affecting sentiments and images of true religion, which are at once dear and
awful to his heart, were represented by Burns with all a poet's magic power.
Old and young, high and low, grave and gay, learned or ignorant, all were
alike delighted, agitated, transported. I was at that time resident in Galloway,
contiguous to Ayrshire, and I can well remember, how that even plough-boys
and maid-servants would have gladly parted with the wages which they earned
the most hardly, and which they wanted to purchase necessary clothing, if they
might but procure the works of Burns. A copy happened to be presented from
a gentleman in Ayrshire to a friend in my neighbourhood; he put it into my
hands, as a work containing some effusions of the most extraordinary genius.
I took it, rather that I might not disoblige the lender, than from any ardour of
curiosity or expectation. "An unlettered ploughman, a poet?" said I, with
contemptuous incredulity. It Mas on a Saturday evening. I opened the volume, by accident, while I was undressing to go to bed. I closed it not, till a late hour on the rising Sunday morn, after I had read over every syllable it contained. And,
Ex illo Corydon, Corydon est tempore nobis!―Virg. Ec. 2.
In the meantime, some few copies of these fascinating poems found their way to Edinburgh: and one was communicated to the late amiable and ingenious Dr Thomas Blacklock. There was, perhaps, never one among all mankind whom you might more truly have called an angel upon earth, than Dr Blacklock: he was guileless and innocent as a child, yet endowed with manly sagacity and penetration; his heart was a perpetual spring of overflowing benignity; his feelings were all tremblingly alive to the sense of the sublime, the beautiful, the tender, the pious, the virtuous:―poetry was to him the dear solace of perpetual blindness; cheerfulness, even to gaiety, was, notwithstanding that irremediable misfortune under which he laboured, long the predominant colour of his mind: in his latter years, when the gloom might otherwise have thickened around him, hope, faith, devotion the most fervent and sublime, exalted his mind to heaven, and made him maintain his wonted cheerfulness, in the expectation of a speedy dissolution.
This amiable man of genius read the poems of Burns with a nice perception, with a tremblingly impassioned feeling, of all their beauties. Amid that tumult of emotions, of benevolence, curiosity, admiration, which were thus excited in his bosom, he eagerly addressed some encouraging verses to the rustic bard; which conveying the praises of a poet, and a judge of poetical composition, were much more grateful to Burns than any applauses he had before received from others. It was Blacklock's invitation that finally determined him to abandon his first intentions of going abroad to the West Indies; and rather to repair to Edinburgh, with his book, in hopes there to find some powerful patron, and perhaps, to make his fortune by his poetry.
In the beginning of the winter 1786-87,[1] Burns came to Edinburgh; by Dr Blacklock he was received with the most flattering kindness; and Avas eagerly introduced to every person of taste and generosity among the good old man's friends. It was little that Blacklock had it in his power to do for a brother poet; but that little he did with a fond alacrity, and with a modest grace, which made it ten times more pleasing, and more effectually useful to him, in whose favour it was exercised, than even the very same services would have been from almost any other benefactor. Others soon officiously interposed to share with Blacklock, in the honour of patronising Burns. He had brought
- ↑ 8 November, 1786.
