second-vivid, fervent, wayward. But Burns-like the Psalmist--sang out of his sins and griefs and failures; and therefore he is on the same plane of influence he has cleansed the passions of men everywhere, and showed them the tracks to the shining hills of life, at the foot of which he himself wept in grief and atoning penitence.

II.

A few further references suggest themselves by way of showing how this temperamental melancholy received deepening shades from the Poet's physical make-up, and also from the harassment of his untoward circumstances.

It seems evident that he suffered from heart trouble. His frequent references to palpitation and heart nervousness can bear no other satisfactory construction. As early as the Mount Oliphant period-when he was only fifteen years of age-his brother Gilbert says: "At this time, he was almost constantly afflicted in the evenings with a dull headache, which at a future period of his life was exchanged for a palpitation of the heart, and a threatening of fainting and suffocation in his bed in the night-time. The symptom thus early revealed continued intermittently but increasing in its effects throughout his life. He was accustomed to have a tub of cold water by his bedside, "into which," writes Lockhart, "he usually plunged more than once in the course of the night, thereby procuring instant though but short-lived relief." He does not indulge in any exaggerated declarations of his troubles with all his revealing frankness, he keeps his heroic side to the front-but frequently it demands some expression in his confidential correspondence. As a

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sample, read this very moderate confession to Mrs Dunlop : 'Though at present I am below the veriest prose, yet everything from you pleases. I am groaning under the miseries of a diseased nervous system; a system the state of which is most conducive to our happiness, or the most productive of our misery. For now near three weeks I have been so ill with a nervous headache that

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I have been obliged for a time to give up my Excise books, being scarce able to lift my head, much less to ride once a week over ten muir parishes." Towards the end of his letter he refers to himself as a man who is weary of one world and anxious about another," and he winds up thus: "If you have a minute's leisure, take up your pen in pity to le pauvre miserable." In his Common-place Book there

are frequent references to "fainting fits, and other alarming symptoms of a pleurisy or some other dangerous disorder," &c. (1784)-manifestly pointing to irregularity of the heart; and there is clear evidence that this affection of the heart was more than troublesome long before his " thoughtless follies were even dreamt of, much less indulged in. Moreover, his nervous condition rendered him an easy prey to the effects of ardent spirits. An occasional burst was enough to punish him for a considerable spell afterwards; and it may be affirmed with certainty that but for this congenital weakness his occasional bouts would not have had any serious results. Thousands of men have drunk alarmingly more than Burns, and the fact has escaped publicity. Scott drank a bottle of wine every day, and could accommodate three of them on an occasion, yet no one ever thinks of speaking of him in the same terms as of Burns. The truth is, that the public opinion in these two cases ought to be reversed. Burns suffered intensely from his drinking, and hence the fact of his indulgence I could not be hidden.

III.

No study of the melancholy of Burns would be sufficient that did not desiderate the effects of his early experiences. Granted the temperamental quality, there were many aggravating circumstances, especially in the impressive period of his boyhood, which fed the gloom with added sadness. There can be no more poignant evidence on this chapter of his career than the testimony of his brother Gilbert. It is very direct and unaffected. Referring to the tragic family excitements at Mount

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Oliphant, he says: To the buffetings of misfortune, we could only oppose hard labour and the most rigid economy. We lived very sparingly... The anguish of mind we felt, at our tender years, under these straits and difficulties, was very great. To think of our father growing old (for he was now above fifty), broken down with the long-continued fatigues of his life, with a wife and five other children, and in a declining state of circumstances -these reflections produced in my brother's mind and mine sensations of the deepest distress. I doubt not but the hard labour and sorrow of this period of his life was in a great measure the cause of that depression of spirits with which Robert was so often afflicted through his whole life afterwards." The very simplicity and manifest sincerity of this confession is pathetic beyond ordinary; but the value of it to us, in our present study, is the fact that there is divulged a set of circumstances fatal to a constitution pensive by birth. Even if Burns had prospered afterwards in the worldly sense of fortune, it is beyond question that these thwarting penalties would have left him with a very drab memory; but his after-life was so often cast in the same catalogue, that not even an angel could have escaped their malign power, much less a nervous, supersensitive poet.

