the Scottish Dialect” was published in 1786. The book contained
lyrical, humorous and satirical poems written in his earlier years,
though some ofhis greatest satires such as “Address to the Unco’
Guid”, “Holy Willie’s Prayer” and “The Jolly Beggars” were not
included into it. This volume opened for him the doors of fashionable
society in Edinburgh, for a season, as the untutored ploughman
poet, he was a lionized curiosity. The same year Robert Burns
received an invitation from Edinburgh scholars, who praised his
verses. The poet accepted the invitation, and went to Edinburgh.
A new and enlarged edition ofhis poems was the result. Burns
returned to his native village with money enough to buy a farm
and many Jean Armour. In 1791 he went bankrupt and was obliged
to sell the farm and take a position as customs officer in the town
of Dumfries. Sometimes Robert Bums is represented by critics
as a child o f the French Revolution. It is true but only partially.
His best poems were written before that Revolution. He is rightly
judged not against the wide expanse o f European polities but
against the sanctimonious hypocrisy of the religious, and against
the social barriers that divided man from man. This equalitarian
philosophy he discovered not in the text-books o f political theory,
but from his own observation, and he expressed it admirably, even
recklessly, in one o f the greatest of all his poems “The Jolly
Beggars”.
Hard work destroyed the poet’s health. In 1796 he died in
poverty at 37. After his death, his widow and children were left
without a shilling. But the common Scottish people collected enough
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