CHAPTER VTHE EDINBURGH EDITION

'Leeze me on rhyme! it's aye a treasure,My chief, amaist, my only pleasure;At hame, afield, at wark or leisure,The Muse, poor hizzie,Though rough and raploch be her measure,She's seldom lazy.'

But, lazy or not, she becomes 'ramfeezled' with constant work, when he vows if 'the thowless jad winna mak it clink,' to prose it,—a terrible threat. For he must write, though it be but to keep despondency at arm's length. Yet it had become more than a pleasure and a recreation to him; and this he was beginning to understand. This, after all, was his real work, not the drudgery of the fields; in it he must live his life, and fulfil his mission. The more he wrote the more he accustomed himself with the idea of being an author. He knew that the critic-folk, deep read in books, might scoff at the very suggestion of a ploughman turning poet, but he recognised also that they might be wrong. It was not by dint of Greek that Parnassus was to be climbed. 'Ae spark o' Nature's fire' was the one thing needful for poetry that was to touch the heart.

'The star that rules my luckless lot,Has fated me the russet coat,And damned my fortune to the groat;But, in requit,Has blest me with a random shotO' countra wit.This while my notion's ta'en a sklent,To try my fate in guid, black prent;But still the mair I'm that way bent,Something cries, "Hoolie!I red you, honest man, tak tent!Ye'll shaw your folly."There's ither poets, much your betters,Far seen in Greek, deep men o' letters,Hae thought they had ensured their debtors,A' future ages;Now moths deform in shapeless tattersTheir unknown pages."'

'The star that rules my luckless lot,Has fated me the russet coat,And damned my fortune to the groat;But, in requit,Has blest me with a random shotO' countra wit.

This while my notion's ta'en a sklent,To try my fate in guid, black prent;But still the mair I'm that way bent,Something cries, "Hoolie!I red you, honest man, tak tent!Ye'll shaw your folly.

"There's ither poets, much your betters,Far seen in Greek, deep men o' letters,Hae thought they had ensured their debtors,A' future ages;Now moths deform in shapeless tattersTheir unknown pages."'

The works of such scholars enjoyed of the moths! There is gentle satire here. They themselves had grubbed on Greek, and now is Time avenged.

It is in his epistles that we see Burns most vividly and clearly, the man in all his moods. They are just such letters as might be written to intimate friends when one is not afraid of being himself, and can speak freely. In sentiment they are candid and sincere, and in language transparently unaffected. Whatever occurs to him as he writes goes down; we have the thoughts of his heart at the time of writing, and see the varying expressions of his face as he passes from grave to gay, from lively to severe. Now he is tender, now indignant; now rattling along in good-natured raillery without broadening into burlesque; now becoming serious and pensively philosophic without a suggestion of mawkish morality. For Burns, when he is himself, is always an artist; says his say, and lets the moral take care of itself; and in his epistles he lets himself go in a very revelry of artistic abandon. He does not think of style—that fetich of barren minds—and style comes to him; for style is a coquette that flies the suppliant wooer to kiss the feet of him who worships a goddess; a submissive handmaiden, a wayward and moody mistress. But along with delicacy of diction, force and felicity of expression, pregnancy of phrase and pliancy of language, what knowledge there is of men—the passions that sway, the impulses that prompt, the motives that move them to action. Clearness of vision and accuracy of observation are evidenced in their vividness of imagery; naturalness and truthfulness—the first essential of all good writing—in theirconvincing sincerity of sentiment. Wit and humour, play and sparkle of fancy, satire genial or scathing, a boundless love of nature and all created things, are harmoniously unified in the glowing imagination of the poet, and welded into the perfect poem. Behind all is the personality of the writer, captivating the reader as much by his kindliness and sympathy as by his witchery of words. Others have attempted poetic epistles, but none has touched familiar intercourse to such fine issues; none has written with such natural grace or woven the warp and woof of word and sentiment so cunningly into the web of poetry as Robert Burns. Looseness of rhythm may be detected, excruciating rhymes are not awanting, but all are forgiven and forgotten in the enjoyment of the feast as a whole.

