'It is to be lamented that an acquaintance with the writers of Greece and Rome does not always supply an original want of taste and correctness in manners and conduct; and where it fails of this effect, it sometimes inflames the native pride of temper, which treats with disdain those delicacies in which it has not learnt to excel. It was thus with the fellow-traveller of Burns. Formed by nature in a model of great strength, neither his person nor his manners had any tincture of taste or elegance; and his coarseness was not compensated by that romantic sensibility, and those towering flights of imagination, which distinguished the conversation of Burns, in the blaze of whose genius all the deficiencies of his manners were absorbed and disappeared.'

To this sketch of Nicol something must be added, in order to explain why Burns gave him his friendship. With all his faults, he was a warm-hearted man. 'He cherished with enthusiasm the recollection of his early years, and rejoiced to meet the companions of his youth. He would go any length to serve and promote the views and wishes of a friend.' Such is the report of one who knew him intimately. A not less characteristic addition of the same writer is-'Whenever low jealousy, trick, or selfish cunning appeared, his mind kindled to something like fury or madness.' One can see that this was, on the whole, a character to attract the sympathies of Burns. The poet probably knew little of the cruelties exercised by Nicol in his class, which by all accounts were terrific. Neither could he probably have entered with impartiality into the merits of a quarrel between Nicol and the Rector Adam, which had come to a strong point in the preceding month. Dr Adam-an amiable man, as well as excellent scholar and teacher--having offended Mr Nicol in the course of his duty as superintendent of the younger classes of the school, the latter had made a personal assault upon him in the courtyard before the boys; nor could any of Adam's mild remonstrances draw forth an apology for the act.2 Burns, however, fully knew and understood the rash, irascible character of Nicol, and very happily compared himself with such a compagnon de voyage to a man travelling with a loaded blunderbuss at full cock!

A jocular letter of the 23d August represents Burns as sitting in the same room with Nicol and some of his pupils:

1 Dr Steven's History of the High School of Edinburgh, 1949; second series of pages, p. 95.

2 Two letters addressed by Dr Adam to Nicol on this outrage, in the gentlest terms of expostulation, are before us through the favour of Dr Steven, author of the work above cited.

From henceforth, my dear sir, I am determined to set off with my letters like the periodical writers; namely, prefix a kind of text, quoted from some classic of undoubted authority, such as the author of the immortal piece of which my text is a part. What I have to say on my text is exhausted in the chatter I wrote you the other day, before I had the pleasure of receiving yours from Inverleithen; and sure never was anything more lucky, as I have but the time to write this that Mr Nicol, on the opposite side of the table, takes to correct a proof sheet of a thesis. They are gabbling Latin so loud, that I cannot hear what my own soul is saying in my own skull, so must just give you a matter-of-fact sentence or two.

*

#

To-morrow I leave Edinburgh in a chaise: Nicol thinks it more comfortable than horseback, to which I say, Amen; so Jenny Geddes goes home to Ayrshire, to use a phrase of my mother's,wi' her finger in her mouth.'

Now for a modest verse of classical authority—

The cats like kitchen,1

The dogs like broe;

The lasses like the lads weel,

And th' auld wives too.

And we're a' noddin,

Nid, nid, noddin,

We're a' noddin fou at e'en.

If this does not please you, let me hear from you; if you write any time before the first of September, direct to Inverness, to be left at the post-office till called for; the next week at Aberdeen; the next at Edinburgh. The sheet is done, and I shall just conclude with assuring you that I am, and ever with pride shall be, my dear sir, yours, &c.

R. B.

Of his Highland excursion Burns has left a diary similar to that which he kept during his southern tour. We propose to make him by this means tell the main features of his story, but to insert at intervals such additional details as have been obtained, and such explanations as may be necessary :

"[Saturday] 25th August 1787.-I leave Edinburgh for a northern tour, in company with my good friend Mr Nicol, whose

1 Any kind of better food taken as a relish is called kitchen in Scotland. VOL. II.

H

originality of humour promises me much entertainment. Linlithgow —a fertile improved country-West Lothian. The more elegance and luxury among the farmers, I always observe, in equal proportion, the rudeness and stupidity of the peasantry. This remark I have made all over the Lothians, Merse, Roxburgh, &c. For this, among other reasons, I think that a man of romantic taste, a "Man of Feeling," will be better pleased with the poverty, but intelligent minds of the peasantry in Ayrshire (peasantry they are all below the Justice of Peace), than the opulence of a club of Merse farmers, when at the same time he considers the Vandalism of their plough-folks, &c. I carry this idea so far, that an unenclosed, half-improven country is to me actually more agreeable, and gives me more pleasure as a prospect, than a country cultivated like a garden.1 Soil about Linlithgow light and thin. The town carries the appearance of rude, decayed grandeur-charmingly rural, retired situation. The old royal palace a tolerably fine, but melancholy ruin, sweetly situated on a small elevation, by the brink of a loch. Shewn the room where the beautiful injured Mary Queen of Scots was born-a pretty good old Gothic church. The infamous stool of repentance standing, in the old Romish way, on a lofty situation.

'What a poor, pimping business is a Presbyterian place of worship; dirty, narrow, and squalid; stuck in a corner of old popish grandeur such as Linlithgow, and much more Melrose! Ceremony and show, if judiciously thrown in, absolutely necessary for the bulk of mankind, both in religious and civil matters. Dine. Go to my friend Smith's at Avon printfield: 2 find nobody but Mrs Miller, an agreeable, sensible, modest, good body, as useful, but not so ornamental, as Fielding's Miss Western—not rigidly polite à la Français, but easy, hospitable, and housewifely.

