year; with dark eyes, a handsome
foot, and a melodious tongue, she made her way to the poet's
heart--and, as their stations in life were equal, it seemed that they
had only to be satisfied themselves to render their union easy. But
her father, in addition to being a very devout man, was a zealot of
the Old Light; and Jean, dreading his resentment, was willing, while
she loved its unforgiven satirist, to love him in secret, in the hope
that the time would come when she might safely avow it: she admitted
the poet, therefore, to her company in lonesome places, and walks
beneath the moon, where they both forgot themselves, and were at last
obliged to own a private marriage as a protection from kirk censure.
The professors of the Old Light rejoiced, since it brought a scoffing
rhymer within reach of their hand; but her father felt a twofold
sorrow, because of the shame of a favourite daughter, and for having
committed the folly with one both loose in conduct and profane of
speech. He had cause to be angry, but his anger, through his zeal,
became tyrannous: in the exercise of what he called a father's power,
he compelled his child to renounce the poet as her husband and burn
the marriage-lines; for he regarded her marriage, without the kirk's
permission, with a man so utterly cast away, as a worse crime than her
folly. So blind is anger! She could renounce neither her husband nor
his offspring in a lawful way, and in spite of the destruction of the
marriage lines, and renouncing the name of wife, she was as much Mrs.
Burns as marriage could make her. No one concerned seemed to think so.
Burns, who loved her tenderly, went all but mad when she renounced
him: he gave up his share of Mossgiel to his brother, and roamed,
moody and idle, about the land, with no better aim in life than a
situation in one of our western sugar-isles, and a vague hope of
distinction as a poet.

How the distinction which he desired as a poet was to be obtained,
was, to a poor bard in a provincial place, a sore puzzle: there were
no enterprising booksellers in the western land, and it was not to be
expected that the printers of either Kilmarnock or Paisley had money
to expend on a speculation in rhyme: it is much to the honour of his
native county that the publication which he wished for was at last
made easy. The best of his poems, in his own handwriting, had found
their way into the hands of the Ballantynes, Hamiltons, Parkers, and
Mackenzies, and we