DEDICATION TO THE SECOND, OR EDINBURGH, EDITION OF THE POEMS OF BURNS.

TO THE NOBLEMEN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CALEDONIAN HUNT.

MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,

A SCOTTISH BARD, proud of the name, and whose highest ambition is to sing in his Country's service-where shall he so properly look for patronage as to the illustrious names of his native land; those who bear the honours and inherit the virtues of their ancestors? The Poetic Genius of my Country found me, as the prophetic bard Elijah did Elisha-at the PLOUGH; and threw her inspiring mantle over me. She bade me sing the loves, the joys, the rural scenes and rural pleasures of my native soil, in my native tongue: I tuned my wild, artless notes as she inspired. She whispered me to come to this ancient Metropolis of Caledonia, and lay my Songs under your honoured protection: I now obey her dictates.

Though much indebted to your goodness, I do not approach you, my Lords and Gentlemen, in the usual style of dedication, to thank you for past favours: that path is so hackneyed by prostituted learning, that honest Rusticity is ashamed of it. Nor do I present this Address with the venal soul of a servile author, looking for a continuation of those favours: I was bred to the plough, and am independent. I come to claim the common Scottish name with you, my illustrious Countrymen; and to tell the world that I glory in the title. I come to congratulate my country, that the blood of her ancient heroes still runs uncontaminated; and that from your courage, knowledge, and public spirit, she may expect protection, wealth, and liberty. In the last place, I come to proffer my warmest wishes to the Great Fountain of Honour, the Monarch of the Universe, for your welfare and happiness.

When you go forth to waken the Echoes, in the ancient and favourite amusement of your forefathers, may Pleasure ever be of your party and may Social Joy await your return! When harassed in courts or camps with the jostlings of bad men and bad measures, may the honest consciousness of injured Worth attend your return to your native seats; and may Domestic Happiness, with a smiling welcome, meet you at your gates! May Corruption shrink at your kindling indignant glance; and may tyranny in the Ruler, and licentiousness in the People, equally find you an inexorable foe!

I have the honour to be,

With the sincerest gratitude, and highest respect,
My Lords and Gentlemen,
Your most devoted, humble Servant,

Edinburgh, April 4, 1787.

ROBERT BURNS.

Memoir of Robert Burns.

On the 25th of January, 1759-in a clay cottage near the bridge of Doon, Ayrshire was born Robert Burns, the great Poet of Scotland. There is a tradition that his father, riding in haste to fetch the doctor, met on the river-brink a wandering mendicant, who entreated his aid to help her across the swollen stream. The good-natured Scotsman complied; and the same woman, it is said, seeking hospitality in his own cottage, uttered a prophecy over the newly-born babe, which was afterwards well fulfilled. There is some confirmation of this apocryphal legend in Burns's song of "Robin," in which he dates the circumstance of the gipsy's prophecy from the day of his own birth,—

"Our monarch's hindmost year but one

(i.e. George II. died in 1760, Robin was born 1759,) Was five-and-twenty days begun,

(i.e. January 25,)

'Twas then a blast o' Janwar' win'

Blew handsel in on Robin." (p. 269.)

The state of the weather, also, agrees with the date of his birth, for it was in the midst of winter storms that the gifted, but ill-fated genius saw the light. Gilbert Burns, Robert's brother, tells Dr. Currie the following incident of the Poet's babyhood: "When my father," he says, "built his clay bigging, he put in two stone jambs, as they are called, and a lintel carrying up a chimney in his clay gable. The consequence was, that as the gable subsided, the jambs, remaining firm, threw it off its centre; and one very stormy morning, when my brother was nine or ten days old, a little before daylight, a part of the gable fell out, and the rest appeared so shattered, that my mother, with the young Poet, had to be carried through the storm to a neighbour's house, where they remained a week till their own dwelling was adjusted."

The father of Robert Burns was William Burness (thus he spelt his name), and was born in Kincardineshire. He was brought up on the estate of Dunnottar, belonging to the Keiths (Earls Marischal), who forfeited it by adhering to the cause of the Stuarts, in 1716. The Burness family shared the misfortunes of their chief, and William and a younger son, Robert, left their paternal home to seek their fortunes in Edinburgh and England. 'I have often," says Gilbert Burns, "heard my father describe the anguish of mind he felt when they parted on the top of a hill on the confines of their native place, each going off his several way in search of new adventures, and scarcely knowing whither he went. My father undertook to act as a gardener, and shaped his course to Edinburgh, where he wrought hard, when he could get work, passing through a variety of difficulties. Still, however, he endeavoured to spare something for the support of his aged parents; and I recollect hearing him mention his having sent a bank-note for this purpose, when money of that kind was so scarce in Kincardineshire, that they scarcely knew how to employ it when it arrived."

William Burness moved from Edinburgh westward into the county of Ayr, where he engaged himself as a gardener to the Laird of Fairlie, with whom he lived two years; he then changed his service for that of Crawford of Doonside. At length, being desirous of marrying and settling, he took a perpetual lease of seven acres of land from Dr. Campbell, a physician in Ayr, with the view of commencing as nurseryman and public gardener. Here he built with his own hands a clay bigging, or cottage, to which he brought his wife, Agnes Brown, the daughter of a Carrick farmer; and here Burns was born.

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The Poet has given a brief account of his life, up to the period when his fame first dawned, in a letter to Dr. Moore, the author of the well-known novel Zeluco." We insert it as an interesting (it is assuredly the most authentic) record of his childhood and youth :

"I have not the most distant pretensions," says Burns, in this epistle, "to assume that character which the pye-coated guardians of escutcheons call a gentleman. When at Edinburgh last winter, I got acquainted in the Herald's Office, and looking through that granary of honours, I found there almost every name in the kingdom; but for me,―

"My ancient but ignoble blood

Has crept through scoundrels ever since the Flood.'

Gules, purpure, argent, &c., quite disowned me.

My father was of the north of Scotland, the son of a farmer, and was thrown by early misfortunes on the world at large,'

as

1 In the original letter to Dr. Moore, our Poet described his ancestors renting lands of the noble Keiths of Marischal, and as having had

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MEMOIR OF ROBERT BURNS.

XV

where, after many years' wanderings and sojournings, he picked up a pretty large quantity of observation and experience, to which I am indebted for most of my little pretensions to wisdom. I have met with few who understood men, their manners, and their ways, equal to 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 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 farmhouse; 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 anybody. 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 particles. 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, elfcandles, dead-lights, 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

the honour of sharing their fate." "I do not," continues he, ". use the word honour with any reference to political principles: loyal and disloyal I take to be merely relative terms, in that ancient and formidable court, known in this country by the name of Club-law, where the right is always with the strongest. But those who dare welcome ruin, and shake hands with infamy, for what they sincerely believe to be the cause of their God, or their king, are, as Mark Antony says, in Shakspeare, of Brutus and Cassius, 'honourable men.' I mention this circumstance, because it threw my father on the world at large. This paragraph was omitted by Dr. Currie, at the desire of Gilbert Burns, who thought the Poet was mistaken, but subsequent information renders it probable that Robert was better informed on the subject than his brother.

The name of this old woman was Betty Davidson; she was the widow of a cousin of Mrs. Burns, and dependent on her son. His wife treated her unkindly, and good William Burness, from compassion, had her to stay for a few months at a time in his house. He little thought how greatly the imagination of his little son would be stirred and awakened by the poor dependant,

nobody 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 halfstanza, which was music to my boyish ear,

"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 first two 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 bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest.

"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.

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 playfellows. 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 ploughboy carcase, the two extremes of which were often exposed to all the inclemencies of all 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.