learn from Mr. Chambers, by a surviving brother, John Lees. John said "that Burns came in a pair of buckskins, out of which he would always pull the other shilling for the other bowl, till it was five in the morning. An awfu' night that." Care left outside the door, we can fancy how the wit would flash, and the big black eyes glow, on such an occasion!

The first edition of his poems being nearly exhausted, his friends encouraged him to produce a second forthwith; but on application, it was found that the Kilmarnock printer declined to undertake the risk, unless the price of the paper was advanced beforehand. This outlay Burns was at the time unable to afford. On hearing of the circumstance, his friend Mr. Ballantyne offered to advance the money, but urged him to proceed to Edinburgh and publish the second edition there. This advice commended itself to Burns's ambition, but for a while he remained irresolute. Jean, meanwhile, had been confined of twins, and from one of his letters, we learn that the "feelings of a father" kept him lingering in Ayrshire. News of the success of his poems came in upon him on every side. Dr. Lawrie, minister of London, to whose family he had recently paid a visit, had forwarded a copy of the poems, with a sketch of the author's life, to Dr. Thomas Blacklock, and had received a letter from that gentleman, expressing the warmest admiration of the writer's genius, and urging that a second and larger edition should at once be proceeded with; adding, that "its intrinsic merits, and the exertions of the author's friends, might give the volume a more universal circulation than any thing of the kind which has been published in my time." This letter, so full of encouragement, Dr. Lawrie carried at once to Mr. Gavin Hamilton, and Mr. Hamilton lost no time in placing it in Burns's hands. The poems had been favorably reviewed in the Edinburgh Magazine for October, and this number of the periodical, so interesting to all its inmates, would, no doubt, find its way to Mossgiel. Burns seems to have made up his mind to proceed to Edinburgh about the 18th November, a step which was warmly approved by his brother Gilbert, and when his resolution was taken, he acted upon it with promptitude.

He reached Edinburgh on the 28th November, 1786, and took up his residence with John Richmond, a Mauchline acquaintance, who occupied a room in Baxter's Close, Lawnmarket, for which he paid three shillings a week. Burns for some time after his arrival seems to have had no special object; he wandered about the city, looking down from the Castle on Princes Street; haunting Holyrood Palace and Chapel; standing with cloudy eyelid and hands meditatively knit beside the grave of Ferguson; and from the Canongate glancing up with interest on the quaint tenement in which Allan Ramsay kept his shop, wrote his poems, and curled the wigs of a departed generation of Scotsmen. At the time of Burns's arrival, the Old Town towered up from Holyrood to the Castle, picturesque, smoke-wreathed; and when the darkness came, its climbing tiers of lights and cressets were reflected in the yet existing Nor' Loch; and the gray uniform streets and squares of the New Town - from which the visitor to-day can look down on low wooded lands, the Forth, and Fife beyond were only in course of erection. The literary society of the time was brilliant but exotic, like the French lily or the English rose. For a generation and more the Scottish philosophers, historians, and poets had brought their epigram from France as they brought their claret, and their humor from England as they brought their parliamentary intelligence. Blair of the Grave was a Scottish Dr. Young; Home of Douglas a Scottish Otway; Mackenzie a Scottish Addison; and Dr. Blair -so far as his criticism was concerned -a sort of Scottish Dr. Johnson. The Scotch brain was genuine enough; the faculty was native, but it poured itself into foreign moulds. The literary grandees wore decorations - - honestly earned - but no one could discover amongst them the Order of the Thistle. These men, too, had done their work, and the burly, black-eyed, humorous, passionate ploughman came up amongst them, the herald of a new day and a new order of things; the first king of a new literary empire, in which he was to be succeeded by Walter Scott, then a lad of sixteen, engrossing deeds in his father's office, with the Tweed murmuring in his ears, and Melrose standing in the light of his opening imagination — with Hogg, Galt, Wilson, Lockhart, and the rest, for his satraps and lieutenants.

Burns's arrival in Edinburgh was an historical event, far more important in itself, and in its issues, than either he or than any other person had suspected.

