These characteristics the poet inherited. With all his failures
in worldly affairs, he contrived to pay his debts; however obliged to
friends and patrons for occasional aid, he never abated his
self-respect or became the hanger-on of any man; and he showed
throughout his life an eager, receptive, and ever-expanding mind. The
seed sown by his father with so much pains and care in his early
training fell on fruitful soil, and in the range of his information,
as well as in his critical and reasoning powers, Burns became the
equal of educated men. The love of independence, indeed, was less a
family than a national passion. The salient fact in the history of
Scotland is the intensity of the prolonged struggle against the
political domination of England; and there developed in the individual
life of the Scot a corresponding tendency to value personal freedom as
the greatest of treasures. The thrift and economy for which the
Scottish people are everywhere notable, and which has its vicious
excess in parsimony and nearness, is in its more honorable aspects no
end in itself but merely a means to independence. If they are keen to
"gather gear,"
It's no to hide it in a hedge,
Nor for a train-attendant,
But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent.
Along with these substantial and admirable qualities of integrity and
independence Burns inherited certain limitations.
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