This brings us to a period, which the poet calls an important era in his life--his twenty-third year; and he explains this in the following näive and characteristic style. "Partly through whim, and partly that I wished to set about doing something in life, I joined a flax-dresser in the neighboring town of Irvine to learn his trade. This was an unlucky affair; as we were welcoming in the new year with a carousal, our shop took fire and burnt to ashes, and I was left like a true poet, not worth a sixpence." About this time the clouds of misfortune thickened around his father's head, who, indeed, was already far gone in a consumption; and to crown the distresses incident to his situation, a girl, to whom he was engaged to be married, jilted him with peculiar circumstances of mortification. During his residence at Irvine, our poet was miserably poor and dispirited. His food consisted chiefly of oat meal, and this was sent to him from his father's family; and so small was, of necessity, his allowance, that he was obliged to borrow often of a neighbor, until he should again be supplied. He was very melancholy with the idea, that the dreams of future eminence and distinction which his imagination had presented to his mind, were _only_ dreams; and to dissipate this melancholy his resource was society with its enjoyments. The incidents to which I have alluded took place some years before the publication of his poems. About this time William Burns removed from Mount Oliphant to Lochlea, and later still, to the parish of Tarbolton, where, as we are informed by a letter from Dr. Murdoch, written in 1799, that "Robert wrote most of his poems." It was in Tarbolton that Burns established a debating club, which consisted of the poet, his brother Gilbert, and five or six other young peasants of the neighborhood--the laws and regulations for which were furnished by the former. Among these members was David Sillar, to whom the two beautiful poems, entitled "Epistles to Davie, a brother poet," were addressed. Some of the rules and regulations of this club are so peculiar, and bespeak so forcibly the character of their author, that I cannot resist the temptation to transcribe some of them. The eighth is in the following words: "Every member shall attend at the meetings, without he can give a proper excuse for not attending. And it is desired, that every one who cannot attend will send his excuse with some other member: and he who shall be absent three meetings without sending such excuse, shall be summoned to the club night, when if he fail to appear, or send an excuse, he shall be excluded." And the tenth and last rule is worthy of particular notice, and a part of it of incorporation into the code even of more extensive and more pretending societies: it is as follows: