e wind," when he wrote the lines
ending--

[v.04 p.0857]

"Adieu, my native banks of Ayr,"

and addressed to the most famous of the loves, in which he was as prolific
as Catullus or Tibullus, the proposal--

"Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary."

He was withheld from his project and, happily or unhappily, the current of
his life was turned by the success of his first volume, which was published
at Kilmarnock in June 1786. It contained some of his most justly celebrated
poems, the results of his scanty leisure at Lochlea and Mossgiel; among
others "The Twa Dogs,"--a graphic idealization of Aesop,--"The Author's
Prayer," the "Address to the Deil," "The Vision" and "The Dream,"
"Halloween," "The Cottar's Saturday Night," the lines "To a Mouse" and "To
a Daisy," "Scotch Drink," "Man was made to Mourn," the "Epistle to Davie,"
and some of his most popular songs. This epitome of a genius so marvellous
and so varied took his audience by storm. "The country murmured of him from
sea to sea." "With his poems," says Robert Heron, "old and young, grave and
gay, learned and ignorant, were alike transported. I was at that time
resident in Galloway, and I can well remember how even plough-boys and
maid-servants would have gladly bestowed the wages they earned the most
hardly, and which they wanted to purchase necessary clothing, if they might
but procure the works of Burns." This first edition only brought the author
L20 direct return, but it introduced him to the _literati_ of Edinburgh,
whither he was invited, and where he was welcomed, feasted, admired and
patronized. He appeared as a portent among the scholars of the northern
capital and its university, and manifested, according to Mr Lockhart, "in
the whole strain of his bearing, his belief that in the society of the most
eminent men of his nation he was where he was entitled to be, hardly
deigning to flatter them by exhibiting a symptom of being flattered."

Sir Walter Scott bears a similar testimony to the dignified simplicity and
almost exaggerated independence of the poet, during this _annus mirabilis_
of his success. "As for Burns, _Virgilium vidi tantum_, I was a lad of
fifteen when he came to Edinburgh, but had sense enough to be interested in
his poetry, and would have given the world to know him. I saw him one day
with several gentlemen of literary reputation, among whom I remember the
celebrated Dugald Stewart. Of course we youngsters sat silent, looked, and
list