Besides the satires and epistles we have during this fertile period poems as different in subject, sentiment, and treatment asThe Cotter's Saturday NightandThe Jolly Beggars;Hallowe'enandThe Mountain Daisy;The Farmer's Address to his Auld Mare MaggieandThe Twa Dogs;Address to a Mouse,Man was made to Mourn,The Vision,A Winter's Night, andThe Epistle to a Young Friend. Perhaps of all these poemsThe Visionis the most important. It is an epoch-marking poem in the poet's life. All that he had previously written had been leading to this; the finer the poem the more surely was it bringing him to this composition. The time was bound to come when he had to settle for himself finally and firmly what his work in life was to be. Was poetry to be merely a pastime; a recreation after the labours of the day were done; a solace when harvests failed and ruin stared the familyin the face? That question Burns answered when he sat down by the ingle-cheek, and, looking backward, mused on the years of youth that had been spent 'in stringing blethers up in rhyme for fools to sing.' He saw what he might have been; he knew too well what he was—'half-mad, half-fed, half-sarket.' Yet the picture of what he might have been he dismissed lightly, almost disdainfully; for he saw what he might be yet—what he should be. Turning from the toilsome past and the unpromising present, he looked to the future with a manly assurance of better things. He should shine in his humble sphere, a rustic bard; his to

'Preserve the dignity of Man,With soul erect;And trust, the Universal PlanWill all protect.'

The poem is pitched on a high key; the keynote is struck in the opening lines, and the verses move to the end with stateliness and dignity. It is calm, contemplative, with that artistic restraint that comes of conscious power. Burns took himself seriously, and knew that if he were true to his genius he would become the poet and prophet of his fellow-men.

It is worth while dwelling a little on this particular poem, because it marks a crisis in Burns's life. At this point he shook himself free from the tyranny of the soil. He had considered all things, and his resolution for authorship was taken. Some of the other poems will be mentioned afterwards; meantime we have to consider another crisis in his life—some aspects of his nature less pleasing, some episodes in his career dark and unlovely.

Speaking of the effectHoly Willie's Prayerhad on the kirk-session, he says that they actually held three meetings to see if their holy artillery could be pointed against profane rhymers. 'Unluckily for me,' he adds, 'my idle wanderings led me on another side, point-blank within reach of their heaviest metal. This is the unfortunate story alluded to in my printed poemThe Lament. 'Twas a shocking affair, which I cannot yet bear to recollect, and it had very nearly given me one or two of the principal qualifications for a place with those who have lost the chart and mistaken the reckoning of rationality.'

Throughout the year 1785 Burns had been acquainted with Jean Armour, the daughter of a master mason in Mauchline. Her name, besides being mentioned in hisEpistle to Davie, is mentioned inThe Vision, and we know from a verse on the six belles of Mauchline that 'Armour was the jewel o' them a'.' From the depressing cares and anxieties of that gloomy season the poet had turned to seek solace in song, but he had also found comfort and consolation in love.

'When heart-corroding care and griefDeprive my soul of rest,Her dear idea brings reliefAnd solace to my breast.'

Now in the spring of 1786 Burns as a man of honour must acknowledge Jean as his wife. The lovers had imprudently anticipated the Church's sanction to marriage, and it was his duty, speaking in the homely phrase of the Scottish peasantry, to make an honest woman of his Bonnie Jean. But, unfortunately, matters had been going from bad to worse on the farm of Mossgiel, andabout this time the brothers had come to a final decision to quit the farm. Robert, as Gilbert informs us, durst not then engage with a family in his poor, unsettled state, but was anxious to shield his partner by every means in his power from the consequences of their imprudence. It was agreed, therefore, between them, that they should make a legal acknowledgment of marriage, that he should go to Jamaica to push his fortune, and that she should remain with her father till it should please Providence to put the means of supporting a family in his power. He was willing even to work as a common labourer so that he might do his duty by the woman he had already made his wife. But Jean's father, whatever were his reasons, would allow her to have nothing whatever to do with a man like Burns. A husband in Jamaica was, in his judgment, no husband at all. What inducement he held out, or what arguments he used, we may not know, but he prevailed on Jean to surrender to him the paper acknowledging the irregular marriage. This he deposited with Mr. Aitken of Ayr, who, as Burns heard, deleted the names, thus rendering the marriage null and void. This was the circumstance, what he regarded as Jean's desertion, which brought Burns, as he has said, to the verge of insanity.

Now it was that he finally resolved to leave the country. It was not the first time he had thought of America. Poverty, before this, had led him to think of emigrating; the success of others who had gone out as settlers tempted him to try his fortune beyond the seas, even though he 'should herd the buckskin kye in Virginia.' Now, imprudence as well as poverty urgedhim, while, wounded so sorely by the action of the Armours both in his love and his vanity, he had little desire to remain at home. There is no doubt that, prior to the birth of his twin children and the publication of his poems, he would have quitted Scotland with little reluctance. But he was so poor that, even after accepting a situation in Jamaica, he had not money to pay his passage; and it was at the suggestion of Gavin Hamilton that he began seriously to prepare for the publication of his poems by subscription, in order to raise a sum sufficient to buy his banishment. Accordingly we find him under the date April 3, 1786, writing to Mr. Aitken, 'My proposals for publishing I am just going to send to press.'

