in courteous, yet often innocent, compliance—­to gratify the several tastes of correspondents; and as little towards distinguishing opinions and sentiments uttered for the momentary amusement merely of the writer’s own fancy, from those which his judgment deliberately approves, and his heart faithfully cherishes.  But the subject of this book was a man of extraordinary genius; whose birth, education, and employments had placed and kept him in a situation far below that in which the writers and readers of expensive volumes are usually found.  Critics upon works of fiction have laid it down as a rule that remoteness of place, in fixing the choice of a subject, and in prescribing the mode of treating it, is equal in effect to distance of time;—­restraints may be thrown off accordingly.  Judge then of the delusions which artificial distinctions impose, when to a man like Doctor Currie, writing with views so honourable, the social condition of the individual of whom he was treating, could seem to place him at such a distance from the exalted reader, that ceremony might he discarded with him, and his memory sacrificed, as it were, almost without compunction.  The poet was laid where these injuries could not reach him; but he had a parent, I understand, an admirable woman, still surviving; a brother like Gilbert Burns!—­a widow estimable for her virtues; and children, at that time infants, with the world before them, which they must face to obtain a maintenance; who remembered their father probably with the tenderest affection;—­and whose opening minds, as their years advanced, would become conscious of so many reasons for admiring him.—­Ill-fated child of nature, too frequently thine own enemy,—­unhappy favourite of genius, too often misguided,—­this is indeed to be ‘crushed beneath the furrow’s weight!’

Why, sir, do I write to you at this length, when all that I had to express in direct answer to the request, which occasioned this letter, lay in such narrow compass?—­Because having entered upon the subject, I am unable to quit it!—­Your feelings, I trust, go along with mine; and, rising from this individual case to a general view of the subject, you will probably agree with me in opinion that biography, though differing in some essentials from works of fiction, is nevertheless, like them, an art—­an art, the laws of which are determined by the imperfections of our nature, and the constitution of society.  Truth is not here, as in the sciences, and in natural philosophy, to be sought without scruple, and promulgated for its own sake, upon the mere chance of its being serviceable; but only for obviously justifying purposes, moral or intellectual.