The fatal man, is he not always the unthinking man, the man
who cannot think and _see_; but only grope, and hallucinate, and _mis_see
the nature of the thing he works with? He mis-sees it, mis_takes_ it as we
say; takes it for one thing, and it _is_ another thing,--and leaves him
standing like a Futility there! He is the fatal man; unutterably fatal,
put in the high places of men.--"Why complain of this?" say some:
"Strength is mournfully denied its arena; that was true from of old."
Doubtless; and the worse for the _arena_, answer I! _Complaining_ profits
little; stating of the truth may profit. That a Europe, with its French
Revolution just breaking out, finds no need of a Burns except for gauging
beer,--is a thing I, for one, cannot _rejoice_ at!--
Once more we have to say here, that the chief quality of Burns is the
_sincerity_ of him. So in his Poetry, so in his Life. The song he sings
is not of fantasticalities; it is of a thing felt, really there; the prime
merit of this, as of all in him, and of his Life generally, is truth.
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