r that when next he moved from town, it was to steal
two days with this anonymous fair one. The exact importance to Burns of
this affair may be gathered from the song in which he commemorated its
occurrence. "I love the dear lassie," he sings, "because she loves me";
or, in the tongue of prose: "Finding an opportunity, I did not hesitate
to profit by it; and even now, if it returned, I should not hesitate to
profit by it again." A love thus founded has no interest for mortal man.
Meantime, early in the winter, and only once, we find him regretting
Jean in his correspondence. "Because"--such is his reason--"because he
does not think he will ever meet so delicious an armful again"; and
then, after a brief excursion into verse, he goes straight on to
describe a new episode in the voyage of discovery with the daughter of a
Lothian farmer for a heroine. I must ask the reader to follow all these
references to his future wife; they are essential to the comprehension
of Burns's character and fate. In June we find him back at Mauchline, a
famous man. There, the Armour family greeted him with a "mean, servile
compliance," which increased his former disgust. Jean was not less
compliant; a second time the poor girl submitted to the fascination of
the man whom she did not love, and whom she had so cruelly insulted
little more than a year ago; and, though Burns took advantage of her
weakness, it was in the ugliest and most cynical spirit, and with a
heart absolutely indifferent. Judge of this by a letter written some
twenty days after his return--a letter to my mind among the most
degrading in the whole collection--a letter which seems to have been
inspired by a boastful, libertine bagman. "I am afraid," it goes, "I
have almost ruined one source, the principal one, indeed, of my former
happiness--the eternal propensity I always had to fall in love. My heart
no more glows with feverish rapture; I have no paradisiacal evening
interviews." Even the process of "battering" has failed him, you
perceive. Still he had some one in his eye--a lady, if you please, with
a fine figure and elegant manners, and who had "seen the politest
quarters in Europe." "I frequently visited her," he writes, "and after
passing regularly the intermediate degrees between the distant formal
bow and the familiar grasp round the waist, I ventured, in my careless
way, to talk of friendship in rather ambiguous terms; and after her
return to ----, I wrote her in the sam