freedom; some would suspect his morality, others would deplore his Scots
tongue; all would criticise favourably or adversely his poetic
expression. It has to be kept in mind, too, that Burns at this time was
in no mood for writing poetry. His mind was not at ease; and after his
long spell of inspiration and the fatiguing distractions of Edinburgh,
it was hardly to be wondered at that brain and body were alike in need
of rest. The most natural rest would have been a return direct to the
labours of the farm. That, however, was denied him, and the period of
his journeyings was little else than a season of unsettlement and
suspense.

Burns only stayed a few days at home, and then set off on a tour to the
West Highlands, a tour of which we know little or nothing. Perhaps this
was merely a pilgrimage to the grave of Highland Mary. We do not know,
and need not curiously inquire. Burns, as has been already remarked,
kept sacred his love for this generous-hearted maiden, hidden away in
his own heart, and the whole story is a beautiful mystery. We do know
that before he left he visited the Armours, and was disgusted with the
changed attitude of the family towards himself. 'If anything had been
wanting,' he wrote to Mr. James Smith, 'to disgust me completely at
Armour's family, their mean, servile compliance would have done it.' To
his friend, William Nicol, he wrote in the same strain. 'I never, my
friend, thought mankind very capable of anything generous; but the
stateliness of the patricians in Edinburgh, and the servility of my
plebeian brethren (who perhaps formerly eyed me askance) since I
returned home, have nearly put me out of conceit altogether with my
species.'

This shows Burns in no very enviable frame of mind; but the cause is
obvious. He is as yet unsettled in life, and now that he has met again
his Bonnie Jean, and seen his children, he is more than ever
dissatisfied with aimless roving. 'I have yet fixed on nothing with
respect to the serious business of life. I am just as usual a rhyming,
mason-making, raking, aimless, idle fellow. However, I shall somewhere
have a farm soon. I was going to say a wife too, but that must never be
my blessed lot.'

To his own folks he was nothing but kindness, ready to share with them
his uttermost farthing, and to have them share in the glory that was
his; but he was at enmity with himself, and at war with the world. Like
Hamlet, who felt keenly, but was incapable of action, h