Burns now began to know that Nature had meant him for a poet; and diligently, though as yet in secret, he laboured in what he felt to be his destined vocation.  He was never more productive than at this time, when he wrote such skits on the kirk and its associates as “The Twa Herds” (pastors), “Holy Willie’s Prayer,” “The Holy Fair,” and “The Ordination.”  “Hallowe’en,” a descriptive poem, perhaps even more exquisitely wrought than “The Holy Fair,” also belongs to the Mossgiel period, as does an even more notable effort.

Burns had often remarked to his brother that there was something peculiarly venerable in the phrase, “Let us worship God,” used by a decent, sober head of a family introducing family worship.  To this sentiment we are indebted for “The Cottar’s Saturday Night,” the hint of the plan and title of which were taken from Fergusson’s “Farmer’s Ingle.”  It is, perhaps, of all Burns’s pieces, the one whose exclusion from the collection, were such a thing possible nowadays, would be the most injurious, if not to the genius, at least to the character of the man.  In spite of many feeble lines and some heavy stanzas, it appears to me that even his genius would suffer more in estimation by being contemplated in the absence of this poem than of any other single performance he has left us.  Loftier flights he certainly has made, but in these he remained but a short while on the wing, and effort is too often perceptible; here the motion is easy, gentle, placidly undulating.

Burns’s art had now reached its climax; but it is time to revert more particularly to his personal history.  In this his loves very nearly occupy the chief place.  That they were many, his songs prove; for in those days he wrote no love-songs on imaginary heroines.  “Mary Morison,” “Behind yon hills where Lugar flows,” and “On Cessnock banks there lives a lass,” belong to this date; and there are three or four inspired by Mary Campbell—­“Highland Mary”—­the object of by far the deepest passion Burns ever knew, a passion which he has immortalised in the noblest of his elegiacs, “To Mary in Heaven.”

Farming had, of course, to engage his attention as well as love-making, but he was less successful in the one than in the other.  The first year of Mossgiel, from buying bad seed, the second from a late harvest, he lost half his crops.  In these circumstances, he thought of proceeding to the West Indies.  Presently he had further cause for contemplating an escape from his native land.  Among his “flames” was one Jean Armour, the daughter of a mason in Mauchline, where she was the reigning toast.  Jean found herself “as ladies wish to be that love their lords.”  Burns’s worldly circumstances were in a most miserable state when he was informed of her condition, and he was staggered.  He saw nothing for it but to fly the country at once.