he
shady side of the principal street of the town, while the opposite
part was gay with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, all drawn
together for the festivities of the night, not one of whom seemed
willing to recognize the poet. The horseman dismounted, and joined
Burns, who, on his proposing to him to cross the street, said, 'Nay,
nay, my young friend, that's all over now,' and quoted, after a pause,
some verses of Lady Grizzell Baillie's pathetic ballad:--

His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow,
His auld ane looked better than mony ane's new;
But now he lets 't wear ony way it will hing,
And caste himsell dowie upon the corn-bing.

O, were we young, as we ance hae been,
We suld hae been galloping down on yon green,
And linking it owre the lily-white lea,--
And werena my heart light, I wad die.

"It was little in Burns's character to let his feelings on certain
subjects escape in this fashion. He immediately after citing these
verses assumed the sprightliness of his most pleasing manner; and
taking his young friend home with him, entertained him very (p. 165)
agreeably until the hour of the ball arrived, with a bowl of his usual
potation, and Bonnie Jean's singing of some verses which he had
recently composed."

In June we find him expressing to Mrs. Dunlop the earliest hint that
he felt his health declining. "I am afraid," he says, "that I am about
to suffer for the follies of my youth. My medical friends threaten me
with flying gout; but I trust they are mistaken." And again, a few
months later, we find him, when writing to the same friend, recurring
to the same apprehensions. Vexation and disappointment within, and
excesses, if not continual, yet too frequent, from without, had for
long been undermining his naturally strong but nervously sensitive
frame, and those symptoms were now making themselves felt, which were
soon to lay him in an early grave. As the autumn drew on, his singing
powers revived, and till the close of the year he kept pouring into
Thomson a stream of songs, some of the highest stamp, and hardly one
without a touch such as only the genuine singer can give.

The letters, too, to Thomson, with which he accompanies his gifts, are
full of suggestive thoughts on song, hints most precious to all who
care for such matters. For the forgotten singers of his native land he
is full of