their debauchery.[1] Even in the country, men of this sort had begun to fasten on him, and to seduce him to embellish the gross pleasures of their looser hours, with the charms of his wit and fancy. And yet I have been informed by Mr Arthur Bruce, a gentleman of great worth and discernment, to whom Burns was, in his earlier days, well known, that he had, in those times, seen the poet steadily resist such solicitations and allurements to excess in convivial enjoyment, as scarcely any other could have withstood. But the enticements of pleasure too often unman our virtuous resolution, even while we wear the air of rejecting them with a stern brow; we resist, and resist, and resist; but, at last, suddenly turn and passionately embrace the enchantress. The bucks of Edinburgh accomplished, in regard to Burns, that in which the boors of Ayrshire had failed. After residing some months in Edinburgh, he began to estrange himself, not altogether, but in some measure, from the society of his graver friends. Too many of his hours were now spent at the tables of persons who delighted to urge conviviality to drunkenness in the tavern, or even in less commendable society. He suffered himself to be surrounded by a race of miserable beings, who were proud to tell that they had been in company with Burns; and had seen Burns as loose and as foolish as themselves. He was not yet irrecoverably lost to temperance and moderation, but he was already almost too much captivated with these wanton revels, to be ever more won back to a faithful attachment to their more sober charms. He now also began to contract something of new arrogance in conversation. Accustomed to be, among his favourite associates, what is vulgarly but expressively called "the cock of the company," he could scarcely refrain from indulging in similar freedom, and dictatorial decision of talk, even in the presence of persons who could less patiently endure his presumption.[2]
Thus passed two winters, and an intervening summer, of the life of Burns. The subscription edition of his poems, in the meantime, appeared; and, although not enlarged beyond that which came from the Kilmarnock press, by any new pieces of eminent merit, did not fail to give entire satisfaction to the subscribers. He at one time, during this period, accompanied, for a few weeks, into Berwickshire, Robert Ainslie, Esq. [Writer to the Signet], a gentleman of the purest and most correct manners,[3] who was accustomed sometimes to soothe the toils of a laborious profession, by an occasional converse with polite litera-
- ↑ Barns came to Edinburgh at an unfortunate time a time of greater licentiousness, perhaps, in all the capitals of Europe, and this northern one among the rest, than had been known for a long period. Men of the best education and rank at this time drank like the Scandinavian barbarians of olden time; and in general there was little refinement in the amusements of any class of the community.
- ↑ With companions and friends, who claimed no superiority in anything, the sensitive mind of Burns must have been at its best and happiest, because completely at its ease, and free movement given to the play of all its feelings and faculties; and, in such companies, we cannot but believe that his wonderful conversational powers shone forth in their most various splendour. He must have given vent there to a thousand familiar fancies, in all their freedom and all their force; which, in the fastidious society of high life, his imagination must have been too much fettered even to conceive; and which, had they flowed from his lips, would either not have been understood, or would have given offence to that delicacy of breeding which is often hurt even by the best manners of those whose manners are all of nature's teaching, and unsubjected to the salutary restraints of artificial life. Indeed, we know that Burns sometimes burst suddenly and alarmingly the restraints of "select society;" and that, on one occasion, he called a'clergyman an idiot for misquot'ng "Gray's Elegy" a truth that ought not to have been promulgated in presence of the parson, especially at so early a meal as breakfast; and he confesses in his most confidential letters, though indeed he was then writing with some bitterness, that he never had been truly and entirely happy at rich men's feasts. If so, then, never could he have displayed there his genius in full power and lustre. Professor Wilson, in " Land of Burns."
- ↑ Mr Ainslie, who died in 1838, was the author of "A Father's Gift to his Children," and "Reasons for the Hope that is in us," both treating of the evidences of the Christian religion.