But what a time this was in the poet's life! It was a long tumult of hope and despair, exultation and despondency, poetry and love; revelry, rebellion, and remorse. Everything was excitement; calmness itself a fever. Yet through it all inspiration was ever with him, and poem followed poem with miraculous, one might almost say, unnatural rapidity. Now he is apostrophising Ruin; now he is wallowing in the mire of village scandal; now he is addressing a mountain daisy in words of tenderness and purity; now he is scarifying a garrulous tailor, and ranting with an alien flippancy; now it is Beelzebub he addresses, now the King; now he is waxing eloquent on the virtues of Scotch whisky, anon writing to a young friend in words of wisdom that might well be written on the fly-leaf of his Bible.

This was certainly a period of ageing activity in Burns's life. It seemed as if there had been a conspiracyof fate and circumstance to herald the birth of his poems with the wildest convulsions of labour and travail. The parish of Tarbolton became the stage of a play that had all the makings of a farce and all the elements of a tragedy. There were endless complications and daily developments, all deepening the dramatic intensity without disturbing the unity. We watch with breathless interest, dumbly wondering what the end will be. It is tragedy, comedy, melodrama, and burlesque all in one.

Driven almost to madness by the faithlessness of Jean Armour, he rends himself in a whirlwind of passion, and seeks sympathy and solace in the love of Mary Campbell. What a situation for a novelist! This is just how the story-teller would have made his jilted hero act; sent him with bleeding heart to seek consolation in a new love. For novelists make a study of the vagaries of love, and know that hearts are caught in the rebound.

Most of the biographers of Burns are agreed that this Highland lassie was the object of by far the deepest passion he ever knew. They may be right. Death stepped in before disillusion, and she was never other than the adored Mary of that rapturous meeting when the white hawthorn-blossom no purer was than their love. Thus was his love for Mary Campbell ever a holy and spiritual devotion. Auguste Angellier says: 'This was the purest, the most lasting, and by far the noblest of his loves. Above all the others, many of which were more passionate, this one stands out with the chasteness of a lily. There is a complete contrast between his love for Jean and his love for Mary. Inthe one case all the epithets are material; here they are all moral. The praises are borrowed, not from the graces of the body, but from the features of the soul. The words which occur again and again are those of honour, of purity, of goodness. The idea of seeing her again some day was never absent from his mind. Every time he thought of eternity, of a future life, of reunions in some unknown state, it was to her that his heart went out. The love of that second Sunday of May was ever present. It was the love which led Burns to the most elevated sphere to which he ever attained; it was the inspiration of his most spiritual efforts. This sweet, blue-eyed Highland lassie was his Beatrice, and waved to him from the gates of heaven.'

We know little about Mary Campbell from the poet himself; and though much has been ferreted out about her by a host of snappers-up of unconsidered trifles, this episode in his life is still involved in mystery. It is pleasant to reflect that his reticence here has kept at least one love passage in his life sacred and holy. Is not mystery half the charm and beauty of love? Yet, in spite of his silence, or probably because of it, details have been raked up from time to time, some grey and colourless fossil-remains of what was once fresh and living fact. From Burns himself we know that the lovers took a tender farewell in a sequestered spot by the banks of the Ayr, and parted never to meet again. All the romance and tragedy are there, and what need we more? We are not even certain as to either the place or the date of her death. Mrs. Begg, the poet's sister, knew little or nothing about Mary Campbell. She remembered, however, a letter being handed in tohim after the work of the season was over. 'He went to the window to open and read it, and she was struck by the look of agony which was the consequence. He went out without uttering a word.' What he felt he expressed afterwards in song—song that has become the language of bereaved and broken hearts for all time. The widowed lover knows 'the dear departed shade,' but he may not have heard of Mary Campbell.

It was in May that Burns and Highland Mary had parted; in June he wrote to a friend about ungrateful Armour, confessing that he still loved her to distraction, though he would not tell her so. But all his letters about this time are wild and rebellious. He raves in a tempest of passion, and cools himself again, perhaps in the composition of a song or poem. Just about the time this letter was written, his poems were already in the press. His proposal for publishing had met with so hearty a reception, that success financially was to a certain extent assured, and the printing had been put into the hand of John Wilson, Kilmarnock. Even yet his pen was busy. He wrote often in a gay and lively style, almost, it would seem, in a struggle to keep himself from sinking into melancholy, 'singing to keep his courage up.' His gaiety was 'the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of the executioner.'A Bard's Epitaph, however, among the many pieces of this season, is earnest and serious enough to disarm hostile criticism; and his loose and flippant productions are read leniently in the light of this pathetic confession. It is a self-revelation truly, but it is honest, straightforward, and manly. Thereis nothing plaintive or mawkish about it.

