"Polemical divinity about this time was putting the country half-mad; and I, ambitious of shining in conversation parties on Sundays, between sermons, at funerals, &c. used, a few years afterwards, to puzzle Calvinism with so much heat and indiscretion, that I raised a hue and cry of heresy against me, which has not ceased to this hour. vation and experience, to which I am indebt- the story of Wallace poured a Scottish preed for most of my little pretensions to wisdom. judice into my veins, which will boil along -I have met with few who understood there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal men, their manners, and their ways, equal to rest. him; but stubborn, ungainly integrity, and headlong, ungovernable irascibility, are disqualifying circumstances; consequently I was born a very poor man's son. For the first six or seven years of my life, my father was a gardener to a worthy gentleman of small estate in the neighbourhood of Ayr. Had he continued in that station, I must have marched off to be one of the little underlings about a farm-house; but it was his dearest wish and prayer to have it in his power to keep his children under his own eye till they could discern between good and evil; so, with the assistance of his generous master, my father ventured on a small farm on his estate. At those years I was by no means a favourite with any body. I was a good deal noted for a retentive memory, a stubborn sturdy something in my disposition, and an enthusiastic idiot piety. I say idiot piety, because I was then but a child. Though it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made an excellent English scholar; and by the time I was ten or eleven years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs, and participles. In my infant and boyish days, too, I owed much to an old woman who resided in the family, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, deadlights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out in suspicious places; and though no body can be more sceptical than I am in such matters, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors. The earliest composition that I recollect taking pleasure in, was The Vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's, beginning, How are thy servants blest, O Lord! I particularly remember one half-stanza which was music to my boyish ears "For though on dreadful whirls we hung High on the broken wave-" I met with these pieces in Mason's English Collection, one of my school-books. The two first books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were, The Life of Hannibal, and The History of Sir William Wallace. Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn, that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bag-pipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; while "My vicinity to Ayr was of some advantage to me. My social disposition, when not checked by some modifications of spirited pride, was, like our catechism-definition of infinitude, without bounds or limits. I formed several connections with other younkers who possessed superior advantages, the youngling actors, who were busy in the rehearsal of parts in which they were shortly to appear on the stage of life, where, alas! I was destined to drudge behind the scenes. It is not commonly at this green age that our young gentry have a just sense of the immense distance between them and their ragged play fellows. It takes a few dashes into the world, to give the young great man that proper, decent, unnoticing disregard for the poor, insignificant, stupid devils, the mechanics and peasantry around him, who were perhaps born in the same village. My young superiors never insulted the clouterly appearance of my plough-boy carcase, the two extremes of which were often exposed to all the inclemencies of the seasons. They would give me stray volumes of books: among them, even then, I could pick up some observations; and one, whose heart I am sure not even the Munny Begum scenes have tainted, helped me to a little French. Parting with these my young friends and benefactors, as they occasionally went off for the East or West Indies, was often to me a sore affliction; but I was soon called to more serious evils. My father's generous master died; the farm proved a ruinous bargain; and, to clench the misfortune, we fell into the hands of a factor, who sat for the picture I have drawn of one in my Tale of Twa Dogs. My father was advanced in life when he married; I was the eldest of seven children; and he, worn out by early hardships, was unfit for labour. My father's spirit was soon irritated, but not easily broken. There was a freedom in his lease in two years more; and to weather these two years, we retrenched our expenses. We lived very poorly; I was a dexterous ploughman, for my age; and the next eldest to me was a brother (Gilbert) who could drive the plough very well, and help me to thrash the corn. A novelwriter might perhaps have viewed these scenes with some satisfaction; but so