BURNS RETURNED TO MOSSGIEL.

97

I cannot settle to my mind. Farming-the only thing of which I know anything, and Heaven above knows but little do I understand even of that—I cannot, dare not risk, on farms as they are. If I do not fix, I will go for Jamaica. Should I stay in an unsettled state at home, I would only dissipate my little fortune, and ruin what I intend shall compensate my little ones for the stigma I have brought on their names. R. B.

There is a sudden access of bitterness here. We have presently. more of it :

TO MR WILLIAM NICOL.

MAUCHLINE, June 18, 1787. MY DEAR FRIEND-I am now arrived safe in my native country, after a very agreeable jaunt, and have the pleasure to find all my friends well. I breakfasted with your grey-headed, reverend friend, Mr Smith; and was highly pleased both with the cordial welcome he gave me, and his most excellent appearance and sterling good

sense.

I have been with Mr Miller at Dalswinton, and am to meet him again in August. From my view of the lands, and his reception of my bardship, my hopes in that business are rather mended; but still they are but slender.

I am quite charmed with Dumfries folks-Mr Burnside, the clergyman, in particular, is a man whom I shall ever gratefully remember; and his wife, guid forgie me! I had almost broke the tenth commandment on her account! Simplicity, elegance, good sense, sweetness of disposition, good-humour, kind hospitality, are the constituents of her manner and heart: in short-but if I say one word more about her, I shall be directly in love with her.

I never, my friend, thought mankind very capable of anything generous; but the stateliness of the patricians in Edinburgh, and the civility of my plebeian brethren (who perhaps formerly eyed me askance) since I returned home, have nearly put me out of conceit altogether with my species. I have bought a pocket Milton, which I carry perpetually about with me, in order to study the sentiments, the dauntless magnanimity, the intrepid, unyielding independence, the desperate daring, and noble defiance of hardship, in that great personage, Satan. 'Tis true I have just now a little cash; but I am afraid the star that hitherto has shed its malignant, purpose-blasting rays full in my zenith; that noxious planet, so baneful in its influences to the rhyming tribe, I much dread it is not yet beneath my horizon. Misfortune dodges the path of human life; the poetic mind finds itself miserably deranged in, and unfit for, the walks of business; add to all, that thoughtless follies and hairbrained whims, like so many ignes fatui eternally diverging from the right line of sober discretion, sparkle with step-bewitching blaze in the idly-gazing eyes of the poor heedless bard, till pop, 'he falls like Lucifer, never to hope again.' God grant this may be an unreal picture with respect to

me! But should it not, I have very little dependence on mankind. I will close my letter with this tribute my heart bids me pay youthe many ties of acquaintance and friendship which I have, or think I have in life, I have felt along the lines, and, damn them, they are almost all of them of such frail contexture, that I am sure they would not stand the breath of the least adverse breeze of fortune; but from you, my ever dear sir, I look with confidence for the apostolic love that shall wait on me through good report and bad report' -the love which Solomon emphatically says is strong as death.' My compliments to Mrs Nicol, and all the circle of our common friends.

P. S.-I shall be in Edinburgh about the latter end of July. R. B.

'There are few of his letters,' says Mr Lockhart with regard to this, ' in which more of the dark places of his spirit come to light.' The idea strongly occurs to me-If such be all the gratitude, patience, or resignation which a man of extraordinary talent and sense can shew after being raised from almost the lowest poverty and the gloomiest prospects to a position comparatively brilliant, what are we to expect of the multitude of the miserable poor who go on from day to day without a 'blue bore' in their sky,1 or a single comfort to cheer their cold firesides? But perhaps it would be wrong to discuss the letter as anything but an effusion of transient vexation of spirit, arising from accidental and passing circumstances.

Though he had been effectually separated, or, it might be said, divorced from Jean Armour, and was much incensed by her conduct and that of her relatives, he had never been able to detach her from his heart. Gusts of passion for different individuals had passed through his bosom, even while resting in what he called the Greenland bay of indifference' in Edinburgh; but still the image of the simple Mauchline girl resided at the core, and would not quit its place. On now returning to his rustic retreat, and accidentally meeting her, his ancient flames were revived, and he was welcomed to her father's house. In a very short time the pair became as intimate as ever. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that the poet was received with open arms by Mr Hamilton and other friends.

The latter part of the month appears to have been devoted to a short Highland tour, of which we have only an imperfect and obscure account. Dr Currie says that, having remained with his friends at Mauchline a few days, 'he proceeded again to Edinburgh, and immediately set out on a journey to the

1

At once a proclamation comes out in farre other strain from the former. It was the first blew bore that did appear in our cloudie sky: we took it for a beginning of a reall change in the king's councills.'-Baillie's Letters, 1639.

TRIP IN THE WEST HIGHLANDS.

99

Highlands;' but no particulars of the tour have been found among his manuscripts.' It is nearly certain that Burns did not visit Edinburgh on this occasion. Mrs Begg thinks he went first to Glasgow, from which he sent home a present to his mother and three sisters; namely, a quantity of mode silk, sufficient to make a bonnet and cloak to each, and a gown besides to his mother and youngest sister, the whole being a recognition of their title to a share of his good fortune. Mrs Begg remembers going for rather more than a week to Ayr to assist in the making up of these dresses, and when she came back on a Saturday, he had returned, and she recollects being requested by him to put on her dress, that he might see how smart she looked in it. Almost the only other certain trace we have of Burns in this trip is in the West Highlands. To this district he might be drawn by his feelings regarding Mary Campbell. It is not unlikely that he visited her relations at Greenock. Imagination fondly pauses to behold him stretched on her grave in the West Kirk Yard, bewailing her untimely severance from his arms. On these points, however, we have only conjecture, and the somewhat remarkable circumstance, that this tour commences with a sort of mystery much like that with which he has contrived to invest the whole story of Highland Mary.

