ened.... I remember ... his shedding tears over a print representing a
soldier lying dead in the snow, his dog sitting in misery on one side, on
the other his widow with a child in her arms. His person was robust, his
manners rustic, not clownish. ... His countenance was more massive than it
looks in any of the portraits. There was a strong expression of shrewdness
in his lineaments; the eye alone indicated the poetic character and
temperament. It was large and of a dark cast, and literally glowed when he
spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human
head. His conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the least
intrusive forwardness. I thought his acquaintance with English poetry was
rather limited; and having twenty times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and
of Fergusson he talked of them with too much humility as his models. He was
much caressed in Edinburgh, but the efforts made for his relief were
extremely trifling." _Laudatur et alget._ Burns went from those meetings,
where he had been posing professors (no hard task), and turning the heads
of duchesses, to share a bed in the garret of a writer's apprentice,--they
paid together 3s. a week for the room. It was in the house of Mr Carfrae,
Baxter's Close, Lawnmarket, "first scale stair on the left hand in going
down, first door in the stair." During Burns's life it was reserved for
William Pitt to recognize his place as a great poet; the more cautious
critics of the North were satisfied to endorse him as a rustic prodigy, and
brought upon themselves a share of his satire. Some of the friendships
contracted during this period--as for Lord Glencairn and Mrs Dunlop--are
among the most pleasing and permanent in literature; for genuine kindness
was never wasted on one who, whatever his faults, has never been accused of
ingratitude. But in the bard's city life there was an unnatural element. He
stooped to beg for neither smiles nor favour, but the gnarled country oak
is cut up into cabinets in artificial prose and verse. In the letters to Mr
Graham, the prologue to Mr Wood, and the epistles to Clarinda, he is
dancing minuets with hob-nailed shoes. When, in 1787, the second edition of
the _Poems_ came out, the proceeds of their sale realized for the author
L400. On the strength of this sum he gave himself two long rambles, full of
poetic material--one through the border towns into England as far as
Newcastle, returning by Dumfries to Mauchli