We next find Burns flying from home to escape legal measures that Jean Armour's father was instituting against him. He was in hiding at Kilmarnock to be out of the way of legal diligence, and it was in such circumstances that he saw his poems through the press. Surely never before in the history of literature had book burst from such a medley of misfortunes into so sudden and certain fame. Born in tumult, it vindicated its volcanic birth, and took the hearts of men by storm. Burns says little about those months of labour and bitterness. We know that he had then nearly as high an idea of himself and his works as he had in later life; he had watched every means of information as to how much ground he occupied as a man and a poet, and was sure his poems would meet with some applause. He had subscriptions for about three hundred and fifty, and he got six hundred copies printed, pocketing, after all expenses were paid, nearly twenty pounds. With nine guineas of this sum he bespoke a passage in the first ship that was to sail for the West Indies. 'I had for some time,' he says, 'been skulking from covert to covert under all the terrors of a jail, as some ill-advised, ungrateful people had uncoupled the merciless, legal pack at my heels. I had taken the last farewell of my friends; my chest was on the road to Greenock; I had composed the songThe Gloomy Night is Gathering Fast, which was to be the last effort of my muse in Caledonia, when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes, by rousing my poetic ambition. The doctor belonged to a class of critics, for whose applause I had not even dared to hope. His idea that I would meet with every encouragement for a second edition fired me so much, that away I posted to Edinburgh, without a single acquaintance in town, or a single letter of recommendation in my pocket.'

It was towards the end of July that the poems were published, and they met with a success that must have been gratifying to those friends who had stood by the poet in his hour of adversity, and done what they could to ensure subscriptions. In spite of the fact that Burns certainly looked upon himself as possessed of some poetic abilities, the reception the little volume met with, and the impression it at once made, must have exceeded his wildest anticipations. Even yet, however, he did not relinquish the idea of going to America. On the other hand, as we have seen, the first use he made of the money which publication had brought him, was to secure a berth in a vessel bound for Jamaica. But he was still compelled by the dramatic uncertainty of circumstance. The day of sailing was postponed, else had he certainly left his native land. It was only after Jean Armour had become the mother of twin children that there was any hint of diffidence about sailing. In a letter to Robert Aitken, written in October, he says: 'All these reasons urge me to go abroad, and to all these reasons I have one answer—the feelings of a father. That in the present mood I am in overbalances everything that can be laid in the scale against it.'

His friends, too, after the success of his poems, were beginning to be doubtful about the wisdom of his going abroad, and were doing what they could to secure for him a place in the Excise. For his fame had gone beyond the bounds of his native county, and others than people in his own station had recognised his genius.Mrs. Dunlop of Dunlop was one of the first to seek the poet's acquaintance, and she became an almost lifelong friend; through his poems he renewed acquaintance with Mrs. Stewart of Stair. He was 'roosed' by Craigen-Gillan; Dugald Stewart, the celebrated metaphysician, and one of the best-known names in the learned and literary circles of Edinburgh, who happened to be spending his vacation at Catrine, not very far from Mossgiel, invited the poet to dine with him, and on that occasion he 'dinnered wi' a laird'—Lord Daer. Then came the appreciative letter from Dr. Blacklock to the Rev. George Lawrie of Loudon, already mentioned. Even this letter might not have proved strong enough to detain him in Scotland, had it not been that he was disappointed of a second edition of his poems in Kilmarnock. Other encouragement came from Edinburgh in a very favourable criticism of his poems in theEdinburgh Magazine. This, taken along with Dr. Blacklock's suggestion about 'a second edition more numerous than the former,' led the poet to believe that his work would be taken up by any of the Edinburgh publishers. The feelings of a father also urged him to remain in Scotland; and at length—probably in November—the thought of exile was abandoned. It was with very different feelings, we may be sure, that he contemplated setting out from Mossgiel to sojourn for a season in Edinburgh—a name that had ever been associated in his mind with thebest traditions of learning and literature in Scotland.

