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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: will venture to call him the best of humorous poets. He
turns about in the midst to utter a noble sentiment or a
trenchant remark on human life, and the style changes and
rises to the occasion. I think it is Principal Shairp who
says, happily, that Burns would have been no Scotchman if he
had not loved to moralise; neither, may we add, would he have
been his father's son; but (what is worthy of note) his
moralisings are to a large extent the moral of his own
career. He was among the least impersonal of artists.
Except in the JOLLY BEGGARS, he shows no gleam of dramatic
instinct. Mr. Carlyle has complained that TAM O' SHANTER is,
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