twice in Kay's Edinburgh Portraits-the second time as UNDER THE one of a group. Kay's original portrait of the lady, a PORTRAIT OF full-length, has this inscription :

'Burns, whose Beauty warms the age,

And fills our youth with love and rage.'

The Bard declaims against her persecutors in a letter to
Peter Hill, 2nd February 1790.

LINE I.

Wisbech MS.

Ye envious prudes, cease, cease your railing,'

3.

"True it is she had one failing,' Duncan, and Stewart. 4. Had a woman ever less,' erroneous reading.

ON MISS AINSLIE AT CHURCH

PUBLISHED—not as Chambers and, after him, Scott Douglas state, by Cromek (1808), but-by Cunningham (1834).

Miss Ainslie was sister to Burns's friend, Robert Ainslie. Burns, on his Border Tour, arrived at Berrywell, Berwickshire, the farm of Ainslie's father, on 5th May 1787. On the Sunday, as related in his Journal, he accompanied the family to church at Duns, and, being seated next Miss Ainslie, wrote the lines in her Bible, apropos of her search for a text against the impenitent denoted by the preacher. In his Journal he sketches the young lady thus :- Her person a little embonpoint, but handsome; her face, particularly her eyes, full of sweetness and good humour; she unites three qualities rarely to be found together: keen, solid penetration; sly, witty observation and remark; and the gentlest, most unaffected female modesty.'

AT INVERARAY

PUBLISHED in Stewart's Poems Ascribed to Robert Burns (1801) with the explanation that Burns found himself and his companion entirely neglected by the innkeeper, whose whole attention seemed to be occupied' by 'some company' on a visit to the Duke of Argyll. (Burns

VOL. II.

2 E

MISS BURNS

AT

slept at Inveraray on 26th June 1787.) In the Stewart INVERARAY and Meikle tracts another set was printed: 'said to have been inscribed by Burns on a pane of glass in a Highland Inn':

'Highland pride, Highland scab, Highland hunger:

If God Almighty sent me here 'twas surely in his anger.' It may be that these were the lines inscribed at Inveraray, and that the version in the text has been elaborated from them. Hately Waddell printed a third set from the recollection of a Dr. Grierson, whose variations are probably the effect of a bad memory.

AT CARRON IRONWORKS

PUBLISHED in The Edinburgh Evening Courant, 5th October 1789, with the title :-'Written on the Window of the Inn at Carron'; dated August 26th 1787'; and signed, 'R. B., Ayrshire.' Republished in No. 1 of the Gray Tracts, Edinburgh 1799; and included in Stewart's Poems Ascribed to Robert Burns (Glasgow 1801).

Burns's only reference to Carron in his Journal is [Sunday, 26th August]-Cross the Grand Canal at Carron. Breakfast.'

LINE 6. Your porter dought na hear us,' Gray, Stewart, and all Editors; but the Courant has 'bear,' which rhymes with 'sair,' and in the sense of 'suffer,' or 'allow,' is the better reading.

ON SEEING THE ROYAL PALACE AT STIRLING
IN RUINS

BURNS reached Stirling on the afternoon of the Sunday
(26th August) which saw him 'tirling' at the door of
Carron Ironworks. Visiting Harvieston on the Monday, he
returned to Stirling that evening. Not improbably these
lines were written after the jolly supper mentioned in his
Journal. The inscription was published, with the inten-

tion of showing Burns up, in James Maxwell's rhymed ON SEEING Animadversions on Some Poets and Poetasters (1788), and it STIRLING appears in Cunningham (1834). As we learn from a letter

PALACE

to Clarinda, January 1788, Burns, on applying for a place IN RUINS in the Excise, was severely questioned about it.

For the copy of a мs.-MS. (A)—at one time in the possession of Mr. B. Nightingale, we are indebted to Mr. Davey, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury. The inscription is found in the Glenriddell Book-мs. (B).

LINE I. Here Stewarts once in triumph reign'd,' Maxwell and мs. (A) 4. 'Their sceptre's sway'd by other hands,' Maxwell, Cunningham, and Ms. (A): an absurd reading if followed by 5-6, which, however, do not occur in Maxwell, Cunningham, or MS. (A). 9-10 do not occur in Cunningham.

