With anything that is false or artificial he
cannot sympathize, nor with such faults as baseness, cruelty, rancour;
which seem contrary to human nature itself; but in dealing with
faults of mere _weakness_ he is far less strait-laced than many less
virtuous men.
He had, in fact, a reverence for human beings as such which enabled
him to face even their frailties without alienation; and there was
something in his own happy exemption from such falls which touched
him into regarding men less fortunate rather with pity than disdain.
Because the unstained, the clear, the crystalline,
Have ever in them something of benign.
His comment on Barns's _Tam o' Shanter_ will perhaps surprise some
readers who are accustomed to think of him only in his didactic
attitude.
"It is the privilege of poetic genius, he says, to catch, under
certain restrictions of which perhaps at the time of its being
exerted it is but dimly conscious, a spirit of pleasure wherever it
can be found, in the walks of nature, and in the business of men.
The poet, trusting to primary instincts, luxuriates among the
felicities of love and wine, and is enraptured while he describes
the fairer aspects of war, nor does he shrink from the company of
the passion of love though immoderate--from convivial pleasures
though intemperate--nor from the presence of war, though savage, and
recognized as the handmaid of desolation.
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