iliarity with which the poet lectures so awful a
personage,"--we may add, than in the inimitable outbreak at the close--

"O would you tak a thought an' men'."

Carlyle, in reference to this passage, cannot resist the suggestion of a
parallel from Sterne. "He is the father of curses and lies, said Dr Slop,
and is cursed and damned already. I am sorry for it, quoth my Uncle Toby."

Burns fared ill at the hands of those who were not sorry for it, and who
repeated with glib complacency every terrible belief of the system in which
they had been trained. The most scathing of his _Satires_, under which head
fall many of his minor and frequent passages in his major pieces, are
directed against the false pride of birth, and what he conceived to be the
false pretences of religion. The apologue of "Death and Dr Hornbook," "The
Ordination," the song "No churchman am I for to rail and to write," the
"Address to the Unco Guid," "Holy Willie," and above all "The Holy Fair,"
with its savage caricature of an ignorant ranter of the time called Moodie,
and others of like stamp, not unnaturally provoked offence. As regards the
poet's attitude towards some phases of Calvinism prevalent during his life,
it has to be remarked that from the days of Dunbar there has been a degree
of antagonism between Scottish verse and the more rigid forms of Scottish
theology.

It must be admitted that in protesting against hypocrisy he has
occasionally been led beyond the limits prescribed by good taste. He is at
times abusive of those who differ from him. This, with other offences
against decorum, which here and there disfigure his pages, can only be
condoned by an appeal to the general tone of his writing, which is
reverential. Burns had a firm faith in a Supreme Being, not as a vague
mysterious Power; but as the Arbiter of human life. Amid the vicissitudes
of his career he responds to the cottar's summons, "Let us worship God."

"An atheist's laugh's a poor exchange
For Deity offended"

is the moral of all his verse, which treats seriously of religious matters.
His prayers in rhyme give him a high place among secular Psalmists.

Like Chaucer, Burns was a great moralist, though a rough one. In the
moments of his most intense revolt against conventional prejudice and
sanctimonious affectation, he is faithful to the great laws which underlie
change, loyal in his veneration for the cardinal virtues--Truth, Justice
and Charity,--and consistent in