Russel Wallace : Alfred Russell Wallace (sic)
"To my mind, the Bounder's articles furnish the salt and the spice to the logic and wisdom, the satire and pathos of the Clarion. I enjoy his free, unstudied, joyous, overflowing, rollicking humour, which I would not have him modify or restrain to please those who cannot appreciate him, and who are not obliged to read him. I myself am an abstainer from alcohol and tobacco, but I enjoy the Bounder’s allusions to his enjoyment of good meat and good liquor, and would not wish them curtailed by a word. Like all the rest of his writings, they show that, to him, life is worth living, and they form a part of his thorough enjoyment of all the good things of life, including those often under-valued charms of simple nature--air and sunshine, the sea and the river, the wild moor and rugged mountain, of which he gives us such delightful glimpses. I admire his love and respect for human nature, and his hearty appreciation of all that is good in man, and of the kindness and good-humour to be found even among the most downtrodden or degraded. I admire, too, his scathing denunciations of all that is mean and cruel and selfish; and I especially thank him for that one kind word he has said in the last Clarion for that most cruelly persecuted and unjustly maligned woman--Mary Queen of Scots. Therefore I give honour to the Bounder, with hearty thanks for many a hearty laugh and for hours of innocent and wise and mirthful enjoyment. Long may he live to hold the mirror up to nature in his own inimitable way. --Your (and his) sincere friend and well-wisher, "Alfred R. Wallace."
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