The critics of the day, headed by Professor Wilson, declared he was Burns’s rival as a song-writer, and his superior in anything relating to external nature! indeed they wrote of him as unsurpassed by poet or painter in his fairy tales of ancient time, dubbing him Poet Laureate to the Queen of Elfland; and yet his unrefined manner tempted these friends to speak of him familiarly as the greatest hog in all Apollo’s herd, or the Boar of the Forest, etc. etc.

Wordsworth, however, on November 21, 1835, when his brother bard had just left the sunshine for the sunless land, wrote from his heart the noble lines ending—­

“Death upon the Braes of Yarrow Closed the Poet Shepherd’s eyes.”

[40] Another, sister Georgiana, married General the Honourable Sir Alexander Hope, G.C.B., grandfather of Mrs. Maxwell Scott.

[41] Chronicles of the Canongate.  First Series, ending with the story of The Surgeon’s Daughter.

[42] Mr. Lockhart justly remarks that this entry “paints the man in his tenderness, his fortitude, and happy wisdom.”

[43] Charles Rose Ellis had been created Baron Seaford in 1826.

[44] See Cromek’s Reliques of Burns, p. 210.

OCTOBER.

October 1.—­I set about work for two hours, and finished three pages; then walked for two hours; then home, adjusted sheriff processes, and cleared the table.  I am to set off to-morrow for Ravensworth Castle, to meet the Duke of Wellington;[45] a great let off, I suppose.  Yet I would almost rather stay and see two days more of Lockhart and my daughter, who will be off before my return.  Perhaps.  But there is no end to perhaps.  We must cut the rope and let the vessel drive down the tide of destiny.

October 2.—­Set out in the morning at seven, and reached Kelso by a little past ten with my own horses.  Then took the Wellington coach to carry me to Wellington—­smart that.  Nobody inside but an old lady, who proved a toy-woman in Edinburgh; her head furnished with as substantial ware as her shop, but a good soul, I’se warrant her.  Heard all her debates with her landlord about a new door to the cellar, etc. etc.; propriety of paying rent on the 15th or 25th of May.  Landlords and tenants have different opinions on that subject.  Danger of dirty sheets in inns.  We dined at Wooler, and I found out Dr. Douglas on the outside, son of my old acquaintance Dr. James Douglas of Kelso.  This made us even lighter in mind till we came to Whittingham.  Thence to Newcastle, where an obstreperous horse retarded us for an hour at least, to the great alarm of my friend the toy-woman. N.B.—­She would have made a good feather-bed if the carriage had happened to fall, and her undermost.  The heavy roads had retarded us near an hour more, so that I hesitated to go to Ravensworth so late; but my good woman’s tales of dirty sheets, and certain recollections of a Newcastle inn, induced me to go on.  When I arrived the family had just retired.  Lord Ravensworth and Mr. Liddell came down, however, and really received me as kindly as possible.