ABSTRACT
merry, hearty life, that Burns delighted in; and one that seems to be completely overflowing with envy, malignity, and a thousand bad passions, of which Burns’ nobler nature, whatever defects it might otherwise have, was at all times entirely incapable. How can a melancholy, sighing, half-parson sort of gentleman, who lives in a small circle of old maids and sonnetteers, and drinks tea now and then with the solemn Laureate, have any sympathy with the free and jolly dispositions of one who spent his evenings in drinking whisky punch at mason lodges with Matthew Henderson and David Lapraik? To my view it would be scarcely less absurd in Gilbert Burns to send Mr Wordsworth a long letter concerning the proper method of drawing the Recluse to a conclusion, than it was in Mr Wordsworth to prescribe rules to Gilbert with regard to that Memoir of his illustrious brother, which he is so well qualified in every way to make exactly what it should be, without the officious hints of any Laker in existence . . .
