Nicol made one or two autumnal excursions to Dumfries; and when they met in Dumfries, friendship, and genius, and wanton wit, and good liquor could never fail to keep Burns and Nicol together, till both the one and the other were as dead drunk as ever was Silenus. The Caledonian Club, too, and the Dumfriesshire and Galloway hunt, had occasional meetings in Dumfries, after Burns came to reside there; and the poet was, of course, invited to share their conviviality, and hesitated not to accept the invitation. The morals of the town were, in consequence of its becoming so much the scene of public amusement, deplorably corrupted; and, though a husband and a father, poor Burns did not escape suffering by the general contamination. In the intervals between his
he has said some strong things in her praise; but she was not, in his system of morality, the Queen of Virtues. His genius, so far from separating him from any portion of his kind, impelled him towards human it, without fear and without suspicion. No saint or prude was he to shun the society of 'jolly companions every one.' Though never addicted to drinking, he had often set the table in a roar at Tarbolton, Mauchline, Kirkoswald, Irvine, and Ayr, and was he all at once to appear in the character of dry Quaker in Edinburgh? "Were the joys that circle round the flowing bowl to be interdicted to him alone, the wittiest, the brightest, the most original, and the most eloquent of all the men of his day? At Ellisland we know for certain that his domestic life was temperate and sober; and that, beyond his own doors, his convivialities, among 'gentle and semple,' though not unfrequent, were not excessive, and left his character without any of those deeper stains with which it has been since said to have been sullied. It is for ever to be lamented that he was more dissipated at Dumfries how much more and under what stronger temptations can be told in not many words. But every glass of wine 'or stouter cheer' he drank like mere ordinary men too fond of the festive hour seems to have been set down against him as a separate sin; and the world of fashion, and of philosophy too, we fear, both of which used him rather scurvily at last, would not be satisfied unless Burns could be made out a drunkard! Had he not been such a wonderful man in conversation, he might have enjoyed unhurt the fame of his poetry. But what was reading his poetry, full as it is of mirth and pathos, to hearing the poet! When all were desirous of the company of a man of such genius and such dispositions, was it in human nature to be always judicious in the selection or rejection of associates? His deepest and best feelings he for the most part kept sacred, for communion with those who were held by him in honour as well as love. But few were utterly excluded from the cordiality of one who, in the largeness of his heart, could sympathize with all, provided he could but bring out, by the stroke of the keen-tempered steel of his own nature, some latent spark of humanity from the flint of theirs; and it is easy to see with what dangers he thus must have been surrounded, when his genius and humour, his mirth and glee, his fun and frolic, and all the outrageous merriment of his exhilarated or maddened imagination came to be considered almost as common property by all who chose to introduce themselves to Robert Burns, and thought themselves entitled to do so because they could prove they had his poems by heart. They sent for the gauger, and the ganger came. A prouder man breathed not, but he had never been subjected to the ceremonial of manners, the rule of artificial life; and he was ready, at all times, to grasp the hand held out in friendship, to go when a message said come, for he knew that his 'low-roofd house' was honoured, because by his genius he had greatly glorified his people. ******** "In Dumfries as in every other considerable town in Scotland, and we might add England it was then customary, you know, with the respectable inhabitants, to pass a convivial hour or two of an evening in some decent tavern or other and Burns' howf was the Globe, kept by honest Mrs Hyslop, who had a sonsie sister, 'Anna wi' the gowden locks,' the heroine of what in his fond deceit he thought was the best of all his songs. The worthy town's-folk did not frequent bar, or parlour, or club-room at least they did not think they did from a desire for drink; though doubtless they often took a glass more than they intended, nay, sometimes even two; and the prevalence of such a system of social life, for it was no less, must have given rise, with others beside the predisposed, to very hurtful habits. They met to expatiate and confer on state affairs to read the newspapers to talk a little scandal and so forth and the result was, we have been told, considerable dissipation. The system was not excellent; dangerous to a man whose face was always more than welcome; without whom there was wanting the evening or the morning star. Burns latterly indulged too much in such compotations, and sometimes drank more than was good for him; but not a man now alive in Dumfries ever saw him intoxicated; and the survivors all unite in declaring that he cared not whether the stoup were full or empty, so that there were conversation―argumentative or declamatory, narrative or anecdotal, grave or gay, satirical or sermonic; nor would any of them have hoped to see the sun rise again in this world, had Burns portentously fallen asleep. They had much better been, one and all of them, even on the soberest nights, at their own firesides, or in their beds, and orgies that seemed moderation itself in a howf, would have been felt outrageous at home. But the blame, whatever be its amount must not be heaped on the head
