In repudiating Hume’s treatment of Mary, Burns was unconsciously illustrating the force of Johnson’s ruthless dictum, which even the loyal Sir Walter Scott could not wholly deny, that ‘a Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth: He will always love it better than inquiry; and if falsehood flatters his vanity, will not be very diligent to detect it.’ Few men have lived more honest than Burns. He would not willingly lie, nor endorse a lie; but if offered choice between a romantic story which appealed to his patriotism and an unromantic one which did not, his choice was never in doubt. His own followers, in their hostility to anything like dispassionate investigation of the picturesque legends surrounding him, continue to illustrate the same attitude. Nor, indeed, have the Burnsians monopolized this aversion to inquiry. It remained for an Irishman and an American to set forth the true details of the life of Allan Ramsay, and for another American to write the only complete and scholarly study of Henry Mackenzie and his times. Many Scotsmen besides Burns shared his passionate defence of Queen Mary; not so many shared his general patriotism. Here Burns, very Scot of very Scot, belonged to a generation which had passed, though he prepared the way for one to come. He had much in common with Claverhouse, Lochiel, or Fletcher of Saltoun; nothing in common with Bute, Wedderburn, or Henry Dundas. In so far as the patriotism of Sir John Sinclair sought the improvement of his country by collecting and tabulating her resources, Burns was with him, but when Sinclair tried to eradicate the national speech he struck at something Burns held precious. True, Burns was like his contemporaries in snatching at everything that seemed like proof that the Scots could equal or surpass the English at their own games. He applauded the _Mirror_ and the _Lounger_ because they looked like successful rivals of the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_; he admired Thomson and Beattie and Blair the more because even the English had to admit that these men wrote well in the southern tongue. But he deeply resented the willingness of his countrymen to sink their national identity in the Union. ‘Alas! have I often said to myself,’ he wrote to Mrs. Dunlop in 1790, ‘what are all the boasted advantages which my country reaps from the union, that can counterbalance the annihilation of her Independance, and even her very name! I often repeat that couplet of my favorite poet, Goldsmith-- “----States of native liberty possest, Tho’ very poor, may yet be very blest.” Nothing can reconcile me to the common terms, “English ambassador, English court,” &c. And I am out of all patience to see that equivocal character, Hastings, impeached by “the Commons of England.” Tell me, my friend, is this weak prejudice?’