Undoubtedly Burns realized before he went to Edinburgh that he was setting out on the old and painful quest of patronage--a quest which had broken the hearts of more poets than it had ever freed from penury. But it was still fame more than money that he looked for from his poems. He continued to hope for some means of modest livelihood independent of his writing; if his subscription brought a little capital to help him on his way, so much the better. When he reached Edinburgh he made no effort to appear more than he was; he even sought deliberately to appear less. He dressed as a plain young farmer, and finding that the metropolitan critics were praising his work as that of an unlettered ploughman who wrote from pure inspiration he did his best to act the part. When Robert Anderson pointed out in private conversation some evidence of extensive knowledge of other poets Burns readily admitted his indebtedness, but in public he would not permit his claims to pure inspiration to be challenged. If an unlettered bard was what his patrons wanted he would do his best to be one. Many times, however, his role was trying, especially when stupider people than himself condescended, and gave him good advice. Undoubtedly there were matters in which he needed good advice, but he did not get it even from the patrons who did not condescend. Among all his new friends there was no one to take his part as Sir Walter Scott later took Southey’s in seeing that he got a fair contract with his publisher. Glencairn had been as good as his word in securing fashionable subscriptions. The Countess of Eglinton made the Earl subscribe ten guineas; the entire membership of the aristocratic Caledonian Hunt put down their names, but altered the first proposal that they give two guineas each to a mere subscription at the regular price. But Glencairn knew nothing about the business end of publishing. In introducing Burns to William Creech, his brother’s former tutor and the best-known publisher in the city, Glencairn no doubt felt that he had done his best. He had, up to that point, but at that point a good contract lawyer was needed. Unfortunately Henry Mackenzie and the other men of letters in the city still adhered to the convention of the writing gentleman who was supposed to disdain pecuniary rewards. A few years earlier, when David Hume was alive, Burns might have been secured better terms; a few years later under the leadership of Scott he would certainly have secured them. Burns’s perverse pride would not allow him to haggle over a contract which in any case offered more ready money than he had handled in all his previous life. What he needed and did not have was a hard-boiled business friend to do his haggling for him.