Rhymer, and a dozen of the hills and streams celebrated
in song. Nor did he fail to pay his respects, after returning through
Dunse, to Sir James Hall, of Dunglass, and his lady, and was much
pleased with the scenery of their romantic place. He was now joined by
a gentleman of the name of Kerr, and crossing the Tweed a second time,
penetrated into England, as far as the ancient town of Newcastle,
where he smiled at a facetious Northumbrian, who at dinner caused the
beef to be eaten before the broth was served, in obedience to an
ancient injunction, lest the hungry Scotch should come and snatch it.
On his way back he saw, what proved to be prophetic of his own
fortune--the roup of an unfortunate farmer's stock: he took out his
journal, and wrote with a troubled brow, "Rigid economy, and decent
industry, do you preserve me from being the principal _dramatis
personae_, in such a scene of horror." He extended his tour to
Carlisle, and from thence to the banks of the Nith, where he looked at
the farm of Ellisland, with the intention of trying once more his
fortune at the plough, should poetry and patronage fail him.

On his way through the West, Burns spent a few days with his mother at
Mossgiel: he had left her an unknown and an almost banished man: he
returned in fame and in sunshine, admired by all who aspired to be
thought tasteful or refined. He felt offended alike with the patrician
stateliness of Edinburgh and the plebeian servility of the husbandmen
of Ayrshire; and dreading the influence of the unlucky star which had
hitherto ruled his lot, he bought a pocket Milton, he said, for the
purpose of studying the intrepid independence and daring magnanimity,
and noble defiance of hardships, exhibited by Satan! In this mood he
reached Edinburgh--only to leave it again on three hurried excursions
into the Highlands. The route which he took and the sentiments which
the scenes awakened, are but faintly intimated in the memoranda which
he made. His first journey seems to have been performed in ill-humour;
at Stirling, his Jacobitism, provoked at seeing the ruined palace of
the Stuarts, broke out in some unloyal lines which he had the
indiscretion to write with a diamond on the window of a public inn. At
Carron, where he was refused a sight of the magnificent foundry, he
avenged himself in epigram. At Inverary he resented some real or
imaginary neglect on the part of his Grace of Argyll, by a stinging
lampoon; nor can he be sai