He soon got to work, however. In Ayrshire he had made the acquaintance of Mr. Dalrymple of Orangefield; that gentleman introduced him to his brother-in-law, the Earl of Glencairn, then resident in Edinburgh; and his lordship introduced him to William Creech, the leading publisher in the city, at whose shop the wits were wont to congregate. Creech undertook the publication of the new edition; and, through the influence of Glencairn, it was arranged that the Caledonian Hunt should subscribe for a hundred copies, and that a guinea should be paid for each. Meantime, Mr. Mackenzie, in the Lounger, of date 9th December, wrote a glowing criticism on the poems, which smoothed a way for them into the politer circles. The new edition, dedicated to the Caledonian Hunt, appeared on the 21st April, 1787, containing a list of subscribers' names extending to more than thirty-eight pages. The Hunt, as we have seen, took one hundred copies, and several gentlemen and noblemen subscribed liberally -one taking twenty copies, a second forty copies, a third forty-two copies. The Scots Colleges in France and Spain are also set down as subscribers among individual names. This was splendid success, and Burns felt it. He was regarded as a phenomenon; was asked hither and thither, frequently from kindness and pure admiration - often, however, to be merely talked with and stared at this he felt too, and his vengeful spleen, well kept under on the whole, corroded his heart like a fierce acid. During the winter preceding the publication of the second edition, he was fêted and caressed. He was patronized by the Duchess of Gordon. Lord Glencairn was his friend, so also was Henry Erskine. He was frequently at Lord Monboddo's, where he admired the daughter's beauty more than the father's philosophy; he breakfasted with Dr. Blair; he walked in the mornings to the Braid Hills with Professor Dugald Stewart; and he frequently escaped from these lofty circles to the Masonic Lodge, or to the suppertables of convivial lawyers, where he felt no restraint, where he could be wounded by no patronage, and where he flashed and coruscated, and became the soul of the revel. Fashionable and lettered saloons were astonished by Burns's talk; but the interior of taverns and in Edinburgh tavern life was all but universal at the time-saw the brighter and more constant blaze. The sudden change of fortune - so different from his old life in the Irvine flax heckling-shop, or working the sour Mossgiel lands, or the post of a book-keeper in Jamaica, which he looked forward to, and so narrowly escaped was not without its giddy and exciting pleasures, and for pleasure of every kind Burns had the keenest relish. Now and again, too, in the earlier days of his Edinburgh life, when success wore its newest gloss, and applause had a novel sweetness, a spirit of exhilaration escaped him, not the less real that it was veiled in a little scornful exaggeration. In writing to Mr. Hamilton, he says, "For my own affairs, I am in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas à Kempis, or John Bunyan; and you may expect henceforth to see my birthday inserted among the wonderful events in the Poor Robin and Aberdeen Almanacks, along with Black Monday and the Battle of Bothwell Bridge." In any case, if he did feel flattered by the attention paid him by society, he had time to cool and strike a balance in his friend Richmond's garret in the Lawnmarket where he slept, Mr. Lockhart informs us, during the whole of that glittering and exciting winter.

Hitherto, the world had seen but little of Burns personally. It had heard his voice as of one singing behind the scenes, and been moved to admiration; and when he presented himself in the full blaze of the footlights, he became the cynosure of every eye, and the point on which converged every critical opera-glass. Edinburgh and Burns confronted each other. Edinburgh "took stock" of Burns, Burns "took stock" of Edinburgh, and it is interesting to note the mutual impressions. From all that can be gathered from Dr. Blair, Professors Dugald Stewart, Walker, and others, Burns acquitted himself in his new circumstances admirably. He never lost head, he never let a word of exultation escape him, his deportment was everywhere respectful yet selfpossessed; he talked well and freely - for he knew he was expected to talk- but he did not engross conversation. His "deferential" address won his way to female favor:

and the only two breaches of decorum which are recorded of him in society, may be palliated by his probable ignorance of his host's feelings and vanities on the first occasion, and on the second by the peculiar provocation he received. Asked in Dr. Blair's house, and in Dr. Blair's presence, from which of the city preachers he had derived the greatest gratification, it would have been fulsome had Burns said, turning to the Doctor, "I consider you, Sir, the greatest pulpit orator I have ever heard." The question was a most improper one in the circumstances, and if the company were thrown into a state of foolish embarrassment, and the host's feelings wounded by Burns giving the palm to his colleague then the company were simply toadies of the sincerer sort, and the host less skilled in the world's ways than Burns, and possessed of less natural good-breeding. In the second instance when, in a sentence more remarkable for force than grace, he extinguished a clergyman who abused Gray's Elegy, but who could not quote a line of it correctly, he merely gave way to a swift and not ungenerous instinct for which he was, no doubt, sorry the next moment. He cannot be defended altogether, although even here one can hardly help rendering him a sneaking approval. Bad language at a breakfast-table, and addressed to a clergyman, is improper, but, on the other hand, no clergyman has a right to be a bore at a breakfast-table. Indeed, your critical and blundering bore, whether clergyman or no- all the more sedulously, perhaps, if he be a clergyman should keep out of the way of a Burns. Evil is certain to befall him if he do not. It is pretty evident, however, from the records left, that Dr. Blair, Dugald Stewart, and others, did not really know Burns, did not, in fact, take much pains to know him. They never met him on frank, cordial, and brotherly terms. They looked on him curiously, as one looks on a strange insect, through a microscope. From their learned heights they regarded him as on the plain beneath. They were ever ready with advice, and counselled him to stand armed at points where no danger could possibly appear. Of all the good things in the world, advice is practically the least useful. If a man is fool enough to need advice, the chances are that he will be fool enough to resent it when given, or neglect it when the critical moment arrives. The Edinburgh literati did not quite well know what to make of Burns. He was a new thing under the sun, and they could not fall back on precedent. They patronized him kindly, heartily, for the most part-but still it was patronage. And it has come about that, in the lapse of seventy years, the relations of the parties have been quite reversed - as in dissolving views the image of Burns has come out in bolder relief and brighter colors, while his patrons have lost outline, have dwindled, and become shadowy. Dr. Blair and Lord Monboddo will be remembered mainly by the circumstance that the one invited Burns to his evening entertainments, and the other to his breakfasts. Burns has kept that whole literary generation from oblivion, and from oblivion he will keep it yet a while.