did not I; my indignation yet boils at the recollection of the s-l factor's insolent threatening letters which used to set us all in tears. "This kind of life-the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galleyslave, brought me to my sixteenth year; a little before which period I first committed the sin of Rhyme. You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together as partners in the labours of harvest. In my fifteenth autumn my partner was a bewitching creature a year younger than myself. My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language; but you know the Scottish idiom-she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she altogether, unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below! How she caught the contagion, I cannot tell you medical people talk much of infection from breathing the same air, the touch, &c.; but I never expressly said I loved her. Indeed, I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labours; why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an Eolian harp and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; and it was her favourite reel, to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine that I could make verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin; but my girl sung a song, which was said to be composed by a small country laird's son, on one of his father's maids, with whom he was in love! and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he; for, excepting that he could smear sheep, and cast peats, his father living in the moor-lands, he had no more scholar-craft than myself.* : It may interest some persons to peruse the first poetical production of our Bard, and it is therefore extracted from a kind of common place book, which he seems to have begun in his twentieth year; and which he entitled, "Observations, Hints, Songs, Scraps of Poetry, &c. by Robert Burness, a man who had little art in making money, and still less in keeping it; but however, a man of some sense, a great deal of howas, nesty, and unbounded good. will to every creature, rational or irrational. As he was but little indebted to a scholastic education, and bred at a plough-tail, his performances must be stronglytinctured with his unpolished rustic way of life; but as, I believe, they are really his own, it may be some entertainment to a curious observer of human nature, to see how a ploughman thinks and feels, under the pressure of love, ambition, anxiety, grief, with the like cares and passions, which, however diversified by the modes and manners of life, operate pretty much alike, I believe, in all the species." "Thus with me began love and poetry; which at times have been my only, and till within the last twelve months, have been my highest enjoyment. My father struggled on till he reached the freedom in his lease, when he entered on a larger farm, about ten miles farther in the country. The nature of the bargain he made was such as to throw a little ready money into his hands at the commencement of his lease: otherwise the affair would have been impracticable. For four years we lived comfortably here; but a difference commencing between him and his landlord, as to terms, after three years tossing and whirling in the vortex of litigation, my father was just saved from the horrors of a jail by a consumption, which, after two years' promises, kindly stepped in, and carried him away, to where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest. "It is during the time that we lived on this farm that my little story is most eventful. I was, at the beginning of this period, perhaps the most ungainly, awkward boy in the parish -no solitaire was less acquainted with the ways of the world. What I knew of ancient story was gathered from Salmon's and Guthrie's geographical grammars; and the ideas I had formed of modern manners, of literature, and criticism, I got from the Spectator. These, with Pope's Works, some plays of Shakspeare, printed, and others in their embryo state. The song alluded to is as follows, TUNE. "I am a man unmarried." Tull and Dickson on Agriculture, the Pantheon, and thus I set absolute want at defiance; and as Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, I never cared farther for my labours than while Stackhouse's History of the Bible, Justice's I was in actual exercise, I spent the evenings British Gardener's Directory, Bayle's Lectures, in the way after my own heart. A country Allan Ramsay's Works, Taylor's Scripture lad seldom carries on a love adventure without Doctrine of Original Sin, A Select Collection an assisting confidant. I possessed a curiosity, of English Songs, and Hervey's Meditations, zeal, and intrepid dexterity, that recommended had formed the whole of my reading. The me as a proper second on these occasions; collection of songs was my vade mecum. I and I dare say, I felt as much pleasure in bepored over them driving my cart, or walking ing in the secret of half the loves of the parish to labour, song by song, verse