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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: Wordsworth and the world. There is, indeed, only one merit
worth considering in a man of letters - that he should write
well; and only one damning fault - that he should write ill.
We are little the better for the reflections of the sailor's
parrot in the story. And so, if Burns helped to change the
course of literary history, it was by his frank, direct, and
masterly utterance, and not by his homely choice of subjects.
That was imposed upon him, not chosen upon a principle. He
wrote from his own experience, because it was his nature so
to do, and the tradition of the school from which he
proceeded was fortunately not oppose to homely subjects. But
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