at
the lowest, one of the most prudent acts of his life. Jean proved to
be all, and indeed more than all, he anticipates in the letters above
given. During the eight years of their married life, according to all
testimony, she did her part as a wife and mother with the most patient
and placid fidelity, and bore the trials which her husband's irregular
habits entailed on her, with the utmost long-suffering. And after his
death, during her long widowhood, she revered his memory, and did her
utmost to maintain the honour of his name.

With his marriage to his Ayrshire wife, Burns had bid farewell to
Edinburgh, and to whatever high hopes it may have at anytime kindled
within him, and had returned to a condition somewhat nearer to that
in which he was born. With what feelings did he pass from this (p. 089)
brilliant interlude, and turn the corner which led him back to the
dreary road of commonplace drudgery, which he hoped to have escaped?
There can be little doubt that his feelings were those of bitter
disappointment. There had been, it is said, a marked contrast between
the reception he had met with during his first and second winters in
Edinburgh. As Allan Cunningham says, "On his first appearance the
doors of the nobility opened spontaneously, 'on golden hinges turning,'
and he ate spiced meats and drank rare wines, interchanging nods and
smiles with high dukes and mighty earls. A colder reception awaited
his second coming. The doors of lords and ladies opened with a tardy
courtesy; he was received with a cold and measured stateliness, was
seldom requested to stop, seldomer to repeat his visit; and one of his
companions used to relate with what indignant feeling the poet
recounted his fruitless calls and his uncordial receptions in the good
town of Edinburgh.... He went to Edinburgh strong in the belief that
genius such as his would raise him in society; he returned not without
a sourness of spirit, and a bitterness of feeling."

When he did give vent to his bitterness, it was not into man's, but
into woman's sympathetic ear that he poured his complaint. It is thus
he writes, some time after settling at Ellisland, to Mrs. Dunlop,
showing how fresh was still the wound within. "When I skulk into a
corner lest the rattling equipage of some gaping blockhead should
mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to exclaim, 'What merits has he
had, or what demerit have I had, in some previous state of existence,
that he is ushered