Edinburgh towards the close of last century was a very different place from Edinburgh of the present day. It was then to a certain extent the hub of Scottish society; the centre of learning and literature; the winter rendezvous of not a few of the nobility and gentry of Scotland. For in those days it had its society and its season; county families had not altogether abandoned the custom of keeping their houses in town. All roads did not then lead to London as they do now, when Edinburgh is a capital in little more than name, and its prestige has become a tradition. A century ago Edinburgh had all the glamour and fascination of the capital of a no mean country; to-day it is but the historical capital invested with the glamour and fascination of a departed glory. The very names of those whom Burns met on his first visit to Edinburgh are part of the history of the nation. In the University there were at that time, representative of the learning of the age, Dugald Stewart, Dr. Blair, and Dr. Robertson. David Hume was but recently dead, and the lustre of his name remained. His great friend, Adam Smith, author ofThe Wealth of Nations, was still living; while Henry Mackenzie,The Man of Feeling, the most popular writer of his day, was editingThe Lounger; and Dr. Blacklock, the blind poet, was also a name of authority in the world of letters. Nor was the Bar, whose magnates have ever figured in the front rank of Edinburgh society, eclipsed by the literary luminaries of the University. Lord Monboddo has left a name, which his countrymen are not likely to forget. He was an accomplished, though eccentric character, whose classical bent was in the direction of Epicurean parties. His great desire was to revive the traditions of the elegant suppers of classical times. Not only were music and painting employed to this end, but the tables were wreathed with flowers, the odour of incense pervaded the room; the wines were of the choicest, served from decanters of Grecian design. But, perhaps, the chief attraction to Burns in the midst of all this super-refinement was the presence of 'the heavenly Miss Burnet,' daughter of Lord Monboddo. 'There has not been anything nearly like her,' he wrote to his friend Chalmers, 'in all the combinations of beauty and grace and goodness the great Creator has formed since Milton's Eve in the first day of her existence.' The Hon. Henry Erskine was another well-known name, not only in legal circles, but as well in fashionable society. His genial and sunny nature made him so great a favourite in his profession, that having been elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates in 1786, he was unanimously re-elected every year till 1796, when he was victorious over Dundas of Arniston, who had been brought forward in opposition to him. The leader of fashion was the celebrated Duchess of Gordon, who was never absent from a public place, and 'the later the hour so much the better.' Her amusements—her life, we might say—were dancing, cards, and company. With such a leader, the season to the very select and elegant society of Edinburgh was certain to be a time of brilliance and gaiety; while its very exclusiveness, and the fact that it affected or reflected the literary life of the University and the Bar, would make it all the more ready to lionise a man like Burns when the opportunity came.

The members of the middle class caught their tone from the upper ranks, and took their nightly sederunts and morning headaches as privileges they dared aristocratic exclusiveness to deny them. Douce citizens, merchants, respectable tradesmen, well-to-do lawyers, forgathered when the labours of the day were done to spend a few hours in some snug back-parlour, where mine host granted them the privileges and privacy of a club. Such social beings as these, met to discuss punch, law, and literature, were no less likely than their aristocratic neighbours to receive Burns with open arms, and once he was in their midst to prolong their sittings in his honour. Nor was Burns, if he found them honest and hearty fellows, the man to say them nay. He was eminently a social and sociable being, and in company such as theirs he could unbend himself as he might not do in the houses of punctilious society. The etiquette of that howff of the Crochallan Fencibles in the Anchor Close or of Johnnie Dowie's tavern in Libberton's Wynd was not the etiquette of drawing-rooms; and the poet was free to enliven the hours with a rattling fire of witty remarks on men and things as he had been wont to do on the bog at Lochlea, with only a few noteless peasants for audience.

Burns entered Edinburgh on November 28, 1786. He had spent the night after leaving Mossgiel at the farm of Covington Mains, where the kind-hearted host, Mr. Prentice, had all the farmers of the parish gathered to meet him. This is of interest as showing the popularity Burns's poems had already won; while the eagerness of those farmers to see and know the man after they had read his poems proves most strikingly how straight the poet had gone to the hearts of his readers. They had recognised the voice of a human being, and heard it gladly. This gathering was convincing testimony, if such were needed, of the truthfulness and sincerity of his writings. No doubt Burns, with his great force of understanding, appreciated the welcome of those brother-farmers, and valued it above the adulation he afterwards received in Edinburgh. The Kilmarnock Edition was but a few months old, yet here was a gathering of hard-working men, who had read his poems, we may be sure, from cover to cover, and now they were eager to thank him who had sung the joys and sorrows of their workaday lives. Of course there was a great banquet, and night wore into morning before the company dispersed. They had seen the poet face to face, and the man was greater than his poems.

Next morning he resumed his journey, breakfasting at Carnwath, and reaching Edinburgh in the evening. He had come, as he tells us, without a letter of introduction in his pocket, and he took up his abode with John Richmond in Baxter's Close, off the Lawnmarket. He had known Richmond when he was a clerk with Gavin Hamilton, and had kept up a correspondence with him ever since he had left Mauchline. The lodging was ahumble enough one, the rent being only three shillings a week; but here Burns lodged all the time he was in Edinburgh, and it was hither he returned from visiting the houses of the rich and great, to share a bed with his friend and companion of many a merry meeting at Mauchline.

