and sufficient reasons for absence were given. Noncommissioned officers and privates suffered penalties of Is for the first offence and 1s 6d for succeeding abstentions from drill; and officers paid 2s 6d for a first offence and 5s for each succeeding offence. In addition, as has been said, fines were imposed for inebriety when on parade, and for insolence to superior officers. These fines were freely and sternly enforced by the Committee of which Burns was a member, and by the Committees before and after his appointment, lists of names with the amounts of the fines being given in the Minute Book. Privates and officers appear to have been punished without distinction or favour; and one officer paid repeatedly the penalty for absence from parade. In March, 1796, Charles Smith was sentenced by the Committee to a reprimand at the head of the Corps at the next drill for being absent from guard, and Smith was ordered to pay a fine of 10s; and at the same meeting George Christie suffered a like punishment for being drunk under arms, and being guilty of unsoldierlike behaviour. Three men who did not turn out were each fined 5s for neglect of duty; and the Committee, to maintain its own dignity and round off what must have been a strenuous meeting, fined Robert Grainger 5s for making disrespectful remarks regarding the Committee. One of these culprits (Charles Smith) sent a letter of remonstrance to a general meeting of the Corps, but for his pains was found guilty of prevarication and was expelled the Corps, an order being given that the fact should be published in the Dumfries Journal. At one meeting-on 24th August, 1795-in the business of which Burns took part, the Committee imposed fines-for non-attendance onlyto the extent of £9 6s, those fined including Captain Hamilton, 2s 6d; Lieut. Francis Shortt, 7s 6d; and Dr Harley, 1s. The examples quoted prove that no favouritism was shown by the Committee, which makes more important one outstanding fact, namely, that although at the date of the meeting last mentioned the Poet had been a member of the Corps for some seven months-six working months

at least not once does the name of Robert Burns appear in a list of those guilty of absenting themselves from drill or for otherwise offending against the rigidly enforced rules.

By means of this Minute Book, whose significance has been overlooked all these years, we are able to trace Burns to, or almost to, his fatal illness, and incidentally to nail to the counter one more of the mis-statements of Currie, the Poet's first editor and perhaps most inaccurate biographer, who says: "From October, 1795, to the January following, an accidental complaint confined him to the house."

We shall see that he was attending to the work of the Volunteer Corps in November. It has been to all his biographers a difficult point to decide when actually the Bard was seized with the long illness which ended fatally. His own letters are somewhat contradictory; but however that may be, Burns attended a Committee Meeting-his last recorded-on 5th November, 1795, at which he took part in the preparation for presentation by the Corps of a Loyal Address to the King. At the Committee Meeting Colonel de Peyster suggested that an address should be presented to His Majesty congratulating him on his happy escape from the late insult upon his sacred person.* few members of the Committee had met and made a draft which he submitted, and which was approved by the Committee-Burns, as has been said, was a member of it, and was present at the meeting-for submission to a General Meeting held at the Court House on the same day. The address was in the following terms, and was passed with unanimity :

A

"To the King's Most Excellent Majesty, the humble address of the Royal Dumfries Volunteers.

"Most Gracious Sovereign,-We, your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, composing the Corps of the Royal Dumfries Volun

*The attack on George III. was made in October, 1795, when the King was on his way to the House of Lords. One result of the attack was the passing of the Treasonable Attempts Bill,

teers, penetrated by the recent and signal interposition of Divine Providence in the preservation of your most sacred person from the atrocious attempt of a set of lawless ruffians, humbly hope that your Majesty will graciously receive our unfeigned congratulations. "Permitted by you, Sire, to embody ourselves for the preservation of social tranquility, we are filled with indignation at every attempt made to shake the venerable and, we trust, lasting fabric of British Liberty.

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'We have directed our Major Commandant to sign this address in the name of the Corps assembled at Dumfries, 5th November, 1795."

So ended Robert Burns's presence at the Committee meetings; and it is a singular fact, in view of his known anti-Hanoverian opinions, that the Poet's last work as a Committeeman of the Royal Dumfries Volunteers was to take part in the presentation of a loyal address in the warm terms just quoted.

