poet's best and early
patrons: the distance at which she lived from Mossgiel had kept his
name from her till his poems appeared: but his works induced her to
desire his acquaintance, and she became his warmest and surest friend.

To say the truth, Burns endeavoured in every honourable way to obtain
the notice of those who had influence in the land: he copied out the
best of his unpublished poems in a fair hand, and inserting them in
his printed volume, presented it to those who seemed slow to buy: he
rewarded the notice of this one with a song--the attentions of that
one with a sally of encomiastic verse: he left psalms of his own
composing in the manse when he feasted with a divine: he enclosed
"Holy Willie's Prayer," with an injunction to be grave, to one who
loved mirth: he sent the "Holy Fair" to one whom he invited to drink a
gill out of a mutchkin stoup, at Mauchline market; and on accidentally
meeting with Lord Daer, he immediately commemorated the event in a
sally of verse, of a strain more free and yet as flattering as ever
flowed from the lips of a court bard. While musing over the names of
those on whom fortune had smiled, yet who had neglected to smile on
him, he remembered that he had met Miss Alexander, a young beauty of
the west, in the walks of Ballochmyle; and he recorded the impression
which this fair vision made on him in a song of unequalled elegance
and melody. He had met her in the woods in July, on the 18th of
November he sent her the song, and reminded her of the circumstance
from which it arose, in a letter which it is evident he had laboured
to render polished and complimentary. The young lady took no notice of
either the song or the poet, though willing, it is said, to hear of
both now:--this seems to have been the last attempt he made on the
taste or the sympathies of the gentry of his native district: for on
the very day following we find him busy in making arrangements for his
departure to Jamaica.

For this step Burns had more than sufficient reasons: the profits of
his volume amounted to little more than enough to waft him across the
Atlantic: Wee Johnnie, though the edition was all sold, refused to
risk another on speculation: his friends, both Ballantynes and
Parkers, volunteered to relieve the printer's anxieties, but the poet
declined their bounty, and gloomily indented himself in a ship about
to sail from Greenock, and called on his muse to take farewell of
Caledonia, in the last