It would be vain to attempt to describe Burns's feelings during those first few days in Edinburgh. He had never before been in a larger town than Kilmarnock or Ayr; and now he walked the streets of Scotland's capital, to him full of history and instinct with the associations of centuries. This was really the heart of Scotland, the home of heroes who fought and fell for their country, 'the abode of kings of other years.' His sentimental attachment to Jacobitism became more pronounced as he looked on Holyrood. For Burns, a representative of the strength and weakness of his countrymen, was no less representative of Scotland's sons in his chivalrous pity for the fate of Queen Mary and his romantic loyalty to the gallant Prince Charlie. His poetical espousal of the cause of the luckless Stuarts was purely a matter of sentiment, a kind of pious pity that had little to do with reason; and in this he was typical of his countrymen even of the present day, who are loyal to the house of Stuart in song, and in life are loyal subjects of their Queen.

We are told, and we can well believe that for the first few days of his stay he wandered about, looking down from Arthur's Seat, gazing at the Castle, or contemplating the windows of the booksellers' shops. We know that he made a special pilgrimage to the grave of Fergusson, and that in a letter, dated February 6, 1787, he applied to the honourable bailies of Canongate, Edinburgh, forpermission 'to lay a simple stone over his revered ashes'; which petition was duly considered and graciously granted. The stone was afterwards erected, with the simple inscription, 'Here lies Robert Fergusson, Poet. Born September 5th, 1751; died 16th October, 1774.

No sculptured marble here, nor pompous lay,"No storied urn nor animated bust";This simple stone directs pale Scotia's wayTo pour her sorrow o'er her poet's dust.'

On the reverse side is recorded the fact that the stone was erected by Robert Burns, and that the ground was to remain for ever sacred to the memory of Robert Fergusson.

It is related, too, that he visited Ramsay's house, and that he bared his head when he entered. Burns over and over again, both in prose and verse, turned to these two names with a kind of fetich worship, that it is difficult to understand. He must have known that, as a poet, he was immeasurably superior to both. It may have been that their writings first opened his eyes to the possibilities of the Scots tongue in lyrical and descriptive poetry; and there was something also which appealed to him in the wretched life of Fergusson.

'O thou, my elder brother in misfortune,By far my elder brother in the Muses.'

His elder brother indeed by some six years! But there is more of reverence than sound judgment in his estimate of either Ramsay or Fergusson.

Burns, however, had come to Edinburgh with a fixed purpose in view, and it would not do to waste his time mooning about the streets. On December 7 we findhim writing to Gavin Hamilton, half seriously, half jokingly: 'I am in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas à Kempis or John Bunyan, and you may expect henceforth to see my birthday inserted among the wonderful events in the Poor Robins' and Aberdeen Almanacs along with the Black Monday and the Battle of Bothwell Bridge. My Lord Glencairn and the Dean of Faculty, Mr. H. Erskine, have taken me under their wing, and by all probability I shall soon be the tenth worthy and the eighth wise man of the world. Through my lord's influence it is inserted in the records of the Caledonian Hunt that they universally one and all subscribe for the second edition.'

This letter shows that Burns had already been taken up, as the phrase goes, by the élite of Edinburgh; and it shows also and quite as clearly in the tone of quiet banter, that he was little likely to lose his head by the notice taken of him. To the Earl of Glencairn, mentioned in it, he had been introduced probably by Mr. Dalrymple of Orangefield, whom he knew both as a brother-mason and a brother-poet. The Earl had already seen the Kilmarnock Edition of the poems, and now he not only introduced Burns to William Creech, the leading publisher in Edinburgh, but he got the members of the Caledonian Hunt to become subscribers for a second edition of the poems. To Erskine he had been introduced at a meeting of the Canongate Kilwinning Lodge of Freemasons; and assuredly there was no man living more likely to exert himself in the interests of a genius like Burns.

Two days after this letter to Gavin Hamilton there appeared inThe LoungerMackenzie's appreciative notice of the Kilmarnock Edition. This notice has become historical, and at the time of its appearance it must have been peculiarly gratifying to Burns. He had remarked before, in reference to the letter from Dr. Blacklock, that the doctor belonged to a class of critics for whose applause he had not even dared to hope. Now his work was criticised most favourably by the one who was regarded as the highest authority on literature in Scotland. If a writer was praised inThe Lounger, his fame was assured. He went into the world with the hall-mark of Henry Mackenzie; and what more was needed? The oracle had spoken, and his decision was final. His pronouncement would be echoed and re-echoed from end to end of the country. And this great critic claimed no special indulgence for Burns on the plea of his mean birth or poor education. He saw in this heaven-taught ploughman a genius of no ordinary rank, a man who possessed the spirit as well as the fancy of a great poet. He was a poet, and it mattered not whether he had been born a peasant or a peer. 'His poetry, considered abstractedly and without the apologies arising from his situation, seems to me fully entitled to command our feelings and obtain our applause.... The power of genius is not less admirable in tracing the manners, than in painting the passions or in drawing the scenery of nature. That intuitive glance with which a writer like Shakspeare discerns the character of men, with which he catches the many changing hues of life, forms a sort of problem in the science of mind, of which it is easier to see the truth than assign the cause.'

