st
beautiful love lyrics ever poet penned. Nothing is more striking than
the immense distance between this composition and any he had previously
written. In this song he for the first time stepped to the front rank as
a song-writer, and gave proof to himself, if to nobody else at the time,
of the genius that was in him. A few letters to Ellison Begbie are also
preserved, pure and honourable in sentiment, but somewhat artificial and
formal in expression. It was because of his love for her, and his desire
to be settled in life, that he took to the unfortunate flax-dressing
business in Irvine. That is something of an unlovely and mysterious
episode in Burns's life. Suffice it to say in his own words: 'This
turned out a sadly unlucky affair. My partner was a scoundrel of the
first water, and, to finish the whole business, while we were giving a
welcome carousal to the New Year, our shop, by the drunken carelessness
of my partner's wife, took fire and burned to ashes, and I was left,
like a true poet, not worth a sixpence.'

His stay at Irvine was neither pleasant for him at the time nor happy in
its results. He met there 'acquaintances of a freer manner of thinking
and living than he had been used to'; and it needs something more than
the family misfortunes and the deathbed of his father to account for
that terrible fit of hypochondria when he returned to Lochlea. 'For
three months I was in a diseased state of body and mind, scarcely to be
envied by the hopeless wretches who have just got their sentence,
_Depart from me, ye cursed_.'

Up to this time, the twenty-fifth year of his age, Burns had not written
much. Besides _Mary Morrison_ might be mentioned _The Death and Dying
Words of Poor Mailie_, and another bewitching song, _The Rigs o'
Barley_, which is surely an expression of the innocent abandon, the
delicious rapture of pure and trustful love. But what he had written was
work of promise, while at least one or two of his songs had the artistic
finish as well as the spontaneity of genuine poetry. In all that he had
done, 'puerile and silly,' to quote his own criticism of _Handsome
Nell_, or at times halting and crude, there was the ring of sincerity.
He was not merely an echo, as too many polished poetasters in their
first attempts have been. Such jinglers are usually as happy in their
juvenile effusions as in their later efforts. But Burns from the first
tried to express what was in him, what he himself felt, and in s