In his youth his liberal-mindedness made him a Jacobite out of mere antagonism to the existing regime; the Revolution only discovered for him the more logical Republican creed.

As the leader of a loose-living, hard drinking set, such as was to be found in every parish, he was a determined and free-spoken enemy of the kirk, whose tyranny he several times encountered.

In his writing he is as vehement an anti-clerical as Shelley and much more practical.

The political side of romanticism, in fact, which in England had to wait for Byron and Shelley, is already full-grown in his work.

He anticipates and gives complete expression to one half of the Romantic movement.
What Burns did for the idea of liberty, Blake did for that and every other idea current among Wordsworth and his successors.