"
Kings may be blest, but Tarn was glorious,
O'er a' the ills of life victorious.
"What a lesson do these words convey of charitable indulgence for
the vicious habits of the principal actor in the scene, and of those
who resemble him! Men who to the rigidly virtuous are objects almost
of loathing, and whom therefore they cannot serve! The poet,
penetrating the unsightly and disgusting surfaces of things, has
unveiled with exquisite skill the finer ties of imagination and
feeling, that often bind these beings to practices productive of so
much unhappiness to themselves, and to those whom it is their duty
to cherish; and, as far as he puts the reader into possession of
this intelligent sympathy, he qualifies him for exercising a
salutary influence over the minds of those who are thus deplorably
enslaved."
The reverence for man as man, the sympathy for him in his primary
relations and his essential being, of which these comments on
_Tam o' Shanter_ form so remarkable an example, is a habit of
thought too ingrained in all Wordsworth's works to call for specific
illustration. The figures of _Michael_, of _Matthew_, of the
_Brothers_, of the hero of the _Excursion_, and even of the _Idiot Boy_,
suggest themselves at once in this connexion.
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