After making a few more observations with relation to the poet's conversation and manner, the writer I have been quoting concludes his reminiscence as follows: "This is all I can tell you about Burns. I never saw him again, except in the street, where he did not recognise me, as I could not expect he should. I have only to add, that his dress corresponded with his manner. He was like a farmer, dressed in his _best_, to dine with the laird. I was told, but did not observe it, that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always with a turn to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their attention particularly. I do not know that I can add any thing to these recollections of forty years since." These are extracts, that, one day or other, will be looked upon as curiosities in literature, and will be inestimably precious: at present, I fear me, an apology should follow their introduction, at such length: but I shall only say in the language of another, in excuse for dwelling so long on this incident in the life of Burns, that it forms "the most remarkable phenomenon in the history of modern literature." But if this, his first winter in Edinborough, produced a favorable effect upon the future fame of Robert Burns, as a poet, it was also the source of vast unhappiness to him, during his after life. Not only was he admitted to the company of men of letters and virtue, but he was pressed into the society of those, whose social habits, and love of the pleasures of life were their chief attractions. When among his superiors in rank and intelligence, his carriage was decorous and diffident: but among others, his boon companions, he, in his turn, was lord of the ascendant: and thus commenced a career, which, had its outset been a more prudent one, would probably not have closed until a later period, nor without a much greater measure of glory and honor to him, who was thus unfortunately misguided.