Page:Life of Robert Burns.pdf/14

 14 unable to repress his wrath any longer, thus ad- dressed him, “Sir, I now perceive a man may be very learned, and an excellent judge of poetry by square and role, and yet after all be a dd blockhead." With those of the other sex his manners and address were in the highest degree deferential and polished A letter from himself about this time says, "For my own affairs I am in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas a Kempis, or John Bunyan; and you may expect henceforth to see my birth day inscribed among the wonderful events in the Poor Robin and Aberdeen Almanacks, along with the Black Monday, and the Battle of Bothwell Bridge." " The attentions he received,” says Mr Dugald Stewart, “ from all ranks and descriptions of per sons, were such as would have turned any head but his own. I cannot say that I could perceive any unfavourable effect which they left on his He retained the same simplicity of man- ners and appearance which had struck me so forcibly in the country; nor did he seem to feel any additional self-importance from the number and rank of his new acquaintance." Notwithstanding all this, and when Burns had retired from the homage of these glittering sa- loons, and the tumultuous applause of convivial assemblies, to the obscure lodgings which he then occupied in one of the closes of the High Street of Edinburgh, he could not shield himself from pain- ful reflections. He came to be more than half aware that the smiles of the great often go for very little; and many passages in his letters writ- ten about this time betray but too plainly the se- cret emotions of his soul. His keen sensibility was wounded by many of the thoughts which ob-