These cronies are chiefly noteworthy as evidence of Burns’s still uncritical mind. As with Bob Ainslie later, there was really nothing to them except youthful exuberance. Their laughter was the ready chorus for Burns’s wit; his sparkle made them shine with a reflected light to which they actually contributed little. By comparison the poor poetaster, Davie Sillar of the Tarbolton Bachelors, was almost a genius. In his characterization of Tarbolton townsfolk Sillar left behind him at least one quotable phrase, which is more than any of the Mauchline group did. They cannot be charged with leading Burns astray--if any leading was needed Burns supplied it--and their biographical importance is negligible except as they gave him an outlet for confidences which might not otherwise have been recorded. When Burns went to Edinburgh he lodged with Richmond during his first winter; during the second winter Richmond was in Mauchline a good part of the time. Burns’s last extant letters to him reveal some details about Jean Armour and her children, but lack the enthusiasm of the ones written in 1786. Smith left Mauchline to engage in calico-printing at Linlithgow. Failing there, he fled to the West Indies and died obscurely, as Burns came so near doing. Both friendships were spent and empty before the correspondence closed. The contrast between the mediocre abilities of the two men and the quality of the poetry they evoked from Burns is even more remarkable than the disparity between the illiterate farm-lasses of Tarbolton and Mauchline and the lyrics Burns addressed to them.