ke one who should leave the hearth upon a winter's night, his
temperature soon fell when he was out of sight, and in a word, though he
could share the symptoms, that he had never shared the disease. At the
same time, amid the fustian of the letters there are forcible and true
expressions, and the love-verses that he wrote upon Clarinda are among
the most moving in the language.

We are approaching the solution. In mid-winter, Jean, once more in the
family way, was turned out of doors by her family; and Burns had her
received and cared for in the house of a friend. For he remained to the
last imperfect in his character of Don Juan, and lacked the sinister
courage to desert his victim. About the middle of February (1788), he
had to tear himself from his Clarinda and make a journey into the
south-west on business. Clarinda gave him two shirts for his little son.
They were daily to meet in prayer at an appointed hour. Burns, too late
for the post at Glasgow, sent her a letter by parcel that she might not
have to wait. Clarinda on her part writes, this time with a beautiful
simplicity: "I think the streets look deserted-like since Monday; and
there's a certain insipidity in good kind folks I once enjoyed not a
little. Miss Wardrobe supped here on Monday. She once named you, which
kept me from falling asleep. I drank your health in a glass of ale--as
the lasses do at Hallowe'en--'in to mysel'.'" Arrived at Mauchline,
Burns installed Jean Armour in a lodging, and prevailed on Mrs. Armour
to promise her help and countenance in the approaching confinement. This
was kind at least; but hear his expressions: "I have taken her a room; I
have taken her to my arms; I have given her a mahogany bed; I have given
her a guinea.... I swore her privately and solemnly never to attempt any
claim on me as a husband, even though anybody should persuade her she
had such a claim--which she has not, neither during my life nor after my
death. She did all this like a good girl." And then he took advantage of
the situation. To Clarinda he wrote: "I this morning called for a
certain woman. I am disgusted with her; I cannot endure her"; and he
accused her of "tasteless insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and mercenary
fawning." This was already in March; by the thirteenth of that month he
was back in Edinburgh. On the 17th, he wrote to Clarinda: "Your hopes,
your fears, your cares, my love, are mine; so don't mind them. I will
take you in my hand through the