He was the victim of a severe lampooning in Burns’s third Election Ballad, ‘John Bushby’s Lamentation’, in addition to these epigrams. However, Burns perhaps treated the Earl more savagely ...

Provost John Will find that his Swans are but Geese. All of these epigrams survive in the transcript of John Syme of Ryedale, a distributor of stamps, and one of Burns’s friends. The third and ...