m
partem_, when I say I never saw a man in company with his
superiors in station and information, more perfectly free from
either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment. I was
told, but did not observe it, that his address to females was
extremely deferential, and always with a turn either to the
pathetic or humorous, which engaged their attention particularly.
I have heard the Duchess of Gordon remark this."

Burns's letters written at this time show an amused consciousness of
his social prominence, but never for a moment did he lose sight of the
fact that it was only the affair of a season, and that in a few months
he would have to resume his humble station. Yet this intellectual
detachment did not prevent his enjoying opportunities for social and
intellectual intercourse such as he had never known and was never
again to know. Careful as he was to avoid presuming on his new
privileges, he clearly threw himself into the discussions in which he
took part with all the zest of his temperament; and in the less formal
convivial clubs to which he was welcomed he became at once the king of
good fellows. To the noblemen and others who befriended him he
expressed himself in language which may seem exaggerated; but the
warmth of his disposition, and the letter writers of the eighteenth
century on whom he had formed his style, sufficiently account for it
without the suspicion of affectation or flattery. Whatever his vices,
ingratitude to those who showed him kindness was not among them; and
the sympathetic reader is more apt to feel pathos than to take offense
in his tributes to his patrons. The real though not extraordinary
kindness of the Earl of Glencairn, for example, was acknowledged again
and again in prose and verse; and the _Lament_ Burns wrote upon his
death closes with these lines which rewarded the noble lord with an
immortality he might otherwise have missed:

The bridegroom may forget the bride
Was made his wedded wife yestreen;
The monarch may forget the crown
That on his head an hour has been;
The mother may forget the child
That smiles sae sweetly on her knee;
But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,
And a' that thou hast done for me!

After a sojourn of a little more than five months, Burns left
Edinburgh early in May for a tour in the south of Scotland. The poet
was mounted on an old mare, Jenny Geddes, which he had bought in
Edinburgh