28. Letter to Mrs Dunlop, 14th June, 1788.

"Your surmise, Madam, is just; I am indeed a husband.... I found a once much-loved, and still much-loved female, literally and truly cast out to the mercy of the naked elements; but as I enabled her to purchase a shelter and there is no sporting with a fellow-creature's happiness or misery... The most placid goodnature and sweetness of disposition; a warm heart, gratefully devoted with all its powers to love me; vigorous health and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to the best advantage by a more than common handsome figure-these, 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 Testament,' nor have danced in a brighter assembly than a penny pay wedding."

29. Author's Journal, 15th June, 1788.

"Wedlock-the circumstance that buckles me hardest to care, if virtue and religion were to be anything with me but names— was what in a few seasons I must have resolved on; in my present situation, it was absolutely necessary... Nor have I any reason on her part to repent it. I can fancy how, but have never seen where, I could have made a better choice."

30. To Robert Ainslie, 15th June, 1788.

"Were it not for the terrors of my ticklish situation respecting provision for a family of children, I am decidedly of opinion that the step I have taken is vastly for my happiness. As it is, look to the Excise scheme as a certainty of maintenance. -luxury to what either Mrs Burns or I were born to."

31. To James Smith, 26th June, 1788.

A maintenance !

'This, my dear Sir, is now the third letter I have written you since I have heard from you or, more properly speaking, since I viva voce heard of you. This is merely a business scrawl, consequently I expect your answer in the course of post.' I have waited on Mr Auld about my marriage affair, and stated that I was legally fined for an irregular marriage by a Justice of the Peace. He says, if I bring an attestation of this by the two witnesses, there shall be no more litigation about it. As soon as this comes to hand, please write me in the way of familiar epistle that such things are.'

* Curiously, he uses this phrase in a letter to Clarinda (January 20th of the same year) also in quotation commas.

Direct to me at Mauchline.

Mrs Burns joins in kindest compliments to you along with, my dear friend, Yours most truly."

32. Letter to Mrs Dunlop, 10th July, 1788.

Burns inadvertently dated this letter "10th August." Its contents were garbled by Currie in some passages. It is now in the possession of Mr C. Cowie, Glasgow, and we have corrected the errors and supplied the omissions from a transcript of the original.

"Mrs Burns, Madam, is the identical woman, who was the mother of twice twins to me in seventeen months. When she first found herself as women wish to be who love their lords '; as I loved her near to distraction, I took some previous steps to a private marriage. Her parents got the hint; and in detestation of my guilt of being a poor devil not only forbade me her company and their house, but on my rumoured West Indian voyage got a warrant to incarcerate me in jail, till I should find security in my about-to-be paternal relation. You know my lucky reverse of fortune. On my eclatant return to Mauchline, I was made welcome to visit my girl. The usual consequences began to betray her; and I was at that time laid up a cripple in Edinburgh, she was turned, literally turned, out of doors, and I wrote to a friend to shelter her till my return. I was not under the least verbal obligation to her, but her happiness or misery were in my hands, and who could trifle with such a deposite ?

33. Letter to Peter Hill, 18th July, 1788.

"From Ellisland in Nithsdale to Mauchline in Kyle is forty and five miles. There, a house a-building, and farm enclosures and improvements to tend; here, a new-not so much indeed a new as a young wife; good God, Sir, could my dearest brother expect a regular correspondence from me!"

34. To Alex. Cunningham, 27th July, 1788.

"On my return to Ayrshire, I found a much-loved female's positive happiness, or absolute misery, among my hands, and I could not trifle with such a sacred deposit. I am, since, doubly pleased with my conduct. I have the consciousness of acting up to that generosity of principle which I would be thought to possess, and I am really more and more pleased with my choice. When I tell you that Mrs Burns was once my Jean,' you will know the rest. Of four children she bore me in seventeen months, my eldest boy

is only living.... Mrs Burns does not come from Ayrshire till my said new house be ready, so I am eight or ten days at Mauchline and this place alternately."

35. Extract from Session Minutes of Mauchline, 5th August,

1788.

'Sess. Con. :-Compeared Robert Burns, with Jean Armour, his alleged spouse. They both acknowledged their irregular marriage, and their sorrow for that irregularity, and desiring that the Session will take such steps as may seem to them proper, in order to the Solemn Confirmation of the said marriage.

"The Session taking this affair under their consideration, agree that they both be rebuked for this acknowledged irregularity, and that they be taken solemnly engaged to adhere faithfully to one another as husband and wife all the days of their life.

"In regard the Session have a title in law to some fine for behoof of the Poor, they agree to refer to Mr Burns his own generosity. "The above sentence was accordingly executed, and the Session absolved the said parties from any scandal on this act.

