--I
am secure against that crushing grip of iron poverty, which, alas!
is less or more fatal to the native worth and purity of, I fear, the
noblest souls; and a late, important step in my life has kindly taken
me out of the way of those ungrateful iniquities, which, however
overlooked in fashionable license, or varnished in fashionable phrase,
are indeed but lighter and deeper shades of VILLAINY.
Shortly after my last return to Ayrshire, I married 'my Jean'. This
was not in consequence of the attachment of romance perhaps; but I
had a long and much-loved fellow creature's happiness or misery in my
determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a deposit. Nor
have I any cause to repent it. If I have not got polite tattle, modish
manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with
the multiform curse of boarding-school affectation; and I have got the
handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and
the kindest heart in the county. Mrs. Burns believes, as firmly as her
creed, that I am _le plus bel esprit, et le plus honnete homme_ in
the universe; although she scarcely ever in her life, except the
Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and the Psalms of David in
metre, spent five minutes together on either prose or verse.
I must except also from this last, a certain late publication of Scots
poems, which she has perused very devoutly; and all the ballads in
the country, as she has (O the partial lover! you will cry) the finest
'wood-note wild' I ever heard.
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