sh Shakspeare. No
one rejoiced more in his success and his fame, than the matron of
Mossgiel.

Other matters than his poems and socialities claimed the attention of
Burns in Edinburgh. He had a hearty relish for the joyous genius of
Allan Ramsay; he traced out his residences, and rejoiced to think that
while he stood in the shop of his own bookseller, Creech, the same
floor had been trod by the feet of his great forerunner. He visited,
too, the lowly grave of the unfortunate Robert Fergusson; and it must
be recorded to the shame of the magistrates of Edinburgh, that they
allowed him to erect a headstone to his memory, and to the scandal of
Scotland, that in such a memorial he had not been anticipated. He
seems not to have regarded the graves of scholars or philosophers; and
he trod the pavements where the warlike princes and nobles had walked
without any emotion. He loved, however, to see places celebrated in
Scottish song, and fields where battles for the independence of his
country had been stricken; and, with money in his pocket which his
poems had produced, and with a letter from a witty but weak man, Lord
Buchan, instructing him to pull birks on the Yarrow, broom on the
Cowden-knowes, and not to neglect to admire the ruins of Drybrugh
Abbey, Burns set out on a border tour, accompanied by Robert Ainslie,
of Berrywell. As the poet had talked of returning to the plough, Dr.
Blair imagined that he was on his way back to the furrowed field, and
wrote him a handsome farewell, saying he was leaving Edinburgh with a
character which had survived many temptations; with a name which would
be placed with the Ramsays and the Fergussons, and with the hopes of
all, that, in a second volume, on which his fate as a poet would very
much depend, he might rise yet higher in merit and in fame. Burns, who
received this communication when laying his leg over the saddle to be
gone, is said to have muttered, "Ay, but a man's first book is
sometimes like his first babe, healthier and stronger than those which
follow."

On the 6th of May, 1787, Burns reached Berrywell: he recorded of the
laird, that he was clear-headed, and of Miss Ainslie, that she was
amiable and handsome--of Dudgeon, the author of "The Maid that tends
the Goats," that he had penetration and modesty, and of the preacher,
Bowmaker, that he was a man of strong lungs and vigorous remark. On
crossing the Tweed at Coldstream he took off his hat, and kneeling
down, repeated a