wo was the celebrated Scotch metaphysician,
one of the chief ornaments of Edinburgh and its University at the
close of last and the beginning of this century. He happened to be
passing the summer at Catrine, on the Ayr, a few miles from Burns's
farm, and having been made acquainted with the poet's works and
character by Mr. Mackenzie, the surgeon of Mauchline, he invited the
poet and the medical man to dine with him at Catrine. The day of this
meeting was the 23rd of October, only three days after that on which
Highland Mary died. Burns met on that day not only the professor (p. 035)
and his accomplished wife, but for the first time in his life dined
with a live lord--a young nobleman, said to have been of high promise,
Lord Daer, eldest son of the then Earl of Selkirk. He had been a
former pupil of Dugald Stewart, and happened to be at that time his
guest. Burns has left the following humorous record of his own
feelings at that meeting:--

This wot ye all whom it concerns,
I, Rhymer Robin, alias Burns,
October twenty-third,
A ne'er to be forgotten day,
Sae far I sprachled up the brae [clambered],
I dinner'd wi' a Lord.

* * * * *

But wi' a Lord! stand out my shin,
A Lord,--a Peer, an Earl's Son!
Up higher yet my bonnet!
And sic a Lord! lang Scotch ells twa,
Our Peerage he o'erlooks them a',
As I look o'er a sonnet.

But oh for Hogarth's magic power!
To show Sir Bardie's willyart glower [bewildered],
And how he stared and stammered,
When goavan, as if led in branks, [moving stupidly],
And stumpin' on his ploughman shanks,
He in the parlour hammered.

I sidling sheltered in a nook,
An' at his Lordship steal't a look
Like some portentous omen;
Except good sense and social glee,
An' (what surprised me) modesty,
I marked nought uncommon.

I watched the symptoms o' the great,
The gentle pride, the lordly state,
The arrogant assuming;
The fient a pride, nae pride had he,
Nor sauce, nor state, that I could see,
Mair than an honest ploughman.

From this rec