) I think it a perfectly legitimate part too. At any
rate it has come to be an impalpable aroma through which only both the
songs and their singer must henceforth be read and absorb'd. Through
that view-medium of misfortune--of a noble spirit in low environments,
and of a squalid and premature death--we view the undoubted facts,
(giving, as we read them now, a sad kind of pungency,) that Burns's
were, before all else, the lyrics of illicit loves and carousing
intoxication. Perhaps even it is this strange, impalpable
_post-mortem_ comment and influence referr'd to, that gives them their
contrast, attraction, making the zest of their author's after fame. If
he had lived steady, fat, moral, comfortable, well-to-do years, on his
own grade, (let alone, what of course was out of the question, the
ease and velvet and rosewood and copious royalties of Tennyson or
Victor Hugo or Longfellow,) and died well-ripen'd and respectable,
where could have come in that burst of passionate sobbing and remorse
which well'd forth instantly and generally in Scotland, and soon
follow'd everywhere among English-speaking races, on the announcement
of his death? and which, with no sign of stopping, only regulated and
vein'd with fitting appreciation, flows deeply, widely yet?
Dear Rob! manly, witty, fond, friendly, full of weak spots as well as
strong ones-essential type of so many thousands--perhaps the average,
as just said, of the decent-born young men and the early mid-aged, not
only of the British Isles, but America, too, North and South, just the
same.
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