Douglas's edition under the different dates.


DOWNWARD COURSE.


It may be questionable whether any marriage could have tamed
Burns; but it is at least certain that there was no hope for
him in the marriage he contracted. He did right, but then he
had done wrong before; it was, as I said, one of those
relations in life which it seems equally wrong to break or to
perpetuate. He neither loved nor respected his wife. "God
knows," he writes, "my choice was as random as blind man's
buff." He consoles himself by the thought that he has acted
kindly to her; that she "has the most sacred enthusiasm of
attachment to him;" that she has a good figure; that she has
a "wood-note wild," "her voice rising with ease to B
natural," no less. The effect on the reader is one of
unmingled pity for both parties concerned. This was not the
wife who (in his own words) could "enter into his favourite
studies or relish his favourite authors;" this was not even a
wife, after the affair of the marriage lines, in whom a
husband could joy to place his trust. Let her manage a farm
with sense, let her voice rise to B natural all day long, she
would still be a peasant to her lettered lord, and an object
of pity rather than of equal affection. She could now be
faithful, she could now be forgiving, she could now be
generous even to a pathetic and touching degree; but coming
from one who was unloved, and who had scarce shown herself
worthy of the sentiment, these were all virtues thrown away,