On the other hand, it is quite evident, that although Burns, during that brilliant winter, masked himself skilfully, he bore an inward smart. He felt that he was regarded as meteoric, a wonder; that he did not fit into existing orders of things, and that in Edinburgh he had no familiar and received status. Consequently, he was never sure of his ground; and while, for the most part, careful to offend no one, he was passionately jealous of condescension and suspicious of personal affront. The men amongst whom he mingled had their positions in the world, and in these positions they had the ease of use and wont. Their couches were made soft by the down of customariness. They had all the social proprieties and traditions at their backs. From the past, they flowered out socially and professionally. With Burns every thing was different. He had in Edinburgh, so to speak, neither father nor mother. He had neither predecessor nor antecedent. He could roll in no groove made smooth by custom; and hence it is, when in bitter mood, we find him making such extravagant claims for genius against dull rich men, or dull well-born men, or semi-dull men, who had been successful in the professions. He knew that genius was his sole claim to the notice of the brilliant personages he met night after night; that but for it he was a small Ayrshire farmer, whom not one of those people would invite to their tables, or bid "Good-day" to, if they met him on a country road. It was admirable in Scott to waive, as he continually did, all

claim to special regard on account of his genius, but it was easy for Scott to do this. Scott would have dined well every day of his life, he would have lived with cultivated and refined people, and would have enjoyed a fair share of social distinction, although he had never written Marmion or Ivanhoe. But Burns's sole title to notice was genius take that from him, he was instantly denuded of his singing robes, and left in the hodden gray of the farmer, with a splash of mud on his top-boots. In his commonplace book -a very pool of Marah which he kept at Edinburgh, there is an entry which

brings all this out in a clear light.

"There are few of the sore evils under the sun give me more uneasiness and chagrin than the comparison how a man of genius, nay, of avowed worth, is received everywhere with the reception which a mere ordinary character, decorated with the trappings and futile distinctions of fortune, meets. Imagine a man of abilities, his heart glowing with honest pride, conscious that men are born equal, still giving honor to whom honor is due, he meets at a great man's table a Squire Something, or a Sir Somebody; he knows the noble landlord, at heart, gives the bard, or whatever he is, a share of his good wishes, beyond, perhaps, any one at table; yet how will it mortify him to see a fellow, whose abilities would scarcely have made an eightpenny tailor, and whose heart is not worth three farthings, meet with attention and notice, that are withheld from the son of genius and poverty!

"The noble Glencairn has wounded me to the soul here, because I dearly esteem, respect, and love him. He showed so much attention, engrossing attention, one day, to the only blockhead at table (the whole company consisted of his lordship, dunder-pate, and myself), that I was within half a point of throwing down my gage of contemptuous defiance; but he shook my hand, and looked so benevolently good at parting. God bless him! though I should never see him more, I shall love him until my dying day! I am pleased to think I am so capable of the throes of gratitude, as I am miserably deficient in some other virtues.

"With Dr. Blair I am more at my ease. I never respect him with humble veneration; but when he kindly interests himself in my welfare, or, still more, when he descends from his pinnacle, and meets me on equal ground in conversation, my heart overflows with what is called liking. When he neglects me for the mere carcass of greatness, or when his eye measures the difference of our points of elevation, I say to myself, with scarcely any emotion, what do I care for him, or his pomp either."