by verse: care of Tarbolton, as ever did statesmen in knowfully noting the true tender, or sublime, ing the intrigues of half the courts of Europe. from affectation and fustian. I am convinced -The very goose-feather in my hand seems to I owe to this practice much of my critic craft, know instinctively the well-worn path of my such as it is. imagination, the favourite theme of my song; and is with difficulty restrained from giving you a couple of paragraphs on the love adventures of my compeers, the humble inmates of the farm-house and cottage; but the grave sons of science, ambition, or avarice, baptize these things by the name of follies. To the sons and daughters of labour and poverty, they are matters of the most serious nature; to them, the ardent hope, the stolen interview, the tender farewell, are the greatest and most delicious parts of their enjoyments. "In my seventeenth year, to give my manners a brush, I went to a country dancingschool. My father had an unaccountable antipathy against these meetings; and my going was, what to this moment I repent, in opposition to his wishes. My father, as I said before, was subject to strong passions; from that instance of disobedience in me, he took a sort of dislike to me, which I believe was one cause of the dissipation which marked my succeeding years. I say dissipation, comparatively with the strictness, and sobriety, and regularity of Presbyterian country life; for though the Will o' Wisp meteors of thoughtless whim were almost the sole lights of my path, yet early ingrained piety and virtue kept me for several years afterwards within the line of innocence. The great misfortune of my life was to want an aim. I had felt early some stirrings of ambition, but they were the blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave. I saw my father's situation entailed on me per petual labour. The only two openings by which I could enter the temple of Fortune, was the gate of niggardly economy, or the path of little chicaning bargain-making. The first is so contracted an aperture, I never could squeeze myself into it; the last I always hated there was contamination in the very entrance! Thus abandoned of aim or view in life, with a strong appetite for sociability, as well from native hilarity, as from a pride of observation and remark; a constitutional melancholy or hypochondriasm that made me fly solitude; add to these incentives to social life, my reputation for bookish knowledge, a certain wild logical talent, and a strength of thought, something like the rudiments of good sense; and it will not seem surprising that I was generally a welcome guest where I visited, or any great wonder that, always where two or three met together, there was I among them. But far beyond all other impulses of my heart, was un penchant a l'adorable moitie du genre humain My heart was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other; and as in every other warfare in this world my fortune was various, sometimes I was received with favour, and sometimes I was mortified with a repulse. At the plough, seythe, or reap hook, I feared no competitor, "Another circumstance in my life which made some alteration in my mind and manners, was, that I spent my nineteenth summer on a smuggling coast, a good distance from home, at a noted school, to learn mensuration, survey.. ing, dialling, &c. in which I made a pretty good progress. But I made a greater progress in the knowledge of mankind. The contraband trade was at that time very successful, and it sometimes happened to me to fall in with those who carried it on. Scenes of swaggering riot and roaring dissipation were till this time new to me; but I was no enemy to social life. Here, though I learnt to fill my glass, and to mix without fear in a drunken squabble, yet I went on with a high hand with my geometry, till the sun entered Virgo, a month which is always a carnival in my bosom, when a charming filette who lived next door to the school, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the sphere of my studies. I, however, struggled on with my sines, and cosines, for a few days more! but stepping into the garden one charming noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met my angel, "Like Proserpine gathering flowers, "It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining week I staid, I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her; and the last two nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless. "I returned home very considerably improved. My reading was enlarged with the very important addition of Thomson's and Shenstone's Works; I had seen human nature in a new phasis and I engaged several of my school-fellows to keep up a literary correspondence with me. This improved me in composition. I had met with a collection of letters by the wits of Queen Anne's reign, and I pored over them most devoutly; I kept copies of any of my own letters that pleased me; and a comparison between them and the composition of most of my correspondents