With politics, sir.
FRIEND TO HUMANITY
I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first,—
Wretch! whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance,—
Sordid, unfeeling, reprobate, degraded,
Spiritless outcast!
(Kicks the knife-grinder, overturns his wheel, and exit in a transport of republican enthusiasm and universal philanthropy.)
Robert Burns, one of the chief names in Scottish literature, has been called the Dictionary of Poetical Quotations.
Byron said, “The rank of Burns is the very first of his art”; and the many-sided Scotchman had both admirers and detractors galore.