“His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its effect, perhaps, from one’s knowledge of his extraordinary talents.  His features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth’s picture, but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished as if seen in perspective.  I think his countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits.  I would have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school—­i.e., none of your modern agriculturists, who keep labourers for their drudgery, but the douce gudeman who held his own plough.  There was a strong expression of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament.  It was large, and of a dark cast, which glowed (I say literally glowed) when he spoke with feeling or interest.  I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time.  His conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest presumption.  He was like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the laird.  I do not speak in malam partem when I say I never saw a man in company with his superiors in station and information more perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment.  I was told that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always with a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their attention particularly.  I have heard the late Duchess of Gordon remark this.”

It needs no effort of imagination to conceive what the sensations of an isolated set of scholars, almost all either clergymen or professors, must have been in the presence of this big-boned, brawny stranger, with his great flashing eyes, who had forced his way among them from the plough-tail at a single stride; and it will always be a reflection in their honour that they suffered no pedantic prejudices to interfere with their reception of the poet.

Shortly after his arrival he arranged with Creech, the chief bookseller in Edinburgh, to undertake a second edition of his poems.  This was published in March, 1787, the subscribers numbering over 1,500.  Out of money thus derived, he provided a tombstone for the neglected grave of Robert Fergusson, his “elder brother in the muses,” in the Canongate churchyard.  Then he decided to visit some of the classic scenes of Scottish history and romance.  He had as yet seen but a small part of his own country, and this by no means among the most interesting, until, indeed, his own poetry made it equal, on that score, to any other.  Various tours were, in fact, undertaken, the chief being, however, in the Border district and in the Highlands.  Usually he returned to Edinburgh, partly to be near his jovial intimates, and partly because, after the excitement attending his first appearance in the capital, he found himself incapable of settling down contentedly in the humble circle at Mossgiel.