met possessed genius comparable to his own. In a very few weeks it was
evident that he was to be the lion of the season. By December
thirteenth he is writing to a friend at Ayr:

"I have found a worthy warm friend in Mr. Dalrymple, of
Orangefield, who introduced me to Lord Glencairn, a man whose
worth and brotherly kindness to me I shall remember when time
shall be no more. By his interest it is passed in the Caledonian
Hunt, and entered in their books, that they are to take each a
copy of the second edition [of the poems], for which they are to
pay one guinea. I have been introduced to a good many of the
Noblesse, but my avowed patrons and patronesses are the Duchess of
Gordon, the Countess of Glencairn, with my Lord and Lady
Betty--the Dean of Faculty [Honorable Henry Erskine]--Sir John
Whitefoord. I have likewise warm friends among the literati;
Professors [Dugald] Stewart, Blair, and Mr. Mackenzie--the Man of
Feeling."

Through Glencairn he met Creech the book-seller, with whom he
arranged for his second edition, and through the patrons he mentions
and the Edinburgh freemasons, among whom he was soon at home, a large
subscription list was soon made up. In the _Edinburgh Magazine_ for
October, November, and December, James Sibbald had published favorable
notices of the Kilmarnock edition, with numerous extracts, and when
Henry Mackenzie gave it high praise in his _Lounger_ for December
ninth, and the _London Monthly Review_ followed suit in the same
month, it was felt that the poet's reputation was established.

Of Burns's bearing in the fashionable and cultivated society into
which he so suddenly found himself plunged we have many contemporary