third-rate; in (p. 073)
fact, he was but a common clever versifier. There is but one purely
English poem of his which at all approaches the first rank--the lines
_To Mary in Heaven_.

These may probably have been the reasons, but the fact is certain that
Burns's tours are disappointing in their direct poetic fruits. But in
another way Burns turned them to good account. He had by that time
begun to devote himself almost entirely to the cultivation of Scottish
song. This was greatly encouraged by the appearance of _Johnson's
Museum_, a publication in which an engraver of that name living in
Edinburgh had undertaken to make a thorough collection of all the best
of the old Scottish songs, accompanying them with the best airs, and
to add to these any new songs of merit which he could lay hands on.
Before Burns left Edinburgh for his Border tour, he had begun an
acquaintance and correspondence with Johnson, and had supplied him
with four songs of his own for the first volume of _The Museum_. The
second volume was now in progress, and his labours for this publication,
and for another of the same kind to be afterwards mentioned,
henceforth engrossed Burns's entire productive faculty, and were to be
his only serious literary work for the rest of his life. He therefore
employed the Highland tour in hearing all he could, that had any
bearing on his now absorbing pursuit, and in collecting materials that
might promote it. With this view, when on his way from Taymouth to
Blair, he had turned aside to visit the famous fiddler and composer of
Scotch tunes, Neil Gow, at his house, which is still pointed out, at
Inver, on the Braan water, opposite the grounds of Dunkeld. This is
the entry about him in Burns's diary:--"Neil Gow plays--a short,
stout-built, honest Highland figure, with his grey hair shed on (p. 074)
his honest social brow; an interesting face marking strong sense,
kind open-heartedness, mixed with unmistrusting simplicity; visit his
house; Margaret Gow." It is interesting to think of this meeting of
these two--the one a Lowlander, the other a Highlander; the one the
greatest composer of words, the other of tunes, for Scottish songs,
which their country has produced.

As he passed through Aberdeen, Burns met Bishop Skinner, a Bishop of
the Scottish Episcopal Church; and when he learnt that the Bishop's
father, the author of the song of _Tulloch-gorum_, and _The Ewie wi'
the crookit horn_, and other Scottish songs,