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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 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-inlaw, 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 patronised 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 supper-tables 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. This 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 spirt 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 self-possessed; 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 favour 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

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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 patronised 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 colours, 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 awhile.

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 everything 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 wellborn 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 grey 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 honour to whom honour 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 carcase 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 recognised forces of the world-was doomed for ever 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 accomplishment, 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 Ainslie, 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

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