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infant brow foreshadowed to some extent the tempestuous future that was in store for him.

It is more than probable that Burns had a well-defined line of intellectual ancestors, and that nature, in her secret resources, had long been preparing for his advent so that he might take his place on the world's stage in due season. On both his father and his mother's side he belonged to a class of substantial Scottish husbandmen or yeomen. In the Poet's autobiographical letter. to Dr John Moore, the distinguished physician and author, which covers the most important period of Burns's life, he makes many playful allusions to his own life and that of his family. While there is no perversion of facts, it is well to make allowance for the play of the poetic imagination which may be read between the lines. What a charming and instructive human document this sketch would have been had the Poet carried it over the subsequent nine years of his life in the same playful spirit. "When at Edinburgh last winter," he says, "I got acquainted at the Herald Office, and looked through the granary of honours. I there found almost every name in the kingdom, but for me".

66 My ancient but ignoble blood

Has crept thro' scoundrels since the flood."

If we trace the Poet's family no further back than his grandfather, also named Robert Burnes, about the year 1700, he and his four brothers were sufficiently wealthy, it seems, to be able to display silver utensils at their table. Moreover, there is a tradition that the Poet's grandfather, with the assistance of some of his neighbours, built the first school on his farm which was erected in the district, and united to support its teacher. If such was the case, we can readily imagine that heredity played some part in the love of knowledge displayed by the whole Burns family, and also in the aptitude of the sons in making the best of their slender opportunities. The strenuous efforts in the Poet's home to acquire the best education within their reach is supported by the most eloquent testimony. A glance at their domestic circle as it is presented in the autobiographical letter already alluded to is a most impressive picture.

When at the farm of Lochlea, during meal-time, parents, brothers, sisters ate with a spoon in one hand and a book in the other. All of them were far above the intellectual level of those in a similar social sphere, whose aspirations seldom rose above the grosser material comforts of life. Robert, who was highly strung and delicately constituted, was especially noted for a retentive memory, and, according to his own testimony, soon made an excellent English scholar, and when ten or eleven years of age he was an authority on English grammar-absolutely a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. His latent poetic faculty was first stimulated by an old maid resident in the parish, who was remarkable for her credulity and superstition, and had the largest collection of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, and the like it is possible to conceive. As a matter of fact, Burns was by no means the ill-taught and unlettered Scottish peasant he has so frequently been made to appear by uninformed apologists. In addition to his knowledge of English grammar he knew something of French, and at the parish school of Hugh Rodger, Kirkoswald, he entered upon the study of mensuration, and at the Tarbolton Club he diligently strove to qualify himself in general questions-taking up in debate both the positive and negative sides, so that he might acquire a breadth of view unattainable by other means in those days of superstition and narrowness. The existence of the Club and its membership came to the ears of Burns's schoolmaster, who sneered at Burns and his schoolmate, William Neven, for their presumption. The story has been so often told that we need not repeat it. Burns challenged the dominie in argument and defeated him. This incident, ordinary though it may appear, goes to illustrate the difference between genius and talent, the former of which was born with the Poet, and time served to emphasise it.

Probably through a long line of ancestors the spark of poetic genius had been silently gathering force and volume till it found expression in the peasant Poet, and the Goddess of the rustic Muses finally threw her mantle over him at the plough. We know

that his father was no common man, but a man of strong moral fibre, shrewd intelligence, and keen observation, to whom, as the Poet generously confessed, he was indebted for most of his pretensions to wisdom. However much the Poet may have been indebted to the debates at the Tarbolton Club, the faculty of criticism was no doubt awakened by his father, who was of the intellectual type of the best class of the Scottish peasant, possessing sound views on religion, on education, and his duty to his family. For the instruction of his family he drew up a catechism, cultivated friendly conversation with his sons on the questions which then engrossed the attention of men of light and leading, teaching them arithmetic and other branches of education of which he himself had gained more than the ordinary knowledge. In emulation of the father, the son manifested a great deal in common with him. Even when a mere youth he was ambitious of shining in conversation, and soon became such an adept in Socinian arguments as to excite alarm of heresy among the more bigoted Calvinists of the neighbourhood. Actuated by a fervent desire to develop the best that was in him, Burns kept up a correspondence with several of his young companions in the same rank of life with the view of acquiring a good style in composition, and so excelled in this that his vanity was flattered by comparing his own epistles with those of his correspondents. "I carried this whim so far," he observes, "that though I had not three farthings worth of business in the world yet every post brought me as many letters as if I had been a broad plodding son of day-book and ledger." He also kept a common-place book, in which he wrote his ideas on man, religion, and various other subjects, carefully criticising his own first productions. By this kind of discipline he rose by degrees to the level of the highly cultured, and quickly discerned the weak and the strong points in the productions of others in the sphere of poetry as well as in other branches of literature. As an example of his shrewd critical faculty, the supreme literary critic in Edinburgh in his day was Dr Hugh Blair, the eloquent divine, and Professor of Rhetoric and Belle-Lettre, yet Burns became sufficiently critical to observe that Blair had

