man, he could not have done otherwise than
he did. To have deserted her now, and married another, even admitting he
was legally free to do so, which is doubtful, would have been the act of
an abandoned wretch, and certainly have wrought ruin in the moral and
spiritual life of the poet. In taking Jean as his wedded wife, he acted
not only honourably, but wisely; and wisdom and prudence were not always
distinguishing qualities of Robert Burns.

Some months had to elapse, however, before the wife could join her
husband at Ellisland. The first thing he had to do when he entered on
his lease was to rebuild the dwelling-house, he himself lodging in the
meanwhile in the smoky spence which he mentions in his letter to Mrs.
Dunlop. In the progress of the building he not only took a lively
interest, but actually worked with his own hands as a labourer, and
gloried in his strength: 'he beat all for a dour lift.' But it was some
time before he could settle down to the necessarily monotonous work of
farming. 'My late scenes of idleness and dissipation,' he confessed to
Dunbar, 'have enervated my mind to a considerable degree.' He was
restless and rebellious at times, and we are not surprised to find the
sudden settling down from gaiety and travel to the home-life of a farmer
marked by bursts of impatience, irritation, and discontent. The only
steadying influence was the thought of his wife and children, and the
responsibility of a husband and a father. He grew despondent
occasionally, and would gladly have been at rest, but a wife and
children bound him to struggle with the stream. His melancholy blinded
him even to the good qualities of his neighbours. The only things he saw
in perfection were stupidity and canting. 'Prose they only know in
graces, prayers, etc., and the value of these they estimate, as they do
their plaiding webs, by the ell. As for the Muses, they have as much an
idea of a rhinoceros as of a poet.' He was, in fact, ungracious towards
his neighbours, not that they were boorish or uninformed folk, but
simply because, though living at Ellisland in body, his mind was in
Ayrshire with his darling Jean, and he was looking to the future when he
should have a home and a wife of his own. His eyes would ever wander to
the west, and he sang, to cheer him in his loneliness, a song of love to
his Bonnie Jean:

'Of a' the airts the wind can blaw,
I dearly lo'e the west;
For there the bonnie lassie lives,