“ONE of the poet’s remarks,” as Cromek tells us, “when he first came to Edinburgh, was that a refined and accomplished woman was a thing almost new to him, and of which he had formed but a very inadequate idea. To be pleased is the old and the best receipt how to please; and there is abundant evidence that Burns’s success among the high-born ladies of Edinburgh was much greater than among the stately patricians of his own sex. The vivid expression of one of them has become proverbial – that she never met with a man whose conversation so completely carried her off her feet.”
Carried off her Feet, p.63.
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