h other with all the rancour of malice and
uncharitableness, and foaming with the passion of a pothouse, was too
flagrant an occasion for satire for Burns to miss. He held them up to
ridicule in _The Holy Tulzie_, and showed them themselves as others saw
them. It has been objected by some that Burns made use of humorous
satire; did not censure with the fiery fervour of a righteous
indignation. Burns used the weapon he could handle best; and a powerful
weapon it is in the hands of a master. We acknowledge Horace's satires
to be scathing enough, though they are light and delicate, almost
trifling and flippant at times. He has not the volcanic utterance of
Juvenal, but I doubt not his castigations were quite as effective.
'Quamquam ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?' Burns might have well
replied to his censors with the same question. Quick on the heels of
this poem came _Holy Willie's Prayer_, wherein he took up the cudgels
for his friend, Mr. Gavin Hamilton, and fought for him in his own
enthusiastic way. The satire here is so scathing and scarifying that we
can only read and wonder, shuddering the while for the wretched creature
so pitilessly flayed. Not a word is wasted; not a line without weight.
The character of the self-righteous, sensual, spiteful Pharisee is a
merciless exposure, and, hardest of all, the picture is convincing. For
Burns believed in his own mind that these men, Holy Willie and the crew
he typified, were thoroughly dishonest. They were not in his
judgment--and Burns had keen insight--mere bigots dehumanised by their
creed, but a pack of scheming, calculating scoundrels.

'They take religion in their mouth,
They talk o' mercy, grace, and truth,
For what? to gie their malice skouth
On some puir wight,
And hunt him down, o'er right and ruth
To ruin straight.'

But it must be noted in _Holy Willie_ that the poet is not letting
himself out in a burst of personal spleen. He is again girding at the
rigidity of a lopped and maimed Calvinism, and attacking the creed
through the man. The poem is a living presentment of the undiluted,
puritanic doctrine of the Auld Light party, to whom Calvinism meant only
a belief in hell and an assurance of their own election. It is evident
that Burns was not sound on either essential. _The Address to the Unco
Guid_ is a natural sequel to this poem, and, in a sense, its
culmination. There is the same strength of satire, but n