his mind could wipe out. He was a Puritan, and lived and breathed in the very heart of Puritanism, and the finger of warning or of scorn could, by the godly or ungodly, be pointed to his door, and this for him to hear was worse than death. Then we must bear in mind that though Burns had written nearly all his great poems at this time, he yet had only a local reputation, or rather a notoriety as a loose scapegrace of a rhymer, and was not to the good folk of Mauchline, and could not be, the glorious poet of the people he is to us. His world-wide fame had yet to come, while in the meantime the direful effects of his follies-(which were crimes in Armour's eyes) -were living realities, and realities from which he knew not how to escape. At length, after a painful consideration of the matter, our bard resolved to go to the West Indies.

Before doing so, however, partly to obtain money, which he needed, and partly through a desire to have his merits known, he made up his mind to publish his poems. "I thought they had merit," he wrote, "and it was a delicious idea that I should be called a clever fellow, even though it should never reach my ears -a poor negro driver-or perhaps a victim to that inhospitable clime, and gone to the land of spirits." "A victim to some more cruel end than even that which awaited him in his own land one can quite conceive might have been written for him in the book of destiny; but to think of the man who had penned the immortal "Address to a Mouse" being a slave-driver! Who in their imagination can realise that? To say the least of it, he would have made a rare slave-driver, and the "blacks" would have had a fine time of it, only-alas! for the "niggers"-the "dream" would have been too bright to last. Ah, Burns! we have only to think of the

greatness of his heart, and "a' his fauts and follies" are at once forgotten. But this the mass of purveyors for the public taste will not do. They are sae guid theirsels," that they feel a keener interest in a man's failings than they do in his nobler qualities, and on this account the errors of a Burns or a Shelley must be hunted up and enlarged upon as if these could afford a more delicious dish for their hungry readers than the precious poetic legacies they have bequeathed to the world, or, what is as likely, as if they did not endure in a tenfold manner in the pangs of 'regret, remorse, and shame" any possible retribution supposed to be due to their errors, and that almost at the very moment of their commission. For that they did so there is abundant proof. And this can especially be said of Burns in the case which now caused him to prepare for Jamaica. If we may accept his own statement, never did man love woman as he did the one he had wronged, and though, as he imagined, she had not been all he could have wished her to be towards himself, "I can," he exclaimed, "have no nearer idea of the place of eternal punishment than what I have felt in my breast on her account." He also expressed his grief in A Lament," and in his song "The Gloomy Night is Gathering Fast," wherein he bids "farewell to the bonnie banks of Ayr," from which he fancied he was about to depart, never more to return. But happily there was a silver lining to the cloud which hung over his head at this moment, though he could not see it from his tears.

The publication of his poems, which at last was effected, turned out to be all that. They were issued from the Kilmarnock press, July 1786, and their success was complete. They established at once and for ever his claim to the title of Scotland's greatest National Poet.

"It is hardly possible to express," wrote Heron, "with what eager admiration and delight they were everywhere received. They eminently possessed all those qualities which can contribute to render any work quickly and permanently popular. They were written in a phraseology of which all the powers were universally felt; and which being at once antique and familiar, and now rarely written, was hence fitted to serve all the dignified and picturesque uses of poetry, without making it unintelligible the imagery, the sentiments, were at once faithfully natural and irresistibly impressive and interesting. Those topics of satire and scandal in which the rustic delights; the humorous delineation of character, and that witty association of ideas, familiar and striking, yet not naturally allied to one another, which has force to shake his side with laughter; those fancies of superstition at which he still wonders and trembles; those affecting sentiments and images of true religion which are at once dear and awful to the heart, were represented by Burns with all a poet's magic power. Old and young, high and low, grave and gay, all were alike delighted, agitated, transported." Thus wrote Heron, who was himself a witness of the effects produced by the issue of Burns's poems.

The edition was quickly sold out, and in November the same year, instead of going to Jamaica, he went to Edinburgh to publish another edition by subscription. His fame had gone before him, and a reception awaited him on his arrival such as had never been accorded to a poet on his first becoming known-at least, not in Great Britain. Nearly everybody, from the highest to the lowest in the social scale, were anxious to get a blink of

"the wonderful Ayrshire ploughman.' Besides being the glory and idol of the masses, he was fited in the

circles of rank and fashion, and entertained by the most famous philosophers and men of letters which the Scottish capital then boasted. To Professor Stewart in the first place, and, through him, to Mackenzie-the Man of Feeling-who reviewed his poems in No. 97 of the Lounger, the bard was indebted for his introduction to the upper circles and the Edinburgh public. Among people of distinction to whom he was introduced besides the Man of Feeling (Dugald Stewart was an old friend) were Drs. Gregory and Blair, Frazer Tytler, Lord Monboddo, and the Earl of Glencairn. In the society of such cultured minds "Burns was," Lockhart said, "exactly where he was entitled to be." He was, in verity, worthy of such, though how many of those luminaries thought the same, at this distance of time it would be hard to say. The stalwart rustic bard, with his horny fists, his swarthy complexion, and his large brilliant dark eyes, had flashed in among them; and by his demeanour, his culture, his originality, and wonderful eloquence, had completely taken them by surprise; but when the proverbial "nine days' talk had passed, what then? In all probability the majority of those who had been drawn out of their customary orbits by the sudden appearance of this new plauet in the literary heavens would have shrunk back into their old courses or habits of thought, and under the sway of aristocratic or academic prejudices would be prompted to call into question the value of the impressions that had been produced by the uncommon phenomenon. "Men are jealous," says Hazlitt, "and uneasy at sudden and upstart popularity, which wants the seal of time to confirm it, and what after all may turn out to be false and hollow;" and was this not a case in point? In this frame of mind-which envy most readily and

without fee lends jealousy a helping hand to producemany would have an open ear for any tale that would tend to lower their erewhile fêted idol somewhat in their esteem; for we can easier brook the idea of having committed an error for once in judgment-since all men are liable to err-than we can submit to the idea of having our brightest and best qualities eclipsed by the splendour of those of another; and while in this frame of mind, such tales one can quite conceive may have reached the ears of many of his noble patrons. Rumour, "horsed on the viewless couriers of the air," may have told ere long of the irregularities of our bard's previous life, or of the fact that even while in Edinburgh he had other haunts than the resorts of rank and fashion, and other associates besides those of the learned and the highborn, and whose society he prized as much as he did theirs; and all this might form reason sufficient that they should at least have less anxiety as to the future weal of their sometime "honoured guest" than their attentions at first may have led him to expect. Be this as it may, no sooner had Burns turned his back on the Scottish capital than he seemed to be all but forgotten, and when he returned, as he did, to the city in the eusuing winter, he met with the cold shoulder from many of his former distinguished entertainers.

During his absence, he of course had hurried home, and having made glad the hearts of his dear old mother and her family by an account of his late splendid triumphs, he made a tour to the Highlands, and the Scottish and English Borders. Though these tours were, according to Principal Shairp, unproductive of any apparent valuable poetic work, yet through them he got a knowledge of localities, and traditions, and so on, that proved of service to him when he began to write his