the excise appointment which he coveted was not procured by any exertion of this noble patron's influence. Mr. Alexander Wood, surgeon (still affectionately remembered in Scotland as "kind old Sandy Wood"), happening to hear Burns, while his patient, mention the object of his wishes, went immediately, without dropping any hint of his intention, and communicated the state of the poet's case to Mr. Graham of Fintry, one of the Commissioners of Excise, who had met Burns at the Duke of Athole's in the autumn, and who immediately had the poet's name put on the roll.

"I have chosen this, my dear friend, (thus wrote Burns to Miss Chalmers, Feb. 17, 1788) after mature deliberation. The question is not at what door of Fortune's palace shall we enter in; but which of her doors does she open to us? I was not likely to get anything to do. I wanted un but, which is a dangerous, an unhappy situation. I got this without any hanging on, or mortifying solicitation. It is immediate bread, and, though poor in comparison of the last eighteen months of my existence, 'tis luxury in comparison of all my preceding life. Besides, the Commissioners are some of them my acquaintances, and all of them my firm friends."

Our poet seems to have kept up an angry correspondence, during his confinement, with his bookseller, Mr. Creech, whom he also abuses very heartily in his letters to his friends in Ayrshire. The publisher's accounts, however, when they were at last made up, must have given the impatient author a very agreeable surprise; for in his letter above quoted, to Lord Glencairn, we find him expressing his hopes that the gross profits of his book might amount to "better than £200," whereas, on the day of settling with Mr. Creech, he found himself in possession of £500, if not of £600.1

1 Mr. Nicol, the most intimate friend Burns had at this time, writes to Mr. John Lewars, excise-officer at Dumfries, immediately on hearing

1

This supply came truly in the hour of need; and it seems to have elevated his spirits greatly, and given him for the time a new stock of confidence; for he now resumed immediately his purpose of taking Mr. Miller's farm, retaining his Excise Commission in his pocket as a dernier ressort, to be made use of only should some reverse of fortune come upon him. His first act, however, was to relieve his brother from his difficulties, by advancing £180, or £200, to assist him in the management of Mossgiel. "I give myself no airs on this," he generously says in a letter to Dr. Moore (Jan. 4, 1789), "for it was mere selfishness on my part. I was conscious that the wrong scale of the balance was pretty heavily charged, and I thought that the throwing a little filial piety and fraternal affection into the scale in my favour, might help to smooth matters at the grand reckoning."

of the poet's death,—" He certainly told me that he received £600 for the first Edinburgh edition, and £100 afterwards for the copyright (MS. in my possession). Dr. Currie states the gross product of Creech's edition at £500, and Burns himself, in one of his printed letters, at £400 only. Nicol hints, in the letter already referred to, that Burns had contracted debts while in Edinburgh, which he might not wish to avow on all occasions; and if we are to believe this, and, as is probable, the expense of printing the subscription edition, should, moreover, be deducted from the £700 stated by Mr. Nicol-the apparent contradictions in these stories may be pretty nearly reconciled, Currie states at the end of his Memoir that Burns realized "nearly nine hundred pounds in all by his poems?

[In the poet's letter to the Earl of Glencairn, dated Jan. 29, 1788, before quoted, he thus refers to this particular act as already performed:-"Your lordship's patronage and kindness have likewise put it in my power to save the little tie of home that sheltered an aged mother, two brothers, and three sisters, from destruction."]

N

CHAPTER VII.

"To make a happy fireside clime
For weans and wife,

That's the true pathos and sublime
Of human life."

