is latter years at Dumfries, is described
in the following terms:--'He has daily duties in stamping leather,
gauging malt-vats, noting the manufacture of candles, and granting
licences for the transport of spirits. These duties he performs with
fidelity to the king and not too much rigour to the subject. As he
goes about them in the forenoon, in his respectable suit of dark
clothes, and with his little boy Robert perhaps holding by his hand
and conversing with him on his school-exercises, he is beheld by the
general public with respect, as a person in some authority, the head
of a family, and also as a man of literary note; and people are heard
addressing him deferentially as _Mr_ Burns--a form of his name which
is still prevalent in Dumfries. At a leisure hour before dinner, he
will call at some house where there is a piano--such as Mr Newall, the
writer's--and there have some young miss to touch over for him one or
two of his favourite Scotch airs, such as, the _Sutor's Daughter_, in
order that he may accommodate to it some stanzas that have been
humming through his brain for the last few days. For another half
hour, he will be seen standing at the head of some cross street with
two or three young fellows, bankers' clerks, or "writer-chiels"
commencing business, whom he is regaling with sallies of his bright
but not always innocent wit--indulging there, indeed, in a strain of
conversation so different from what had passed in the respectable
elderly writer's mansion, that, though he were not the same man, it
could not have been more different. Later in the day, he takes a
solitary walk along the Dock Green by the river side, or to Lincluden,
and composes the most part of a new song; or he spends a couple of
hours at his folding-down desk, between the fire and window in his
parlour, transcribing in his bold round hand the remarks which occur
to him on Mr Thomson's last letter, together with some of his own
recently composed songs. As a possible variation upon this routine, he
has been seen passing along the old bridge of Devorgilla Balliol,
about three o'clock, with his sword-cane in his hand, and his black
beard unusually well shaven, being on his way to dine with John Syme
at Ryedale, where young Mr Oswald of Auchincruive is to be of the
party--or maybe in the opposite direction, to partake of the luxuries
of John Bushby, at Tinwald Downs. But we presume a day when no such
attraction invades. The evening is passing qui