ce
may contain, as Lockhart says, "passages of deep and noble feeling,
which no one but Burns could have penned," it cannot be denied that it
contains many more of such fustian, such extravagant bombast, as Burns
or any man beyond twenty might well have been ashamed to write. One
could wish that for the poet's sake this correspondence had never been
preserved. It is so humiliating to read this torrent of falsetto
sentiment now, and to think that a man gifted like Burns should have
poured it forth. How far his feelings towards Clarinda were sincere,
or how far they were wrought up to amuse his vacancy by playing at
love-making, it is hard to say. Blended with a profusion of forced
compliments and unreal raptures, there are expressions in Burns's
letters which one cannot but believe that he meant in earnest, at the
moment when he wrote them. Clarinda, it would seem, must have regarded
Burns as a man wholly disengaged, and have looked forward to the
possible removal of Mr. M'Lehose, and with him of the obstacle to a
union with Burns. How far he may have really shared the same hopes it
is impossible to say. We only know that he used again and again
language of deepest devotion, vowing to "love Clarinda to death,
through death, and for ever."

While this correspondence between Sylvander and Clarinda was in its
highest flight of rapture, Burns received, in January or February,
1788, news from Mauchline which greatly agitated him. His renewed
intercourse with Jean Armour had resulted in consequences which again
stirred her father's indignation; this time so powerfully, that he
turned his daughter to the door. Burns provided a shelter for her
under the roof of a friend; but for a time he does not seem to (p. 084)
have thought of doing more than this. Whether he regarded the original
private marriage as entirely dissolved, and looked on himself as an
unmarried man, does not quite appear. Anyhow, he and Clarinda, who
knew all that had passed with regard to Jean Armour, seem to have then
thought that enough had been done for the seemingly discarded
Mauchline damsel, and to have carried on their correspondence as
rapturously as ever for fully another six weeks, until the 21st of
March (1788). On that day Sylvander wrote to Clarinda a final letter,
pledging himself to everlasting love, and following it by a copy of
verses beginning,--

Fair empress of the poet's soul,

presenting her at the same time with a pa