A more astonishing stage-trick is not to be found. And yet
his conduct is seen, upon a nearer examination, to be
grounded both in reason and in kindness. He was now about to
embark on a solid worldly career; he had taken a farm; the
affair with Clarinda, however gratifying to his heart, was
too contingent to offer any great consolation to a man like
Burns, to whom marriage must have seemed the very dawn of
hope and self-respect. This is to regard the question from
its lowest aspect; but there is no doubt that he entered on
this new period of his life with a sincere determination to
do right. He had just helped his brother with a loan of a
hundred and eighty pounds; should he do nothing for the poor
girl whom he had ruined? It was true he could not do as he
did without brutally wounding Clarinda; that was the
punishment of his bygone fault; he was, as he truly says,
"damned with a choice only of different species of error and
misconduct." To be professional Don Juan, to accept the
provocation of any lively lass upon the village green, may
thus lead a man through a series of detestable words and
actions, and land him at last in an undesired and most
unsuitable union for life. If he had been strong enough to
refrain or bad enough to persevere in evil; if he had only
not been Don Juan at all, or been Don Juan altogether, there
had been some possible road for him throughout this
troublesome world; but a man, alas! who is equally at the
call of his worse and better instincts, stands among changing
events without foundation or resource. (1)

(1) For the love affairs see, in particular, Mr. Scott