p's interest will easily procure
me the grant from the commissioners: and your lordship's patronage and
goodness, which have already rescued me from obscurity, wretchedness,
and exile, emboldens me to ask that interest. You have likewise put it
in my power to save the little tie of home that sheltered an aged
mother, two brothers, and three sisters from destruction. I am ill
qualified to dog the heels of greatness with the impertinence of
solicitation, and tremble nearly as much at the thought of the cold
promise as the cold denial." The farm and the excise exhibit the
poet's humble scheme of life: the money of the one, he thought, would
support the toil of the other, and in the fortunate management of
both, he looked for the rough abundance, if not the elegancies
suitable to a poet's condition.

While Scotland was disgraced by sordidly allowing her brightest genius
to descend to the plough and the excise, the poet hastened his
departure from a city which had witnessed both his triumph and his
shame: he bade farewell in a few well-chosen words to such of the
classic literati--the Blairs, the Stewarts, the Mackenzies, and the
Tytlers--as had welcomed the rustic bard and continued to countenance
him; while in softer accents he bade adieu to the Clarindas and
Chlorises of whose charms he had sung, and, having wrung a settlement
from Creech, he turned his steps towards Mossgiel and Mauchline. He
had several reasons, and all serious ones, for taking Ayrshire in his
way to the Nith: he desired to see his mother, his brothers and
sisters, who had partaken of his success, and were now raised from
pining penury to comparative affluence: he desired to see those who
had aided him in his early struggles into the upper air--perhaps
those, too, who had looked coldly on, and smiled at his outward
aspirations after fame or distinction; but more than all, he desired
to see one whom he once and still dearly loved, who had been a
sufferer for his sake, and whom he proposed to make mistress of his
fireside and the sharer of his fortunes. Even while whispering of love
to Charlotte Hamilton, on the banks of the Devon, or sighing out the
affected sentimentalities of platonic or pastoral love in the ear of
Clarinda, his thoughts wandered to her whom he had left bleaching her
webs among the daisies on Mauchline braes--she had still his heart,
and in spite of her own and her father's disclamation, she was his
wife. It was one of the delusions o