I'll be with you by-and-by,
Or else the devil's in it.

And this we may be sure was the spirit of many another reply to these
ill-omened invitations. It would have been well if, on these
occasions, the pride he boasted of had stood him in better stead, and
repelled such unjustifiable intrusions. But in this, as in so many
other respects, Burns was the most inconsistent of men.

From the time of his migration to Dumfries, it would appear that he
was gradually dropped out of acquaintance by most of the Dumfriesshire
lairds, as he had long been by the parochial and all other (p. 139)
ministers. I have only conversed with one person who remembered in his
boyhood to have seen Burns. He was the son of a Dumfriesshire baronet,
the representative of the House of Redgauntlet. The poet was
frequently in the neighbourhood of the baronet's country seat, but the
old gentleman so highly disapproved of "Robbie Burns," that he forbade
his sons to have anything to do with him. My informant, therefore,
though he had often seen, had never spoken to the poet. When I
conversed with him, his age was nigh four score years, and the one
thing he remembered about Burns was "the blink of his black eye." This
is probably but a sample of the feeling with which Burns was regarded
by most of the country gentry around Dumfries. What were the various
ingredients that made up their dislike of him, it is not easy now
exactly to determine. Politics most likely had a good deal to do with
it, for they were Tories and aristocrats, Burns was a Whig and
something more. Though politics may have formed the chief, they were
not probably the only element in their aversion. Yet though the
majority of the county families turned their backs on him, there were
some with which he still continued intimate.

These were either the few Whig magnates of the southern counties,
whose political projects he supported by electioneering ballads,
charged with all the powers of sarcasm he could wield; or those still
fewer, whose literary tastes were strong enough to make them willing,
for the sake of his genius, to tolerate both his radical politics and
his irregular life. Among these latter was a younger brother of
Burns's old friend, Glen Riddel, Mr. Walter Riddel, who with his wife
had settled at a place four miles from Dumfries, formerly called
Goldie-lea, but named after Mrs. Riddel's maiden name, Woodley (p. 140)
Park. Mrs. Riddel was handsome, c