xxii

PREFATORY NOTICE.

lume, are somewhat perplexing. And it may, moreover, be seriously questioned, whether Gilbert Burns' best method of answering many of his amiable author's unconscious mis-statements and exaggerations, would not have been to expunge them altogether from a work with which posterity were to connect, in any shape or measure, the authority of his own name.

As to criticism on Burns' poetry, no one can suppose that any thing of consequence remains to be added on a subject which has engaged successively the pens of Mackenzie, Heron, Currie, Scott, Jeffrey, Walker, Wordsworth, Campbell, and Wilson.

The humble purpose of the following Essay was, therefore, no more than to compress, within the limits of a single small volume, the subtance of materials already open to all the world. and sufficient, in every point of view, for those who have leisure to collect, and candor to weigh them.

For any little touches of novelty that may be discovered in a Narrative, thus unambitiously undertaken, the writer is indebted to respectable authorities, which shall be cited as he proceeds. As to the earlier part of Burns' history, Currie and Walker appear to have left little unexplored; it is chiefly concerning the incidents of his closing years that their accounts have been supposed to admit of a supplement.

LIFE

OF

ROBERT BURNS.

CHAPTER I.

"My father was a farmer upon the Carrick Border, And soberly he brought me up in decency and order."

ROBERT BURNS was born on the 25th of Januaary 1759, in a clay-built cottage, about two miles to the south of the town of Ayr, and in the imme. diate vicinity of the Kirk of Alloway, and the "Auld Brig o' Doon." About a week afterwards, part of the frail dwelling, which his father had constructed with his own hands, gave way at midnight; and the infant poet and his mother were carried through the storm, to the shelter of a neighboring hovel.

The father, William Burnes or Burness, (for so he spelt his name,) was the son of a farmer in Kincardineshire, whence he removed at 19 years of age, in consequence of domestic embarrassments. The farm on which the family lived, formed part of the estate forfeited, in consequence of the Rebellion of 1715, by the noble house of Keith Marischall; and the poet took pleasure in saying,

that his humble ancestors shared the principles and the fall of their chiefs. Indeed, after William Burnes settled in the west of Scotland, there prevailed a vague notion that he himself had been out in the insurrection of 1745-6; but though Robert would fain have interpreted his father's silence in favor of a tale which flattered his imagination, his brother Gilbert always treated it as a mere fiction, and such it was.* It is easy to suppose that when any obscure northern stranger fixed himself in those days in the Low Country, such rumors were likely enough to be circulated concerning him.

William Burnes labored for some years in the neighborhood of Edinburgh as a gardener, and then found his way into Ayrshire. At the time when Robert was born, he was gardener and overseer to a gentleman of small estate, Mr. Ferguson of Doonholm; but resided on a few acres of land, which he had on lease from another proprietor, and where he had originally intended to establish himself as a nurseryman. He married Agnes Brown in December 1757, and the poet was their first-born.

William Burnes seems to have been, in his humble station, a man eminently entitled to respect. He had received the ordinary learning of a Scottish parish school, and profited largely both by that and by his own experience in the world. "I have met with few" (said the poet, † after he had himself seen a good deal of mankind) "who under

Gilbert found among his father's papers a certificate of the minister of his native parish, testifying that "the bearer, William Burnes, had no hand in the late wicked rebellion."

+ Letter of Burns to Dr. Moore, 22d August, 1787.

stood men, their manners and their ways, equal to my father." He was a strictly religious man. There exists in his handwriting a little manual of theology, in the form of a dialogue, which he drew up for the use of his children, and from which it appears that he had adopted more of the Arminian than of the Calvinistic doctrine; a circumstance not to be wondered at, when we consider that he had been educated in a district which was never numbered among the strong-holds of the Presbyterian church. The affectionate reverence with which his children ever regarded him, is attested by all who have described him as he appeared in his domestic circle; but there needs no evidence beside that of the poet himself, who has painted, in colors that will never fade, "the saint, the father, and the husband," of the Cottar's Saturday Night.

Agnes Brown, the wife of this good man, is described, as 66 a very sagacious woman, without any appearance of forwardness, or awkwardness of manner;"* and it seems that, in features, and,as he grew up, in general address, the poet resembled her more than his father. † She had an inexhaustible store of ballads and traditionary tales, and ap. pears to have nourished his infant imagination by this means, while her husband paid more attention to "the weightier matters of the law."

These worthy people labored hard for the support of an increasing family. William was occupied with Mr. Ferguson's service, and Agnes— like the wyfe of Auchtermuchtie, who ruled

"Baith calvis and kye,

And a' the house baith in and out,"

*Letter of Mr. Mackenzie, surgeon at Ervine. Morrison, vol. ii. p. 261.

t Ibid.

contrived to manage a small dairy as well as her children. But though their honesty and diligence merited better things, their condition continued to be very uncomfortable; and our poet (in his letter to Dr. Moore) accounts distinctly for his being born and bred "a very poor man's son," by the remark, that" stubborn, ungainly integrity, and headlong, ungovernable irascibility, are disqualifying circumstances.'

These defects of temper did not, however, obscure the sterling worth of William Burnes in the eyes of Mr. Ferguson; who, when his gardener expressed a wish to try his fortune on a farm of his then vacant, and confessed at the same time his inability to meet the charges of stocking it, at once advanced 100l. towards the removal of the difficulty. Burnes accordingly removed to this farm (that of Mount Oliphant, in the parish of Ayr) at Whitsuntide 1766, when his eldest son was be. tween six and seven years of age. But the soil proved to be of the most ungrateful description; and Mr. Ferguson dying, and his affairs falling into the hands of a harsh factor, (who afterwards sat for his picture in the Twa Dogs,) Burnes was glad to give up his bargain at the end of six years. He then removed about ten miles to a larger and better farm, that of Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton. But here, after a short interval of prosperity, some unfortunate misunderstanding took place as to the conditions of the lease; the dispute was referred to arbitration; and after three years of suspense, the result involved Burnes in ruin. The worthy man lived to know of this decision; but death saved him from witnessing its necessary consequences. He died of consumption on the 13th February, 1784. Severe labor, and