But Mackenzie did more than praise. He pointed out the fact that the author had had a terrible strugglewith poverty all the days of his life, and made an appeal to his country 'to stretch out her hand and retain the native poet whose wood-notes wild possessed so much excellence.' There seems little doubt that the concluding words of this notice led Burns for the first time to hope and believe that, through some influential patron, he might be placed in a position to face the future without a fear, and to cultivate poetry at his leisure. There is no mistaking the meaning of Mackenzie's words, and he had evidently used them with the conviction that something would be done for Burns. Unfortunately, he was mistaken; the poet, at first misled, was slowly disillusioned and somewhat embittered. 'To repair the wrongs of suffering or neglected merit; to call forth genius from the obscurity where it had pined indignant, and place it where it may profit or delight the world—these are exertions which give to wealth an enviable superiority, to greatness and to patronage a laudable pride.'

To Burns, at the time, such a criticism as this must have been all the more pleasing, inasmuch as it was the verdict of a man whose best-known work had been one of the poet's favourite books. We can easily imagine that, under the patronage of Lord Glencairn and Henry Erskine, and after Mackenzie's generous recognition of his genius, the doors of the best houses in Edinburgh would be open to him. His letter to John Ballantine, Ayr, written a few days after this criticism appeared, shows in what circles the poet was then moving. 'I have been introduced to a good many of thenoblesse, but my avowed patrons and patronesses are, the Duchess of Gordon, the Countess of Glencairn with my Lordand Lady Betty, the Dean of Faculty, Sir John Whitefoord. I have likewise warm friends among theliterati; Professors Stewart, Blair, and Mr. Mackenzie,The Man of Feeling.... I am nearly agreed with Creech to print my book, and I suppose I will begin on Monday.... Dugald Stewart and some of my learned friends put me in a periodical calledThe Lounger, a copy of which I here enclose you. I was, Sir, when I was first honoured with your notice, too obscure; now I tremble lest I should be ruined by being dragged too suddenly into the glare of learned and polite observation.'

Burns was now indeed the lion of Edinburgh. It must have been a great change for a man to have come straight from the stilts of the plough to be dined and toasted by such men as Lord Glencairn, Lord Monboddo, and the Hon. Henry Erskine; to be fêted and flattered by the Duchess of Gordon, the Countess of Glencairn, and Lady Betty Cunningham; to count amongst his friends Mr. Mackenzie and Professors Stewart and Blair. It would have been little wonder if his head had been turned by the patronage of the nobility, the deference and attention of the literary and learned coteries of Edinburgh. But Burns was too sensible to be carried away by the adulation of a season. A man of his keenness of penetration and clearness of insight would appreciate the praise of the world at its proper value. He bore himself with becoming dignity, taking his place in refined society as one who had a right there, without showing himself either conceitedly aggressive or meanly servile. He took his part in conversation, but no more than his part, and expressed himself with freedom and decision. His conversation,in fact, astonished theliteratieven more than his poems had done. Perhaps they had expected some uncouth individual who would stammer crop-and-weather commonplaces in a rugged vernacular, or, worse still, in ungrammatical English; but here was one who held his own with them in speculative discussion, speaking not only with the eloquence of a poet, but with the readiness, clearness, and fluency of a man of letters. His pure English diction astonished them, but his acuteness of reasoning, his intuitive knowledge of men and the world, was altogether beyond their comprehension. All they had got by years of laborious study this man appeared to have as a natural gift. In repartee, even, he could more than hold his own with them, and in the presence of ladies could turn a compliment with the best. 'It needs no effort of imagination,' says Lockhart, 'to conceive what the sensations of an isolated set of scholars (almost all either clergymen or professors) must have been in the presence of this big-boned, black-browed, brawny stranger, who, having forced his way among them from the plough-tail at a single stride, manifested in the whole strain of his bearing and conversation a most thorough conviction that in the society of the most eminent men of his nation he was exactly where he was entitled to be.' It was a new world to Burns, yet he walked about as if he were of old familiar with its ways; he conducted himself in society like one to the manner born.

