Scotland/Scots > Life of Robert Burns

ROBERT BURNS, 171
cried; and the old man ever after kept up an af¬
fectionate correspondence with his family. It fell
to the poet’s lot, as we have seen, to communicate
his father’s last illness and death to the Kincar¬
dineshire kindred; and of his subsequent corres¬
pondence with Mr James Burness, some specimens
have already been given, by the favour of his son.
Burns now formed a personal acquaintance with
these good people ; and in a letter to his brother
Gilbert, we find him describing them in terms
which show the lively interest he took in all their
concerns. *
“ The rest of my stages, ” says he, “ are not
worth rehearsing; warm as I was from Ossian’s
country, where I had seen his grave, what cared
I for fishing-towns and fertile carses ? ” He arriv¬
ed once more in Edinburgh, on the 16th of Sep¬
tember, having travelled about six hundred miles
in two-and-twenty days—greatly extended his ac¬
quaintance with his own country, and visited some
of its most classical scenery—observed something
of Highland manners, which must have been as in¬
teresting as they were novel to him—and strength¬
ened considerably among the sturdy Jacobites of
the North those political opinions which he at this
period avowed.
Of the few poems composed during this High¬
land tour, we have already mentioned two or
three. While standing by the Fall of Fyers, near
Loch Ness, he wrote with his pencil the vigorous
couplets—
“ Among the heathy hills and rugged woods,
The roaring Fyers pours his mossy floods, ” &c.
When at Sir William Murray’s of Ochtertyre,
* General Correspondence, No. 32.