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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: all) for having written some more or less obscene and
scurrilous ballads, must have been little fitted to gratify
the self-respect or increase the reputation of a benevolent
ecclesiastic. The same remark applies to a subsequent legacy
of the poet's library, with specification of one work which
was plainly neither decent nor devout. We are thus left on
the horns of a dilemma. If the chaplain was a godly,
philanthropic personage, who had tried to graft good
principles and good behaviour on this wild slip of an adopted
son, these jesting legacies would obviously cut him to the
heart. The position of an adopted son towards his adoptive
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