hat they were many, his songs prove; for in
those days he wrote no love-songs on imaginary heroines. "Mary Morison,"
"Behind yon hills where Lugar flows," and "On Cessnock banks there lives
a lass," belong to this date; and there are three or four inspired by
Mary Campbell--"Highland Mary"--the object of by far the deepest passion
Burns ever knew, a passion which he has immortalised in the noblest of
his elegiacs, "To Mary in Heaven."

Farming had, of course, to engage his attention as well as love-making,
but he was less successful in the one than in the other. The first year
of Mossgiel, from buying bad seed, the second from a late harvest, he
lost half his crops. In these circumstances, he thought of proceeding to
the West Indies. Presently he had further cause for contemplating an
escape from his native land. Among his "flames" was one Jean Armour, the
daughter of a mason in Mauchline, where she was the reigning toast. Jean
found herself "as ladies wish to be that love their lords." Burns's
worldly circumstances were in a most miserable state when he was
informed of her condition, and he was staggered. He saw nothing for it
but to fly the country at once.

Meanwhile, meeting Jean, he yielded to her tears, and gave her a written
acknowledgment of marriage, valid according to Scottish law. Her
father's wrath was not appeased thereby. Burns, confessing himself
unequal to the support of a family, proposed to go immediately to
Jamaica in search of better fortunes. He offered, if this were rejected,
to abandon his farm, already a hopeless concern, and earn at least bread
for his wife and children as a day labourer at home. But nothing would
satisfy Armour, who, in his indignation, made his daughter destroy the
written evidence of her "marriage."

_III.--Burns at His Zenith_

Such was his poverty that he could not satisfy the parish officers; and
the only alternative that presented itself to him was America or a gaol.
A situation was obtained for him in Jamaica, but he had no money to pay
his passage. It occurred to him that the money might be raised by
publishing his poems; and a first edition, printed at Kilmarnock in
1786, brought him nearly L20, out of which he paid for a steerage
passage from the Clyde. "My chest was on the road to Greenock," he
tells; "I had composed the last song I should ever measure in Caledonia,
'The gloomy night is gathering fast,' when a letter from Dr. Blacklock
to a friend of mine ove