one which would have required it all; and before he had well begun, his perseverance failed.

Such, with the addition of a few weeks of his nineteenth year, employed in acquiring some knowledge of surveying, is a history of the education of Burns, which appears to have been far more desultory and imperfect than that of almost every peasant in Scotland. It was continually interrupted by accident; and the whole time which it occupied, when the broken periods are laid together, was extremely short. A few hasty snatches of instruction were all he obtained; and though the lower orders in Scotland, as Dr Currie has shown, possess advantages beyond those of the corresponding orders in other countries, it must not be forgot, that Burns had the double honour of forcing his way to distinction as an author, without the usual education, not only of professional students, but even of his rustic countrymen.

The discipline of circumstances, however, has far more influence in forming the mind than that of schools; and the peculiar character of his father, as I have already remarked, was certainly the circumstance which compensated to Burns the defects of his education. Of William Burnes I have been fortunate to receive an account from one, who had both opportunity to observe, and intelligence to comprehend, his peculiarities. To a stranger, at first sight, by this gentleman's description, he had a chill, austere, and backward

reserve, which appeared to proceed less from habitual manner, than from natural obtuseness and vacuity of intellect. But when he found a companion to his taste, with whom he could make a fair exchange of mind, he seemed to grow into a different being, or into one suddenly restored to its native element. His conversation became animated and impressive, and discovered an extent of observation, and a shrewdness and sagacity of remark, which occasioned the more gratification the less it had been expected; while the pleasing discovery made his associate eager to repair the injustice of his first impression, by imputing the repulsive manner of his reception to that series of troubles which had dulled the vivacity, and given a suspicious caution to this upright and intelligent rustic. I speak of him as he appeared at Lochlea, when misfortunes were clustering round him. It may indeed be conjectured, without much refinement, that his intellectual superiority had some share in those misfortunes. When we are conscious of excelling in a department above that by which we are destined to subsist, it often happens that we devote to it more of our attention than we ought, and less in proportion to those exertions, in which we are equalled or surpassed by others. We have no evidence that William Burnes was negligent in his ordinary business, yet a constant succession of failures seldom occurs without a cause which exists,

though it may exist imperceptibly in the unfor tunate person. It is also to be observed, that intellectual superiority is in many situations a possession by no means popular, It renders us

fastidious in our choice of associates; it inclines and enables us to suggest distinctions which might have otherwise passed unnoticed; and it lowers disagreeably in their own esteem, many with whom we must mingle in daily intercourse, and on whom we may depend for assistance or advice. We may be assured, therefore, that though common sense and prudence prevents it from being openly undervalued, yet the vulgar mind can feel little regret in witnessing the depression of those by whom it had frequently been depressed itself.

The farm of Mount Oliphant was of so churlish and ungrateful a soil, that the family of Burns, far from realizing any property, could scarcely draw from it a meagre subsistence. The account of their difficulties shall be given in the words of Gilbert, who must have written it under a painful recollection of the feelings which they excited.

"Mount Oliphant, the farm my father possessed in the parish of Ayr, is almost the very poorest soil I know of in a state of cultivation. A stronger proof of this I cannot give, than that, notwithstanding the extraordinary rise in the value of lands in Scotland, it was, after a considerable sum laid out in improving it by the proprietor, let a few years ago five pounds per

annum lower than the rent paid for it by my father thirty years ago. My father, in consequence of this, soon came into difficulties, which were increased by the loss of several of his cattle by accident and disease.-To the buffettings of misfortune, we could only oppose hard labour and the most rigid economy. We lived very sparingly. For several years butcher's meat was a stranger in the house, while all the members of the family exerted themselves to the utmost of their strength, and rather beyond it, in the labours of the farm. My brother, at the age of thirteen, assisted in thrashing the crop of corn, and at fifteen was the principal labourer on the farm; for we had no hired servant, male or female. 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. At this time he was almost constantly afflicted in the evenings with a dull head-ache, 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.

By a stipulation in my father's lease, he had a right to throw it up, if he thought proper, at the end of every sixth year. He attempted to fix himself in a better farm at the end of the first six years, but failing in that attempt, he continued where he was for six years more. He then took the farm of Lochlea, of 130 acres, at the rent of twenty shillings an acre, in the parish of Tarbolton, of Mr then a merchant

in Ayr, and now (1797) a merchant in Liverpool. He removed to this farm at Whitsunday 1777, and possessed it only seven years. No writing had ever been made out of the conditions of the lease; a misunderstanding took place respecting them; the subjects in dispute were submitted to arbitration, and the decision involved my father's affairs in ruin. He lived to know of this decision, but not to see any execution in consequence of it. He died on the 13th of February, 1784."*

Before the removal of Burns from Mount Oliphant, he had read at least a part of the following books. The Spectator, Pope, Shakespeare, Tull and Dickson on Agriculture, the Pantheon, Locke's Essay, Boyle's Lectures, Taylor on Original Sin, and Harvey's Meditations. After his

* Currie's Edition of the Works of Burns, Vol. I. p. 69. b