ssary number of subscribers was soon obtained. They were
published at Kilmarnock in the summer of 1786, and were read by all
classes,--by the plowman as eagerly as by the laird, by the milkmaid in
the dairy as eagerly as by her mistress in the parlor,--and wherever
they were read they were admired. No poet was ever so quickly recognized
as Burns, who captivated his readers by his human quality as well as his
genius. They understood him at once. He sung of things which concerned
them,--of emotions which they felt, the joys and sorrows of their homely
lives, and, singing from his heart, his songs went to their hearts. His
fame as a poet spread along the country and came to the knowledge of Dr.
Blacklock, a blind poet in Edinburgh, who after hearing Burns's poetry
was so impressed by it that he wrote or dictated a letter about it,
which he addressed to a correspondent in Kilmarnock, by whom it was
placed in the hands of Burns. He was still at Mossgiel, and in a
perturbed condition of mind, not knowing whether he could remain there,
or whether he would have to go to Jamaica. He resolved at last to do
neither, but to go to Edinburgh, which he accordingly did, proceeding
thither on a pony borrowed from a friend.

The visit of Burns to Edinburgh was a hazardous experiment from which he
might well have shrunk. He was ignorant of the manners of its
citizens,--the things which differentiated them as a class from the only
class he knew,--but his ignorance did not embarrass him. He was
self-possessed; manly in his bearing; modest, but not humble; courteous,
but independent. He had no letters of introduction, and needed none, for
his poetry had prepared the way for him. It was soon known among the
best people in Edinburgh that he was there, and they hastened to make
his acquaintance; one of the first to do so being a man of rank, Lord
Glencairn. To know him was to know other men of rank, and to be admitted
to the brilliant circles in which they moved. Burns's society was sought
by the nobility and gentry and by the literary lords of the period,
professors, historians, men of letters. They dined him and wined him and
listened to him,--listened to him eagerly, for here as elsewhere he
distinguished himself by his conversation, the charm of which was so
potent that the Duchess of Gordon declared that she was taken off her
feet by it. He increased his celebrity in Edinburgh by the publication
of a new and enlarged edition of his Poems, w