All who have left written evidence of Burns's visit to Edinburgh are agreed that he conducted himself with manliness and dignity, and all have left record of the powerful impression his conversation made on them.His poems were wonderful; himself was greater than his poems, a giant in intellect. A ploughman who actually dared to have formed a distinct conception of the doctrine ofassociationwas a miracle before which schools and scholars were dumb. 'Nothing, perhaps,' Dugald Stewart wrote, 'was more remarkable among his various attainments than the fluency, precision, and originality of his language when he spoke in company; more particularly as he aimed at purity in his turn of expression, and avoided more successfully than most Scotchmen the peculiarities of Scottish phraseology.'

And Professor Stewart goes further than this when he speaks of the soundness and sanity of Burns's nature. 'The attentions he received during his stay in town from all ranks and descriptions of persons, were such as would have turned any head but his own. He retained the same simplicity of manner and appearance which had struck me so forcibly when I first saw him in the country; nor did he seem to feel any additional self-importance from the number and rank of his new acquaintance. His dress was perfectly suited to his station, plain and unpretentious, with a sufficient attention to neatness.' Principal Robertson has left it on record, that he had scarcely ever met with any man whose conversation displayed greater vigour than that of Burns. Walter Scott, a youth of some sixteen years at the time, met Burns at the house of Dr. Adam Ferguson, and was particularly struck with his poetic eye, 'which literally glowed when he spoke with feeling or interest,' and with his forcible conversation. 'Among the men who were the most learned of their time and country, he expressed himself with perfect firmness, but without the least intrusive forwardness; and when he differed in opinion, he did not hesitate to express it firmly, and at the same time with modesty.... I never saw a man in company more perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment.' To these may be added the testimony of Dr. Walker, who gives, perhaps, the most complete and convincing picture of the man at this time. He insists on the same outstanding characteristics in Burns, his innate dignity, his unaffected demeanour in company, and brilliancy in conversation. In no part of his manner, we read, was there the slightest degree of affectation, and no one could have guessed from his behaviour or conversation, that he had been for some months the favourite of all the fashionable circles of a metropolis. 'In conversation he was powerful. His conceptions and expression were of corresponding vigour, and on all subjects were as remote as possible from commonplace.'

But whilst ladies of rank and fashion were deluging this Ayrshire ploughman with invitations, and vying one with another in their patronage and worship, the mind of the poet was no less busy registering impressions of every new experience. If the learned men of Edinburgh set themselves to study the character of a genius who upset all their cherished theories of birth and education, and to chronicle his sayings and doings, Burns at the same time was studying them, gauging their powers intuitively, telling their limitations at a glance. For he must measure every man he met, and himself with him. His standard was always the same; every brain was weighed against his own; but with Burns this was never more than a comparison of capacities. Hetook his stand, not by what work he had done, but by what he felt he was capable of doing. And that is not, and cannot be, the way of the world. In all his letters at this time we see him studying himself in the circles of fashion and learning. He could look on Robert Burns, as he were another person, brought from the plough and set down in a world of wealth and refinement, of learning and wit and beauty. He saw the dangers that beset him, and the temptations to which he was exposed; he recognised that something more than his poetic abilities was needed to explain his sudden popularity. He was the vogue, the favourite of a season; but public favour was capricious, and next year the doors of the great might be closed against him; while patrician dames who had schemed for his smiles might glance at him with indifferent eyes as at a dismissed servant once high in favour. His letter to Mrs. Dunlop, dated January 15, may be taken as a just, deliberate, and clear expression of his views of himself and society at this time. The letter is so quietly dignified that we may quote at some length. 'You are afraid I shall grow intoxicated with my prosperity as a poet. Alas! madam, I know myself and the world too well. I do not mean any airs of affected modesty; I am willing to believe that my abilities deserve some notice, but in a most enlightened, informed age and nation, where poetry is and has been the study of men of the first natural genius, aided with all the powers of polite learning, polite books, and polite company—to be dragged forth to the full glare of learned and polite observation, with all my imperfections of awkward rusticity and crude and unpolished ideas on my head—I assure you, madam, I do not dissemblewhen I tell you I tremble for the consequences. The novelty of a poet in my obscure situation, without any of those advantages that are reckoned necessary for that character, at least at this time of day, has raised a partial tide of public notice which has borne me to a height where I am absolutely, feelingly certain my abilities are inadequate to support me; and too surely do I see that time when the same tide will leave me and recede, perhaps as far below the mark of truth. I do not say this in the ridiculous affectation of self-abasement and modesty. I have studied myself, and know what ground I occupy; and however a friend or the world may differ from me in that particular, I stand for my own opinion in silent resolve, with all the tenaciousness of property. I mention this to you once for all to disburden my mind, and I do not wish to hear or say more about it. But—

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