He sung of things which concerned them,--of emotions which they felt, the joys and sorrows of their homely lives, and, singing from his heart, his songs went to their hearts. His fame as a poet spread along the country and came to the knowledge of Dr. Blacklock, a blind poet in Edinburgh, who after hearing Burns's poetry was so impressed by it that he wrote or dictated a letter about it, which he addressed to a correspondent in Kilmarnock, by whom it was placed in the hands of Burns. He was still at Mossgiel, and in a perturbed condition of mind, not knowing whether he could remain there, or whether he would have to go to Jamaica. He resolved at last to do neither, but to go to Edinburgh, which he accordingly did, proceeding thither on a pony borrowed from a friend. The visit of Burns to Edinburgh was a hazardous experiment from which he might well have shrunk. He was ignorant of the manners of its citizens,--the things which differentiated them as a class from the only class he knew,--but his ignorance did not embarrass him. He was self-possessed; manly in his bearing; modest, but not humble; courteous, but independent. He had no letters of introduction, and needed none, for his poetry had prepared the way for him. It was soon known among the best people in Edinburgh that he was there, and they hastened to make his acquaintance; one of the first to do so being a man of rank, Lord Glencairn. To know him was to know other men of rank, and to be admitted to the brilliant circles in which they moved. Burns's society was sought by the nobility and gentry and by the literary lords of the period, professors, historians, men of letters. They dined him and wined him and listened to him,--listened to him eagerly, for here as elsewhere he distinguished himself by his conversation, the charm of which was so potent that the Duchess of Gordon declared that she was taken off her feet by it. He increased his celebrity in Edinburgh by the publication of a new and enlarged edition of his Poems, which he dedicated to the noblemen and gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt in a page of manly prose, the proud modesty and the worldly tact of which must have delighted them. "The poetic genius of my country found me," he wrote, "as the prophetic bard Elijah did Elisha, and threw her inspiring mantle over me. She bade me sing the loves, the joys, the rural scenes and rural pleasures of my native soil in my native tongue. I tuned my wild, artless notes as she inspired. She whispered me to come to this ancient metropolis of Caledonia and lay my songs under your honored protection. I now obey her dictates." His mind was not active at this time, for beyond a few trivial verses he wrote nothing worthy of him except a short but characteristic 'Epistle to the Guidwife of Wauchope House.' He spent the winter of 1786 and the spring of 1787 in Edinburgh; and summer being close at hand, he resolved to return for a time to Mossgiel. There