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CHAPTER X
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY - LITERATURE UNDER THE GEORGES

attention shown him. His only mistake was in not realizing that the people who praised him so heartily would forget all about him in a month. He hoped that some of those men of rank and wealth who claimed to be his friends and admirers would help to secure for him some position in which he could have part of his time free for poetry. He was disappointed, for nothing came of his visit but a little money, a little fame, and the restless, unhappy feeling that there was a world of intellect, of cultivation, of association with the most brilliant men of his country, and that he was shut out from this by nothing but the want of money. He was not strong enough to put the thought away from him. He had one more winter in Edinburgh ; but while there was quite as much admiration of his poems, the novelty was gone, and the lovers of novelty were not so attentive. Burns made no complaint. He secured a position as an excise man, rented a little farm, married Jean Armour, and set out to live on his small income. Scotland's poet was tracking smugglers, working on a farm, and incidentally writing such poems as Tam O'Shanter, Bannockburn, and The Banks o' Doon.
The farm was not a success; and he moved to a tiny house in Dumfries. The years were hard. Burns's readiness to please and be pleased led him into whatever company chose him, not the company which he