ADDITIONAL LINES AT STIRLING

PUBLISHED by Cunningham (1834), who states, but, as
usual, without giving his authority, that Burns wrote the
preceding inscription on the Monday morning, and, being
remonstrated with by Nicol on his return from Harvies-
ton, added this mock 'reproof to the author.'

REPLY TO THE THREAT OF A CENSORIOUS
CRITIC

"THESE impudent lines,' wrote Burns, in the Glenriddell
Book [he referred to the inscription On Seeing the Royal
Palace, etc.] 'were answered very petulantly by somebody,
I believe a Rev. Mr. Hamilton. In a мs. where I met
with the answer I wrote below,' etc. Hamilton's answer
(he was minister of Gladsmuir, East Lothian), was pub-
lished in James Maxwell's Animadversions (Paisley 1788).
It is not so galling as Muirhead's To Vacerras (sic); but,
for all that, it is by no means pointless, e.g. :—

'But can a mind which fame inspires,
Where genius lights her brightest fires?
Can Burns, disdaining truth and law,
Faction's envenomed dagger draw?'

TO A The Bard's Reply was first published in Cunningham CENSORIOUS (1834), where it reads thus :—

CRITIC

:

'Like Esop's lion, Burns says sore I feel
All other scorn, but damn that Ass's heel!'

A HIGHLAND WELCOME

PUBLISHED in The Edinburgh Courant (2nd July 1792) under the title, Written at Dalnacardoch in the Highlands, and signed 'R. B.'; reprinted in No. 1. of the Gray Tracts, 1799; and included in Currie (1800): with the remark that the lines were composed and repeated by Burns to the master of the house, on taking leave at a place in the Highlands where he had been hospitably entertained,'

AT WHIGHAM'S INN, SANQUHAR

INSCRIBED on a window-pane of the inn, and also in a copy of the Kilmarnock Edition which the Poet presented to the innkeeper. Whigham, who was Burns's particular friend (see Vol. i. p. 420), became Provost of the burgh, and died October 3rd, 1823. The lines appeared in The Burns Chronicle for 1896.

VERSICLES ON SIGN-POSTS

INSCRIBED in the Second Common Place Book, and included in Alexander Smith's Edition (1868). The everlasting surliness of a lion and Saracen's head,' etc.—thus does Burns preface them-' or the unchanging blandness of the landlord welcoming a traveller, on some sign-posts, would be no bad similes of the constant affected fierceness of a Bully, or the eternal simper of a Frenchman or a Fiddler.' No. 2. LINE 2. Strong on the sign-post stands the stupid ox,' alternative reading.

No. 4. LINE 3. It shews a human face, and wears a wig,' erroneous reading. 4. And looks, when well preserved, amazing big,' erroneous reading.

ON MISS JEAN SCOTT

PUBLISHED in Stewart's Poems Ascribed to Robert Burns (Glasgow 1801). Nothing is known of the lady.

ON CAPTAIN FRANCIS GROSE

PUBLISHED in The Scots Magazine for June 1797, and included in one of the tracts 'printed for and sold by Stewart and Meikle' (1799) and in Stewart's Poems Ascribed to Robert Burns (Glasgow 1801). Inscribed in the Glenriddell Book, but ignored by Currie (decent man!), it is thus prefaced in The Scots Magazine :— 'Mr. Grose was exceedingly corpulent, and used to rally himself with the greatest good humour on the singular rotundity of his figure. The following epigram, written in a moment of festivity by the celebrated Burns, the Scottish poet, was so much relished by Grose, that he made it serve as an excuse for prolonging the convivial occasion to a very late hour.'

LINE 6. I'll want him ere I take such a damnable load,' Stewart.

ON BEING APPOINTED TO AN EXCISE

DIVISION

PUBLISHED in Cromek's Reliques (1808). The appointment was made in August 1789.

ON MISS DAVIES

PUBLISHED in the series of tracts printed by Chapman and Lang for Stewart and Meikle,' and included in Stewart's Poems Ascribed to Robert Burns (Glasgow 1801). Stewart states that the mot was graven on a pane of glass in the Inn at Moffat. Cunningham gives more details, on the authority (no doubt) of his own imagination. The