ting
powers and find play for his expanding intellect. The members met to
forget their cares in mirth and diversion, 'without transgressing the
bounds of innocent decorum'; and the chief diversion appears to have
been debate.

If we are to believe Gilbert, the seven years of their stay in
Tarbolton parish were not marked by much literary improvement in Robert.
That may well have been Gilbert's opinion at the time; for the poet was
working hard on the farm, and often spending an evening at Tarbolton or
at one or other of the neighbouring farms. But he managed all the same
to get through a considerable amount of reading; and though, perhaps, he
did not devote himself so sedulously to books as he had been accustomed
to do in the seclusion of Mount Oliphant, he was storing his mind in
other ways. His keen observation was at work, and he was studying what
was of more interest and importance to him than books--'men, their
manners and their ways.' 'I seem to be one sent into the world,' he
remarks in a letter to Mr. Murdoch, 'to see and observe; and I very
easily compound with the knave who tricks me of my money, if there be
anything original about him, which shows me human nature in a different
light from anything I have seen before.' Partly it was this passion to
see and observe, partly it was another passion that made him the
assisting confidant of most of the country lads in their amours. 'I had
a curiosity, zeal, and intrepid dexterity in these matters which
recommended me as a proper second in duels of that kind.' His song, _My
Nannie, O_, which belongs to this period, is not only true as a lyric of
sweet and simple love, but is also true to the particular style of
love-making then in vogue.

'The westlin wind blaws loud an' shill;
The night's baith mirk and rainy, O:
But I'll get my plaid, an' out I'll steal,
An' owre the hills to Nannie, O.'

According to Gilbert, the poet himself was constantly the victim of some
fair enslaver, although, being jealous of those richer than himself, he
was not aspiring in his loves. But while there was hardly a comely
maiden in Tarbolton to whom he did not address a song, we are not to
imagine that he was frittering his heart away amongst them all. A poet
may sing lyrics of love to many while his heart is true to one. The one
at this time to Robert Burns was Ellison Begbie, to whom some of his
songs are addressed--notably _Mary Morrison_, one of the purest and mo