r;
well for Burns, also, that he was leaving Clarinda and Edinburgh. Only
one thing remained for both to do, and it had been wise, to burn their
letters. Would that Clarinda had been as much alive to her own good
name, and the poet's fair fame, as Peggy Chalmers, who did not preserve
her letters from Burns!

It was February 1788 before Burns could settle with Creech; and, after
discharging all expenses, he found a balance in his favour of about five
hundred pounds. To Gilbert, who was in sore need of the money, he
advanced one hundred and eighty pounds, as his contribution to the
support of their mother. With what remained of the money he leased from
Mr. Miller of Dalswinton the farm of Ellisland, on which he entered at
Whitsunday 1788.

CHAPTER VII

ELLISLAND

When Burns turned his back on Edinburgh in February 1788, and set his
face resolutely towards his native county and the work that awaited him,
he left the city a happier and healthier man than he had been all the
months of his sojourn in it. The times of aimless roving, and of still
more demoralising hanging on in the hope of something being done for
him, were at an end; he looked to the future with self-reliance. His
vain hopes of preferment were already 'thrown behind and far away,' and
he saw clearly that by the labour of his own hands he had to live,
independent of the dispensations of patronage, and trusting no longer to
the accidents of fortune. 'The thoughts of a home,' to quote
Cunningham's words, 'of a settled purpose in life, gave him a silent
gladness of heart such as he had never before known.'

Burns, though he had hoped and was disappointed, left the city not so
much with bitterness as with contempt. If he had been received on this
second visit with punctilious politeness, more ceremoniously than
cordially, it was just as he had himself expected. Gossip, too, had been
busy while he was absent, and his sayings and doings had been bruited
abroad. His worst fault was that he was a shrewd observer of men, and
drew, in a memorandum book he kept, pen-portraits of the people he met.
'Dr Blair is merely an astonishing proof of what industry and
application can do. Natural parts like his are frequently to be met
with; his vanity is proverbially known among his acquaintance.' The Lord
Advocate he pictured in a verse:

'He clenched his pamphlets in his fist,
He quoted and he hinted,
Till in a declamation-mist,
His argument