graces of prose: when Dugald Stewart commended the simplicity of Franklin’s writing, Burns could see nothing in it, ‘when compared with the point, and antithesis, and quaintness of _Junius_.’ Those who have judged Burns adversely as a letter-writer would have still more grounds for their criticism had more letters survived like the few to William Niven and Thomas Orr. These country youths admired Burns’s solemn analyses of Pride and Courage and his exhortations to be content with poverty; so, unfortunately, did the better-educated friends of his later life. The letters which he transcribed for Lady Harriet Don in 1787 and for Robert Riddell in 1791-93 belonged to the same school of prose as his earliest epistles to Niven. Burns would never have thought of making, nor his friends of asking for, transcripts of the admirable discussions of Scottish song which he sent to George Thomson, nor of his easier letters to John Ballantine and Mrs. Dunlop. No epistolary Robert Fergusson ever came into his hands to show him the way to a conversational style. When he wrote easy prose it was in spite of his models and because he had something to say which really demanded saying. When the family at last escaped from Mount Oliphant in 1777 Burns was eighteen, the age at which Chatterton, seven years before, had taken his own life. But Burns’s self-education was a much slower process than Chatterton’s. At eighteen he was still an awkward rustic, with all his intellectual and artistic powers still to find. The most positive result of the long ordeal at Mount Oliphant--apart from its injuries to his health--had been the building up of a strong sense of family loyalty. William Burnes had made every sacrifice to keep his family together, and the feeling that this was a primary obligation had been deeply impressed on his son. For the moment their prospects seemed hopeful. The father had managed to lease the larger farm of Lochlie near Tarbolton, and had again obtained from his landlord a cash advance for stock and improvements. But again Burnes was paying the penalty of his desperately independent character. For Lochlie’s hundred and thirty acres of sour clay--so sour that the lease provided for two separate applications of lime at the rate of 400 bushels to an acre--its putative owner, David M’Lure, set a rental of £130. It was a ruinous bargain which broke William Burnes’s spirit, helped to kill him, and gave his children some first-hand acquaintance with the chicanery of the law.