All this time he had been busy correcting the proofs of his poems; and now that he was already assured the edition would be a success, he began to think seriously of the future and of settling down again as farmer. The appellation of Scottish Bard, he confessed to Mrs. Dunlop, was his highest pride; to continue to deserve it, his most exalted ambition. He had no dearer aim than to be able to make 'leisurely pilgrimages through Caledonia, to sit on the fields of her battles, to wander on the romantic banks of her rivers, and to muse by the stately towers or venerable ruins, once the honoured abodes of her heroes.' But that was a Utopian dream; he had dallied long enough with life, and now it was time he should be in earnest. 'I have a fond, an aged mother to care for; and some other bosom ties perhaps equally tender.'

Perhaps, had Burns received before he left Edinburgh the £500 which Creech ultimately paid him for the Edinburgh Edition, he might have gone straight to a farm in the south country, and taken up what he considered the serious business of life. He himself, about this time, estimated that he would clear nearly £300 by authorship, and with that sum he intended to return to farming. Mr. Miller of Dalswinton had expressed a wish to have Burns as tenant of one of his farms, and the poet had been already approached on the subject. We also gather from almost every letter written just before the publication of his poems, that he contemplated an immediate return 'to his shades.' However, when the Edinburgh Edition came out, April 21, 1787, the poet found that it would be a considerable time before the whole profits accruing from publication could be paid over to him. Indeed, there was certainly an unnecessary delay on Creech's part in making a settlement. The first instalment of profits was not sufficient for leasing and stocking a farm; and during the months that elapsed before the whole profits were in his hands, Burns made several tours through the Borders and Highlands of Scotland. This was certainly one of his dearest aims; but these tours were undertaken somewhat under compulsion, and we doubt not he would much more gladly have gone straight back to farm-life, and kept these leisurely pilgrimages to a more convenient season. One is not in a mood for dreaming on battlefields, or wandering in a reverie by romantic rivers, when the future is unsettled and life is for the time being without an aim. There is something of mystery and melancholy hanging about these peregrinations, and the cause, it seems to us, is not far to seek. These months are months of waiting and wearying; he is unsettled, oftentimes moody and despondent; his bursts of gaiety appear forced, and his muse is well-nigh barren. In the circumstances, no doubt it was the best thing he could do, to gratify his long-cherished desire of seeing these places in his native country, whose names were enshrined in song or story. But how much more pleasant—and more profitable both to the poet himself and the country he loved—had these journeys been made under more favourable conditions!

The past also as much as the future weighed on the poet's mind. His days had been so fully occupied in Edinburgh that he had little leisure to think on some dark and dramatic episodes of Mauchline and Kilmarnock; but now in his wanderings he has time not only to think but to brood; and we may be sure the face of Bonnie Jean haunted him in dreams, and that his heart heard again and again the plaintive voices of little children. In several of his letters now we detect a tone of bitterness, in which we suspect there is more of remorse than of resentment with the world. He certainly was disappointed that Creech could not pay him in full, but he must have been gratified with the reception his poems had got. The list of subscribers ran to thirty-eight pages, and was representative of every class in Scotland. In the words of Cunningham: 'All that coterie influence and individual exertion—all that the noblest and humblest could do, was done to aid in giving it a kind reception. Creech, too, had announced it through the booksellers of the land, and it was soon diffused over the country, over the colonies, and wherever the language was spoken. The literary men of the South seemed even to fly to a height beyond those of the North. Some hesitated not to call him the Northern Shakspeare.'

This surely was a great achievement for one who, a few months previously, had been skulking from covert to covert to escape the terrors of a jail. He had hardly dared to hope for the commendation of the Edinburgh critics, yet he had been received by the best society of the capital; his genius had been recognised by the highest literary authorities of Scotland; and now the second edition of his poems was published under auspices that gave it the character of a national book.

If the poems this volume contained established fully and finally the reputation of the poet, the subscription list was a no less substantial proof of a generous and enthusiastic appreciation of his genius on the part of his countrymen. And that Burns must have recognised. A man of his sound common sense could not have expected more.

CHAPTER VI
BURNS'S TOURS

The Edinburgh Edition having now been published, there was no reason for the poet to prolong his stay in the city. It was only after being disappointed of a second Kilmarnock Edition of his poems that he had come to try his fortunes in the capital; and now that his hopes of a fuller edition and a wider field had been realised, the purpose of his visit was accomplished, and there was no need to fritter his time away in idleness.

In a letter to Lord Buchan, Burns had doubted the prudence of a penniless poet faring forth to see the sights of his native land. But circumstances have changed. With the assured prospect of the financial success of his second venture, he felt himself in a position to gratify the dearest wish of his heart and to fire his muse at Scottish story and Scottish scenes. Moreover, as has been said, it would be some time before Creech could come to a final settlement of accounts with the poet, and he may have deemed that the interval would be profitably spent in travel. His travelling companion on his first tour was a Mr. Robert Ainslie, a young gentleman of good education and some natural ability, with whom he left Edinburgh on the 5th May, a fortnight after the publication of his poems. We are told that the poet, just before he mounted his horse, received a letter from Dr. Blair, which, having partly read, he crumpled up and angrily thrust into his pocket. A perusal of the letter will explain, if it does not go far to justify, the poet's irritation. It is a sleek, superior production, with the tone of a temperance tract, and the stilted diction of a dominie. The doctor is in it one of those well-meaning, meddlesome men, lavish of academic advice. Burns resented moral prescriptions at all times—more especially from one whose knowledge of men was severely scholastic; and we can well imagine that he quitted Edinburgh in no amiable mood.