With a leer of
what the French call fatuity, he bids the belles of Mauchline beware of
his seductions; and the same cheap self-satisfaction finds a yet uglier
vent when he plumes himself on the scandal at the birth of his first
bastard. We can well believe what we hear of his facility in striking up
an acquaintance with women: he would have conquering manners; he would
bear down upon his rustic game with the grace that comes of absolute
assurance--the Richelieu of Lochlea or Mossgiel. In yet another manner
did these quaint ways of courtship help him into fame. If he were great
as principal, he was unrivalled as confidant. He could enter into a
passion; he could counsel wary moves, being, in his own phrase, so old
a hawk; nay, he could turn a letter for some unlucky swain, or even
string a few lines of verse that should clinch the business and fetch
the hesitating fair one to the ground. Nor, perhaps, was it only his
"curiosity, zeal, and intrepid dexterity" that recommended him for a
second in such affairs; it must have been a distinction to have the
assistance and advice of "Rab the Ranter"; and one who was in no way
formidable by himself might grow dangerous and attractive through the
fame of his associate. I think we can conceive him, in these early years, in that rough
moorland country, poor among the poor with his seven pounds a year,
looked upon with doubt by respectable elders, but for all that the best
talker, the best letter-writer, the most famous lover and confidant, the
laureate poet, and the only man who wore his hair tied 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 and became confused when he saw
Robert enter the church in which he was to preach. It is not surprising
that the poet determined to publish: he had now stood the test of some
publicity, and under this hopeful impulse he composed in six winter
months the bulk of his more important poems. Here was a young man who,
from a very humble place, was mounting rapidly; from the cynosure of a
parish, he had become the talk of a county; once the bard of rural
courtships, he was now about to appear as a bound and printed poet in
the world's bookshops. A few more intimate strokes are necessary to complete the sketch. This
strong young ploughman, who feared no competitor with the flail,
suffered like a fine lady from sleeplessness and vapours; he would fall
into the blackest melancholies, and be filled with remorse for the past
and terror for the future. He was still not perhaps devoted to religion,
but haunted by it; and at a touch of sickness prostrated himself before
God in what I can only call unmanly penitence. As he had aspirations
beyond his place in the world, so he had tastes, thoughts, and
weaknesses to match. He loved to walk under a wood to the sound of a
winter tempest; he had a singular tenderness for animals; he carried a
book with him in his pocket when he went abroad, and wore out in this
service two copies of the "Man of Feeling." With young people in the
field at work he was very long-suffering; and when his brother Gilbert
spoke sharply to them--"O man, ye are no' for young folk," he would say,
and give the defaulter a helping hand and a smile. In the hearts of the
men whom he met, he read as in a book; and, what is yet more rare, his
knowledge of himself equalled his knowledge of others. There are no
truer things said of Burns than what is to be found in his own letters. Country Don Juan as he was, he had none of that blind vanity which
values itself on what it is not; he knew his own strength and weakness
to a hair: he took himself boldly for what he was, and, except in
moments of hypochondria, declared himself content. THE LOVE-STORIES

On the night of Mauchline races, 1785, the young men and women of the
place joined in a penny ball, according to their custom. In the same set
danced Jean Armour, the master-mason's daughter, and our dark-eyed Don
Juan. His dog (not the immortal Luath, but a successor unknown to fame,
_caret quia vote sacro_), apparently sensible of some neglect, followed
his master to and fro, to the confusion of the dancers. Some mirthful
comments followed; and Jean heard the poet say to his partner--or, as I
should imagine, laughingly launch the remark to the company at
large--that "he wished he could get any of the lasses to like him as
well as his dog." Some time after, as the girl was bleaching clothes on
Mauchline green, Robert chanced to go by, still accompanied by his dog;
and the dog, "scouring in long excursion," scampered with four black
paws across the linen.