As

a certain wild logical talent, and a strength of thought, something like the rudiments of good sense, made me generally a welcome guest. So 'tis no great wonder that always 'where two or three were met together, there was I in the midst of them." Further, he mentions that as he had no interest in his labours except when he was "in actual exercise," he spent the evenings in "the way after his own heart"; and that was after the usual manner of country lads, to whom, he tells us, "the ardent hope, the stolen interview, the tender farewell, are the greatest and most delicious part of their enjoyments." for the poet's own particular heart, it was, he says, "completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up with some goddess or other"; "and," he continues, with somewhat halting grammar, "like every other warfare in this world, I was sometimes crowned with success, and sometimes mortified with defeat." All this is fully corroborated by Gilbert, who states that his brother was constantly "the victim of some fair enslaver," and also that when once he had selected anyone for his attention he "instantly invested her with a stock of charms out of the plentiful stores of his imagination." The access of the passion was, moreover, marked by an agitation of his mind and body" that excelled everything of the kind he " ever knew in real life." For the time

being "one generally reigned paramount in his affections; but as Yorick's affections flowed out towards Madame de L- at the remise door, while the eternal vows of Eliza were upon him, so Robert was frequently encountering other attractions which formed so many underplots in the drama of his love." But all those connections," we are told, "were governed by the strictest rules of virtue and modesty." Violent though the attack was for the moment, it very soon reached its climax, and then subsided as the glamour cast by his poetic imagination began to dissolve. Apart from that glamour, the poet, as is evident from his song on "The Tarbolton Lasses," had thus early a very shrewd knowledge of the dispositions, gifts, and pretensions of his female acquaintances.

Yet with all his manifold sociality, and with "vive l'amour! et vive la bagatelle! as his sole principles of action," his life was not so aimless as it seemed. On the contrary, as he wrote to his friend Thomas Orr, he was studying as well as he could " men, their manners and their ways," so that he shortly came to think, as he relates to Murdoch in 1783, that he seemed "to be one sent into the world to see and observe." As regards the Tarbolton Bachelors' Club, started, it may be at his instigation, in 1780, it was apparently intended to act as a partial restraint

on miscellaneous sociality, the purpose of the youthful founders being that, while they should forget their "cares and labours in mirth and diversion," they might not "transgress the bounds of innocence and decorum." The aim of those intelligent and honest-hearted youths was most laudable; but the club-with its well-meaning principles and its common - place round of debates-can hardly have influenced appreciably the poet's future. Already as is manifest from a description by a fellow-clubman and fellow - versifier, David Sillar-his individuality had began to render him conspicuous among his fellows; and he was clearly quite aware of his own powers. Conscious of a somewhat striking personality, and desirous of appearing to advantage in the eyes of rustic beauty, he wore at church the "only tied hair in the parish," and provided himself with a plaid of a special brown colour, which "he wrapped in a particular manner round his shoulders." Further, he liked in company to display his satiric gifts, which, while they "set the rustic circle in a roar," also aroused a suspicious fear" in the hearts of his bucolic audience. In the kirkyard before service he delighted in "getting up an argument," with the view mainly of "puzzling the Calvinism" of the orthodox, who "couldna tell what to mak o' young Burns o' Lochlea." Nor, while sharpening his

wits and enriching his experience by intercourse with a very miscellaneous set of acquaintances, did he neglect such mental culture as was obtainable from the limited range of miscellaneous reading that was within his reach. In addition to a variety of the stock religious works of the Scottish peasants' home, it included, at a very early period, The Spectator, Pope's Works, some Plays of Shakespeare, Allan Ramsay's Works, and a Select Collection of English Songs, as well as "those excellent New Songs that are hawked about the country in baskets or exposed in stalls in the streets." The Collection of Songs [The Lark, 1746 and 1765, a small volume which he could carry in his pocket] "was," he says, "my vade mecum. I pored over them driving my cart, or walking to labour, song by song, verse by verse, carefully noting the tender or sublime from affectation or fustian." At Kirkoswald his reading was further enlarged by what he describes as "the very important addition of Thomson's and Shenstone's Works; and he never ceased to retain his admiration for what he termed the "divine elegies" of that "celebrated poet." A little later Tristram Shandy and The Man of Feeling became his "bosom favourites"; some time afterwards his reading was increased by two stray volumes of Pamela, and one of Ferdinand, Count Fathom; and

at some unknown date, possibly about this later period, he came into possession of a copy of 2 Macpherson's Ossian.

The above list included practically the whole range of his reading until his twenty-third year; and the inability to obtain a larger supply of books compelled him to have recourse to repeated perusal, the more important and favourite volumes being not only thoroughly mastered but almost committed to memory, a fact which partly accounts for the numerous echoes of the sentiments and phraseology of eighteenth century writers, especially in his earlier poetry, and more particularly in his attempts at English verse. Few of the poems of this very early period, that have been preserved, manifest any marked individuality. A few religious pieces, inspired mainly by hypochondria, merely repeat the laudable sentiments of traditional belief, and, though redeemed from mere common - place by a certain justness and dignity of expression, are modelled very much on the lines of the metrical translations of the Psalms of David. Others, as "Corn Rigs," "O Tibbie, I ha'e seen the Day," and "It's o' Fickle Fortune O," savour of the ingenuous naturalism of The Excellent New Songs, or the easy-going philosophy of the Collections; "John Barleycorn" is an excellent revision of an old ballad, descended from very old