The moon was at the
full on Tuesday the 2d of November, and it could not be till after
that day that the first hour of the night would be "starry," with
Venus in full blaze. By that time, as far as we can gather from the
chronicles of the time, the harvest was past. Besides, Mrs Burns might
easily mistake September for October, but scarcely for November, a
month of such different associations. On this point the temperature of
the time might throw some light, if we could be sure of the exact
meaning to be attached to the phrase--"the frost had set in." It
chances that the temperature of October that year was unusually high,
the average at eight o'clock in the evening in Edinburgh being 45-1/2 deg.
Fahrenheit. The _Edinburgh Advertiser_ of 30th October speaks of
apple-trees and bean-stalks renewing their blossoms in consequence of
the extraordinary mildness. On the 19th of October, at eight o'clock
in the evening, the thermometer indicated in Edinburgh 51 deg.; on the
20th, at the same hour, 59 deg.; on the 21st, 51 deg. again. The only approach
to frost was on the 30th and 31st, when, at eight in the evening, the
thermometer was respectively at 33 deg. and 37 deg.. After this, it rose to a
more temperate point. Hence it becomes evident that _literal frost_
did not then exist at any such period of the day. Probably Mrs Burns
merely thought the evening was beginning to be comparatively chilly.
If we can admit of this construction being put upon her words, I would
be disposed to pitch upon the _warmest evening_ of the little period
within which we are confined--for unless the poet had been in a
peculiarly excited state, so as to be insensible to external
circumstances, which is obviously a different thing from being in a
merely pensive state, we must suppose him as not likely to lie down in
the open air after sunset, except under favour of some uncommon amount
of "ethereal mildness." Seeing, on the other hand, how positively
inviting to such a procedure would be a temperature of 59 deg., I leave
the subject with scarcely a doubt that the composition of _To Mary in
Heaven_ took place on Tuesday the 20th of October, and that this was
consequently the date of the death of the heroine.'

This, no doubt, seems a great muster of evidence about so small a
matter; but to judge of the rationality of its being entered upon, the
reader must keep in mind the relation of the incident to others. If it
only proved that the comic drinking-