asantry of
Scotland, and which at the best are full of perilous temptation. But
ever since the time when, during his Irvine sojourn, he forsook the
paths of innocence, there is nothing in any of his love-affairs which
those who prize what was best in Burns would not willingly forget. If
here we allude to two such incidents, it is because they are too
intimately bound up with his life to be passed over in any account of
it. Gilbert says that while "one generally reigned paramount in
Robert's affections, he was frequently encountering other attractions,
which formed so many underplots in the drama of his love." This is
only too evident in those two loves which most closely touched his
destiny at this time.

From the time of his settlement at Mossgiel frequent allusions occur
in his letters and poems to flirtations with the belles of the
neighbouring village of Mauchline. Among all these Jean Armour, the
daughter of a respectable master-mason in that village, had the chief
place in his affections. All through 1785 their courtship had
continued, but early in 1786 a secret and irregular marriage, with (p. 027)
a written acknowledgment of it had to be effected. Then followed the
father's indignation that his daughter should be married to so wild
and worthless a man as Burns; compulsion of his daughter to give up
Burns, and to destroy the document which vouched their marriage;
Burns's despair driving him to the verge of insanity; the letting
loose by the Armours of the terrors of the law against him; his
skulking for a time in concealment; his resolve to emigrate to the
West Indies, and become a slave-driver. All these things were passing
in the spring months of 1786, and in September of the same year Jean
Armour became the mother of twin children.

It would be well if we might believe that the story of his betrothal
to Highland Mary was, as Lockhart seems to have thought, previous to
and independent of the incidents just mentioned. But the more recent
investigations of Mr. Scott Douglas and Dr. Chambers have made it too
painfully clear that it was almost at the very time when he was half
distracted by Jean Armour's desertion of him, and while he was writing
his broken-hearted _Lament_ over her conduct, that there occurred, as
an interlude, the episode of Mary Campbell. This simple and
sincere-hearted girl from Argyllshire was, Lockhart says, the object
of by far the deepest passion Burns ever knew. And Lockhart gives at
le