his memory might be held to be defective, but, in vindication of his power of recollection, he repeated that day to Mr Alexander four verses of doggerel composed by a Dreghorn man, the subject being the town of Irvine, and the time of composition the year of the "Buchanites," whose beliefs are characterised as "terrible delusions."

The verses form part of the memorandum,

but need not be quoted here. This statement by John Boyd received strong confirmation in 1859. At the centenary dinner the Hon. Adam Fairie, a native of Irvine, and who had come from Montreal, stated that he recollected the fire, and that it had taken place in a close a few doors up the High Street from the King's Arms Hotel, in which the dinner was being held. This is Montgomerie Boyd's Close. Mr Fairie was between 80 and 90 when he made this statement.

Suppose he was 85, he

would be seven years old at the time of the fire. The present occupant of the shop and bakehouse, which latter is on the site of the old heckling-shop, has also something confirmatory to sayto wit that, when he took possession, there was an old door lying

Heckling Shop in Montgomerie Boyd's Close.

about with the name "Robert Burns" rudely cut with a knife, and a date" 17-something," he could not recollect what. He gave the door to a gentleman interested in such matters, who died not very long after. It would, no doubt, be broken up for firewood, as the writer has tried in vain to trace it.

It will be noticed that in his memorandum, Mr Alexander says:-"Burns, either before or after this fire, wrought in

Glasgow Vennel." One is almost afraid to venture another statement by a lawyer in Irvine, so much more does it complicate the question. He says that the deeds relative to the house in Montgomerie Boyd's Close passed through his hands, and that one name he recollects in them was Peacock. Supposing that this Peacock is the one to whom Burns went on coming to Irvine, this would get rid of the dubiety of the two "my partners," for it would identify them. But it would upset the accepted site of the first shop Burns wrought in, and would make it that Burns went to the Glasgow Vennel only after the fire had driven him out of the High Street; though of course it might be surmised that he perhaps worked in both shops, according as there was work to be had. It would also throw the quarrel between him and Peacock into 1782.

The whole question stands as has been stated, and the most reasonable conclusion scems to be that Burns began work in the Glasgow Vennel, quarrelled with Peacock, entered into partnership with some one else in Montgomerie Boyd's Close, and was there burned out. The evidence for this conclusion is certainly stronger than that for the burning of the Glasgow Vennel shop.

The "but-and-ben" theory of Burns's lodging-place has already been mentioued, and it is certainly feasible enough to suppose that he might have heckled in one room of the building and lived in the other. This is not generally believed. Taking this to have been Peacock's shop, this lodgement would come to an end at the quarrel, and another would have to be found. Whether he lived in the heckling-shop or no, we are not left in any doubt about where he lived "till he left Irvine."

In the narrow Glasgow Vennel, at one time the only way into Irvine from the Glasgow side, hence the name, and on the right. as you go from the Townhead, stands a house of two storeys, with a stair on each side of the lobby. Going up the right-hand stair, we come to an attic at the back of the house, which we reverence as the room in which the future poet, then heckler, lived. His lodging was not what we now-a-days know by the term, with the conventional landlady; but a room hired, and perhaps furnished

by him, where he looked after himself, and cooked his own food, simple enough, by custom and necessity. "My meal is nearly out, but I am going to borrow till I get a little more." So runs the postscript of the down-hearted letter he wrote to Lochlea on 27th December, 1781. From this we gather that supplies were sent from home, and that Burns was his own cook-housekeeper.

The Glasgow Vennel.

Tenement in which Burns lodged, first on right.

Very literally, here and elsewhere, he "cultivated the Muses on a little oatmeal." In this little room he left a memorial of himself in the shape of initials and a date, rudely cut on the lintel part of the mantelpiece, "R.B, 1782." One can fancy the spirit in which this rude and simple commemorating was done. A burnedout heckler, a sixpenceless poet, feeling that trade had no opening for him, as it certainly had little charm. He is about to turn his

back on heckling and to face farming again in Lochlea, where he probably arrived in March, and he will leave a "frail memorial" in the place where he feels he has made a failure. Did he, think you, dream of his monumentum acre perennius?

Perhaps in this attic, scene of times and feelings that he "could not afterwards recall without a shudder," were written, "Winter, a Dirge," eldest of his printed pieces, and "A Prayer, written under the pressure of