of Loch Lomond with a wild Highlandman," from which he did not escape unscathed.

Throughout July Burns was still at home, having as yet "fixed on nothing with regard to the serious business of life: I am just as usual a rhyming, masonmaking, aimless, idle fellow." On August 2 was written the long letter to Dr. Moore which is so valuable for the early history of his life.* On the 7th of the month he was back in Edinburgh, this time, however, with no definite aim in view, except, perhaps, to settle with Creech, and to set out for a Highland tour with his friend William Nicol, classical teacher in the High School, a man of coarse and violent temper, with "a confounded strong in-kneed sort of a soul," yet with some qualities that attracted Burns.

After freeing himself from the results of an escapade of the previous winter, he set out for the Highlands along with Nicol on August 25. The Journal of the tour shows a good deal of observa-_Highland Tour. Aug.tion. Bannockburn awoke an enthusiasm

September,

rather turgidly expressed in the diary. At 1787. Stirling, after seeing the ruinous state of the

old hall in the castle, Burns wrote on a window in the inn some lines about the Stuarts and their successors, which excited not a little public indignation, and caused him trouble later on. On August 31 the travellers reached Blair Athole, where Burns was invited to supper with the family of the duke. A full account of his visit is given by Josiah Walker. In return for the hospitality shown him, from which the jealous Nicol

* The letter was not actually sent until September 23, when he returned from his Highland tour. He had a copy with him, which was shown to the Duchess of Athole and others.

D

tore him away, Burns composed his poem on the Falls of Bruar.

The route then lay over the Grampians, down Speyside, and so on to Inverness. From here the Falls of Foyers were visited and sketched in verse. By way of Culloden, Nairn, Forres, and Elgin, they came to Fochabers, where the poet paid a visit to Gordon Castle. His reception there was of the kindest, but Nicol, who had hurried him away from Blair, behaved even worse here, and his call was extremely short, a fact that he afterwards deeply regretted.

By Banff and Peterhead to Aberdeen, on to Stonehaven, where he met some of his relatives, then by Montrose to Dundee and Perth, and so through Kinross to Queensferry-such was the journey of twentytwo days, covering some 600 miles. On the evening of September 16 he was again in Edinburgh. Despite the haste and the temper of his companion, Burns enjoyed the tour, though it may be doubted whether the desolate grandeur of the Highland landscapes really appealed to him. Wooded valleys, fertile carses and waterfalls are the scenes he appears mainly to have admired. Yet the new experience was not without its effect upon him. "My journey through the Highlands was perfectly inspiring, and I hope I have laid in a good stock of new poetical ideas from it." A number of Highland airs had taken his fancy, and it was from this time that he began to write verses for old Scottish tunes, otherwise it would be difficult to point to any "new poetical ideas" derived from the journey.

Other excursions he made during the autumn, round by Linlithgow and Stirling again to Gavin Hamilton's relatives in Clackmannanshire, among whom Margaret

Chalmers had a special attraction for him. By her own account, as reported by the poet Campbell, Burns made a serious proposal of marriage to her. Thence he visited the scenery on the Devon, and proceeded as far east as Dunfermline. Again he went to Ochtertyre, in Strathearn, the seat of Sir William Murray, perhaps on some errand connected with the excise; and to Auchtertyre on the Teith, the residence of the scholarly Mr. Ramsay. These tours, however, were over by October 20, and Burns then settled down in Edinburgh for another winter in the house of Mr. W. Cruickshank, a colleague of Nicol in the High School.

Johnson's

Museum.

During his previous residence in the capital he had made the acquaintance, though very slightly, of Mr. James Johnson, an engraver, who had ventured upon the publication of a collection of Scottish songs with music. Into this design Burns entered with great eagerness; and while the first volume (published in May 1787) had contained only one or two pieces from his hand, the second, which appeared in February 1788, was enriched with his first great outburst of lyric verse, henceforward destined to be the chief form of his poetry. Several of the songs given in this volume are the direct result of the Highland tour. Others are of a much earlier date. Besides his own songs, however, Burns was diligent in searching out and preserving all scraps of old songs and music. "I have been absolutely crazed about it," he writes in October of this year, "collecting old stanzas and every information remaining respecting their authors, origin, etc." To another he writes, "I have collected, begged, borrowed, and stolen all the songs I could meet with." These old fragments he

mended and made fit for decent society, adding verses where necessary, all in such a masterly way as to make his services to the old popular songs of Scotland only second in value to his own original work.

His other poetry at the time was slight enough. A Birthday Ode for 31st December (the birthday of Prince Charles Edward) is intensely Jacobite, and little more, while its extravagant tone also appears in the elegy On the Death of Robert Dundas. The latter was sent to the son of the deceased, who took no notice of it, an oversight that Burns deeply resented, and ever remembered "with gnashing of teeth."

The expected settlement with Creech had not yet taken place, and Burns was apparently preparing to leave Edinburgh in the beginning of December, when, on a Saturday afternoon, a fall from a coach bruised one of his knees so severely as to confine him to the house for several weeks, and prevented him from going about freely for some three months. The effects, indeed, were more lasting. In December 1788, he writes, "My knee, I believe, will never be entirely well." The incident, however, would be trivial enough but for a new love-affair, and the extraordinary series of letters to which it gave rise. On the very evening of his accident Burns had intended to call on a lady, whose acquaintance he had made only a few days before. This was a Mrs. McLehose (née Agnes Clarinda. Craig), whose husband was in Jamaica, caring nothing for his wife; while she, possessed of no little beauty and intelligence, felt that in Burns she had found her ideal. The poet, too, seems to have been captivated by her charms at first sight, and being unable to visit her, he wrote to her a series of letters

of the most extravagant kind. Whether the sentiments on his part were altogether genuine may be doubted; on hers they certainly were. Yet that he had a passion of some kind for Clarinda, as he styled her, is patent enough. To his old friend, Richard Brown, he wrote on December 30, "Almighty love still reigns and revels in my bosom and I am at this moment ready to hang myself for a young Edinburgh widow." After the New Year, when he was again able to be out, came various interviews, which seem on Burns's part to have been as warm as his correspondence. Yet, in little more than a year after, he somewhat ungallantly credits himself with "the conduct of an honest man, struggling successfully with temptations the most powerful that ever beset humanity, and preserving untainted honour in situations where the austerest virtue would have forgiven a fall."

"Almighty love," however, could not prevent other considerations from pressing on him. Creech would not settle accounts, and the gloomiest thoughts filled his mind. "God have mercy on me! a poor, damned, incautious, duped, unfortunate fool, the sport, the miserable victim of rebellious pride, hypochondriac imagination, agonizing sensibility, and bedlam passions!" Under these circumstances Burns, in casting about for some plan in life, reverted to his old idea of entering the Excise, in which he was encouraged and assisted by his medical attendant, Dr. Wood. His applications to Graham of Fintry and the Earl of Glencairn were penned some time in January, but he found it was not all plain sailing. "I have almost given up the Excise idea," he writes to Clarinda on January 27. "I have been just now to wait on a great person