this
rebuke, he wrote to Mrs. Dunlop, "I have set, henceforth, a seal on my
lips as to these unlucky politics." But neither his own resolve nor
the remonstrance of the Excise Board seem to have weighed much with
him. He continued at convivial parties to express his feelings freely,
and at one of these, shortly after he had been rebuked by the Excise
Board, when the health of William Pitt was drunk, he followed it by
craving a bumper "to the health of a much better man--General
Washington." And on a subsequent occasion, as we shall see, he brought
himself into trouble by giving an injudicious toast. The (p. 150)
repression brought to bear on Burns cannot have been very stringent
when he was still free to sport such sentiments. The worst effect of
the remonstrance he received seems to have been to irritate his
temper, and to depress his spirits by the conviction, unfounded though
it was, that all hope of promotion for him was over.

But amid all the troubles entailed on him by his conduct, domestic,
social, and political, the chief refuge and solace which he found, was
in exercising his gifts of song. All hope of his ever achieving a
great poem, which called for sustained effort, was now over. Even
poems descriptive of rustic life and characters, such as he had
sketched in his Ayrshire days--for these he had now no longer either
time or inclination. His busy and distracted life, however, left him
leisure from time to time to give vent to his impulses, or to soothe
his feelings by short arrow-flights of song. He found in his own
experience the truth of those words of another poet,--

They can make who fail to find
Short leisure even in busiest days,
Moments to cast a look behind,
And profit by those kindly rays,
Which through the clouds will sometimes steal,
And all the far-off past reveal.

Such breaks in the clouds he eagerly waited for, and turned every
golden gleam to song.

It may be remembered that while Burns was in Edinburgh he became
acquainted with James Johnson, who was engaged in collecting the Songs
of Scotland in a work called the _Musical Museum_. He had at once
thrown himself ardently into Johnson's undertaking, and put all his
power of traditional knowledge, of criticism, and of original
composition at Johnson's disposal. This he continued to do through (p. 151)
all the Ellisland period, and more or less during