From Edinburgh the two journeyed by the Lammermuirs to Berrywell, near Duns, where the Ainslie family lived. On the Sunday he attended church with the Ainslies, where the minister, Dr. Bowmaker, preached a sermon against obstinate sinners. 'I am found out,' the poet remarked, 'wherever I go.' From Duns they proceeded to Coldstream, where, having crossed the Tweed, Burns first set foot on English ground. Here it was that, with bared head, he knelt and prayed for a blessing on Scotland, reciting with the deepest devotion the two concluding verses of The Cotter's Saturday Night.
The next place visited was Kelso, where they admired the old abbey, and went to see Roxburgh Castle, thence to Jedburgh, where he met a Miss Hope and a Miss Lindsay, the latter of whom 'thawed his heart into melting pleasure after being so long frozen up in the Greenland Bay of indifference amid the noise and nonsense of Edinburgh.' When he left this romantic city his thoughts were not of the honour its citizens had done him, but of Jed's crystal stream and sylvan banks, and, above all, of Miss Lindsay, who brings him to the verge of verse. Thereafter he visited Kelso, Melrose, and Selkirk, and after spending about three weeks seeing all that was to be seen in this beautiful country-side, he set off with a Mr. Ker and a Mr. Hood on a visit to England. In this visit he went as far as Newcastle, returning by way of Hexham and Carlisle. After spending a day here he proceeded to Annan, and thence to Dumfries. Whilst in the Nithsdale district he took the opportunity of visiting Dalswinton and inspecting the unoccupied farms; but he did not immediately close with Mr. Miller's generous offer of a four-nineteen years' lease on his own terms. From Nithsdale he turned again to his native Ayrshire, arriving at Mossgiel in the beginning of June, after an absence from home of six eventful months.
We can hardly imagine what this home-coming would be like. The Burnses were typical Scots in their undemonstrative ways; but this was a great occasion, and tradition has it that his mother allowed her feeling so far to overcome her natural reticence that she met him at the threshold with the exclamation, 'O Robert!' He had left home almost unknown, and had returned with a name that was known and honoured from end to end of his native land. He had left in the direst poverty, and haunted with the terrors of a jail, now he came back with his fortune assured; if not actually rich, at least with more money due to him than the family had ever dreamed of possessing. The mother's excess of feeling on such an occasion as this may be easily understood and excused.
Of this Border tour Burns kept a scrappy journal, but he was more concerned in jotting down the names and characteristics of those with whom he forgathered than of letting himself out in snatches of song. He makes shrewd remarks by the way on farms and farming, on the washing and shearing of sheep, but the only verse he attempted was his Epistle to Creech. He who had longed to sit and muse on 'those once hard-contested fields' did not go out of his way to look on Ancrum Moor or Philiphaugh, nor do we read of him musing pensive in Yarrow.
However, we are not to regard these days as altogether barren. The poet was gathering impressions which would come forth in song at some future time. 'Neither the fine scenery nor the lovely women,' Cunningham regrets, 'produced any serious effect on his muse.' This is a rash statement. Poets do not sow and reap at the same time—not even Burns. If his friends were disappointed at what they considered the sterility of his muse on this occasion, the fault did not lie with the poet, but with their absurd expectations. It may be as well to point out here that the greatest harm Edinburgh did to Burns was that it gathered round him a number of impatient and injudicious admirers who could not understand that poetry was not to be forced. The burst of poetry that practically filled the Kilmarnock Edition came after a seven years' growth of inspiration; but after his first visit to Edinburgh he was never allowed to rest. It was expected that he should write whenever a subject was suggested, or burst into verse at the first glimpse of a lovely landscape. Every friend was ready with advice as to how and what he should write, and quite as ready, the poet unfortunately knew, to criticise afterwards. The poetry of the Mossgiel period had come from him spontaneously. He had flung off impressions in verse fearlessly, without pausing to consider how his work would be appreciated by this one or denounced by that; and was true to himself. Now he knew that every verse he wrote would be read by many eyes, studied by many minds; some would scent heresy, others would spot Jacobitism, or worse, freedom; some would suspect his morality, others would deplore his Scots tongue; all would criticise favourably or adversely his poetic expression. It has to be kept in mind, too, that Burns at this time was in no mood for writing poetry. His mind was not at ease; and after his long spell of inspiration and the fatiguing distractions of Edinburgh, it was hardly to be wondered at that brain and body were alike in need of rest. The most natural rest would have been a return direct to the labours of the farm. That, however, was denied him, and the period of his journeyings was little else than a season of unsettlement and suspense.
