d no genteel timidities in the conduct
of his life. He loved to force his personality upon the world. He would
please himself, and shine. Had he lived in the Paris of 1830, and joined
his lot with the Romantics, we can conceive him writing _Jehan_ for
_Jean_, swaggering in Gautier's red waistcoat, and horrifying Bourgeois
in a public cafe with paradox and gasconnade.

A leading trait throughout his whole career was his desire to be in
love. _Ne fait pas ce tour qui veut._ His affections were often enough
touched, but perhaps never engaged. He was all his life on a voyage of
discovery, but it does not appear conclusively that he ever touched the
happy isle. A man brings to love a deal of ready-made sentiment, and
even from childhood obscurely prognosticates the symptoms of this vital
malady. Burns was formed for love; he had passion, tenderness, and a
singular bent in the direction; he could foresee, with the intuition of
an artist, what love ought to be; and he could not conceive a worthy
life without it. But he had ill-fortune, and was besides so greedy after
every shadow of the true divinity, and so much the slave of a strong
temperament, that perhaps his nerve was relaxed and his heart had lost
the power of self-devotion before an opportunity occurred. The
circumstances of his youth doubtless counted for something in the
result. For the lads of Ayrshire, as soon as the day's work was over and
the beasts were stabled, would take the road, it might be in a winter
tempest, and travel perhaps miles by moss and moorland to spend an hour
or two in courtship. Rule 10 of the Bachelors' Club at Tarbolton
provides that "every man proper for a member of this Society must be a
professed lover of _one or more_ of the female sex." The rich, as Burns
himself points out, may have a choice of pleasurable occupations, but
these lads had nothing but their "cannie hour at e'en." It was upon love
and flirtation that this rustic society was built; gallantry was the
essence of life among the Ayrshire hills as well as in the Court of
Versailles; and the days were distinguished from each other by
love-letters, meetings, tiffs, reconciliations, and expansions to the
chosen confidant, as in a comedy of Marivaux. Here was a field for a man
of Burns's indiscriminate personal ambition, where he might pursue his
voyage of discovery in quest of true love, and enjoy temporary triumphs
by the way. He was "constantly the victim of some fair enslaver"--