attainments but no great depth-an opinion which is fully confirmed in Blair's Dissertation on the Ossianic Poems, not to quote other opinions from eminent literary authorities.

Gifted far beyond the average of mankind Burns seems to have been impressed with the idea that he had a mission to his less-gifted fellow-countrymen. "I seem to be one sent into the world," he says, "to see and observe; the joy of my heart is to study men, their manners, and their ways." Heinrich Heine, the German poet, said of himself, "Crown me not with the laurel wreath of poetry, for I have always looked upon poetry as a divine plaything, but lay a sword upon my coffin, for I have been a brave soldier in the liberation war of humanity." The idea thus expressed by this gifted poet was that though the world claimed him only as a poet and the mouth-piece of sweet sounds expressed to please the fancy, he considered that his noblest achievement consisted in emancipating the minds of his countrymen from that theological superstition and intellectual narrowness which have ever constituted the great enemies of progress. Surely it will not be thought invidious to make a similar claim for Robert Burns.

By the fearless courage and biting sarcasm of John Knox the Reformation was more thorough in Scotland than in any other country in Europe, but by the end of the eighteenth century the Kirk of John Knox itself needed reformation. Burns, though never claiming to be either saint or reformer, by his wit and satire swept the Augean Stables more effectually than any other agency could have done. When he first shed the light of his genius on his beloved land, Scotland was in the rigid grasp of Calvinism, which had acted throughout the seventeenth century and part of the eighteenth as a petrifying agency, stifling all originality and freedom of thought. The Deity which the Calvinist conceived was an extension of his own morbid and unhealthy nature-a being at one and the same time selfish, jealous, and revengeful, bearing the unmistakable impression of having been the survival of a more barbarous and ferocious age. Burns caught up the spirit of his own day as it existed in the atmosphere of advanced. thought, but in its moral application to life and conduct he never

abandoned the sentiment of true religion in its best

sense.

The French Revolution had stirred in men new conceptions of political and intellectual freedom, and the Poet accurately gauged its importance for the future of mankind. In a certain sense it is true that with all his relentless logic and biting satire, Burns did not finally sweep pharisaism from the theological world in his own day, but he put a weapon into the hands of the advocate of honesty and freedom of thought by which he could gradually break down intolerance and bigotry, and put to the blush the hypocrite and the pharisee. Some idea will be conveyed of the extent to which the spirit of Calvinism, had narrowed and prejudiced the minds of many of the people by the fact that when the Rev. George Whitfield, visited Scotland for the first time, he was solemnly and sternly rebuked by the Seceders, because he refused to confine his labours to them. And why? Because they alone claimed to be the chosen of God, while all outside the pale of their theological cult were destined for the Abodes of Darkness. Whitfield, however, administered a well-merited reproof by pointing out "if that was so they had no need of him or anyone else, for according to their own testimony they were saved already; and, like the Master he professed to follow, he came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.'" It was against such blind selfishness and barbaric intolerance that Burns directed his satire of "Holy Willie's Prayer." In addition to the corruption of the Church, and the false views. of religion which were then prevalent, the majority of the people were fettered by a slavish fear, not so much of their God as of their minister, and Burns had the courage to tell them so. The countrymen of Burns may not only crown him with the laurel wreath of poetry but hail him as a brave soldier in the liberation war of humanity. All who are conversant with his poetry, and the spirit of the real Burns, well know how deep a reverence he had for true religion, which is manifest in "The Cottar's Saturday Night," his "Prayer in Prospect of Death," "An Epistle to a Young Friend," and others which need not be quoted. His satires against Presbyterian theology, as exemplified

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