The foregoing I submit, my dear sir, to your better judgment. Acquit them or condemn them as seemeth good in your sight. Duncan Gray is that kind of light-horse gallop of an air which precludes sentiment. The ludicrous is its ruling feature. Auld Rob Morris was written by Burns on the basis of a rude old ditty which appears in Johnson's Museum, and of which he retained only the two initial lines. The second stanza was designed as a description of Charlotte Hamilton. So Burns himself told Miss Dunlop, who communicated the fact to Major Adair, Charlotte's son, who again is my informant. Duncan Gray is likewise composed on the basis, and to the tune, of a rude old song in Johnson's Museum, the name of the hero being alone retained. The first eighteen months of Burns's life in Dumfries present him as occupying a very small dwelling on the first floor of the house in the Wee Vennel (now Bank Street). He has three small apartments, each with a window to the street, besides perhaps a small kitchen in the rear. The small central room, about the size of a bed-closet, is the only place in which he can seclude himself for study. On the ground-floor immediately underneath, his friend John Syme has his office for the distribution of stamps. Overhead is an honest blacksmith called George Haugh, whom Burns treats on a familiar footing as a neighbour. On the opposite side of the street is the poet's landlord, Captain Hamilton, a gentleman of fortune and worth, who admires Burns, and often asks him to a family Sunday dinner. The Nith rolls within a hundred yards, but it is not here a shining, pebbly stream, as at Ellisland, with green, broomy banks, but a sluggish tidal river, admitting of small-craft from Cumberland and Liverpool. It was professionally a busy time with Burns; so much so, that one would have thought he had little time for dissipation. Nevertheless, he did not escape the snare. Dumfries was then a great stage on the road from England to the north of Ireland; the Caledonian Hunt occasionally honoured it with their meetings; and the county gentlemen were necessarily often within its walls. Its hotels were consequently well frequented; and when a party of strangers found themselves assembled there, with no other means of passing an evening, they were very apt to make an effort to obtain the company of Burns, the brilliant intellectual prodigy of whom fame spoke so loudly. Now it certainly was a most unreasonable thing for such persons to expect that they were to draw Burns away from his humble home, and his wife and little ones, to bestow his time, strength, and spirits merely for the amusement of a set of people whom he probably never saw before and was never to see again. Equally absurd was it for Burns to yield to such invitations, and render himself up a voluntarily enslaved Samson to make sport for such Philistines. Yet so it is, that gentlemen, or what were called such in those days, would send messages for Burns, bidding him come to the King's Arms,' the George,' or the Globe,' as it might be, and there drink with them. And equally true it is, though most lamentable, that Burns did not feel called upon by any principle, either of respect to himself, or regard for his gentle wife and innocent children, to reject these unworthy invitations. Sure was he to answer on the spur of the moment in some goodhumoured snatch of rhyme; and sure was he in time to make his appearance before the strangers, meditating at first of course only a social hour, but certain to be detained till perhaps the cock had given his first, if not his second accusing crow. It was not a love of debauchery for its own sake that rendered Burns the victim of this system. Nor can we doubt that he felt himself in error in giving way to such temptations. Why, then, could he not resist them? Need we answer that the first grand cause was his social, fervent temperament, his delight in that ideal abnegation of the common selfish policy of the world which arises amongst boon-companions over the bowl? He could not but know the hollowness of convivial friendship; yet he could not resist the pleasing deceit. Burns, moreover, though a pattern of modesty amongst poets, was not by any means so insensible to flattery as his more ardent admirers would in general represent him. He would have been more than mortal if he had been beyond all sensibility to distinction on account of his extraordinary intellect. Notwithstanding, then, his great pride, and the powerful selfassertion which he had sometimes shewn, he certainly felt pleasure in being so signalised by these gentlemen strangers, and in seeing himself set up amongst them as a luminary. It was the ready compensation for that equality with common functionaries, and that condemnation to a constant contact with the vulgar, in which his professional fate condemned him to spend the most of his time. A vigorous will might have saved him from falling under this influence; but here it was that our poet was most deficient. And yet he was occasionally sensible that his course was a wrong one. Of this there is proof in an anecdote preserved by the family of his neighbour, George Haugh. One summer morning, this worthy citizen had risen somewhat earlier than usual to work: Burns soon after came up to his shop-door, on his way home from a debauch in the ' King's Arms.' The poet, though excited by the liquor he had drunk, addressed his neighbour in a sufficiently collected manner. 