WILLIAM AULD, Modr.

ROBERT BURNS.
JEAN ARMOUR.

(Mr Burns gave a guinea-note for behoof of the poor.)"

36. Letter to Robert M'Indoe, 5th August, 1788.

"To be brief, send me fifteen yds. black lutestring silk, such as they used to make gowns and petticoats of, and I shall choose, some sober morning before breakfast, and write you a sober answer, with the sober sum which will then be due from, dear Sir, fu' or fasting, Yours sincerely."

37. Letter from Burns to Mrs Robert Burns, Mauchline, 12th September, 1788.

"Mr Dear Love,—I received your kind letter with a pleasure which no letter but one from you could have given me, &c."

38. Letter to Margaret Chalmers, 16th September, 1788.

66

Shortly after my last return to Ayrshire, I married my Jean.' This was not in consequence of the attachment of romance, perhaps; but I had a long and much-loved fellow-creature's happiness or misery in my determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a deposit. Nor have I any cause to repent it. If I have not got

polite tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse of boarding-school affectation ; and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the country. Mrs Burns believes, as firmly as her creed, that I am le plus bel esprit, et le plus honnète homme in the universe; although she scarcely ever in her life, except the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and the Psalms of David in metre, spent five minutes together on either prose or verse."

This

The most careless reader of the foregoing cannot fail to note the high tension of Burns's feelings in the earlier letters and the tone of deep indignation, as if he were the injured party, which pervades them all, and which approaches hysteria in No. 2 and No. 3. The reason is obvious enough. Some kind of private or irregular marriage-Burns himself styles it" some sort of wedlock "--had taken place between him and Jean Armour, the particulars of which are not made clear. This much we know for certain, a document was duly signed, witnessed, and given to the keeping of Jean as voucher for her character, and the honourable intentions of Burns as the author of her misfortune. document, we are informed, was either mutilated or destroyed at the instigation of Jean's father, she thereby becoming a consenting party to what Burns evidently considered at that time to be tantamount to a divorce, notwithstanding the sacrifices he expressed himself willing to make in order to provide for a wife and family. When he called to enquire for Jean on her return from Paisley, her mother peremptorily forbade him the house. (See Nos. 9 and 11). Hence his indignation and bitter resentment of his contemptuous treatment by the Armours, which their servile attitude towards him on his change of fortune served only to intensify. (See 16 and 19). What kind of "conjugal shield" Burns interposed between Jean and "the darts of calumny " when he became aware of her condition, we describe in the words of Dr Edgar, late minister of Mauchline, and author of the able and instructive volumes, Old Church Life in Scotland, from

which we quote from the chapter dealing with marriages in olden times.

THE SCOTS MARRIAGE LAWS.

"In Scotland there have, from a very early period, been two kinds of legal marriage, recognised under the designations of regular and irregular. Regular marriages have always been defined as marriages celebrated according to the regulations of the Church, by authorised ministers, and with religious solemnities, or, as a certain class of ecclesiastical writers are given to say, with sacerdotal benediction. The definition of an irregular marriage has not been so constant and unquestioned. In the strict sense of the term, a

marriage may be said to have been irregular when the regulations of the Church were not fully complied with; and, as these regulations varied from time to time, marriages that at one period were held to be regular may at another period have been pronounced irregular.

As far back as any living man remembers, it has taken very few formalities to constitute in Scotland a marriage that is binding in law. A man and a woman have had only to take up house together, and declare themselves husband and wife. The law thereupon pronounced them married persons. But this was not always understood to be the law of the land in Scotland, and the Church of Scotland did not always recognise such unions as marriages... The Presbytery of Irvine, in 1753, agreed that in determining questions of marriage the following queries should be put: first, did the parties ever acknowledge themselves husband and wife; secondly, did they ever live together as husband and wife; and thirdly, are they habit and repute married persons.. When people were found by a Kirk-Session to have been lawfully married, although in an irregular manner, they were not treated as scandalous persons, and censured for living in scandal. Their offence was held to be of a milder type. It was simply a breach of Church order, and it was visited by a censure modified to the measure of misdeed.... Had Burns's alleged marriage by the unlucky paper come before the Civil Courts in 1786, and the fact of consent de presenti been clearly established, it is at least doubtful if the marriage could have been affirmed. There is reason to think that all the length the Court would have gone would have been to grant an order to compel solemnisation. Church Courts, during the greater part of the 18th century, scarcely knew what to recognise as marriages."

The cautious and painstaking Robert Chambers submitted the question of Burns's marriage to an eminent