It is not meant that this general analysis should form any apology for the ultimate colour of Burns's character and history. No sane student of his life seeks to deny the mournful augmentation of his moral frailties on his despondent tendencies-and certainly he does not condone them himself; but the fact to be held clear is, that but for his saddening history in early life, the heart-weakness which handicapped his vigour, and the desertion attending his later career, we might have had a different Burns— a Burns, at least, whose lengthened days would have sanctified his repute, given fuller glory to Scotland, and added to the masterpieces of the world's literature.

JOHN HORNE.

BURNS'S MARRIAGE

IN THE LIGHT OF UP-TO-DATE EVIDENCE.

TH

HE recent discovery of a letter, dated 23rd June, 1788, addressed by Burns to James Smith, his Mauchline friend, then resident in Linlithgow, has raised anew the discussion of Burns's irregular marriage-when it took place, the nature of the ceremony, and what steps were taken when Burns proceeded to make public acknowledgment of its existence.* To refer to this biographer or that as a papal authority on the disputed points is entirely fatuous as a solution, their conclusions being founded on their own interpretation of the recorded facts, supplemented in some cases by oral tradition-an indeterminate basis of judgment which accounts in great measure for the diversity of their findings. In point of fact, most of the biographers write so hazily or carelessly on the subject that confusion is made worse confounded. Professor Nichol, for instance, gives the date of the birth of the second twins three days after one of them was buried; he also trips in the date of the Session meeting; and he further states, without the slightest indication of his authority, that a second irregular marriage took place on some date or other previous to 28th April, 1788, which 66 was solemnized in the house of Gavin Hamilton on 2nd May following," thereby giving us to understand that Burns went through a marriage ceremony with Jean Armour on three separate occasions.† This slipshod way of dealing with one of the most important events in the Poet's life has done grievous harm to his memory by putting

the "

* See Glasgow Herald, Correspondence Columns, March, 1917. † A second ceremony apparently was necessary to bridge over concubinage "interval; the third, we opine, was in deference to Lockhart. But why did Burns ride post-haste to Mauchline on 18th February to marry Jean on 2nd May following"?

it in the power of his detractors to seize upon a series of disjointed or distorted facts as a convenient text upon which to found their fulminations, and throw obloquy upon certain personages whose names Fate linked with his in the earlier period of his career.

As the average individual is quite as well qualified to sit on the jury as the most accomplished author who ever wrote about Burns, we beg to submit a full catalogue of the facts bearing on the irregular marriage, accompanied by some extraneous information which may help to a better understanding of their import. These consist mainly of extracts from authentic letters written by the Poet to his friends or by them to him, and are set down in chronological order so far as the accuracy of the dates has been ascertained.

THE EVIDENCE.

1. Burns to John Richmond, 17th February, 1786.

"I have no news to acquaint you with about Mauchline; they are just going on in the old way. I have some very important news with respect to myself, not the most agreeable-news I am sure you cannot guess, but I shall give you the particulars another time." *

2. Letter to Gavin Hamilton, dated "Mossgiel, Saturday morn (early in April, 1786).

A garbled version of this letter, copied by successive editors, was published by Cunningham, in 1834, who set it down as addressed to John Ballantine, "about 14th April, 1786." We have perused the original, presently in the possession of Mrs Finch, daughter of Mrs Adair, and grand-daughter of Gavin Hamilton, who states that the letter has always been in the possession of the Hamilton family. The following is the correct version:

"My proposals came to hand last night, and... I knew that you would wish to have it in your power to do me a service as early

*The extracts are confined to the relevant passages in the letters, and are referred to by their numbers.