I
perceived any unfavourable effect which they left on his mind. He
retained the same simplicity which had struck me so forcibly when
first I saw him in the country, nor did he seem to feel any additional
self-importance from the number and rank of his new acquaintance. He
walked with me in spring, early in the morning, to the Braid Hills,
when he charmed me still more by his private conversation than he had
ever done in company. He was passionately fond of the beauties of
nature; and he once told me, when I was admiring a distant prospect in
one of our morning walks, that the sight of so many smoking cottages
gave a pleasure to his mind which none could understand who had (p. 052)
not witnessed, like himself, the happiness and worth which they
contained.... The idea which his conversation conveyed of the powers
of his mind exceeded, if possible, that which is suggested by his
writings. All his faculties were, as far as I could judge, equally
vigorous, and his predilection for poetry was rather the result of his
own enthusiastic and impassioned temper, than of a genius exclusively
adapted to that species of composition. I should have pronounced him
fitted to excel in whatever walk of ambition he had chosen.... The
remarks he made on the characters of men were shrewd and pointed,
though frequently inclining too much to sarcasm. His praise of those
he loved was sometimes indiscriminate and extravagant.... His wit was
ready, and always impressed with the marks of a vigorous understanding;
but, to my taste, not often pleasing or happy."

While the learned of his own day were measuring him thus coolly, and
forming their critical estimates of him, youths of the younger
generation were regarding him with far other eyes. Of Jeffrey, when a
lad in his teens, it is recorded that one day in the winter of
1786-87, as he stood on the High Street of Edinburgh, staring at a man
whose appearance struck him, a person at a shop door tapped him on the
shoulder and said, "Aye, laddie, ye may weel look at that man. That's
Robbie Burns." This was the young critic's first and last look at the
poet of his country.

But the most interesting of all the reminiscences of Burns, during his
Edinburgh visit, or indeed, during any other time, was the day when
young Walter Scott met him, and received from him that one look of
approbation.

This is the account of that meeting which Scott himself gave to (p. 053)
Lockhart: "As for Burns, I may