Next morning he resumed his journey, breakfasting at Carnwath, and reaching Edinburgh in the evening. He had come, as he tells us, without a letter of introduction in his pocket, and he took up his abode with John Richmond in Baxter's Close, off the Lawnmarket. He had known Richmond when he was a clerk with Gavin Hamilton, and had kept up a correspondence with him ever since he had left Mauchline. The lodging was a humble enough one, the rent being only three shillings a week; but here Burns lodged all the time he was in Edinburgh, and it was hither he returned from visiting the houses of the rich and great, to share a bed with his friend and companion of many a merry meeting at Mauchline.
It would be vain to attempt to describe Burns's feelings during those first few days in Edinburgh. He had never before been in a larger town than Kilmarnock or Ayr; and now he walked the streets of Scotland's capital, to him full of history and instinct with the associations of centuries. This was really the heart of Scotland, the home of heroes who fought and fell for their country, 'the abode of kings of other years.' His sentimental attachment to Jacobitism became more pronounced as he looked on Holyrood. For Burns, a representative of the strength and weakness of his countrymen, was no less representative of Scotland's sons in his chivalrous pity for the fate of Queen Mary and his romantic loyalty to the gallant Prince Charlie. His poetical espousal of the cause of the luckless Stuarts was purely a matter of sentiment, a kind of pious pity that had little to do with reason; and in this he was typical of his countrymen even of the present day, who are loyal to the house of Stuart in song, and in life are loyal subjects of their Queen.
We are told, and we can well believe that for the first few days of his stay he wandered about, looking down from Arthur's Seat, gazing at the Castle, or contemplating the windows of the booksellers' shops. We know that he made a special pilgrimage to the grave of Fergusson, and that in a letter, dated February 6, 1787, he applied to the honourable bailies of Canongate, Edinburgh, for permission 'to lay a simple stone over his revered ashes'; which petition was duly considered and graciously granted. The stone was afterwards erected, with the simple inscription, 'Here lies Robert Fergusson, Poet. Born September 5th, 1751; died 16th October, 1774.
No sculptured marble here, nor pompous lay,
"No storied urn nor animated bust";
This simple stone directs pale Scotia's way
To pour her sorrow o'er her poet's dust.'
On the reverse side is recorded the fact that the stone was erected by Robert Burns, and that the ground was to remain for ever sacred to the memory of Robert Fergusson.
It is related, too, that he visited Ramsay's house, and that he bared his head when he entered. Burns over and over again, both in prose and verse, turned to these two names with a kind of fetich worship, that it is difficult to understand. He must have known that, as a poet, he was immeasurably superior to both. It may have been that their writings first opened his eyes to the possibilities of the Scots tongue in lyrical and descriptive poetry; and there was something also which appealed to him in the wretched life of Fergusson.
'O thou, my elder brother in misfortune,
By far my elder brother in the Muses.'
His elder brother indeed by some six years! But there is more of reverence than sound judgment in his estimate of either Ramsay or Fergusson.
Burns, however, had come to Edinburgh with a fixed purpose in view, and it would not do to waste his time mooning about the streets. On December 7 we find him writing to Gavin Hamilton, half seriously, half jokingly: 'I am in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas à Kempis or John Bunyan, and you may expect henceforth to see my birthday inserted among the wonderful events in the Poor Robins' and Aberdeen Almanacs along with the Black Monday and the Battle of Bothwell Bridge. My Lord Glencairn and the Dean of Faculty, Mr. H. Erskine, have taken me under their wing, and by all probability I shall soon be the tenth worthy and the eighth wise man of the world. Through my lord's influence it is inserted in the records of the Caledonian Hunt that they universally one and all subscribe for the second edition.'
This letter shows that Burns had already been taken up, as the phrase goes, by the élite of Edinburgh; and it shows also and quite as clearly in the tone of quiet banter, that he was little likely to lose his head by the notice taken of him. To the Earl of Glencairn, mentioned in it, he had been introduced probably by Mr. Dalrymple of Orangefield, whom he knew both as a brother-mason and a brother-poet. The Earl had already seen the Kilmarnock Edition of the poems, and now he not only introduced Burns to William Creech, the leading publisher in Edinburgh, but he got the members of the Caledonian Hunt to become subscribers for a second edition of the poems. To Erskine he had been introduced at a meeting of the Canongate Kilwinning Lodge of Freemasons; and assuredly there was no man living more likely to exert himself in the interests of a genius like Burns.