Donne's mistress:--
"Her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
That one would almost say her body thought."
Accompanied by this charming dame, he visited an old lady, Mrs. Bruce,
of Clackmannan, who, in the belief that she had the blood of the royal
Bruce in her veins, received the poet with something of princely
state, and, half in jest, conferred the honour of knighthood upon him,
with her ancestor's sword, saying, in true Jacobitical mood, that she
had a better right to do that than some folk had! In the same pleasing
company he visited the famous cataract on the Devon, called the
Cauldron Lian, and the Rumbling bridge, a single arch thrown, it is
said by the devil, over the Devon, at the height of a hundred feet in
the air. It was the complaint of his companions that Burns exhibited
no raptures, and poured out no unpremeditated verses at such
magnificent scenes. But he did not like to be tutored or prompted:
"Look, look!" exclaimed some one, as Carron foundry belched forth
flames--"look, Burns, look! good heavens, what a grand sight!--look!"
"I would not look--look, sir, at your bidding," said the bard, turning
away, "were it into the mouth of hell!" When he visited, at a future
time, the romantic Linn of Creehope, in Nithsdale, he looked silently
at its wonders, and showed none of the hoped-for rapture.
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