A man like Burns, living at a period when literature had not to any extent become a profession, could not find his place amongst the recognized forces of the world-was doomed forever to be an outsider and therein lay the tragedy of his life. He was continually making comparisons between his own evil fortune and the good fortune of others. Proud, suspicious, swift to take offence, when his amour propre was wounded, he was apt to salve it in the company of revellers whom he could meet on equal terms, and in whose society he could take out his revenge in sarcasm, As regards mere brain, he does not seem to have entertained any remarkable respect for the Edinburgh men of letters. He considered he had met as much intellectual capacity - unpolished and in the rough-in Torbolton debating societies, Mauchline Masonic meetings, and at the tables of the writers of Kilmarnock and Ayr. He admitted, however, that his residence in Edinburgh had brought him in contact with something new-a refined and accomplished woman. The admission is important, and meeting it, one fancies for a moment that one has caught some sort of explanation of his future life. What might have been the result had Burns secured a career in which his fancy and intellect could have exercised themselves, and a wife who to affection added refinement and accomplish. ment, we may surmise, but cannot tell, A career he never secured; and on his return to Ayrshire, in passionate blindness, he forged chains for himself which he could not break which it would have been criminal in him to have attempted to break.

From Burns's correspondence while in Edinburgh we can see in what way he regarded his own position and prospects. He admitted that applause was pleasant; he knew that, as a poet, he possessed some merit, but he constantly expressed his conviction that much of his success arose from the novelty of a poet appearing in his rank of

life; and he congratulates himself on the circumstance that - let literary reputation wax or wane- he had "an independence at the plough-tail" to fall back upon. He foresaw from the beginning that Edinburgh could be nothing more than a striking episode in his life, and that he was fated to return to the rural shades. Early in the year, he had some conversation with Mr. Patrick Miller, relative to his becoming a tenant on that gentleman's estate at Dalswinton, and had promised to run down to Dumfriesshire and look at the lands some time in the following May. That Mr. Miller was anxious to serve Burns, seems to have been generally known in Edinburgh, for in Dr. Blair's letter, dated on 4th May, 1787, in answer to a note written by Burns on the previous day, intimating that he was about to leave town, the Doctor supposes that he is "going down to Dalswinton to look at some of Mr. Miller's farms." Before his return, Burns did intend to look at these farms, but at the moment farming was not the principal business in hand. He, in company with his young friend Ainslic, was on the wing for the South of Scotland. -a district which was calling him with a hundred voices of tradition and ballad. On the day before starting, he sent Mr. Johnson, editor of the Scot's Musical Museum, a cordial letter, for he had entered with enthusiasm into that gentleman's work, and already written for it one or two songs-preliminary drops of the plenteous summer-shower which has kept so many secret places of the heart fresh and green.

The companions left Edinburgh on horseback on the 5th May. They visited Dunse, Coldstream, Kelso, Jedburgh, Melrose, Dryburgh, and Yarrow- Burns scattering jokes and epigrams all the way. About the middle of the month Ainslie returned to Edinburgh, and Burns then crossed into England, saw Hexham and Newcastle, and returned home by Carlisle and Dumfries. From Dumfries he went to Dalswinton, looked over the estate, but did not seem much enamoured of its condition. He, however, arranged to meet Mr. Miller in August. He then came by Sanquhar to Mauchline, and dropped in upon his family unannounced. His meeting with these reticent hearts must be left to imagination. He went out from them obscure, he returned to them, illustrious, with a nimbus around his head. At home he renewed acquaintanceship with old friends, and found that Mr. Armour, who had treated him coldly in the day of his poverty and obscurity, was now inclined to regard him with a favorable eye-a circumstance which seems to have kindled Burns into unreasonable rage. "If any thing," he writes to his correspondent Smith, "had been wanting to disgust me completely with the Armour family, their mean, servile compliance would have done it." The proud spirit which rankled in Edinburgh seems to have rankled no less bitterly in Ayrshire. A few days after he wrote to Mr. William Nicol, master of the High School, Edinburgh then and afterwards one of his chiefest friends: -"I never, my friend, thought mankind very capable of any thing generous; but the stateliness of the patricians in Edinburgh, and the civility of my plebeian brethren (who perhaps formerly eyed me askance) since I returned home, have nearly put me out of conceit altogether with my species. I have bought a pocket Milton, which I carry perpetually about with me, in order to study the sentiments, the dauntless magnanimity, the intrepid, unyielding independence, the desperate daring, and noble defiance of hardship, in that great personage, Satan." At this precise period, it is somewhat hard to understand whence came the bitterness which wells up in almost every letter which Burns wrote. He was famous, he was even comparatively rich, but he had an eye which, constitutionally, regarded the seamy side of things. Probably, in no possible combination of fortunate circumstances could Burns have been a contented and happy He had Ulysses' "hungry heart," which could be satisfied with no shore, however green and pleasant, which must needs sail beyond the sunset. While residing at Mauchline, he accidentally met Jean, and affectionate intimacy was renewed, as if no anger or bitterness had ever estranged them.

man.

Towards the end of June he went alone to the West Highlands, without any apparent motive, if not drawn by the memory of Mary Campbell. Of his movements in this trip we have no very precise information. At Inverary, where he could find accommodation neither in castle nor inn, he left an epigram which has become famous.

In