After the labours of the day are over, nay, very often after he is supposed by the inmates of his own fireside to be in his bed, the happy youth thinks little of walking many long Scotch miles to the residence of his mistress, who, upon the signal of a tap at her window, comes forth to spend a soft hour or two beneath the harvest moon, or if the weather be severe (a circumstance which never prevents the journey from being accomplished), amidst the sheaves of her father's barn. This "chappin' out," as they call it, is a custom which parents commonly wink at, if they do not openly approve of the observance; and the consequences are far, very far, more frequently quite harmless, than persons not familiar with the peculiar manners and feelings of our peasantry may find it easy to believe. Excursions of this class form the theme of almost all the songs which Burns is known to have produced about this period,-and such of these juvenile performances as have been preserved, are, without exception, beautiful. They show how powerfully his boyish fancy had been affected by the old rural minstrelsy of his own country, and how easily his native taste caught the secret of its charm. The truth and simplicity of nature breathe in every line-the images are always just, often originally happy-and the growing refinement of his ear and judgment, may be traced in the terser language and more mellow flow of each successive ballad.

The best of his songs written at this time is that beginning,

"It was upon a Lammas night,
When corn rigs are bonie,
Beneath the moon's unclouded light,
I held awa to Annie.

The time flew by wi' tentless heed,
Till, 'tween the late and early,

Wi' sma' persuasion she agreed
To see me through the barley," &c.

The heroine of this ditty is supposed to have been a daughter of the poet's friend-"rude, rough, ready-witted Rankine."

We may let him carry on his own story. "A circumstance," says he, " which made some alteration on my mind and manners was, that I spent my nineteenth1 summer on a smuggling coast, a good distance from home, at a noted school [Kirkoswald], to learn mensuration, surveying,dialling, &c., in which I made a good progress. But I made a greater progress in the knowledge of mankind. The contraband trade was at that time very successful, and it sometimes happened to me to fall in with those who carried it on. Scenes of swaggering riot and roaring dissipation were till this time new to me; but I was no enemy to social life. Here, though I learnt to fill my glass, and to mix without fear in a drunken squabble, yet I went on with a high hand with my geometry, till the sun entered Virgo, a month which is always a carnival in my bosom, when a charming filette, who lived next door to the school, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the sphere of my studies. I, however, struggled on with my sines and cosines for a few days more; but stepping into the garden one charming noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met my angel, like

'Proserpine, gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower.'-

"It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining week I staid I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her; and the two last nights of my stay in this

1 [This word "nineteenth" distinctly reads "seventeenth "in the author's manuscript. It is the alteration of date before noted, which Currie admits he made "by the suggestion of Gilbert Burns," but for which no grounds whatever have been stated.]

country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless.

"I returned home very considerably improved. My reading was enlarged with the very important addition of Thomson's and Shenstone's works; I had seen human nature in a new phasis; and I engaged several of my schoolfellows to keep up a literary correspondence with me. This improved me in composition. I had met with a collection of letters by the wits of Queen Anne's reign, and I pored over them most devoutly; I kept copies of any of my own letters that pleased me; and a comparison between them and the composition of most of my correspondents flattered my vanity. I carried this whim so far, that though I had not three farthings' worth of business in the world, yet almost every post brought me as many letters as if I had been a broad plodding son of day-book and ledger.

"My life flowed on much in the same course till the twenty-third year.' Vive l'amour, et vive la bagatelle, were my sole principles of action. The addition of two more authors to my library gave me great pleasure: Sterne and M'Kenzie- Tristram Shandy' and 'The Man of Feeling '—were my bosom favourites. Poesy was still a darling walk for my mind; but it was only indulged in according to the humour of the hour. I had usually half a dozen or more pieces on hand; I took up one or other, as it suited the momentary tone of the mind, and dismissed the work as it bordered on fatigue. My passions, once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they found vent in rhyme; and then the conning over my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet."

'[This proves the exactness of the poet's own dates in his autobiography. Here he refers to the six months he spent in Irvine; his "twenty-third year" was, of course, 1781, and so we find "December 27, 1781" is the date of the published letter he wrote from Irvine to his father.]

Of the rhymes of those days, a few, when he penned his Autobiography, had appeared in print. "Winter, a Dirge," an admirably versified piece, is of their number; the "Death of Poor Mailie," "Mailie's Elegy," and "John Barleycorn;" and one charming song, inspired by the nymph of Kirkoswald, whose attractions put an end to his trigonometry.

"Now westlin' winds, and slaughtering guns,
Bring Autumn's pleasant weather;

The moorcock springs, on whirring wings,
Amang the blooming heather.

O Peggy dear, the evening's clear,
Thick flies the skimming swallow;
The sky is blue, the fields in view,

All fading green and yellow;

Come let us stray our gladsome way," &c.

"John Barleycorn "1 is a good old ballad, very cleverly new-modelled and extended; but the "Death" and "Elegy of Poor Mailie" deserve more attention. The expiring animal's admonitions touching the education of the "poor toop lamb, my son and heir," and the "yowie, sillie thing," her daughter, are from the same peculiar vein of sly homely wit, embedded upon fancy, which he afterwards dug with a bolder hand in the "Twa Dogs," and perhaps to its utmost depth, in his "Death and Doctor Hornbook." It need scarcely be added, that poor Mailie was a real personage, though she did not actually die until some time after her last words were written. She had been purchased by Burns in a frolic, and became exceedingly attached to his person.

"Thro' all the town she trotted by him,
A lang half-mile she could descry him;

1 [Of several of Burns's effusions that have been translated into the German language, we are informed that no one delighted the illustrious Goethe more than "John Barleycorn." It became his favourite postprandial ditty.]

Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him,

She ran wi' speed;

A friend mair faithfu' ne'er came nigh him,

Than Mailie dead."

These little pieces are in a much broader dialect than any of their predecessors. His merriment and satire were, from the beginning, Scotch.

Notwithstanding the luxurious tone of some of Burns's pieces produced in those times, we are assured by himself (and his brother unhesitatingly confirms the statement), that no positive vice mingled in any of his loves, until after he reached his twenty-third year. He has already told us that his short residence " away from home" at Kirkos. wald, where he mixed in the society of sea-faring men and smugglers, produced an unfavourable alteration on some of his habits; but in 1781-2 he spent six months at Irvine; and it is from this period that his brother dates a serious change.

"As his numerous connections," says Gilbert, were governed by the strictest rules of virtue and modesty (from which he never deviated till his twenty-third year), he became anxious to be in a situation to marry.1 This was not likely to be the case while he remained a farmer, as the

1 [The writings of the poet in reference to this period of his early life furnish no clue to the name or social position of the young woman he was thus anxious to marry; and not till half a century after his death did any of his family, or Tarbolton associates, venture to throw some light on the matter. Four drafts of love-letters in the poet's handwriting, addressed to "My dear E.," found among his papers at his death, were published in Currie's first edition (1800) as having been written "about the year 1780." These were withdrawn from the second, and all subsequent editions, and were not even restored by Gilbert in 1820. The details of that early love-attachment of Burns, as revealed by his youngest sister, Mrs. Begg, would occupy more space than a footnote can supply, and therefore we refer the reader to Appendix B. for particulars on this theme.]