AGNES BROWN. Died 14th January, 1820, aged 88; buried in Bolton The spring birds sing, nor care if no one listen, And while, to music of the spring's returning, I, nursing tender thoughts, this sweet March morning. The snowdrop on the grass-green turf is blowing, As when old Homer sung. And round me are the quaint-hewn gravestones, giving Of promise for the dead. But not that mausoleum, huge and hoary, Its long-forgotten great ones died in glory, Ah. no! with reverence meet from these I turn; They had what wealth could bring or love supply, Like thousands such, who, born as they were born, Live, have their day, and die. Let peace be theirs! It is a fairer meed A peasant name, befitting peasant tongue : Here, in this alien ground, her ashes lie, Far from her native haunts on Carrick shore, Far from where first she felt a mother's joy O'er the brave child she bore. Ah! who can tell the thoughts that on her prest Perhaps in prescient vision came to her Some shadowings of the glory yet afar— But dreamt she ever, as she sang to still His infant heart in slumber sweet and long, That he who silent lay the while, should fill Half the round world with song? Yet so he filled it; and she lived to see Which thrilled his native land. She saw, too, when had passed the singer's breath, Oh! may we hope she heard not, even afar, Who would not wish that her long day's decline He sleeps among the eternal; nothing mars JOHN RUSSELL. BURNS'S FIRST BIOGRAPHER (1764-1807). I T is by no means unusual for those who write or speak with appreciation of the great poetic gifts of Robert Burns, to be extremely apologetic respecting what are considered the blemishes of his private character. The fear is that those blemishes disqualify him for saintship in heaven above if not on the earth beneath, and Scotsmen cannot abide the thought that the gates of heaven should be closed against their favourite poet. The existence of those blemishes has too long been assumed, and allowed to pass without question as the ordinary defects of human nature. They have been excused, condoned, and apologised for, but for the most part in so half-hearted a manner as to tend to magnify the suspicion that they must have been more heinous than they dare be represented to posterity. That it is possible for an author's private character to be made or marred by his biographer does not sufficiently enter into the calculations of most readers; they forget that what they read is always less or more shaped and coloured by the writer's own opinions and views. For instance, take the case of Thomas Carlyle. Most intelligent readers know how much his private character has suffered from the indiscretions and misconceptions of his chief biographer, Anthony Froude, which would, we feel sure, have been resented by Carlyle himself, notwithstanding his liberality with regard to the licence of biographers. Every biographer is not a Boswell, who had the genius to reveal the weaknesses and failings of a life in a way void of offence. If the poet Burns could revisit this mortal sphere and learn the extent of his own popularity he would probably be greatly surprised, though he once said to his wife that his countrymen would think more of him a hundred years after his death. Probably he would be still more surprised at what has been said and written of the part he played when in the flesh, and would perhaps find much reason for desiring to be saved from his friends. No one is more culpable in this respect than Robert Heron, the Poet's first biographer, who, by a few suggestive touches of his pen has managed to distort the whole subsequent conception of Burns's private life and character. So much so, indeed, that one is constantly reminded of Burns's humorous lines upon him, especially the following couplet :— It is exceedingly difficult, at this distance of time, to form anything like a correct estimate of how far Burns's first biographer was wide of the facts when speaking of the Poet's last days at Dumfries. Although Heron's biography deals with but a small space in the short history of the Poet's life, and in concise and condensed style, it is unquestionably responsible for a great deal of misconception with regard to the character he bore during the other periods of his life. In Dr Currie's fuller biography, which long held the field, the influence of Heron's brief biography is clearly apparent. Heron himself let the cat out of the bag in his well-known letter to the Literary Fund, in which he states that Dr Currie had openly acknowledged that the smaller biography had formed the basis for his own. It has been said, and with much truth, that when a lie gets half-an-hour's start of the truth, the truth loses much time in overcoming the handicap. A short sketch of Heron and his works may probably help us to decide whether he was the most trustworthy contemporary of the Poet to give an unbiased account of his life and character. Robert Burns we know, but who is this Robert Heron, who but for his pamphlet on Burns would have been consigned to oblivion? The name occurs only once in one of Burns's shorter pieces, but it is the fact that his achievements in literature, apart from his association with the Poet, should not have left him unknown, unhonoured, and unsung. Robert Heron was born at New-Galloway, Kirkcudbrightshire, in 1764, in a small thatched house in the main street. At that time the village consisted of thatched houses without either fire-places or grates, the smoke issuing from the doors of the houses. Heron thus describes it himself in his journey through Scotland in 1793: "The inhabitants are merchants, labourers in husbandry, a few alehouse-keepers, and two or three shopkeepers. The houses are low, ill-built, thatched with straw, and imperfectly repaired within. A sashed window was lately a curiosity not to be seen here." New-Galloway is situated. on the banks of the river Ken, at the intersection of the road from Kirkcudbright to Ayrshire with that from Newton-Stewart to Dumfries, nestling in a romantic valley suggestive of the "Happy Valley " in Dr Johnson's Rasselas, and surrounded with high mountains. The scenery around is of the wildest and most romantic character, and it is difficult to convey in words the impression it produces on the sensitive mind. In its midst one is overawed with a keen sense of the gigantic powers of Nature and an overwhelming feeling of one's own utter insignificance. It was through NewGalloway and this wild region Burns frequently travelled on horseback when on his Excise business. Since the days of Burns and Heron, this district has been immortalised in the writings of S. R. Crockett. In this environment, then, Robert Heron first saw the light. His father, John Heron, was a weaver, and bailie of the small burgh town of New-Galloway, and was evidently a man of shrewd intelligence, with an instinctive desire to keep abreast of the times. The only newspaper that came to New-Galloway at that time was the London Chronicle, which was usually lent to John Heron by Gordon of Kenmure Castle, which has a conspicuous place in the Cromwellian invasion of Galloway. John Heron was in the habit of reading the entire contents of the Chronicle to his staff of young weavers, amongst whom may be mentioned |