formists because the established religion was considered necessary
to gentility, who might have remained contented with its ordinances as a
simple discipline for their souls.

I dislike the interference of genteel notions in our studies for another
reason. They deprive such culture as we may get from them, of one of the
most precious results of culture, the enlargement of our sympathy for
others. If we encourage ourselves in the pride of scholarly caste, so
far as to imagine that we who have made Latin verses are above
comparison with all who have never exercised their ingenuity in that
particular way, we are not likely to give due and serious attention to
the ideas of people whom we are pleased to consider uneducated; and yet
it may happen that these people are sometimes our intellectual
superiors, and that their ideas concern us very closely. But this is
only half the evil. The consciousness of our contempt embitters the
feelings of men in other castes, and prevents them from accepting our
guidance when it might be of the greatest practical utility to them. I
may mention Robert Burns as an instance of a man of genius who would
have been happier and more fortunate if he had felt no barrier of
separation between himself and the culture of his time. His poetry is as
good rustic poetry as the best that has come down to us from antiquity,
and instead of feeling towards the poets of times past the kind of
soreness which a parvenu feels towards families of ancient descent, he
ought rather to have rejoiced in the consciousness that he was their
true and legitimate successor, as the clergy of an authentic Church feel
themselves to be successors and representatives of saints and apostles
who are gathered to their everlasting rest. But poor Burns knew that in
an age when what is called scholarship gave all who had acquired it a
right to look down upon poets who had only genius as the illegitimate
offspring of nature, his position had not that solidity which belonged
to the scholarly caste, and the result was a perpetual uneasiness which
broke out in frequent defiance.

"There's ither poets, much your betters,
Far seen in Greek, deep men o' letters,
Hae thought they had ensur'd their debtors
A' future ages;
_Now moths deform in shapeless tatters,
Their unknown pages_."

And again, in another poem--

"A set o' dull, conceited hashes
Confuse their brains in college classes!
_T