things but loss - heaven excepted - that she might win and
keep him." Burns himself was transported while in her
neighbourhood, but his transports somewhat rapidly declined
during an absence. I am tempted to imagine that, womanlike,
he took on the colour of his mistress's feeling; that he
could not but heat himself at the fire of her unaffected
passion; but that, like one who should leave the hearth upon
a winter's night, his temperature soon fell when he was out
of sight, and in a word, though he could share the symptoms,
that he had never shared the disease. At the same time, amid
the fustian of the letters there are forcible and true
expressions, and the love verses that he wrote upon Clarinda
are among the most moving in the language.

We are approaching the solution. In mid-winter, Jean, once
more in the family way, was turned out of doors by her
family; and Burns had her received and cared for in the house
of a friend. For he remained to the last imperfect in his
character of Don Juan, and lacked the sinister courage to
desert his victim. About the middle of February (1788), he
had to tear himself from his Clarinda and make a journey into
the south-west on business. Clarinda gave him two shirts for
his little son. They were daily to meet in prayer at an
appointed hour. Burns, too late for the post at Glasgow,
sent her a letter by parcel that she might not have to wait.
Clarinda on her part writes, this time with a beautiful
simplicity: "I think the streets look deserted-like since
Monday; and there's a certain insipidity in good kind folks I
once enjoyed not a little. Miss Wardrobe supped here on
Monday. She once named you, which kept me from falling