who have difficulty in reconciling much of his passionate love-song making with fidelity to his marriage contract— who are shocked, indeed, by the thought of his sitting by his faithful wife amidst their young family at the fire o' nights and addressing sonnets to "Chloris'" eyebrowsthese few lines should explain much, if not all. I do not, of course, claim that they explain all; although, really, they remove quite a world of seeming involvement and apparent fickleness. Burns could not stand unmoved before the magic of any charming woman's eye. Never for a moment; and what he said for the Bard in "The Jolly Beggars," he might have said for himself: "Their tricks an' craft hae put me daft, They've ta'en me in, an' a' that; But clear your decks, an' here's the Sex! I like the jades for a' that. For a' that, an' a' that, An' twice as muckle's a' that; My dearest bluid, to do them guid, Thrice welcome! And well it is for our song-literature that his heart was so "completely tender"; for, inasmuch as he was ready ever to fall in love, he was equally sure to burst out into song—the first being, in his experience, the natural and true condition for the second. But, whatever else he may have been in love mattersand he was a blunderer often, as we will see-Burns was no professional Don Juan. Had he been so, as one has truly remarked, he would never have reaped, as he did, a harvest of bitter misery and despair. None more readily than he should have expressed a feeling of rapture with "Clarinda's" lines: "Talk not of love, it gives me pain, For love has been my foe; He bound me with an iron chain, It is true, nevertheless, that, better than any vindication of Burns's character is the simple narration of his love stories; for there, although sometimes obscurely, behind the songs and poems, we catch glimpses of the man, and behold the movements of that passion of love that has raised him deservedly to a first-to an immortal place, at least among the lyric poets of the world. NELLY KILPATRICK BURNS's first real love, and the inspirer of his first song, was Nelly Kilpatrick. Writing in his first Common-Place Book, in August, 1783, he confesses that he never had the least thought or inclination of turning poet till he got once heartily in love. But "then rhyme and song," he continues, "were in a manner the spontaneous language of my heart. The following composition "the reference is to "Handsome Nell"-" was the first of my performances, and done at an early period of life, when my heart glowed with honest, warm simplicity; unacquainted and uncorrupted with the ways of a wicked world. The performance is, indeed, very puerile and silly; but I am always pleased with it, as it recalls to my mind those happy days when my heart was yet honest, and my tongue was sincere. The subject of it was a young girl, who really deserved all the praises I have bestowed on her. I not only had this opinion of her then, but I actually think so still, now that the spell is long since broken, and the enchantment at an end." The "bonnie lass" who "roused the forming strain," was the daughter of a country blacksmith, near Mount Oliphant,* and was the poet's partner on the harvest field in * Robert Chambers describes her as the daughter of Allan Kilpatrick, miller at Parclewan, in the parish of Dalrymple, and states, further, that she became the wife of William Bone, coachman to the Laird of Newark, and died about the year 1820. the autumn of 1773, when he was yet under fifteen years old, while she was about a year younger. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, Nelly sang sweetly, and the tones of her voice made the heart-strings of the hitherto dumb poet thrill like an Eolian harp. One of her songs was reputed to have been composed by a small country laird's son, on one of his father's maids, with whom he was in love. The lad Burns saw no reason why he should not sing of his love as well even as the country laird's son had done, for he had equal scholar-craft. So he set his wits to work and composed "Handsome Nell," which, the more effectively to establish in its subject's favour, he set to be sung to her favourite reel tune, "I am a man unmarried." In his autobiographical letter to Dr. Moore, written in 1787, he describes her as a "bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass," and, continuing, he says:-"She, altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated me into a certain delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and bookworm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our chiefest pleasure here below. How she caught the contagion, I cannot tell; you medical folks talk much of infection by breathing the same air, the touch, etc.; but I never expressly told her that I loved her. Indeed, I did not know well myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labours; why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill; and particularly, why my pulse beat such a furious rantann, when I looked and fingered over her hand to pick out the nettle-stings and thistles." There is no record, no tradition, telling whether Nelly ever sang the song. But we may easily guess that she never did; unless it might be, to her own heart. Young love is bashful love, the more sincere, the more retiring. And first love, moreover, ever tender, sweet, and beautiful, seldom ever dies. The poet, anyway, in his "Epistle to Mrs. Scott, the Gudewife of Wauchope House," written fifteen years later, reveals with what warm affection he hearkened back on the scene, the subject, and the song here. He writes: "I mind it weel, in early date, When I was beardless, young and blate, An' first could thresh the barn, And wi' the lave ilk merry morn The tither stooked raw, |