rbulent
phrases, to a perfect passion of alarmed self-respect and vanity. He had
been muzzled, and muzzled, when all was said, by his paltry salary as an
exciseman; alas! had he not a family to keep? Already, he wrote, he
looked forward to some such judgment from a hackney scribbler as this:
"Burns, notwithstanding the _fanfaronnade_ of independence to be found
in his works, and after having been held forth to public view and to
public estimation as a man of some genius, yet, quite destitute of
resources within himself to support his borrowed dignity, he dwindled
into a paltry exciseman, and slunk out the rest of his insignificant
existence in the meanest of pursuits, and among the vilest of mankind."
And then on he goes, in a style of rhodomontade, but filled with living
indignation, to declare his right to a political opinion, and his
willingness to shed his blood for the political birthright of his sons.
Poor, perturbed spirit! he was indeed exercised in vain; those who
share and those who differ from his sentiments about the Revolution,
alike understand and sympathise with him in this painful strait; for
poetry and human manhood are lasting like the race, and politics, which
are but a wrongful striving after right, pass and change from year to
year and age to age. "The Twa Dogs" has already outlasted the
constitution of Sieyes and the policy of the Whigs; and Burns is better
known among English-speaking races than either Pitt or Fox.

Meanwhile, whether as a man, a husband, or a poet, his steps led
downward. He knew, knew bitterly, that the best was out of him: he
refused to make another volume, for he felt it would be a
disappointment; he grew petulantly alive to criticism, unless he was
sure it reached him from a friend. For his songs, he would take nothing;
they were all that he could do; the proposed Scots play, the proposed
series of Scots tales in verse, all had gone to water; and in a fling of
pain and disappointment, which is surely noble with the nobility of a
viking, he would rather stoop to borrow than to accept money for these
last and inadequate efforts of his muse. And this desperate abnegation
rises at times near to the height of madness; as when he pretended that
he had not written, but only found and published, his immortal "Auld
Lang Syne." In the same spirit he became more scrupulous as an artist;
he was doing so little, he would fain do that little well; and about two
months before his death, he