former happiness - the eternal propensity I always had to
fall in love. My heart no more glows with feverish rapture;
I have no paradisiacal evening interviews." Even the process
of "battering" has failed him, you perceive. Still he had
some one in his eye - a lady, if you please, with a fine
figure and elegant manners, and who had "seen the politest
quarters in Europe." "I frequently visited her," he writes,
"and after passing regularly the intermediate degrees between
the distant formal bow and the familiar grasp round the
waist, I ventured, in my careless way, to talk of friendship
in rather ambiguous terms; and after her return to - , I
wrote her in the same terms. Miss, construing my remarks
further than even I intended, flew off in a tangent of female
dignity and reserve, like a mounting lark in an April
morning; and wrote me an answer which measured out very
completely what an immense way I had to travel before I could
reach the climate of her favours. But I am an old hawk at
the sport, and wrote her such a cool, deliberate, prudent
reply, as brought my bird from her aerial towerings, pop,
down to my foot, like Corporal Trim's hat." I avow a carnal
longing, after this transcription, to buffet the Old Hawk
about the ears. There is little question that to this lady
he must have repeated his addresses, and that he was by her
(Miss Chalmers) eventually, though not at all unkindly,
rejected. One more detail to characterise the period. Six
months after the date of this letter, Burns, back in
Edinburgh, is served with a writ IN MEDITATIONE FUGAE, on
behalf of some Edinburgh fair one, probably of humble rank,
who declared an intention of adding to his family.