"Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me.
Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met, or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted."
Of the generous and true-hearted disposition of Clarinda, we shall possess a juster idea when we reflect that Burns was not at this time any longer the lion of the day. The first warm flush of aristocratic flattery was over. The souls of the great and fashionable had subsided into their native icy contempt of peasant merit. "What he had seen and endured in Edinburgh," says honest Allan Cunningham, "during his second visit, admonished him regarding the reed on which he leaned, when he hoped for a place of profit and honor from the aristocracy on account of his genius. On his first appearance the doors of the nobility opened spontaneously, 'on golden hinges turning,' and he ate spiced meats, and drank rare wines, interchanging nods and smiles 'with high dukes and mighty earls.' A colder reception awaited his second coming: the doors of lords and ladies opened with a tardy courtesy; he was received with a cold and measured stateliness, was seldom requested to stop, seldom to repeat his visit; and one of his companions used to relate with what indignant feelings the poet recounted his fruitless calls and his uncordial receptions in the good town of Edinburgh."
It is related, that on one occasion being invited to dine at a nobleman's, he went, and, to his astonishment, found that he was not to dine with the guests, but with the butler! After dinner he was sent for into the dining-room; and a chair being set for him near the bottom of the table, he was desired to sing a song. Restraining his indignation within the bounds of outward appearance, Burns complied, and he sung,
'Is there, for honest poverty,
Wha hangs his head and a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
And dare be poor for a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
A man's a man for a' that!
"You see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,
(Pointing to the nobleman at the head of the table)
Who struts, and stares, and a' that,
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
A man's a man for a' that."
As the last word of these stanzas issued from his lips, he rose, and not deigning the company a syllable of adieu, marched out of the room and the house.
Burns himself expressed in some lines to Clarinda all this at this very moment:
"In vain would Prudence, with her decent sneer,
Point to the censuring world and bid me fear:
Above that world on wings of love I rise,
I know its worst, and can that worst despise.
Wronged, slandered, shunned, unpitied, unredressed,
The mocked quotation of the scorners' jest,
Let Prudence direst bodements on me fall—
Clarinda, rich reward! o'erpays them all."
But Clarinda could never be Burns's. To say the least of it, his attachment to her was one of the least defensible things of his life. Jean Armour had now the most inviolable claims upon him, and, in fact, as soon as his leg was well enough, he tore himself from the fascinations of Clarinda's society, went to Mauchline, and married Jean.
But we must not allow ourselves to follow him till we have taken a peep at the house of Clarinda at this time, where Burns used to visit her, and where, no doubt, he took his melancholy farewell. This house is in Potter's Row; now old and dingy-looking, but evidently having been at one time a superior residence. It is a house memorable on more accounts than one, having been occupied by General Monk while his army lay in Edinburgh, and the passage which goes under it to an interior court is still called the General's Entrance. To the street the house presents four gabled windows in the upper story, on the tops of which stand a rose, thistle, fleur-de-lis, with a second rose or thistle to make out the four. The place is now inhabited by the poorest people; and on a little shop window in front is written up, "Rags and Metals bought!" The flat which was occupied by Clarinda is now divided into two very poor tenements. In the room which used to be Clarinda's sitting-room, a poor woman was at once busy with her work and two or three very little children. My companion told her that her house had been once frequented by a great man; she said, "Oh yes, General Monk." When he, however, added that he was then thinking of Robert Burns, this was news to her, and seemed to give to the wretched abode quite a charm in her eyes.