flattered my vanity. I carried this whim so far, that though I had not three farthings worth of bus:ness in the world, yet almost every post brought me as many letters as if I had been a broad plodding son of day-book and ledger. My life flowed on much in the same course till my twenty-third year. Vive l'amour, et vive la bagatelle, were my sole principles of action. The addition of two more authors to my library gave me great pleasure; Sterne and M'Kenzie-Tristram Shandy and The Man of Feeling-were my bosom favourites. Poesy was still a darling walk for my mind; but it was only indulged in according to the humour of the hour. I had usually half a dozen or more pieces on hand; I took up one or other, as it suited the momentary tone of the mind, and dismissed the work as it bordered on fatigue. My passions, when once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they got vent in rhyme; and then the conning over my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet! None of the rhymes of those days are in print, except Winter, a Dirge, the eldest of my printed pieces; The Death of Poor Mailie, John Barleycorn, and Songs, first, second, and third. Song second was the ebullition of that passion which ended the forementioned school busi ness. "My twenty-third year was to me an importánt era. Partly through whim, and partly that I wished to set about doing something in life, I joined a flax-dresser in a neighbouring town (Irvine) to learn his trade. This was an unlucky affair. My ; and, to finish the whole, as we were giving a welcoming carousal to the new year, the shop took fire, and burnt to ashes; and I was left like a true poet, not worth a sixpence. ed with a young fellow, a very noble character, but a hapless son of misfortune. He was the son of a simple mechanic; but a great man in the neighbourhood taking him under his patronage gave him a genteel education, with a view of bettering his situation in life. The patron dying just as he was ready to launch out into the world, the poor fellow in despair went to sea; where after a variety of good and ill fortune, a little before I was acquainted with him, he had been set ashore by an American privateer, on the wild coast of Connaught, stripped of every thing. I cannot quit this poor fellow's story, without adding, that he is at this time master of a large West Indiaman belonging to the Thames. He "His mind was fraught with independence, magnanimity, and every manly virtue. I loved and admired him to a degree of enthusiasm, and of course strove to imitate him. In some measure, I succeeded; I had pride before, but he taught it to flow in proper channels. His knowledge of the world was vastly superior to mine, and I was all attention to learn. was the only man I ever saw, who was a greater fool than myself, where woman was the presiding star; but he spoke of illicit love with the levity of a sailor, which hitherto I had regarded with horror Here his friendship did me a mischief; and the consequence was that soon after I resumed the plough, I wrote the Poet's Welcome. My reading only increased, while in this town, by two stray volumes of Pamela and one of Ferdinand Count Fathom, which gave me some idea of novels. Rhyme, except some religious pieces that are in print, I had given up; but meeting with Ferguson's Scottish Poems, I strung anew my wildly-sounding lyre with emulating vigour. When my father died, his all went among the hell-hounds that growl in the kennel of justice; but we made a shift to collect a little money in the family amongst us, with which, to keep us together, my brother and I took a neighbouring farm. My brother wanted my hair-brained imagination, as well as my social and amorous madness: but in good sense, and every sober qualification, he was far my superior. "I was obliged to give up this scheme: the clouds of misfortune were gathering thick "I entered on this farm with a full resoluround my father's head; and what was worst tion, Come, go to, I will be wise! I read farmof all, he was visibly far gone in a consump-ing books; I calculated crops; I attended tion; and to crown my distresses, a belle fille whom I adored, and who had pledged her soul to meet me in the field of matrimony, jilted me, with peculiar circumstances of mortification. The finishing evil that brought up the rear of this infernal file, was, my constitutional melancholy being increased to such a degree, that for three months I was in a state of mind scarcely to be envied by the hopeless wretches who have got their mittimus-Depart from me, ye accursed! "From this adventure, I learned something of a town life; but the principal thing which gave my mind a turn, was a friendship I form markets; and in short, in spite of the devil, and the world, and the flesh, I believe, I should have been a wise man, but the first year from unfortunately buying bad seed, the second, from a late harvest, we lost half our crops. This overset all my wisdom, and I returned, like the dog to his vomit, and the sow that was wushed to her wallowing in the mire.