At the same time a trifle happened that saved Burns from exile from the country, the best son of which he was marked out to be. The ship in which he was to make the journey was belated by a storm.

A respite was given him, and that respite was used by some of his friends. They asked what about the poems they knew he kept in his drawer. They were known by the whole parish in transcripts; every clever peasant within several miles could draw them out of his pocket and recite them by heart. But to print them!-no; Burns hardly had thought of that but once, perhaps, in his most secret dreams. And yet it happened so in the year 1786. They were published in a paper-bound volume. They succeeded enormously, not only in his native shire, but even in the most severely critical circles in Edinburgh! Well, I must be brief. Later there was a new edition. He borrowed a horse-he rode the many Scotch miles to Edinburgh in order to manage things with a publisher. He rode like a conquering hero. The peasants were proud of him; they made banquets for him when he passed their towns. The "Ploughman from Ayrshire "-that name went ahead of him and his horse-it was soon in everybody's mouth; the finest ladies of nobility competed in gaining him for their saloons. The capital, with its refinement and fashionable humbug, was a bad place for him. There they filled him with flattery and wine. The critics advised him in the best way to destroy his genius-be revised and polished like other people. The young ladies of nobility looked with curiosity at this queer bird whose feathers smelt of heather. They wondered that a man wearing those coarse clothes and those clumsy shoes could compose verses that even their favourite critic had honoured with his praise. They did not read him themselves, of course. But it was awfully interesting to see him. And they were so very gracious as to let him pay them compliments and write about themselves-in their gilt albums.

During a whole winter the social functions of the noble families in Edinburgh were-Burns and tea. But as soon as the high season was over they had done with that; he had satisfied their curiosity. For a season this Samson had amused the Philistines by his sensibility, his anecdotes, and the merry whims of his ingenious brain. But Fashion wanted a change; he had done his duty; he might go―return to his obscurity, his poverty and oblivion.

That was a thing which he, by his inborn perception, had foreseen; at certain moments he felt utterly disgusted with it.

God have mercy upon the poet who founds his fame on the public of a metropolis. In the large town. literary taste perches on the chimney-head. Every time it turns, a poet of fashion tumbles down head foremost into the fire.

When Burns returned home he was a better match to the mind of the purse-proud mason than earlier. Now he courted Jean Armour again, and was accepted by father and daughter. They could marry when they liked. Yet one thing was left to manage. Burns had come under advance of the joy of being a father, you know. He had to pay for that together with Jean, viz., by public repentance in the parish church. No doubt the parish minister and his holy brethren greatly delighted in their having caught this foul enemy in the trap at last. With what unsparing scoff had not Burns castigated the self-important hypocritical Scotch Kirk. He ever kept ready a rod in pickle for it. Such brightening laughter has never sounded over the reverend persons and their endless denunciations of people's natural need of humanity and merriment. But the Kirk was not to be trifled with; and were Burns ever so famous, he was to receive a rebuke -gaped at by the congregation--that he might win forgiveness for his sin. The church register for July 30th, 1786, has preserved that moment from oblivion when the greatest genius of Scotland had to receive a rebuke in a pew and, having risen from the seat among other sinners,

had to listen to a thundering speech of the parish minister while malicious and impudent eyes were fixed upon

him.

You appear

there to be rebuked, and at the same time making profession of repentance for ye sin of fornication.

of deep

The frequency of this sin is just matter of lamentation among Christians, and affords just ground humiliation to the guilty persons themselves.

66

We call you to reflect seriously in contrition of heart on all the instances of your sin and guilt, in their numbers high aggravation, and unhappy consequences, and say, having done foolishly, will do so no more.

Beware of returning again to your sin, as some of you have done, like the dog to his vomit, or like the sow yt is washed to her wallowing in the mire.'

Burns had to stand that volley for three Sundays in the face of the congregation before he was purified, though he had married Jean Armour privately months before.

