position of parish minister of Mauchline.

When the real state of matters was revealed to him in 1788, he made amends for his error by confining the charge to the irregular marriage, thereby providing irrefutable proof that all Jean Armour's children were born in lawful wedlock. What Burns himself thought of his relations with Jean Armour we shall see shortly. He went to Edinburgh with the bachelor certificate in his pocket; he was received there as a single man, which doubtless would have the effect of unsettling his mind on the validity of his marriage; he discovered his power of impressing women on a much higher social and intellectual level than the belles of Mauchline; and latterly he came under the fascination of Mrs M'Lehose, when the wish became father to the thought, and he wrote two of the most regrettable letters (19 and 20) that ever proceeded from his pen. The remembrance of his treatment by the Armours rankled; new ambitions were awakened; the change in his outlook on life, plainly observable in 1787, reached its climax in the early months of 1788 but he came right in the end, as Burns always did. Confronted with the heart-rending circumstances under which Jean had been banished from her father's house, the mists of his self-deception were dissipated, and the native qualities of his mind, after a brief struggle between honour and wounded pride, resumed their wonted sway. There was but one honourable course open to him, and he manfully chose it, though his self-laudatory phrases, repeated again and again in his letters of that date, detract from the virtue of his action, for these cannot be taken as reasons for a "sacrifice which was no sacrifice at all but a bounden duty. If Jean had been thrust out of her father's house in 1786, Burns would have acted then as he did in 1788. He confessed his irregular marriage to Mr Auld, and wrote his friend Smith (No. 31), who was one of the witnesses, to forward his testimony by post, but of this more anon. Notwithstanding the casuistry he had laid as flattering unction to his soul, he knew all along he was a married man, which brings us to the second issue.

Whatever doubts he entertained of his obligations

to Jean after he obtained the bachelor certificate, he had none before that incident took place. His letter to John

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Arnot (No. 5) is sufficient proof of this. In that strange serio-comic production, which he thought so much of that he inscribed it in the collection he made for Robert Riddel, he says he had lost a wife by the destruction of "the unlucky paper," and was looking for another, which may be taken as a hint of his love interlude with Highland Mary, with whom he parted a few weeks afterwards never to meet again.* This letter acquires double force from its revisal by Burns five years afterwards, taken along with the explanatory note there attached, stating that he and Jean “had made up some sort of wedlock." A year afterwards, when he was at the height of his fame, he unwittingly revealed to Smith (No. 17) the doubting complexion of his thoughts with regard to marriage. In the confidential letter to Ainslie (No. 20), which that faithless friend of his handed to Allan Cunningham to be made use of as he thought proper, the doubts which had haunted him ever since the granting of the questionable certificate found expression in a way, to say the least of it, that was not creditable to him. If he thought the burning of "the lines" and possession of the Kirk-Session certificate had made him a free man, why this solemn swearing of Jean to forego her claims upon him? On 28th April, 1788, he first styles Jean "Mrs Burns" to his friend Smith (No. 24), and he repeats the term to others in Nos. 27, 30, 31, 32, and 34, from that date to 27th July of the same year. To Margaret Chalmers and Clarinda he was more reticent, as might have been expected. The former has put upon record that Burns was a suitor for her hand, and it would have been rather awkward to inform her that he was a married man when he made his advances to her.† Clarinda

* Mrs Begg tells us he had made her acquaintance before this date. All the available evidence points to the conclusion that she was a rival of Jean's in the early stage of their courtship.

†This also explains his reticence regarding Highland Mary.

made the discovery too late.

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He had evidently told her of his relations with Jean, but nothing of a compromising nature about the marriage; it is, however, very suggestive of his inner thoughts at the time, that he told her in March, 1789, he never had "the least glimmering of hope" that she could be his, though he considered he was not under the smallest moral tie* to Mrs Burns." It is an instructive commentary on the manners of that age that a woman of the social standing and education of Mrs M'Lehose could look upon grave moral lapses as mere peccadilloes to be pardoned without much questioning or compunction when the victims happened to be, in her judgment, in an inferior social position. She knew of Jean's first twins, and wished the birth of the second "happily over." The "paitrick" incident in Rankine's epistle must also have been familiar to her; yet she lived in the hope of being free to marry him, and dubbed him "villain" when he publicly acknowledged Jean to be his wife. The second twins are said to have been born on 3rd March, 1788; one of them was buried on 10th March, and the other on the 22nd immediately following.†

In his letter to Mrs Dunlop (No. 32) he mentions only 66 some previous steps to marriage" in 1786. Though she had asked in a previous letter for full particulars of his marriage, he says not a word of any private or irregular ceremony on any subsequent date, for the very good reason that nothing of the kind had taken place, Writing to Peter Hill (No. 33), it is worth noting that he styles Jean not so much a new as a young wife, Hill no doubt being in possession of the facts of Burns's relations with her.

