ng the well-known Glenriddel
Manuscript. Had not one already become convinced of the fact from
internal evidence, it would be clear enough from this prose volume
that Burns's letters were often as much works of art to him as his
poems. This is of supreme importance in weighing the epistolary
evidence for his character and conduct. Even when his words seem to be
the direct outpourings of his feelings--of love, of friendship, of
gratitude, of melancholy, of devotion, of scorn--a comparative
examination will show that in prose as much as in verse we are dealing
with the work of a conscious artist, enamored of telling expression,
aware of his reader, and anything but the naif utterer of
unsophisticated emotion. To recall this will save us from much
perplexity in the interpretation of his words, and will clear up many
an apparent contradiction in his evidence about himself.

Burns was never very sanguine about success on the Ellisland farm. By
the end of the summer of 1789 he concluded that he could not depend on
it, determined to turn it into a dairy farm to be conducted mainly by
his wife and sisters, and took up the work in the excise for which he
had prepared himself. He had charge of a large district of ten
parishes, and had to ride some two hundred miles a week in all
weathers. With the work he still did on the farm one can see that he
was more than fully employed, and need not wonder that there was
little time for poetry. Yet these years at Ellisland were on the whole
happy years for himself and his family; he found time for pleasant
intercourse with some of his neighbors, for a good deal of
letter-writing, for some interest in politics, and for the
establishing, with Colonel Riddel, of a small neighborhood library. As
an excise officer he seems to have been conscientious and efficient,
though at times, in the case of poor offenders, he tempered justice
with mercy. Ultimately, despairing of making the farm pay and hoping
for promotion in the government service, he gave up his lease, sold
his stock, and in the autumn of 1791 moved to Dumfries, where he was
given a district which did not involve keeping a horse, and which paid
him about seventy pounds a year. Thus ended the last of Burns's
disastrous attempts to make a living from the soil.

5. Dumfries

The house in which the Burnses with their three sons first lived in
Dumfries was a three-roomed cottage in the Wee Vennel, now Banks
Street. Though his income was