The clergy always have been very powerful in that country. It was about the same year that a minister in Kilbirnie excluded those of the congregation who at the winnowing had made use of the newly invented winnowing machine, and by that-so the minister said " produced a diabolical wind, an artificial breath, in sheer defiance of God who made the winds blow where they chose." Well. Burns took vengence on them, you know, and framed and glazed these ministers in poetry-their long faces amusing all of us up to this day.

Burns ultimately vindicated his irregular marriage to Jean, and rented a room in Mauchline. I have stood in that little room that nowadays is kept in repair by the owner. No charwoman lived more poorly in this town, nor any peat-digger in Rundesmos' Land.* When here the world's

* A small moor in the north-western part of Jutland, south of Limfjorden (Lüm Fiord). Mr Aakjär himself dug peats there in his youth. [T. D.]

greatest song-writer raised his royal head, it must have touched the rafters.

They went

Jean was just a woman out of the people-no offspring of æsthetic civilisation, and no weakling; twice she gave birth to twins during seventeen months, and yet preserved her strength. Burns has described her as a woman of iron constitution, a fine figure, clever and active. "These qualities, I think, in a woman may make a good wife though she should never have read a page but the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, nor have danced in a brighter assembly than a penny-pay wedding." Were it not a good wife for a poor Poet-especially the good health and the cheerful mind? Burns has crowned her fair hair with a wreath of charming songs. to a farm nearer to the Border: Ellisland, it was called. Neither here did he succeed in the farming business. Burns was often away from the farm, and Jean was busy with the children. The fields often were neglected. The maid-servants were standing at the fireplace half the day making pastry; the man-servants sat beside them eating it. That does not make farming profitable. When the seven fiends of failure had found him here too, some friends procured a poor post of Excise for him. At any rate that saved him from starvation, though it was rather a miserable post. Now he was to make himself useful: labelling barrels, gauging ale, weighing tar and train-oil-these were the only services which the nation asked of her most ingenious Poet. I wonder if he was clever at them! It is impossible to deny that he now and then had other interests. Even in this fatiguing situation it sometimes happened that he, in spite of the severe inspection, secretly wrote down a poem on some pitchy beam-a poem that any English millionaire nowadays would be glad to buy, were it possible, for a barrel of gold. During the life-time of Burns it was hardly paid with the value of the paper whereon it was written.

Burns's life as an Excise officer involved an incessant roaming about on horseback. It brought him to inns

and revelry that stole away his health and part of his emotion and imagination. Now and then he clanks his fetters, as in this affecting letter to a friend of his (1791):

"My dear Ainslie,-Can you minister to a mind diseased? Can you, amid the horrors of penitence, regret, remorse, headache, nausea, and all the rest of the d-d hounds of hell that beset a poor wretch who has been guilty of the sin of drunkenness-can you speak peace to a troubled soul?

"Miserable perdu that I am! I have tried every thing that used to amuse me, but in vain: here must I sit, a monument of the vengeance laid up in store for the wicked, slowly counting every click of the clock as it slowly. slowly numbers over these lazy scoundrels of hours, who, d-m them, are ranked up before me, every one at its neighbour's backside, and every one with a burden of anguish on his back, to pour on my devoted head-and there is none to pity me. My wife scolds me, my business torments me, and my sins come staring me in the face, every one telling a more bitter tale than his fellow."

During these years his poor situation was endangered by his sympathy with the French Revolution. He had written daring verses against the Royal Family, and kept his hat on his head while the health of the King had been proposed. It was considered whether to dismiss him from the post. It was told him you are to work (i.e., weigh hemp and tar), not to reason. Burns had to swallow his own wrath. To a friend he spoke his opinion of his superior: "I can tell him that the nation rests on persons like me."

Now Scotsmen are ready to sign the words of their offended Poet-but during his life-time.....!

People always are so very clear-sighted and wise-afterwards. For instance, the Scotch critic, Francis Jeffrey, who writes: “O, my dear Empson, there must be something terribly wrong in the present arrangements of the Universe when these things can happen, and be thought natural.