786, he was
unanimously re-elected every year till 1796, when he was victorious over
Dundas of Arniston, who had been brought forward in opposition to him.
The leader of fashion was the celebrated Duchess of Gordon, who was
never absent from a public place, and 'the later the hour so much the
better.' Her amusements--her life, we might say--were dancing, cards,
and company. With such a leader, the season to the very select and
elegant society of Edinburgh was certain to be a time of brilliance and
gaiety; while its very exclusiveness, and the fact that it affected or
reflected the literary life of the University and the Bar, would make it
all the more ready to lionise a man like Burns when the opportunity
came.

The members of the middle class caught their tone from the upper ranks,
and took their nightly sederunts and morning headaches as privileges
they dared aristocratic exclusiveness to deny them. Douce citizens,
merchants, respectable tradesmen, well-to-do lawyers, forgathered when
the labours of the day were done to spend a few hours in some snug
back-parlour, where mine host granted them the privileges and privacy of
a club. Such social beings as these, met to discuss punch, law, and
literature, were no less likely than their aristocratic neighbours to
receive Burns with open arms, and once he was in their midst to prolong
their sittings in his honour. Nor was Burns, if he found them honest and
hearty fellows, the man to say them nay. He was eminently a social and
sociable being, and in company such as theirs he could unbend himself as
he might not do in the houses of punctilious society. The etiquette of
that howff of the Crochallan Fencibles in the Anchor Close or of Johnnie
Dowie's tavern in Libberton's Wynd was not the etiquette of
drawing-rooms; and the poet was free to enliven the hours with a
rattling fire of witty remarks on men and things as he had been wont to
do on the bog at Lochlea, with only a few noteless peasants for
audience.

Burns entered Edinburgh on November 28, 1786. He had spent the night
after leaving Mossgiel at the farm of Covington Mains, where the
kind-hearted host, Mr. Prentice, had all the farmers of the parish
gathered to meet him. This is of interest as showing the popularity
Burns's poems had already won; while the eagerness of those farmers to
see and know the man after they had read his poems proves most
strikingly how straight the poet had gone to the hearts of his readers.