well-known _A Man's a Man for
a' that_. This powerful song speaks out in his best style a sentiment
that through all his life had been dear to the heart of Burns. It has
been quoted, they say, by Beranger in France, and by Goethe in
Germany, and is the word which springs up in the mind of all
foreigners when they think of Burns. It was inspired, no doubt, by his
keen sense of social oppression, quickened to white heat by influences
that had lately come from France, and by what he had suffered for his
sympathy with that cause. It has since become the watchword of all who
fancy that they have secured less, and others more, of this world's
goods, than their respective merit deserves. Stronger words he never
wrote.

The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.

That is a word for all time. Yet perhaps it might have been wished
that so noble a song had not been marred by any touch of social
bitterness. A lord, no doubt, may be a "birkie" and a "coof," but may
not a ploughman be so too? This great song Burns wrote on the first
day of 1795.

Towards the end of 1794, and in the opening of 1795, the panic which
had filled the land in 1792, from the doings of the French
republicans, and their sympathizers in this country, began to abate;
and the blast of Government displeasure, which for a time had beaten
heavily on Burns, seemed to have blown over. He writes to Mrs. Dunlop
on the 29th of December, 1794. "My political sins seem to be (p. 168)
forgiven me," and as a proof of it he mentions that during the illness
of his superior officer, he had been appointed to act as supervisor--a
duty which he discharged for about two months. In the same letter he
sends to that good lady his usual kindly greeting for the coming year,
and concludes thus:--"What a transient business is life! Very lately I
was a boy; but t' other day I was a young man; and I already begin to
feel the rigid fibre and stiffening joints of old age coming fast o'er
my frame. With all the follies of youth, and, I fear, a few vices of
manhood, still I congratulate myself on having had, in early days,
religion strongly impressed on my mind." Burns always keeps his most
serious thoughts for this good lady. Herself religious, she no doubt
tried to keep the truths of religion before the poet's mind. And he
naturally was drawn out to reply in a tone more unreserved than when
he wrote to most others.

In February of