If there be any truth whatever in the statement by Cunningham that Burns's accession to the Royal Dumfries Volunteers was objected to by some of his neighbours on account of political feeling-and we have discovered no substantiation of it—the minutes which have been quoted prove completely that the objections were soon overcome. And if Cunningham be right, the fact that the Poet was so soon at the head of the Corps' affairs was a great personal triumph, and a tribute to his wholeheartedness in the cause which, let it always be remembered to his credit, he was one of the first to espouse.

For the light that it throws on the habits of the Poet at a particularly interesting period of his life, this Minute Book of the Royal Dumfries Volunteers (gifted to the Ewart Library by the inheritrix of Col. de Peyster's estate) is a most valuable and fortunate find. It is important, for it covers part of the time during which, according to his principal detractor, Henley, he was, because of his vicious habits, an outcast from society; and because of those habits was "burnt to a cinder." Here Henley quotes the words reported by an old man as having been uttered by John Syme, Burns's friend, and reads into

them-if ever they were spoken, which is doubtfulmeaning that they probably never had.

If Burns's work during the year 1795, his Volunteer year, the year that ended in his fatal illness, which his critics say was the consequence of his drunkenness, be reviewed, we find how impossible the stories are. Is it conceivable that a man, in the condition to which he is said to have descended, could have attended his drills regularly for two hours on two days in every week, attended regularly his Committee meetings-his very presence there is proof that the story of social ostracism was a lie-and assisted in transacting the important and exacting business of a new Volunteer Corps, when arms, accoutrements, and the general paraphernalia of such a body had to be provided and maintained? Not only is Burns by this Minute Book proved to have been a man of most regular habits, which coincides exactly with his colleague Findlater's and his friend Gray's testimony, and the "Excise Register of Censures," but during those months he was hard at work on his Excise duties, and had contributed to Scottish song some of its most brilliant gems. During his period of strenuous Volunteering, Burns continued his great work for Scottish song by contributing generously to Thomson's work, still refusing to accept payment because he was rendering patriotic work for his native country. Among the numerous songs which he wrote in the busy months of 1795, were the great patriotic song: "Does haughty Gaul invasion threat?" that trumpet call to Democracy: "A man's a man for a' that "; one of the finest specimens of his humour, "Last May a braw wooer"; one of his immortal love songs, "This is no my ain lassie "; as well as the Heron Ballads. If this strenuous labour-active Volunteering, exacting Excise duties, and the composition of at least three of his greatest songs, all in the compass of some ten months-be the record of a decadent, we should pray that to Scotland might be born to-day another such decadent.

No; the truth is that though Burns was not a heavy

or a habitual drinker, his craving for convivial company led him occasionally to drink too much-which in his verse he glorified and exaggerated-and that he had many enemies who did not hesitate to enlarge upon his occasional excesses. He was a man of great individuality, and consequently he attracted great attention. The "fierce light that beats upon a throne" was nothing to the fierceness of the local light that searched every cranny of the life of the man who died in the humble home in the Mill Vennel of Dumfries. The searchlight discovered blemishes. It could not be otherwise. Burns was nothing if he was There was no hypocrisy in his composition. He was a seer, far ahead of his fellows, and consequently

not open.

misunderstood by many. and therefore looked at of his contemporaries.

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He was a political revolutionary, askance and suspected by many He had a vitriolic tongue and pen which he used remorselessly on occasion on those whom he did not like; and those victims of his "rough tongue, human nature, even in Dumfries, being what it was, lost no opportunity of retaliating by improving and spreading tales of his dissipation; tales, some of them, which were merely oral half a century after the Poet's death, yet believed, in spite of the written evidence of his contemporaries that he seldom drank to excess, that he was deeply interested in his family's welfare and education, that he was a highly respected citizen, and in conversation a moral purist. That many doors in Dumfries were shut to Burns we need not doubt, but the doors that were closed to him were not closed because of his dissipation. His political opinions being what they were, his caustic epigrams and epitaphs on men and women, created a suffi. cient number of enemies, and consequently the ground was ready for the seed sown by those who wished to malign him. Because they hated his politics, groaned under his castigations, and were unable to retaliate in kind, they took the arrows which Burns himself made, put poison on the tips, and drove them into the reputation of the greatest genius of his day; his biographers turned them