SCOTTISH POETRY. 189 



Campbell, was a native of Ardrossan. Unlike Burns' other heroines, 

 she appears to have had many personal attractions. 



" That she was beautiful, we have other testimony than that of Burns : 

 her charms attracted gazers, if not wooers, and she was exposed to the 

 allurements of wealth. She withstood all temptation, and returned the 

 affection of the Poet with the fervour of innocence and youth." Pp. 88, 89. 



We extract what Mr. Cunningham has said of Miss Armour : 



" To the charms of Jean Armour I have already alluded. This young 

 woman, the daughter of a devout man and master-mason, lived in Mauch- 

 line, and was distinguished less for the beauty of her person than for the 

 grace of her dancing and the melody of her voice. Burns seems to have 

 been attached to her soon after the loss of his Highland Mary. How the 

 Poet and his Jean became acquainted is easily imagined by those who 

 know the facilities for meetings of the young which fairs, races, dances, 

 weddings, house-heatings, and kirn-suppers afford ; of the growth of af- 

 fection between them it is less easy to give an account." Pp. 90, 91. 



Love and poetry, now, Burns began for a time to throw aside, 

 and of 



" The threshers' weary flinging tree," 



he had become tired. The farm did not prosper with him, and he 

 longed to try his hand at something congenial. To make three pounds 

 perform the duty of five, Burns and all men have found impossible. 

 It was at this period that be thought of going to Jamaica. Mr. 

 Cunningham has spoken of this part of his history with great feeling; 



" But bodily discomfort was not all: he might, to use his own language, 

 have braved the bitter blast of misfortune, which, long mustering over his 

 head, was about to descend ; but sorrows of a tender nature, from which 

 there was no escape, came pouring upon him in a flood. 



" In protracted courtship there is always danger; prudence seldom 

 takes much care of the young and the warm-hearted : Jean was not out of 

 her teens, and thought more of her father's ungentleness than of her own 

 danger ; the Poet's respect for sweetness and innocence protected her for a 

 while but he was doomed to feel what he afterwards sung : 

 " e Wha can prudence think upon, 



And sic a lassie by him ? 

 Wha can prudence think upon, 

 And sae in love as I am ! ' 



" These convoyings home in the dark, and meetings under ' the milk- 

 white thorn/ ended in the Poet being promised to be made a father before 

 he had become a husband. This, to one so destitute and utterly poor as 

 Burns, was a stunning event : but that was not the worst ; the father of 

 Jean Armour heard with much anguish of his favourite daughter's condi- 

 tion ; and when, on her knees before him, she implored forgiveness, arid 

 showed the marriage lines as the private acknowledgment of marriage 

 without the sanction of the kirk is called his anguish grew into anger 

 which overflowed all bounds, and heeded neither his daughter's honour nor 

 her husband's fame. He snatched her marriage certificate from her, threw 

 it into the fire, and commanded her to think herself no longer the wife of 

 the Poet." 



We also add an extract from an unpublished letter to David Bryce, 

 shoemaker, Glasgow; the mirthful mood in which he wrote the 

 verses on his departure to the West Indies, is lost in this cheerless 

 strain; the date is June 12, 1786 : 