Burns only stayed a few days at home, and then set off on a tour to the West Highlands, a tour of which we know little or nothing. Perhaps this was merely a pilgrimage to the grave of Highland Mary. We do not know, and need not curiously inquire. Burns, as has been already remarked, kept sacred his love for this generous-hearted maiden, hidden away in his own heart, and the whole story is a beautiful mystery. We do know that before he left he visited the Armours, and was disgusted with the changed attitude of the family towards himself. 'If anything had been wanting,' he wrote to Mr. James Smith, 'to disgust me completely at Armour's family, their mean, servile compliance would have done it.' To his friend, William Nicol, he wrote in the same strain. 'I never, my friend, thought mankind very capable of anything generous; but the stateliness of the patricians in Edinburgh, and the servility of my plebeian brethren (who perhaps formerly eyed me askance) since I returned home, have nearly put me out of conceit altogether with my species.'
This shows Burns in no very enviable frame of mind; but the cause is obvious. He is as yet unsettled in life, and now that he has met again his Bonnie Jean, and seen his children, he is more than ever dissatisfied with aimless roving. 'I have yet fixed on nothing with respect to the serious business of life. I am just as usual a rhyming, mason-making, raking, aimless, idle fellow. However, I shall somewhere have a farm soon. I was going to say a wife too, but that must never be my blessed lot.'
To his own folks he was nothing but kindness, ready to share with them his uttermost farthing, and to have them share in the glory that was his; but he was at enmity with himself, and at war with the world. Like Hamlet, who felt keenly, but was incapable of action, he saw that 'the times were out of joint'; circumstances were too strong for him. Almost the only record we have of this tour is a vicious epigram on what he considered the flunkeyism of Inveraray. Nor are we in the least astonished to hear that on the homeward route he spent a night in dancing and boisterous revel, ushering in the day with a kind of burlesque of pagan sun-worship. This was simply a reaction from his gloom and despondency; he sought to forget himself in reckless conviviality.
About the end of July we find him back again in Mauchline, and on the 25th May he set out on a Highland tour along with his friend William Nicol, one of the masters of the High School. Of this man Dr. Currie remarks that he rose by the strength of his talents, and fell by the strength of his passions. Burns was perfectly well aware of the passionate and quarrelsome nature of the man. He compared himself with such a companion to one travelling with a loaded blunderbuss at full-cock; and in his epigrammatic way he said of him to Mr. Walker, 'His mind is like his body; he has a confounded, strong, in-kneed sort of a soul.' The man, however, had some good qualities. He had a warm heart; never forgot the friends of his early years, and he hated vehemently low jealousy and cunning. These were qualities that would appeal strongly to Burns, and on account of which much would be forgiven. Still we cannot think that the poet was happy in his companion; nor was he yet happy in himself. Otherwise the Highland tour might have been more interesting, certainly much more profitable to the poet in its results, than it actually proved.
In his diary of this tour, as in his diary of the Border tour, there is much more of shrewd remark on men and things than of poetical jottings. The fact is, poetry is not to be collected in jottings, nor is inspiration to be culled in catalogue cuttings; and if many of his friends were again disappointed in the immediate poetical results of this holiday, it only shows how little they understood the comings and goings of inspiration. Those, however, who read his notes and reflections carefully and intelligently are bound to notice how much more than a mere verse-maker Burns was. This was the journal of a man of strong, sound sense and keen observation. It has also to be recognised that Burns was at his weakest when he attempted to describe scenery for mere scenery's sake. His gift did not lie that way. His landscapes, rich in colour and deftly drawn though they be, are always the mere backgrounds of his pictures. They are impressionistic sketches, the setting and the complement of something of human interest in incident or feeling.