Letter
and guns were stopped at Dover by the English officials;
there was trouble for Burns with his superiors; he was
reminded firmly, however delicately, that, as a paid
official, it was his duty to obey and to be silent; and all
the blood of this poor, proud, and falling man must have
rushed to his head at the humiliation. His letter to Mr.
Erskine, subsequently Earl of Mar, testifies, in its turgid,
turbulent 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 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 shrunk 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.
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