of the
Ministry, and the autocrat of all Scottish affairs, that the heaviest
weight of blame has fallen. But perhaps this is not altogether
deserved. There is the greatest difference between a literary man, who
holds his political opinions in private, but refrains from mingling in
party politics, and one who zealously espouses one side, and employs
his literary power in promoting it. He threw himself into every
electioneering business with his whole heart, wrote, while he might
have been better employed, electioneering ballads of little merit, in
which he lauded Whig men and theories, and lampooned, often
scurrilously, the supporters of Dundas. No doubt it would have been
magnanimous in the men then in power to have overlooked all these
things, and, condoning the politics, to have rewarded the poetry of
Burns. And it were to be wished that such magnanimity were more common
among public men. But we do not see it practised even at the present
day, any more than it was in the time of Burns.

During the first half of 1795 the poet had gone on with his accustomed
duties, and, during the intervals of business, kept sending to Thomson
the songs he from time to time composed.

His professional prospects seemed at this time to be brightening, (p. 172)
for about the middle of May, 1795, his staunch friend, Mr. Graham of
Fintray, would seem to have revived an earlier project of having him
transferred to a post in Leith, with easy duty and an income of nearly
200_l._ a year. This project could not at the time be carried out; but
that it should have been thought of proves that political offences of
the past were beginning to be forgotten. During this same year there
were symptoms that the respectable persons who had for some time
frowned on him, were willing to relent. A combination of causes, his
politics, the Riddel quarrel, and his own many imprudences, had kept
him under a cloud. And this disfavour of the well-to-do had not
increased his self-respect or made him more careful about the company
he kept. Disgust with the world had made him reckless and defiant. But
with the opening of 1795, the Riddels were reconciled to him, and
received him once more into their good graces, and others, their
friends, probably followed their example.

But the time was drawing near, when the smiles or the frowns of the
Dumfries magnates would be alike indifferent to him. There has been
more than enough of discussion among the biographers of Bu