o' glee;
He wad na wrang'd the vera deil,
That's owre the sea.

Fareweel, my rhyme-composing billie!
Your native soil was right ill-willie; [unkind]
But may ye flourish like a lily,
Now bonnilie!
I'll toast ye in my hindmost gillie, [last gill]
Tho' owre the sea!

3. Edinburgh

On the twenty-seventh of November, 1786, mounted on a borrowed pony,
Burns set out for Edinburgh. He seems to have arrived there without
definite plans, for, after having found lodging with his old friend
Richmond, he spent the first few days strolling about the city. At
home Burns had been an enthusiastic freemason, and it was through a
masonic friend, Mr. James Dalrymple of Orangefield, near Ayr, that he
was introduced to Edinburgh society. A decade or two earlier, that
society, under the leadership of men like Adam Smith and David Hume
had reached a high degree of intellectual distinction. A decade or two
later, under Sir Walter Scott and the Reviewers it was again to be in
some measure, if for the last time, a rival to London as a literary
center. But when Burns visited it there was a kind of interregnum,
and, little though he or they guessed it, none of the celebrities he
met possessed genius comparable to his own. In a very few weeks it was
evident that he was to be the lion of the season. By December
thirteenth he is writing to a friend at Ayr:

"I have found a worthy warm friend in Mr. Dalrymple, of
Orangefield, who introduced me to Lord Glencairn, a man whose
worth and brotherly kindness to me I shall remember when time
shall be no more. By his interest it is passed in the Caledonian
Hunt, and entered in their books, that they are to take each a
copy of the second edition [of the poems], for which they are to
pay one guinea. I have been introduced to a good many of the
Noblesse, but my avowed patrons and patronesses are the Duchess of
Gordon, the Countess of Glencairn, with my Lord and Lady
Betty--the Dean of Faculty [Honorable Henry Erskine]--Sir John
Whitefoord. I have likewise warm friends among the literati;
Professors [Dugald] Stewart, Blair, and Mr. Mackenzie--the Man of
Feeling."

Through Glencairn he met Creech the book-seller, with whom he
arranged for his second edition, and through the patrons he mentions
and the Edinburgh freemasons, among wh