f
the rustic poet's wit and humour were as welcome us were the tenderest
of his narratives to the accomplished Duchess of Gordon and the
beautiful Miss Burnet of Monboddo; they raised a social roar not at
all classic, and demanded and provoked his sallies of wild humour, or
indecorous mirth, with as much delight as he had witnessed among the
lads of Kyle, when, at mill or forge, his humorous sallies abounded as
the ale flowed. In these enjoyments the rough, but learned William
Nicol, and the young and amiable Robert Ainslie shared: the name of
the poet was coupled with those of profane wits, free livers, and that
class of half-idle gentlemen who hang about the courts of law, or for
a season or two wear the livery of Mars, and handle cold iron.

Edinburgh had still another class of genteel convivialists, to whom
the poet was attracted by principles as well as by pleasure; these
were the relics of that once numerous body, the Jacobites, who still
loved to cherish the feelings of birth or education rather than of
judgment, and toasted the name of Stuart, when the last of the race
had renounced his pretensions to a throne, for the sake of peace and
the cross. Young men then, and high names were among them, annually
met on the pretender's birth-day, and sang songs in which the white
rose of Jacobitism flourished; toasted toasts announcing adherence to
the male line of the Bruce and the Stuart, and listened to the strains
of the laureate of the day, who prophesied, in drink, the dismissal of
the intrusive Hanoverian, by the right and might of the righteous and
disinherited line. Burns, who was descended from a northern race,
whoso father was suspected of having drawn the claymore in 1745, and
who loved the blood of the Keith-Marishalls, under whose banners his
ancestors had marched, readily united himself to a band in whose
sentiments, political and social, he was a sharer. He was received
with acclamation: the dignity of laureate was conferred upon him, and
his inauguration ode, in which he recalled the names and the deeds of
the Grahams, the Erskines, the Boyds, and the Gordons, was applauded
for its fire, as well as for its sentiments. Yet, though he ate and
drank and sang with Jacobites, he was only as far as sympathy and
poesie went, of their number: his reason renounced the principles and
the religion of the Stuart line; and though he shed a tear over their
fallen fortunes--though he sympathized with the brave and honou