text:  And suppose--which was the case--that this unguarded sympathy this quick sensibility and this vivid capacity of happiness which the moment brings and the frankness of impulse and the strength of desire and the warmth of blood which have made him what he greatly is which have been fire and music in his song and manhood and courage and endurance and independence in his life have at times betrayed or overmastered him--to turn against him all this self-painting and self-revealing is it not ungrateful barbarous inhuman? Can he be indeed a true lover of his kind who would record in judgment against such a man words that have escaped him in the fervour of the pleading designed to uphold great causes dear to humanity?--who would ignobly strike the self-disarmed?--scornfully insult him who kneeling at the Muses' confessional whispers secrets that take wings and fly abroad to the uttermost parts of the earth? Can they be lovers of the people who do so? who find it in their hearts thus to think and speak and write of Robert Burns?--He who has reconciled poverty to its lot toil to its taskwork care to its burden--nay I would say even--grief to its grave? And by one Immortal Song has sanctified for ever the poor man's Cot--by such a picture as only genius in the inspiring power of piety could have painted; has given enduring life to the image--how tender and how true!--of the Happy Night passing by sweet transition from this worky world into the Hallowed Day by God's appointment breathing a heavenly calm over all Christian regions in their rest--nowhere else so profoundly--and may it never be broken!--as over the hills and valleys of our beloved and yet religious land! It cannot be said that the best biographers of Burns and his best critics have not done or desired to do justice to his character as well as to his genius; and according as the truth has been more entirely and fearlessly spoken has he appeared the nobler and nobler man