Instead of treating with him, as a man, whose genius entitled him to a stand upon their own proud and distinguished level, all uncultivated and unpolished as that genius was--they universally spoke _to_ him, and _of_ him, as an object of patronage--as something that was to become valuable to the world, only through _their_ instrumentality. This feeling, this mode of treatment, are not to be objected to, in themselves considered: their existence was natural, and, rightly conducted, might have been made productive of much good, and lasting happiness to him, who was their subject. But Burns was not the man to rest quietly under the most oppressive burthen that a proud man can ever feel--_Patronage_. And thus his relative situation to his literary friends could not but be viewed by a mind so sensitive as his own, in its true character. And we find (as soon as the novelty of a "ploughman-poet" had worn off--as every fashionable novelty _will_ wear off in time,) that our poet began to remember that "a life of pleasure and praise would not support his family," and having experienced a portion of these reverses, which they, who depend on popular favor and flattery, must ever find inseparable therefrom--we see him stocking his little farm, and soon after adding the emoluments of the office of exciseman for the district of Ayr, to his scanty income. And here he might have been "Content to breathe his native air, On his own ground," but for his kind yet misjudging friends, "the patrons," as they were called, "of his genius." Unfortunately for his future peace, each new arrival at his little home of Ellisland, of those who had known him at Edinborough, furnished proof that his old habits of conviviality were only interrupted, but by no means broken: And it was only by the frequency of these opportunities of good cheer in the society of the gay companions of his city life, that he became inattentive to his agricultural concerns, and that he finally lost the composure and happiness, which were the attendants of his new situation, and with these was lost his inclination to temperate and assiduous exertion. I would not be understood as denying, in this argument, a previous, perhaps a _natural_ tendency in the character of Burns, to undue and intemperate excitement: but the impression upon my own mind is strong, that this bias might have been checked and regulated, and turned to good account by the noble and learned patrons of his genius. Tried by the statutes of strict morality, a man like Burns has many things to plead in his own defence, which those of less mind and dimmer intellect cannot justly claim as their own: and it is in the unwillingness to make this distinction, that the world are, too often, unfair judges in cases of character. A distinguished writer thus elegantly remarks, upon a similar subject.