Robert Burns Author:Thomas Finlayson Henderson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III IRVINE AND ITS RESULTS—1781-1783 Desire to Marry—Elison Begbie—Jilted—Irvine Partnership— Hypochondria — Destruction of Shop — Town Life—Richar... more »d Brown—A Fashionable Failing—Return to Lochlea — Death of his Father — First Commonplace Book—The Poet on Himself—Freemasonry— Elizabeth Paton—Penitential and Defiant Verses— "The Cutty Stool"—"The Poet's Welcome"—In- fluence of Fergusson. IN his twenty-third year the poet, according to Gilbert, being " anxious to be in a situation to marry," entered into partnership with a flax- dresser at Irvine. He himself says that he entered on the enterprise " partly through whim," and partly because he " wished to set about doing something in life " ; but his reason for giving so vague an account of his intentions was doubt- . less that when about to set out to Irvine he had been deprived of his special inducements for contemplating matrimony. The desire to be in si a situation to marry was not a mere general sentiment. It had been awakened by his acquaintanceship with Elison Begbie, a farmer's daughter, whose "twa sparkling roguish een " he had celebrated in "The Lass of Cessnock Banks." After courting her assiduously for some time in stolen interviews, he wound up the attack by a series of elaborate epistles, full of pattern sentiments and reflections, and modelled, both as to tone and style, on the letters "by the most eminent writers," of which he possessed a copy. As he himself half suspected, their manner is too solemn; and, although he particularly prided himself on his abilities at a billet doux, they are neither very ardent nor, so far as one can judge without knowing the peculiarities of the case, particularly tactful. To attempt by cold argument to convince the average young woman that she possesses qualities of...« less