An old lady from Paisley, a Mrs Lawson, whom I promise to call for in Paisley-like old Lady W[auchope], and still more like Mrs C, her conversation is pregnant with strong sense and just remark, but, like them, a certain air of self-importance and a duresse in the eye, seem to indicate, as the Ayrshire wife observed of her cow, that "she had a mind o' her ain."

6 Pleasant view of Dunfermline, and the rest of the fertile coast of Fife, as we go down to that dirty, ugly place, Borrowstounness : see a horse-race, and call on a friend of Mr Nicol's, a Bailie Cowan, of whom I know too little to attempt his portrait. Come through the rich carse of Falkirk to pass the night. Falkirk nothing remarkable, except the tomb of Sir John the Graham,

1 These remarks are not unworthy of the attention of modern political economists.

2 Smith had of late removed from Mauchline to this place.

FALKIRK-CARRON.

115

over which, in the succession of time, four [three] stones have been placed.'

[The travellers appear to have spent the night in the Cross Keys Inn at Falkirk. Burns had lately provided himself with a diamond, wherewith to scribble on glass; and it is said that a verse written with this instrument was afterwards found on a window in the inn:

Sound be his sleep and blithe his morn,

That never did a lassie wrang;
Who poverty ne'er held in scorn,

For misery ever tholed a pang.1]

[Sunday, August 26.]—Camelon, the ancient metropolis of the Picts, now a small village in the neighbourhood of Falkirk. Cross the Grand Canal to Carron.'

[It would appear that the travellers zig-zagged a little on their route between Falkirk and Stirling. They went to Carron, in the hope of seeing the celebrated iron-works there, although, the day being Sunday, it is difficult to understand how they should have expected admission. The following epigram comes in here :—

WRITTEN ON A WINDOW OF THE INN AT CARRON.

We cam na here to view your warks

In hopes to be mair wise,

But only, lest we gang to hell,

It may be nae surprise:

But whan we tirled at your door,

Your porter dought na hear us;

Sae may, should we to hell's yetts come,
Your billy Satan sair us!

Mr Lockhart relates an anecdote, which may be applicable to the preceding evening, excepting only that Jenny Geddes is a figure de trop :-'I have heard that, riding one dark night near Carron, his companion teased him with noisy exclamations of delight and wonder whenever an opening in the wood permitted them to see the magnificent glare of the furnaces: "Look, Burns! Good Heaven! Look, look! What a glorious sight!" 'Sir," said Burns, "I would not look look at your bidding, if it were the mouth of hell!"']

1 This is given on the authority of Mr G. Boyack, St Andrews. It is introduced, with some other circumstances regarding Burns's visit to Falkirk, which I regard as doubtful, in the Fifeshire Journal, Nov. 4, 1847. The last line is there given thus: "For misery never tholed a pang,' which, being inconsistent with the sense evidently intended, I have here taken leave to alter.

'Pass Dunipace, a place laid out with fine taste; a charming amphitheatre bounded by Denny village, and pleasant seats down the way to Dunipace. The Carron running down the bosom of the whole, makes it one of the most charming little prospects I have

seen.

'Dine at Auchinbowie: Mr Monro an excellent worthy old man, Miss Monro an amiable, sensible, sweet young woman, much resembling Mrs Grierson. Come to Bannockburn. Shewn the old house where James III. finished so tragically his unfortunate life. The field of Bannockburn: the hole where glorious Bruce set his standard. Here no Scot can pass uninterested. I fancy to myself that I see my gallant, heroic countrymen, coming o'er the hill and down upon the plunderers of their country, the murderers of their fathers; noble revenge and just hate glowing in every vein, striding more and more eagerly as they approach the oppressive, insulting, bloodthirsty foe! I see them meet in gloriously-triumphant congratulation on the victorious field, exulting in their heroic royal leader, and rescued liberty and independence! Come to Stirling.'

[TO MR ROBERT MUIR, KILMARNOCK.

STIRLING, 26th August 1787. MY DEAR SIR-I intended to have written you from Edinburgh, and now write you from Stirling to make an excuse. Here am L on my way to Inverness, with a truly original, but very worthy man, a Mr Nicol, one of the masters of the High School in Edinburgh. I left Auld Reekie yesterday morning, and have passed, besides byexcursions, Linlithgow, Borrowstounness, Falkirk, and here am I undoubtedly. This morning I knelt at the tomb of Sir John the Graham, the gallant friend of the immortal Wallace; and two hours ago I said a fervent prayer for old Caledonia over the hole in a blue whinstone, where Robert de Bruce fixed his royal standard on the banks of Bannockburn; and just now, from Stirling Castle, I have seen by the setting sun the glorious prospect of the windings of Forth through the rich carse of Stirling, and skirting the equally rich carse of Falkirk. The crops are very strong, but so very late, that there is no harvest except a ridge or two perhaps in ten miles, all the way I have travelled from Edinburgh.

I left Andrew Bruce1 and family all well. I will be at least three weeks in making my tour, as I shall return by the coast, and have many people to call for.

1 Andrew Bruce, a shopkeeper on the North Bridge, Edinburgh, to whom Burns, on his arrival in the city, requested his letters to be addressed, appears to have become known to him through a Kilmarnock line of acquaintance.