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In Lockhart's life of the Poet, he affirms that Burns rode to Mossgiel (18th February, 1788) and went through

†Burns's family register gives 3rd March as the date of birth, seemingly a mistake. In the Mauchline Burial Register (now in the Register House, Edinburgh), the dates are those given.

Both,

the ceremony of a Justice of Peace marriage with Jean in the writing chambers of his friend Gavin Hamilton "; he does not, however, condescend upon an exact or approximate date, though he leaves the impression that the ceremony took place immediately on his arrival at Mauchline -an untenable position. We must therefore do our best

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to supply the omission. On March 3rd of that year, Burns, to put it mildly, had not the slightest intention of re-marrying Jean, nor of abiding by the marriage of 1786 (See No. 20)-he had done with her and she with him (See No. 19). On 28th April he tells Smith that Mrs Burns" is Jean's "private designation"; the ceremony. alluded to by Lockhart is bound, therefore, to have taken place between these dates. As early as 7th April (No. 23) he writes as if the "sacrifices had been already made; which shortens the period by three weeks; and it must be borne in mind that he returned to Edinburgh about the 10th of March,* and remained there till the 24th, when he finally left it. Scott Douglas, in his annotations on Lockhart, records his dissent from that biographer regarding the implied date of the alleged marriage in 1788, and he suggests no other in that year. On 7th March (No. 21a)

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he informs Brown that he had towed Jean into a convenient harbour, and "taken the command for a time in secret while on 4th May (No. 25) he tells his kinsman at Kirkoswald that he was "thinking of taking out a licence" and forsaking the "smuggling trade." It is, however, in his letter to Smith (No. 24) that we get most enlightenment on the vague references to his marriage, and his having conferred some new title or other on Jean, recently and privately," which misled Lockhart. His quotation of the old Scotch adage was Burns's cryptic way of informing Smith that he was wearing "the robe " and bearing "the pock" of matrimony by cohabitation with Jean, while he was being tutored by Mr Findlay, officer at Tarbolton, on the duties of an exciseman.† His allusion to twelve * Part of the intervening time was spent at Dalswinton. † Findlay's Excise order is dated 31st March.

brace of children ere he celebrated his twelfth wedding-day is a clear indication of what was in his mind at that time, and, indeed, all along. If the wedding-day he meant was in 1788, the twelfth anniversary of it would have made him the father of fourteen brace; but, calculating from the real wedding day in 1786, his facetious presagement is understandable. Again, if Smith was a witness to Lockhart's alleged re-marriage in 1788, why does Burns subsequently write to him (No. 24) as if he knew nothing about it? On 26th June (No. 31) he had written Smith twice without reply. Smith was resident in Linlithgow (No. 18), and, as travelling was dear and inconvenient in those days, it is not at all likely that he was summoned to Mauchline between 3rd March and 28th April to act as witness to a private marriage, more especially when dozens of the Poet's Mauchline acquaintances would have been only too glad of the honour. Smith left Mauchline towards the end of 1786, and never resided in it afterwards. He emigrated to the West Indies, and died in the island of St. Lucia at a comparatively early age. Burns had no reason for secrecy in 1788; on the contrary, when his better self became victorious, his resolution was to acknowledge Jean publicly. His first step was to approach Mr Auld, who expressed himself willing to extricate him from the difficulties he had brought upon himself by his hesitating attitude towards Jean if he proved the validity of the 1786 marriage by the oath or declaration of the witnesses present. He accordingly wrote Smith (No. 31), and apparently received the necessary testimony. Had there been a re-marriage there would have been no call for any such procedure; the documentary proofs of its celebration could readily have been produced, and the grounds of the "litigation" referred to by Mr Auld effectually removed. The documentary proofs of 1786 were destroyed, and the evidence could only be recovered by the procedure adopted. By the proof of the 1786 marriage, the air was cleared and Burns was delivered from a very awkward position. The birth of the second twins rendered his offence a trilapse,