in the parish. He
says he had then as high a notion of himself as ever after; and I can
well believe it. Among the youth he walked _facile princeps_, an
apparent god; and even if, from time to time, the Reverend Mr. Auld
should swoop upon him with the thunders of the Church, and, in company
with seven others, Rab the Ranter must figure some fine Sunday on the
stool of repentance, would there not be a sort of glory, an infernal
apotheosis in so conspicuous a shame? Was not Richelieu in disgrace more
idolised than ever by the dames of Paris? and when was the highwayman
most acclaimed but on his way to Tyburn? Or, to take a simile from
nearer home, and still more exactly to the point, what could even
corporal punishment avail, administered by a cold, abstract, unearthly
schoolmaster, against the influence and fame of the school's hero?

And now we come to the culminating point of Burns's early period. He
began to be received into the unknown upper world. His fame soon spread
from among his fellow-rebels on the benches, and began to reach the
ushers and monitors of this great Ayrshire academy. This arose in part
from his lax views about religion; for at this time that old war of the
creeds and confessors, which is always grumbling from end to end of our
poor Scotland, brisked up in these parts into a hot and virulent
skirmish; and Burns found himself identified with the opposition
party,--a clique of roaring lawyers and half-heretical divines, with wit
enough to appreciate the value of the poet's help, and not sufficient
taste to moderate his grossness and personality. We may judge of their
surprise when "Holy Willie" was put into their hand; like the amorous
lads of Tarbolton, they recognised in him the best of seconds. His
satires began to go the round in manuscript; Mr. Aiken, one of the
lawyers, "read him into fame"; he himself was soon welcome in many
houses of a better sort, where his admirable talk, and his manners,
which he had direct from his Maker, except for a brush he gave them at a
country dancing school, completed what his poems had begun. We have a
sight of him at his first visit to Adamhill, in his ploughman's shoes,
coasting around the carpet as though that were sacred ground. But he
soon grew used to carpets and their owners; and he was still the
superior of all whom he encountered, and ruled the roost in
conversation. Such was the impression made, that a young clergyman,
himself a man of ability, trembled