† Rob the Rhymer's Welcome to his Bastard Child. At the time that our poet took the resolution of becoming wise, he procured a little book of blank paper, with the purpose (expressed in the first page) of making memorandums upon it. These farming memorandums are curious enough; many of them have been written "I now began to be known in the neighbourhood as a maker of rhymes. The first of my poetic offspring that saw the light, was a burlesque lamentation on a quarrel between with a pencil, and are now obliterated, or at least illegible. A considerable number are however legible, and a specimen may gratify the reader. It must be premised, that the poet kept the book by him several years-that he wrote upon it here and there, with the utmost irregularity, and that on the same page are notations very distant from each other as to time and place. April, 1782. O why the deuce should I repine, I'm twenty-three, and five feet nine- I gat some gear with meikle care, But now its gane, and something mair, FRAGMENT. Tune-' DONALD BLUE.' O leave novels, ye Mauchline belles, two reverend Calvinists, both of them dramatis persone in my Holy Fair. I had a notion myself, that the piece had some merit; but to prevent the worst, I gave a copy of it to a friend who was very fond of such things, and told him that I could not guess who was the author of it, but that I thought it pretty clever. With a certain description of the clergy, as well as laity, it met with a roar of applause. Holy Willie's Prayer next made its appearance, and alarmed the kirk-session so much, that they held several meetings to look over their spiritual artillery, if haply any of it might be pointed against profane rhymers. Unluckily for me, my wanderings led me on another side, within point blank shot of their heaviest metal. This is the unfortunate story that gave rise to my printed poem, The Lament. This was a most melancholy affair, which I cannot yet bear to reflect on, and had very nearly given me one or two of the principal qualifications for a place among those who have lost the chart, and mistaken the reckoning of Rationality. I gave up my part of the farm to my brother; in truth it was only nominally mine; and made what little preparation was in my power for Jamaica. But, before leaving my native country for ever, I resolved to publish my poems. I weighed my productions as imSing tal, lal, lay, &c. partially as was in my power: I thought they had merit; and it was a delicious idea that I should be called a clever fellow, even though it should never reach my ears-a poor negrodriver, or perhaps a victim to that inhospitable clime, and gone to the world of spirits! I can truly say, that pauvre inconnu as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high an idea of myself and of my works as I have at this moment, when the public has decided in their favour. It ever was my opinion, that the mistakes and blunders, both in a rational and religious point of view, of which we see thousands daily guilty, are owing to their ignorance of themselves. To know myself, had been all along my constant study. I weighed myself alone; I balanced myself with others: I watched every means of information, to see how much ground I occupied as a man and as a poet: I studied assiduously nature's design in my formation-where the lights and shades in my character were intended. I was pretty confident my poems would meet with some applause: but, at the worst, the roar of the Atlantic would deafen the voice of censure, and the novelty of West Indian scenes make me forget neglect. I threw off six hundred copies, of which I had got subscriptions for Your fine Tom Jones and Grandisons, Beware a tongue that's smoothly hung; The frank address, the soft caress, Are all finesse in Rob Mossgiel. For he's far aboon Dunkel' the night, Mem.-To get for Mr Johnston these two Songs : Molly, Molly, my dear honey. The cock and the hen, the deer in her den', &c. Ah! Chloris! Sir Peter Halket of Pitferran, the author.-Note, He married her-the heiress of Pitferran. Colonel George Crawford, the author of Down the Burn Dary. Pinkey house, by J. Mitchell. My apron Deary! and Amynta, by Sir G. Elliot. Willie was a wanton Wag, was made on Walkinshaw of Walkinshaw, near Paisley. I lo'e na a laddie but ane, Mr Clunzee. The bonnie wee thing-beautiful-Lundie's Dream about three hundred and fifty.-My vanity was very beautiful. He till't and she till't-assez bien. Armstrong's Farewell-fine. The Author of the Highland Queen was a Mr M'Iver, purser of the Solbay. Fife and a' the land about it, R. Ferguson. The author of The Bush aboon Traquair was a Dr Stewart. Polwart on the Green, composed by Captain John Drummond M'Gregor, of Boehaldie. Mem.-To inquire if Mr Cockburn was the author of I ha'e seen the smiling, &c. highly gratified by the reception I met with from the public; and besides I pocketed, all The above may serve as a specimen. All the notes on farming are obliterated. * An explanation of this will be found hereafter. |