We all know what a brave fight the two Burns boys, Gilbert and Rob, made of it when Death, "the poor man's dearest friend," took off the father; Gilbert the elder; but Robert the brighter and keener--making verselets in the fields which the elder brother approves, and says would "bear {293} to be printed;" and so presently after, the first poor, thin, dingy volume finds it way to the light, and gives to far-away Edinboro' people their earliest hint of this strange, fine, new, human plant which has begun to blossom under the damps of Mossgiel. But the farm life is hard; the poet is wayward; his jolly friends near by who chant his songs are not helpful; his love affairs, of which he has overstock in his young wildness, run to confusion; quarrels threaten; so he books himself with what moneys the thin, dingy volume of poems have brought him, for America. What if he had come! But no; one low, wee encouraging voice--the piping answer to those poems--reaches him from Edinboro', and the poet goes thither in his best gear; Dugald Stewart, and Dr. Blacklock the blind poet, and Mackenzie, of whom I have already made mention, all befriend him. The gentlewomen of Edinboro' entertain him, and admire him, and flatter him; and he, in best blue and buff, with his dark, rolling eyes, and lips that command all shapes of language, holds his dignity with these fine ladies of the Northern capital; {294} gives compliments that make them tremble; prints other and fuller edition of his poems; goes northward amongst the highlands--dropping jewels of verse as he goes--to beautiful women, to waterfalls, to noble patrons. The next season in Edinboro', however, is no longer the same; that brilliant series of fêtes and of conquests has gone by; the new lion is too audacious; he shakes his fetters with a bold rage that intimidates. So we find him with some three hundred pounds only, saved out of the new book and the junketings of the Capital, going off to lease quietly the farm of Ellisland, near to Dumfries, and turn ploughman once more. It is a poor place, but very beautiful; it is in Nithsdale, and the murmur of the river through its wooded banks makes the poet forget the crop of pebbles which every ploughing turns to the top. He is presently in the Excise too (1789): so gets some added pence by the gauging of beer-barrels and looking after frauds upon the revenue; married too--having out of all the loose love-strings, which held him more or less weakly, at last knotted one, which ties the quiet, pretty, womanly, much injured Jean Armour to his hearth and {295} home, forever. And he begins that Ellisland life bravely well; has prayers at night; teaches the "toddlin' wee things" their catechism; has hope and faith, and sings--and sings; and this, amongst other things, was what he sang--