The lassie I lo'e best.'

It was not till the beginning of December that he was in a position to
bring his wife and children to Ellisland; and this event brought him
into kindlier relations with his fellow-farmers. His neighbours gathered
to bid his wife welcome; and drank to the roof-tree of the house of
Burns. The poet, now that he had made his home amongst them, was
regarded as one of themselves; while Burns, on his part, having at last
got his wife and children beside him, was in a healthier frame of mind
and more charitably disposed towards those who had come to give them a
welcome. That he was now as one settled in life with something worthy to
live for, we have ample proof in his letter written to Mrs. Dunlop on
the first day of the New Year. It is discursive, yet philosophical and
reflective, and its whole tone is that of a man who looks on the world
round about him with a kindly charity, and looks to the future with
faith and trust. Life passed very sweetly and peacefully with the poet
and his family for a time here. The farm, it would appear, was none of
the best,--Mr. Cunningham told him he had made a poet's not a farmer's
choice,--but Burns was hopeful and worked hard. Yet the labour of the
farm was not to be his life-work. Even while waiting impatiently the
coming of his wife, he had been contributing to Johnson's Museum, and he
fondly imagined that he was going to be farmer, poet, and exciseman all
in one. Some have regretted his appointment to the Excise at this time,
and attributed to his frequent absences from home his failure as a
farmer. They may be right. But what was the poet to do? He knew by
bitter experience how precarious the business of farming was, and
thought that a certain salary, even though small, would always stand
between his family and absolute want. 'I know not,' he wrote to Ainslie,
'how the word exciseman, or, still more opprobrious, gauger, will sound
in your ears. I too have seen the day when my auditory nerves would have
felt very delicately on this subject; but a wife and children have a
wonderful power in blunting these kind of sensations. Fifty pounds a
year for life and a pension for widows and orphans, you will allow, is
no bad settlement for a _poet_.' And to Blacklock he wrote in verse:

'But what d'ye think, my trusty fier,
I'm turned a gauger--Peace be here!
Parnassian queans, I fear, I fear,
Ye'll now disdain me!
And then my fifty pound