Scotland/Scots > Life of Robert Burns

13G LIFE OF
of this big-boned, black-browed, brawny stranger,
with his great flashing eyes, who, having forced
his way among them from the plough-tail at a
single stride, manifested, in the whole strain of his
bearing and conversation, a most thorough convic¬
tion, that, in the society of the most eminent men
of his nation, he was exactly where he was enti¬
tled to be ; hardly deigned to flatter them by ex¬
hibiting even an occasional symptom of being flat¬
tered by their notice; by turns calmly measured
himself against the most cultivated understandings
of his time in discussion ; overpowered the bon
mots of the most celebrated convivialists by broad
floods of merriment, impregnated with all the burn¬
ing life of genius ; astounded bosoms habitually
enveloped in the thrice-piled folds of social reserve,
by compelling them to tremble—nay to tremble
visibly—beneath the fearless touch of natural pa¬
thos ; and all this without indicating the smallest
willingness to be ranked among those professional
ministers of excitement, who are content to be
paid in money and smiles for doing what the spec¬
tators and auditors would be ashamed of doing in
their own persons, even if they had the power of
doing it; and,—last and probably worst of all,—
who was known to be in the habit of enlivening so¬
cieties which they would have scorned to approach,
still more frequently than their own, with elo¬
quence no less magnificent; with wit in all likeli¬
hood still more dat ing ; often enough, as the su¬
periors whom he fronted without alarm might have
guessed from the beginning, and had, ere long, no
occasion to guess, with wit pointed at themselves.
The lawyers of Edinburgh, in whose wider cir¬
cles Burns figured at his outset, with at least as
much success as among the professional literati,