most universal, indeed, in the rural districts of southern Scotland; but it should never be forgotten that Burns was among the first, if not the very first, to set the example. "He was so good," says Mr Riddel, as to take the whole management of this concern; he was treasurer, librarian, and censor, to our little society, who will long have a grateful sense of his public spirit and exertions for their improvement and information.” *

Once, and only once, did Burns quit his residence at Elliesland to revisit Edinburgh. His object was to close accounts with Creech; that business accomplished, he returned immediately, and he never again saw the capital. He thus writes to Mrs Dunlop :- "To a man who has a home, however humble and remote, if that home is, like mine, the scene of domestic comfort, the bustle of Edinburgh will soon be a business of sickening disgust

• Vain pomp and glory of the world, I hate you.'

"When I must skulk into a corner, lest the rattling equipage of some gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to exclaim -what merits had he had, or what demerits have I had, in some state of pre-existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the sceptre of rule, and the key of riches in his puny fist, and I kicked into the world, the sport of folly or the victim of pride? Often as I have glided with humble stealth through the pomp of Prince's Street, it has suggested itself to me as an improvement on the present human figure, that a

Letter to Sir John Sinclair, Bart. in the Statistical Account of Scotland-Parish of Dunscore.

man, in proportion to his own conceit of his consequence in the world, could have pushed out the longitude of his common size, as a snail pushes out his horns, or as we draw out a perspective." There is bitterness in this badinage.

It may naturally excite some surprise, that of the convivial conversation of so distinguished a convivialist, so few specimens have been preserved in the Memoirs of his life. The truth seems to be, that those of his companions who chose to have the best memory for such things, happened also to have the keenest relish for his wit and his humour when exhibited in their coarser phases. Among a heap of MSS. memoranda with which I have been favoured, I find but little that one could venture to present in print: and the following specimens of that little must, for the present, suffice.

A gentleman who had recently returned from the East Indies, where he had made a large fortune, which he showed no great alacrity about spending, was of opinion, it seems, one day, that his company had had enough of wine, rather sooner than they came to that conclusion: he offered another bottle in feeble and hesitating terms, and remained dallying with the corkscrew, as if in hopes that some one would interfere and prevent further effusion of Bourdeaux. "Sir," said Burns, losing temper, and betraying in his mood something of the old rusticity" Sir, you have been in Asia, and for aught I know, on the Mount of Moriah, and you seem to hang over your tappithen as remorsefully as Abraham did over his son Isaac-Come, Sir, to the sacrifice!"

At another party, the society had suffered considerably from the prosing of a certain well-known provincial Bore of the first magnitude; and Burns, as much as any of them, although overawed, as it would seem, by the rank of the nuisance, he had not only submitted, but condescended to applaud. The Grandee being suddenly summoned to another company in the same tavern, Burns immediately addressed himself to the chair, and demanded a bumper. The president thought he was about to dedicate his toast to the distinguished absentee: I give," said the Bard, "I give you the health, gentlemen all-of the waiter that called my Lord out of the room."

He often made extempore rhymes the vehicle of his sarcasm: thus, for example, having heard a person, of no very elevated rank, talk loud and long of some aristocratic festivities in which he had the honour to mingle, Burns, when he was called upon for his song, chanted some verses, of which one has been preserved :

"Of lordly acquaintance you boast,

And the dukes that you dined wi' yestreen,

Yet an insect 's an insect at most,

Tho' it crawl on the curl of a queen."

I believe I have already alluded to Burns's custom of carrying a diamond pencil with him in all his wanderings, and constantly embellishing innwindows and so forth with his epigrams. On one occasion, being storm-stayed at Lamington, in Clydesdale, he went to church; and the indignant beadle, after the congregation dispersed, invited the attention of the clergyman to this stanza on the window by which the noticeable stranger had been sitting:

"As cauld a wind as ever blew ;
A cauld kirk, and in't but few;
As cauld a minister's ever spak;
Ye'se a' be het or I come back."

Sir Walter Scott possesses a tumbler, on which are the following verses, written by Burns on the arrival of a friend, Mr W. Stewart, factor to a gentleman of Nithsdale. The landlady being very wroth at what she considered the disfigurement of her glass, a gentleman present appeased her, by paying down a shilling, and carried off the relic. "You're welcome, Willie Stewart,

You're welcome, Willie Stewart;

There's ne'er a flower that blooms in May,
That's half sae welcome's thou art.

Come, bumpers high, express your joy,

The bowl we maun renew it;

The tappit-hen gae bring her ben,

To welcome Willie Stewart.

May foes be strang, and friends be slack,
Ilk action may he rue it;

May woman on him turn her back,

That wrangs thee, Willie Stewart."

Since we are among such small matters, perhaps some readers will smile to hear, that Burns very often wrote his name on his books thus-" Robert Burns, Poet;" and that Allan Cunningham remembers a favourite collie at Elliesland having the same inscription on his collar.

CHAPTER VIII.

"The King's most humble servant, I
Can scarcely spare a minute;
But I am your's at dinner-time,
Or else the devil's in it." ✦

"In

THE four principal biographers of our poet, Heron, Currie, Walker, and Irving, concur in the general statement, that his moral course, from the time when he settled in Dumfries, was downwards. Heron knew more of the matter personally than any of the others, and his words are these:Dumfries his dissipation became still more deeply habitual. He was here exposed, more than in the country, to be solicited to share the riot of the dissolute and the idle. Foolish young men, such as writers' apprentices, young surgeons, merchants' clerks, and his brother excisemen, flocked eagerly about him, and from time to time pressed him to drink with them, that they might enjoy his wicked wit. The Caledonian Club, too, and the Dumfries and Galloway Hunt, had occasional meetings at Dumfries after Burns came to reside there, and the poet was of course invited to share their hospitality, and hesitated not to accept the invitation. The morals of the town were, in consequence of its becoming so much the scene of public amuse

"The above answer to an invitation was written extempore on a leaf torn from his pocket-book."—Cromek's MSS.