Ainslie’s chief injury to Burns’s fame was inflicted after the poet’s death; William Nicol, Latin master in Edinburgh High School, harmed him in life. A coarse, egotistical, drunken man of violent temper, Nicol was also one of the foremost Latin scholars of his day. In his bawdy violence of language Burns saw wit; his emphatic dislike of his superiors Burns interpreted as proof of an independent spirit. No great harm might have come of the friendship had it been confined to drinking bouts in Edinburgh and to correspondence thereafter. Unfortunately Burns took Nicol as his travelling companion on the tour of the Highlands in September, 1787. This tour was Burns’s chance to meet influential folk in their homes and to show himself at his best. Thanks to Nicol he came near to showing himself at his worst. Among the people from whom he had invitations were the Duke and Duchess of Athole. Their reception of him at Blair Athole was all the touchy poet could desire. The Duke and Duchess were cordiality itself; among the guests was Robert Graham of Fintry, Commissioner of Excise, whose friendship and influence could be of the utmost importance to Burns; a still more influential person, Henry Dundas, dispenser of patronage for all Scotland, was expected next day on one of his periodical inspections of his political fences. Everything seemed to be going well for Burns when Nicol, the ‘most unprincipled savage’, intervened. The boorish schoolmaster, finding himself neglected in favour of his companion, decided to move on at once, and insisted on Burns’s going with him. The poet’s pride made him guilty of outrageous bad manners. In reply to Nicol’s insistence, Burns should have bidden him go to the devil his own gait. But that might have been interpreted as subservience to the Great. Through what can only be described as inverted snobbery, Burns allowed Nicol to drag him away. The scene was repeated at Castle Gordon, where the merry Duchess, who had declared in Edinburgh that Burns swept her off her feet, pleaded in vain against Nicol’s urgings. Though he afterwards wrote complimentary and apologetic letters, and cursed the ‘obstinate son of Latin Prose’, Burns could not efface the impression he had made. He never saw the Atholes or the Gordons again.