_(i)_ "O, I could curse circumstances, and the coarse tie of human
laws which keeps fast what common-sense would loose, and which bars
that happiness it cannot give--happiness which otherwise love and
honour would warrant!"

_(j)_ "If there is no man on earth to whom your heart and affections
are justly due, it may savour of imprudence, but never of
criminality, to bestow that heart and those affections where you
please. The God of love meant and made those delicious attachments to
be bestowed on somebody."

The inequalities of fortune, the pleasures of friendship, the miseries
of poverty, the glories of independence, the privileges of wealth allied
to generosity, the sin of ingratitude, and similar topics, are
continually recurring to prove the elevation at which his spirit usually
soared and surveyed mankind. It has been charged against him[b] that
these subjects were not the food of his daily contemplation, but were
lugged into his letters for the sake of effect, and that their clumsy
introduction was frequently apologised for by the complaint that the
writer had nothing else to write about. The frequent apologies here
spoken of will be hard to find, and the critic's only reason for
advancing the charge, for which he would fain find support in the
fancied apologies of Burns, is that many of the letters "relate neither
to facts nor feelings peculiarly connected with the author or his
correspondent." This only means that a very large proportion of Burns's
letters are not like the letters of ordinary men, and therefore do not
satisfy the critic's idea or definition of a letter. They treat of
themes that are not specially _a propos_ of passing events, and
therefore they are forced and affected. Few are likely to be imposed
upon by such shallow reasoning. Another critic[c] avers that "while