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One day, in a hermitage on the banks of Nith, belonging to a gentleman in my neighbourhood, who is so good as give me a key at pleasure, I wrote as follows; supposing myself the sequestered, venerable inhabitant of the lonely mansion. Thou whom chance may hither lead, Be thou clad in russet weed, etc. CV. To MR. MORISON, WRIGHT, MAUCHLINE. Ellisland, September 22nd 1788.
I shall return your books very soon. I only wish to give Dr. Adam Smith one other perusal, which I will do in one or two days. ELLISLAND, 5 Aug. 1789. My Dear Sir, I was half in thoughts not to have written to you at all, by way of revenge for the two damn'd business letters you sent me. I wanted to know all about your publications your news, your hopes, fears, etc., in commencing poet in print.
Closeburn is the place where the Kirkpatricks, the Empress Eugénie's family, used to live before they went to Spain. At Auldgirth we went over a bridge built by Carlyle's father. At Mauchline Burns grew from a boy into a man and fell in love. At Ellisland, Burns lived for a long time with his handsome wife, Jean Armour. At Dalswinton the first steamboat made its first trip, and Burns was on it.
Besides this, the soil of Ellisland had been utterly exhausted before he entered on his lease, and consequently made a miserable return for the labour expended on it. The friendly relations that had existed between him and his landlord were broken off before now; and towards the close of his stay at Ellisland Burns spoke rather bitterly of Mr. Miller's selfish kindness.
At Edinburgh I was in a new world; I mingled among many classes of men, but all of them new to me, and I was all attention to "catch" the characters and "the manners living as they rise." Whether I have profited, time will show. ELLISLAND, 4th January, 1789. . . . The character and employment of a poet were formerly my pleasure, but are now my pride.
I know, my ever dear friend, that you will be pleased with the news when I tell you I have at last taken a lease of a farm. Yesternight I completed a bargain with Mr. Miller, of Dalswinton, for the farm of Ellisland, on the banks of the Nith, between five and six miles above Dumfries.
The dazzling perplexity of novelty will dissipate, and leave me to pursue my course in the quiet path of methodical routine. CXLVIIL. To MR. W. NICOL. ELLISLAND, Feb. 9th, 1790. My Dear Sir, That damn'd mare of yours is dead. I would freely have given her price to have saved her; she has vexed me beyond description.
I remember her while she lived at Ellisland, and better still as the wife of Adam Armour, the brother of bonnie Jean." CXX.-To MRS. DUNLOP. ELLISLAND, 4th March 1789. Here am I, my honoured friend, returned safe from the capital.
Alas for the daisies! he must have turned over perches of them in his day; and yet only one has caught the glory of his lamentation! Ellisland, where he went later, and where he hoped to redeem his farm-promise, was not over-fertile; it had been hardly used by scurvy tenants before him, and was so stony that a rain-storm made a fresh-rolled field of sown barley look like a paved street.
I imagine his Jacobitism, like my own, belonged to the fancy rather than the reason." CXLIV. To HIS BROTHER, GILBERT BURNS, MOSSGIEL. ELLISLAND, 11th January 1790. Dear Brother, I mean to take advantage of the frank, though I have not in my present frame of mind much appetite for exertion in writing. My nerves are in a cursed state.
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