wildly sounding lyre with emulating vigour. When my father died, his all went among the hell-hounds that prowl 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 hairbrained imagination, as well as my social and amorous madness; hut in good sense, and every sober qualification, he was far my superior.

"I entered on this farm with a full resolution, 'Come, go to, I will be wise!' I read farming books, I calculated crops, I attended 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 washed to her wallowing in the mire.'

"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 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 pointblank 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 impartially 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 negro driver, or perhaps a

At the time that our Poet took the resolution of becoming wise, he procured a little book of blank paper, with the purpose (expressed on the first page) of making farming memoranda upon it. These farming memoranda are curious enough; many of them have been written with a pencil, and are now obliterated, or at least illegible.

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 about three hundred and fifty. My vanity was highly gratified by the reception I met with from the public, and besides I pocketed-all expenses deducted-nearly twenty pounds. This sum came very seasonably, as I was thinking of indenting myself, for want of money, to procure my passage. As soon as I was master of nine guineas, the price of wafting me to the torrid zone, I took a steerage passage in the first ship that was to sail from the Clyde, for

"Hungry ruin had me in the wind.'

"I had been for some days skulking from covert to covert, under all the terrors of a jail, as some ill-advised people had uncoupled the merciless pack of the law at my heels. I had taken the last farewell of my few friends; my chest was on the road to Greenock; I had composed the last song I should ever measure in Caledonia-The gloomy night is gathering fast'-when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects to my poetic ambition. The Doctor belonged to a set of critics for whose applause I had not dared to hope. His opinion that I should meet with encouragement in Edinburgh for a second edition fired me so much, that away I posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a single letter of introduction. The baneful star that had so long shed its blasting influence in my zenith, for once made a revolution to the nadir, and a kind Providence placed me under the patronage of one of the noblest of men, the Earl of Glencairn. Oublie moi, grand Dieu, si jamais je t'oublie!

"I need relate no further. At Edinburgh I was in a new world. I mingled among many classes of men, but all of them new to me, and I was all attention to catch the characters, and the manners living, as they rise. Whether I have profited, time will show."

The Poet has omitted from his autobiography an episode to which we are indebted for one of the finest of his lyrics.

Burns was, as he describes in his letter, in circumstances of great misery. He had been forsaken by Jean Armour, at the bidding of her parents, and, in consequence of their mutual sin and folly, he was about to become an exile from his beloved Scotland. One ray of light came to brighten the gloom of that moment.

There dwelt a dairymaid at Coilsfield, a modest, gentle, Highland maiden, with sweet blue eyes, and warm kind heart, of whose love for himself the Poet had doubtless some suspicion, though she was far superior in modesty and intelligence to the women he had hitherto known.

Her character must have commanded his respect as well as love, for he long cherished her memory. She lived in the service of his friend Gavin Hamilton, but her parentage was Highland. She came from the neighbourhood of Dunoon, on the Firth of Clyde. Her father was a sailor in a revenue cutter, stationed off Campbelton, in Kintyre, where the family resided. At one period she had been dairymaid, afterwards she was nurse, at Coilsfield.

Mary consented to become the wife of Burns, and agreed to give up her place and return home at once and arrange matters for their marriage. Before her departure the lovers met, on the second Sunday in May, in a lonely spot on the banks of the Ayr. Mr. Cromek tells us that their adieux were solemn as well as tender. "The lovers stood on each side of a small purling brook; they laved their hands in the limpid stream, and, holding a Bible between them, pronounced their vows to each other." They then exchanged Bibles. In the blank leaf of the one which Burns gave to his betrothed he wrote, And ye shall not swear by My name falsely. I am the Lord.-Levit. xix. 12. Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths."-Matt. v. 33.1

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Mary returned to her parents, but it appears probable, both from the following circumstances and the expressed opinions of her father after her death, that a union with Burns was not considered desirable for her; it was therefore deferred, and, after spending the summer with her family, Mary took another place (her service to begin at Martinmas) in the family of Colonel M'Ivor, of Glasgow. Her father was about to take her brother Robert to Greenock, to apprentice him to a cousin, Peter Macpherson, who was a ship-carpenter in that town. Mary accompanied them ostensibly on her road to her new place at Glasgow, secretly, it is imagined, to bid a last farewell to Burns before he sailed for the West Indies. But the boy Robert caught a fever, and Mary, who tenderly nursed him through it, drooped as he

1 This Bible has been preserved, and is placed now in Mary's monument.

MEMOIR OF ROBERT BURNS.

XXV

recovered, and died in a few days. Peter Macpherson had bought a new burying-place just at that time, and poor Highland Mary was the first interred in it. Her death was a great misfortune to Burns, and bitterly felt by him. He mourned his loss long afterwards in the exquisite lyric entitled "To Mary, in Heaven."

Within a month of Burns's arrival in Edinburgh he was in the midst of the first society both for rank and talent. Jane, Duchess of Gordon, then the leader of fashion in the Scotch metropolis, appreciated his poetry, and eagerly patronized him. Lord Monboddo, Dr. Robertson, Dr. Blair, Dr. Gregory, Dr. Adam Ferguson, Mackenzie, the novelist, and Mr. Fraser Tytler all extended to the rustic Poet the warmest and most generous encouragement. He was not spoiled by this universal homage. Nothing could be more manly and dignified than the manner in which he received the praises and attentions of fair ladies and learned divines. No thought of forsaking his original calling appears to have entered his mind. He returned gladly to the home and friends of his youth. He received £500 for the Edinburgh edition of his poems, and was thus enabled, soon after, to take a farm, called Ellisland, on the banks of the Nith, and also to lend his brother Gilbert £180 to enable him to support the family on that of Mossgiel.

He was no sooner possessed of a house of his own than he made the only reparation he could to Jean Armour. He privately married her the latter end of April, 1788, and the next month took her to his new dwelling-place. But misfortune dogged the Poet's steps. The farm proved a ruinous speculation. Burns was finally compelled to give it up, and remove into the town of Dumfries, where he remained till his death. He supported his family on his income as an exciseman-£50 per annum-the only appointment, under Government, which his friends had been able to procure him. Debt and difficulties gathered round his path, and an accidental circumstance, which occurred in the January of 1796, brought physical suffering also on the sad struggling years of the great Scottish Poet. He had sat late one evening at the Globe Tavern, and on his return home, overcome by drowsiness, and, alas! slightly intoxicated, he sank down on the snow, and slept for some hours in the open air. A severe cold, from the effects of which he never recovered, followed. Change of air and sea-bathing were tried for the restoration of his health in vain. On the 18th of July he became unable to stand. His mind sank into delirium, unless when roused by conversation; the fever increased rapidly, and on the fourth day "the sufferings of this great but ill-fated genius terminated, and a life was closed in which virtue and passion had been at perpetual variance."-Dr. Currie's "Life of Burns." He was buried with military honours by the gentlemen volunteers of Dumfries.

Burns was nearly five feet ten inches in height; his face was

well-formed, his eyes large, dark, and full of expression. Time has drawn a merciful veil over the failings of the sorely tried man, and has crowned the Poet with a fame which will endure as long as Scotland exists. The details of his troubled life are given fully and well in the late Mr. Robert Chambers's "Life and Works of Burns." Only a brief space could be allowed in this volume for a biographical notice; but the poems themselves contain the history of his mind and heart more fully than any other pen could ever tell it; and to them we refer the reader for the true life of Burns.