aw a man in company more perfectly free from
either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment.' To these may be
added the testimony of Dr. Walker, who gives, perhaps, the most complete
and convincing picture of the man at this time. He insists on the same
outstanding characteristics in Burns, his innate dignity, his unaffected
demeanour in company, and brilliancy in conversation. In no part of his
manner, we read, was there the slightest degree of affectation, and no
one could have guessed from his behaviour or conversation, that he had
been for some months the favourite of all the fashionable circles of a
metropolis. 'In conversation he was powerful. His conceptions and
expression were of corresponding vigour, and on all subjects were as
remote as possible from commonplace.'

But whilst ladies of rank and fashion were deluging this Ayrshire
ploughman with invitations, and vying one with another in their
patronage and worship, the mind of the poet was no less busy registering
impressions of every new experience. If the learned men of Edinburgh set
themselves to study the character of a genius who upset all their
cherished theories of birth and education, and to chronicle his sayings
and doings, Burns at the same time was studying them, gauging their
powers intuitively, telling their limitations at a glance. For he must
measure every man he met, and himself with him. His standard was always
the same; every brain was weighed against his own; but with Burns this
was never more than a comparison of capacities. He took his stand, not
by what work he had done, but by what he felt he was capable of doing.
And that is not, and cannot be, the way of the world. In all his letters
at this time we see him studying himself in the circles of fashion and
learning. He could look on Robert Burns, as he were another person,
brought from the plough and set down in a world of wealth and
refinement, of learning and wit and beauty. He saw the dangers that
beset him, and the temptations to which he was exposed; he recognised
that something more than his poetic abilities was needed to explain his
sudden popularity. He was the vogue, the favourite of a season; but
public favour was capricious, and next year the doors of the great might
be closed against him; while patrician dames who had schemed for his
smiles might glance at him with indifferent eyes as at a dismissed
servant once high in favour. His letter to Mrs. Dunlop, dated January