es ":

Had we never loved so kindly
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met--or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

At this time the publication of Johnson's "Scots Musical Museum" was
going on in Edinburgh; and Burns, being enlisted as a contributor,
furnished many of his best songs to that work. From his youth upwards he
had been an enthusiastic lover of the old minstrelsy and music of his
country; but he now studied both subjects with better opportunities and
appliances than he could have commanded previously; and it is from this
time that we must date his ambition to transmit his own poetry to
posterity, in eternal association with those exquisite airs which had
hitherto, in far too many instances, been married to verses that did not
deserve to be immortal. Later, beginning in 1792, he wrote about sixty
songs for George Thomson's collection, many of which, like "Auld Lang
Syne" and "Scots Wha Hae," are in the front rank of popularity. The
letters he addressed to Thomson are full of interesting detail of
various kinds. In one he writes:

"Until I am complete master of a tune in my own singing, such as it is,
I can never compose for it. My way is this. I consider the poetic
sentiment correspondent to my idea of the musical expression--then
choose my theme--compose one stanza. When that is composed, which is
generally the most difficult part of the business, I walk out, sit down
now and then, look out for objects in Nature round me that are in unison
or harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom,
humming every now and then the air, with the verses I have framed. When
I feel my muse beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of
my study, and there commit my effusions to paper; swinging at intervals
on the hind legs of my elbow-chair, by way of calling forth my own
critical strictures, as my pen goes. Seriously this, at home, is almost
invariably my way."

But to return. During his second winter in Edinburgh, Burns met with a
hackney coach accident which kept him to the house for six weeks. While
in this state he learned from Mauchline that his intimacy with Jean
Armour had again exposed her to the reproaches of her family. The father
sternly turned her out of doors, and Burns had to arrange about a
shelter for her and his children in a friend's house. In the meantime,
through the influence of some sympathisers, he had been appointed an
officer of exci