We light upon him first with certainty at Inverary, where he was unlucky, for the Duke of Argyle had an overabundance of guests in the castle, and the innkeeper was too much occupied with the surplus to have any attention to spare for passing travellers. Hereupon he penned an epigram, which it is to be supposed he left inscribed on one of the windows:

-:

ON INCIVILITY SHEWN HIM AT INVERARY.

Whoe'er he be that sojourns here,

I pity much his case,

Unless he come to wait upon

The Lord their God-his Grace.

There's naething here but Highland pride,

And Highland scab and hunger;

If Providence has sent me here,

'Twas surely in an anger.

We must regret this as a discourtesy towards a most respectable nobleman the more so as the names of the Duke and Duchess of Argyle stand at the head of the subscription for his poems; but when did genius ever learn to measure or control its feelings? We next have authentic accounts of the bard on the route southwards.

It is by no means inconsistent with our conjecture as to Highland Mary, that we find the poet indulging at the end of his tour in conviviality and frolic carried to the borders of extravagance.

TO MR ROBERT AINSLIE.

ARROCHAR, BY LOCHLONG, June 28, 1787.

I write you this on my tour through a country where savage streams tumble over savage mountains, thinly overspread with savage flocks, which starvingly support as savage inhabitants. My last stage was Inverary, to-morrow night's stage Dumbarton. I ought sooner to have answered your kind letter, but you know I am a man of many sins.

Burns appears to have returned home by Paisley. In a letter, dated May 29, 1847, and inserted in the Liverpool Mercury, the writer, who signs himself J. T.,1 gives an account of some circumstances connected with the poet's brief stay at that place. It must have been, he says, on Friday the 29th of June, about noon, that Dr John Taylor of Paisley, who had been charmed with the poems of the Ayrshire Ploughman, readily recognised him from his portrait, as he stood in the street with his friend Mr Alexander Pattison. Having induced both Burns and Pattison to go to his house, notwithstanding some hesitation on the poet's part, who expressed himself as eager to proceed on his journey, Dr Taylor entered into conversation on what was with himself a favourite subject-poetry. 'Burns made the observation, that "perhaps people were ready to attach more merit to poetry than was its due, for, that after all it was only natural ideas expressed in melodious words;" to which his host assented, and in illustration remarked, that "nothing was more common than for children in a winter's night to say: 'What will become of the puir birdies the nicht?' But what says the poet?

Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing!
That in the merry months o' spring,
Delighted me to hear thee sing,

What comes o' thee?

The compliment pleased: Burns started on his feet, and bowing, expressed his thanks

for the obliging quotation." After this,

1 Mr John Taylor, cotton-broker, Liverpool.

Burns seemed to forget the haste which he had before alleged; the conversation became animated, and, as it appeared, to each interesting. Burns spoke of his reception at Edinburgh, and dwelt much on the kindness which he had experienced from the Earl of Glencairn, shewing a ring that he wore, a gift from that nobleman. However fond Burns was of the produce of his muse, the other was probably no less so of his young family, who were all summoned to give their attendance. One of the children, a fat chubby boy, the poet took on his knee, and said "he would make an excellent subject for a poem;" an idea which the father assured him he should be highly gratified to see carried into effect. An elder one was sent for, and desired to go in; but from the great talk he had heard about poets, and particularly about Poet Burns, this one did not feel well assured that it was safe for him to trust his person within the poet's clutches. He therefore watched his opportunity, and ventured merely to pass from one door to another through the room, taking the best look he could of the poet, as he stood up with a small black profile of Mrs Taylor's in his hand, which he was then examining. The small black profiles, since called Silhouettes, were then coming into fashion. From that time, although the observer was then hardly more than a child, the remembrance of the poet's figure, face, and general appearance has never been lost; the recollection of him is distinct, and is that of a big, stout, athletic man, of a brown, ruddy complexion, broadchested, erect, and standing firmly on his legs, which perhaps were rather clumsy, though hid in yellow topped boots. His dress was a blue coat and buckskin breeches, and his caste seemed, what we should now style, that of a gentleman farmer. The impression made by the poet on his host was highly favourable, but the lady was struck with a certain gloominess that seemed to have possession of his countenance and general bearing.'

TO MR JAMES SMITH.

June 30, 1787.

On our return, at a Highland gentleman's hospitable mansion, we fell in with a merry party, and danced till the ladies left us, at three in the morning. Our dancing was none of the French or English insipid formal movements; the ladies sang Scotch songs like angels, at intervals; then we flew at 'Bab at the Bowster,' 'Tullochgorum,' 'Loch Erroch side,' &c. like midges sporting in the mottie sun, or craws prognosticating a storm in a hairst day. When the dear lasses left us, we ranged round the bowl till the good-fellow hour of

1 Names of Scotch dancing tunes.