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Excerpt from The Works of Robert Burns, Vol. 5
So I am set down to write a memoir of the life of Robert Burns. I wish from my soul that as many lives of that singular man had been written during his lifetime as have been of myself, and then we should have known all of the bard and the man that behoved us to know; for really this everlasting raking up of the ashes of the illustrious dead, in search of collateral evidences relating to things about which we have no concern and ought not to know, is too bad.
It has always been my opinion, that mankind have as little right to dive into the private actions of a poet as those of any other individual. It is by a man's general behaviour in society that he is to be judged. But with regard to his private frailties and failings, these are between God and his own heart, and we have nothing to do with them. Why then should the distinguished bard be an exemption from this general and rational principle, - he who of all men is the most exposed to erratic wanderings, but without whose strong passions and ardent feelings, he could never have been the splendid meteor of our admiration, or the being of our high concern? Therefore, of all other retrospects, a narrow one into the private failings of a deceased poet, is the most unfair. No, no; mankind have nothing ado with them.
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