'O George,' said he, 'you are a happy man; you have risen from a refreshing sleep, and left a kind wife and children, while I am returning a self-condemned wretch to mine.' And yet he would go sinning on. Clarinda's visit to the West Indies had proved unfortunate. Her husband received her coldly; his temper was insupportably bad; and she was mortified to find how grossly unfaithful he had been during the period of their separation. She was at the same time admonished by the state of her health, that she could not expect long to bear the effects of a warm climate. She therefore returned to Scotland in August, and recommenced that quiet course of life which sustained no further interruption till her death -an event postponed to take place amidst a different generation. In consequence, probably, of the weakened state to which she was reduced by her voyage, she did not immediately write to Burns. The bard addressed two letters to her friend, Mary Peacock, inquiring after the quondam 'mistress of his soul;' but they unfortunately miscarried. He had concluded to write no more, when that sensibility to anniversaries which he had already shewn in the case of Highland Mary, overthrew his resolution. He remembered the parting of the 6th of December in the past year, with its anguished outburst: Had we never loved sae kindly,' and penned a third brief epistle to the young lady. TO MISS MARY PEACOCK. Dec. 6, 1792. DEAR MADAM-I have written so often to you and have got no answer, that I had resolved never to lift up a pen to you again; but this eventful day, the sixth of December, recalls to my memory such a scene! Heaven and earth! when I remember a far-distant person!-but no more of this until I learn from you a proper address, and why my letters have lain by you unanswered, as this is the third I have sent you. The opportunities will be all gone now, I fear, of sending over the book I mentioned in my last. Do not write me for a week, as I shall not be at home, but as soon after that as possible. Yours, Ance mair I hail thee, thou gloomy December, R. B.1 It appears from this letter, that the return of Mrs M'Lehose in the preceding August was as yet unknown to Burns. We shall speedily see the subject revived; but in the meantime sterner matters call for attention. A most eventful year was now drawing to a close. In France, under the threatened interference of the German states and the emigrés, moderation and constitutionalism had been forced to give way before wild democracy; the king was a prisoner, threatened with capital punishment; the blood of thousands of loyalists had been shed without form of law in Paris; a republic was established, threatening with the aid of its victorious arms to revolutionise other countries. We have seen that in February scarcely any apprehension was felt for either the contagion of French politics or the possibility of war. A rapid change had taken place during the year. Paine's Essay on the Rights of Man, and other publications believed to be of a seditious tendency, had appeared. In the course of summer, societies taking the name 1 This letter first appeared in Pickering's edition of Burns's Poems, of Friends of the People, were established in many parts of the empire, manifesting only a desire of 'stemming the torrent of corruption,' and bringing about 'a redress of real grievances,' calling for as specific measures a full, free, and equal representation of the people,' and a shortening of the duration of parliamentscarefully disclaiming all extreme and dangerous courses, and professing to seek by timely reform the permanence of the ancient institutions of the country-yet felt by those in the management of affairs, and by the great bulk of the influential classes, to be, in their practical bearing on the time, of evil omen to the peace of society. Such societies were supported by a mere handful of men above the vulgar; and the general feeling in England was one of good affection towards the reigning sovereign and the institutions of the country. Indeed, Paine himself had been mobbed at Dover; and disloyal men generally found themselves by no means in favour with the public. Nevertheless, towards the close of the year the government became seriously uneasy about seditious publications and seditious practices and opinions. It was now contemplating hostilities against the French, on the ostensible ground of their infraction of the rights of the Dutch in the opening of the Scheldt, but in reality for the purpose of repelling, and, if possible, extinguishing, a spirit which was felt to be dangerous to all altars and all thrones. A sound spirit in its own officers of all grades and services might well in such circumstances be felt of importance. Burns had continued to sympathise with the French, notwithstanding all blots in their reforming career. He did not hesitate in company to express an unfavourable opinion of the warlike policy about to be adopted by the English ministry, and to avow his persevering desire of those reforms which had long been demanded by the Whig party. He would even, in the heat of discourse, denounce public men in terms far less remarkable for their justice than their vehemence and severity. It does not appear that he had gone the length of openly joining any of the affiliated societies called Friends of the People; but his other demonstrations were sufficiently imprudent. As an example :-a paper called the Gazetteer had been started in Edinburgh by a gentleman named Johnstone, for the purpose of advocating the reforming views. Now Johnstone was so noted as a reformer, that at an aggregate meeting or convention of representatives from the different societies, which took place in James's Court, Edinburgh, on the 22d of November, he being observed in the room, was |