Scotland/Scots > Life of Robert Burns

LIFE OF
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he certainly was one of the most enthusiastic of
his admirers, and one of the most affectionate of
all his intimates. The abridgement of Burns’s
visit at Gordon Castle, “ was not only, ” says Mr
Walker, “ a mortifying disappointment, but in all
probability a serious misfortune ; as a longer stay
among persons of such influence, might have begot
a permanent intimacy, and on their parts, an ac¬
tive concern for his future advancement. ” * But
this touches on a subject which we cannot at pre¬
sent pause to consider.
A few days after leaving Fochabers, Burns trans¬
mitted to Gordon Castle his acknowledgment of
the hospitality he had received from the noble fa¬
mily, in the stanzas—
“ Streams that glide on orient plains.
Never bound by winter’s chains, ” &c.
The Duchess, on hearing them read, said she sup¬
posed they were Dr Beattie’s, and on learning
whose they really were, expressed her wish that
Burns had celebrated Gordon Castle in his own
dialect. The verses are among the poorest of his
productions.
Pursuing his journey along the coast, the poet
visited successively Nairn, Forres, Aberdeen, and
Stonehive, where one of his relations, Janies Bur-
ness, writer in Montrose, met him by appointment,
and conducted him into the circle of his paternal
kindred, among whom he spent two or three days.
When William Bumess, his father, abandoned his
native district, never to revisit it, he, as he used
to tell his children, took a sorrowful farewell of
his brother on the summit of the last hill from
which the roof of their lowly home could be des-
* Morrison, vol. i. p. 89.