly
his happiest hit.
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