This is a large and noble eloquence, condensed into a soul-fraught poetry; yet is it but one out of the many stanzas of which the whole consists, of equal power. So, likewise, he has the pathos of pity, of tenderness, in their finest modulations. The chords of his own heart were most delicately attuned to “the soft, sad music of humanity;” and the breathings of its sorrow were of that genuine humanity, to which other hearts cannot but respond. How much of such pitiful gentleness have we constantly in his poetry, often coming near to gusts of anger—like the song of a mourner in a stormy midnight—or, the moan of the tempest after its rush. But sometimes we have low and melancholy plaints, without one tone of harshness, in such exquisite verses, as those on “The Mouse,” and “The Mountain Daisy”—in “Poor Mailie’s Elegy”—and “The Farmer’s Address to the Old Mare on New Year’s Day.” Illustrations of this point are in all his writings, prose as well as poetry; but I will only mention one other—his “Lines on a Wounded Hare.” Burns has, in an eminent degree, the pathos which springs from contemplation of our mortal life; and not less, that which comes from those solemn questionings of the spirit, to which experience and the Past, give only accusing answers. A man of genius may do wrong; he may lose himself in the mazes of the passions; he may forget himself in the excitement and turbulence of the senses—but all this is at a deadlier cost than it is to any other man. Let no puny-copyist of genius only in its errors and its wanderings, doubly deceive himself—first, by supposing that he _has_ genius, and then, more fatally, deceive himself by inferring that genius has impunity. True, it is, that genius, like charity, covereth a multitude of sins—and for the delight and the beauty which a great soul showers upon the world, the world does abundantly forgive. But, genius does not forgive itself. A strong moral sensibility—though, it may be, not strong moral principle—is mostly a concomitant—if not an essential element—in the nature of a man of genius, and, therefore, when such a man does violence to his higher sentiments, his very genius becomes his punishment. The grandeur of his ideal—the innate love that he must have to the good and to the beautiful—the extent of his moral associations—the tenacity of his moral memories—the vitality of his imagination, calling back again, and back again, the thoughts which had only disappeared, but were not dead—all conspire to chastise him, and to chastise him by the faculties which enchant and move the world. The depth and the compass of his sympathies afflict him; and, as the fountains of thought and feeling are full within him, so much the greater are the agitations that shake him. These remarks concern mainly those men of genius whose nature is that of a comprehensive humanity. Men there have been, and are, that might be adduced to contradict the position I have ventured here to take: for