III.--Burns at His Zenith
Such was his poverty that he could not satisfy the parish officers; and the only alternative that presented itself to him was America or a gaol. A situation was obtained for him in Jamaica, but he had no money to pay his passage. It occurred to him that the money might be raised by publishing his poems; and a first edition, printed at Kilmarnock in 1786, brought him nearly £20, out of which he paid for a steerage passage from the Clyde. "My chest was on the road to Greenock," he tells; "I had composed the last song I should ever measure in Caledonia, 'The gloomy night is gathering fast,' when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects to my poetic ambition."
Blacklock, the blind divine upon whom Johnson "looked with reverence," had read the newly published poems, and it was his praise of them that directly prevented Burns from expatriating himself. "His opinion that I would meet with encouragement in Edinburgh fired me so much that away I posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a single letter of introduction. The baneful star that had so long shed its blasting influence in my zenith for once made a revolution to the nadir." In Edinburgh, which Burns reached in November, 1786, he was introduced by Blacklock to all the literati, and within a fortnight he was writing to a friend: "I am in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas à Kempis or John Bunyan; and you may expect to see my birthday inscribed among the wonderful events in the Poor Robin and Aberdeen Almanacks, along with the Black Monday and the Battle of Bothwell Bridge."
But he bore his honours in a manner worthy of himself. "The attentions he received," says Dugald Stewart, "from all ranks and descriptions of persons were such as would have turned any head but his own. I cannot say that I could perceive any unfavourable effect which they left on his mind." Scott, then a lad of fifteen, met him, and wrote a vivid description of his appearance:
"His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its effect, perhaps, from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's picture, but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished as if seen in perspective. I think his countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. I would have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school--i.e., none of your modern agriculturists, who keep labourers for their drudgery, but the douce gudeman who held his own plough. There was a strong expression of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, which glowed (I say literally glowed) when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time. His conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest presumption. He was like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the laird. I do not speak in malam partem when I say I never saw a man in company with his superiors in station and information more perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment. I was told that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always with a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their attention particularly. I have heard the late Duchess of Gordon remark this."
It needs no effort of imagination to conceive what the sensations of an isolated set of scholars, almost all either clergymen or professors, must have been in the presence of this big-boned, brawny stranger, with his great flashing eyes, who had forced his way among them from the plough-tail at a single stride; and it will always be a reflection in their honour that they suffered no pedantic prejudices to interfere with their reception of the poet.
Shortly after his arrival he arranged with Creech, the chief bookseller in Edinburgh, to undertake a second edition of his poems. This was published in March, 1787, the subscribers numbering over 1,500. Out of money thus derived, he provided a tombstone for the neglected grave of Robert Fergusson, his "elder brother in the muses," in the Canongate churchyard. Then he decided to visit some of the classic scenes of Scottish history and romance. He had as yet seen but a small part of his own country, and this by no means among the most interesting, until, indeed, his own poetry made it equal, on that score, to any other. Various tours were, in fact, undertaken, the chief being, however, in the Border district and in the Highlands. Usually he returned to Edinburgh, partly to be near his jovial intimates, and partly because, after the excitement attending his first appearance in the capital, he found himself incapable of settling down contentedly in the humble circle at Mossgiel.
IV.--The Clarinda Romance
During the winter of 1787--1788, he had a little romance with Mrs. McLehose, the beautiful widow to whom he addressed the song, "Clarinda, mistress of my soul," and a series of letters which present more instances of bad taste, bombastic language, and fulsome sentiment than could be produced from all his writings besides. It was the same lady who inspired the lines which furnished Byron with a motto, and Scott declared to be "worth a thousand romances ":
Had we never loved so kindly
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met--or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.