BURNS, as soon as his bruised limb was able for a

journey, rode to Mossgiel, and went through the ceremony of a Justice-of-Peace marriage with Jean Armour, in the writing-chambers of his friend Gavin Hamilton.' He then crossed the country to Dalswinton, and

1 [Not quite so fast as here indicated did the poet make up his mind to commit himself to this course. He was enabled to quit Edinburgh (but only for three weeks) on 18th February, 1788. Having arranged matters for Jean's present emergency at Mauchline, as described in a previous note, he proceeded to Dumfries along with his father's old friend, John Tennant, and, guided by his advice, resolved to take a lease of the farm of Elliesland. Meanwhile he continued his madcap, and perhaps not very hearty, correspondence with Clarinda, whom he had found to be somewhat exacting in her demands on his time and attention. He returned to the city about the 10th of March, where the lease of Elliesland was executed on the 13th, and completed his arrangements for entering into the service of the Excise. After some further dalliance with Clarinda, in course of which intelligence must have reached him of Jean's delivery of twins (for the second time) who, however, died shortly after birth, he finally left Edinburgh on 24th of March. Between his sense of duty to Jean Armour, and his infatuated entanglement with Clarinda-not to mention his more excusable aspirations towards Peggy Chalmers he had (to use his own words) "to face a dilemma which damned him with only a choice of different species of error and imprudence." Happily for his own peace, and the peace of two or three more

concluded his bargain with Mr. Miller as to the farm of Elliesland, on terms which must undoubtedly have been considered by both parties as highly favourable to the poet; they were indeed fixed by two of Burns's old friends, who accompanied him for that purpose from Ayrshire. The lease was for four successive terms, of nineteen years each, -in all seventy-six years; the rent for the first three years and crops fifty pounds; during the remainder of the period £70. Mr. Miller bound himself to defray the expense of any plantations which Burns might please to make on the banks of the river; and the farm-house and offices being in a dilapidated condition, the new tenant was to receive £300 from the proprietor, for the erection of suitable buildings. "The land," says Allan Cunningham, "was good, the rent moderate, and the markets were rising."

Burns entered on possession of his farm at Whitsuntide 1788, but the necessary rebuilding of the house prevented his removing Mrs. Burns thither until the season was far advanced. He had, moreover, to qualify himself for holding his excise commission by six weeks' attendance on the business of that profession in Tarbolton. From these circumstances, he led this summer a wandering and unsettled life, and Dr. Currie mentions this as one of his chief misfortunes. "The poet," as he says, "was continually riding between Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire; and, often spending a night on the road, sometimes fell into company, and forgot the resolutions he had formed."

What these resolutions were, the poet himself shall tell us. On the third day of his residence at Elliesland, he thus writes to Mr. Ainslie: "I have all along hitherto, in

innocent souls, his final resolve was to cast in his lot for life with his own Jean. On 28th April we find him writing to James Smith, ordering "a new shawl for Mrs. Burns-'Tis my first present to her," he writes, "since I have irrevocably called her mine."]

the warfare of life, been bred to arms, among the lighthorse, the piquet guards of fancy, a kind of hussars and Highlanders of the brain; but I am firmly resolved to sell out of these giddy battalions. Cost what it will, I am determined to buy in among the grave squadrons of heavyarmed thought, or the artillery-corps of plodding contri. Were it not for the terrors of my ticklish situation respecting a family of children, I am decidedly of opinion that the step I have taken is vastly for my happiness."

vance.

To all his friends, he expresses himself in terms of similar satisfaction in regard to his marriage. "Your surmise, madam," he writes to Mrs. Dunlop (July 10), "is just. I am indeed a husband. found a once much-loved, and still much-loved female, literally and truly cast out to the mercy of the naked elements, but as I enabled her to purchase a shelter; and there is no sporting with a fellowcreature's happiness or misery. The most placid goodnature and sweetness of disposition; a warm heart, gratefully devoted with all its powers to love me; vigorous health and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to the best advantage by a more than commonly handsome figure; these, I think, in a woman, may make a good wife, though she should never have read a page but the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, nor danced in a brighter assembly than a penny-pay wedding. To jealousy or infidelity I am an equal stranger; my preservative from the first, is the most thorough consciousness of her sentiments of honour, and her attachment to me; my antidote against the last, is my long and deep-rooted affection for her. In housewife matters, of aptness to learn, and activity to execute, she is eminently mistress, and during my absence in Nithsdale, she is regularly and constantly an apprentice to my mother and sisters in their dairy, and other rural business. You are right, that a bachelor state