Robert Burns: How To Know Him

by William Allan Neilson

and he ends with the hope that if patronage could be abolished and the lairds forced to give

the brutes the power themsels

To chuse their herds,

Then Orthodoxy yet may prance,

An' Learning in a woody dance, gallows

An' that fell cur ca'd ‘common-sense,’

That bites sae sair, sorely

Be banish'd o'er the sea to France;

Let him bark there.

More light is thrown on Burns's positive attitude in religious matters by his [Epistle to McMath], a young New Licht minister in Tarbolton. From the evidences of the letters, we are justified in accepting at its face value the profession of reverence for true religion made by Burns in this epistle; his hatred of the sham needs no corroboration.