ggested their publication. The
result appeared in the "Mountain Bard," a collection of poems and
ballads, which he published in 1803, prefixed with an account of his
life. From the profits of this volume, with the sum of eighty-six pounds
paid him by Constable for the copyright of his two treatises on sheep,
he became master of three hundred pounds. With this somewhat startling
acquisition, visions of prosperity arose in his ardent and enthusiastic
mind. He hastily took in lease the pastoral farm of Corfardin, in the
parish of Tynron, Dumfriesshire, to which he afterwards added the lease
of another large farm in the same neighbourhood. Misfortune still
pursued him; he rented one of the farms at a sum exceeding its value,
and his capital was much too limited for stocking the other, while a
disastrous murrain decimated his flock. Within the space of three years
he was again a penniless adventurer. Removing from the farm-homestead of
Corfardin, he accepted the generous invitation of his hospitable
neighbour, Mr James Macturk of Stenhouse, to reside in his house till
some suitable employment might occur. At Stenhouse he remained three
months; and he subsequently acknowledged the generosity of his friend,
by honourably celebrating him in the "Queen's Wake." Writing to Mr
Macturk, in 1814, he remarks, in reference to his farming at Corfardin,
"But it pleased God to take away by death all my ewes and my lambs, and
my long-horned cow, and my spotted bull, for if they had lived, and if I
had kept the farm of Corfardin, I had been a lost man to the world, and
mankind should never have known the half that was in me. Indeed, I can
never see the design of Providence in taking me to your district at all,
if it was not to breed my acquaintance with you and yours, which I hope
will be one source of happiness to me as long as I live. Perhaps the
very circumstance of being initiated into the mysteries of your
character,[29] is of itself a sufficient compensation for all that I
suffered in your country."

Disappointed in obtaining an ensigncy in a Militia Regiment, through the
interest of Sir Walter Scott, and frustrated in every other attempt to
retain the social position he had gained, he returned to Ettrick, once
more to seek employment in his original occupation. But if friendship
had somewhat failed him, on his proving unsuccessful at Ettrick-house,
his _prestige_ was now completely gone; old friends received him coldly,
and former e