APPENDIX.

It may gratify curiosity to know some particulars of the history of the preceding Poems, on which the celebrity of our Bard has been hitherto founded; and with this view the following extract is made from a letter of Gilbert Burns, the brother of our poet, and his friend and confidant from his earliest years.

DEAR SIR,

Mossgill, 2d April, 1798.

YOUR letter of the 14th of March

I received in due course, but from the hurry of the season have been hitherto hindered from answering it. I will now try to give you what satisfaction I can in regard to the particulars you mention. I cannot pretend to be very accurate in respect to the dates of the poems, but none

of them, except Winter, a Dirge, (which was a juvenile production) The Death and Dying Words of poor Maillie, and some of the songs, were composed before the year 1784. The circumstances of the poor sheep were pretty much as he has described them. He had, partly by way of frolic, bought a ewe and two lambs from a neighbour, and she was tethered in a field adjoining the house at Lochlie. He and I were going out, with our teams, and our two younger brothers to drive for us, at mid-day; when Hugh Wilson, a curious looking awkward boy, clad in plaiding, came to us with much anxiety in his face, with the information that the ewe had entangled herself in the tether, and was lying in the ditch. Robert was much tickled with Huoc's appearance and postures on the occasion. Poor Maillie was set to rights, and when we returned from the plough in the evening, he repeated to me her Death and Dying Words pretty much in the way they now stand.

Among the earliest of his poems was the Epistle to Davie. Robert often composed without any regular plan. When any thing made a strong impression on his mind, so as to rouse it to poetic exertion, he would give way to the impulse, and embody the thought in rhyme. If he hit on two or three stanzas to please him, he would then think of proper introductory, connecting,

and

and concluding stanzas; hence the middle of a poem was often first produced. It was, I think, in summer, 1784, when in the interval of harder labour, he and I were weeding in the garden, (kail-yard) that he repeated to me the principal part of this epistle. I believe the first idea of Robert's becoming an author was started on this occasion. I was much pleased with the epistle, and said to him I was of opinion it would bear being printed, and that it would be well received by people of taste; that I thought it at least equal, if not superior, to many of Allan Ramsay's epistles, and that the merit of these, and much other Scotch poetry, seemed to consist principally in the knack of the expression, but here, there was a strain of interesting sentiment, and the Scotticism of the language scarcely seemed affected, but appeared to be the natural language of the poet; that, besides, there was certainly some novelty in a poet pointing out the consolations that were in store for him when he should go a-begging. Robert seemed very well pleased with my criticism, and we talked of sending it to some magazine, but as this plan afforded no opportunity of knowing how it would take, the idea was dropped.

It was, I think, in the winter following, as we were going together with carts for coal to the family fire, (and I could yet point out the par

ticular

ticular spot) that the author first repeated to me the Address to the Deil. The curious idea of such an address was suggested to him by running over in his mind the many ludicrous accounts and representations we have, from various quarters, of this august personage. Death and Doctor Hornbook, though not published in the Kilmarnock edition, was produced early in the year 1785. The Schoolmaster of Tarbolton parish, to eke up the scanty subsistence allowed to that useful class of men, had set up a shop of grocery goods. Having accidentally fallen in with some medical books, and become most hobby-horsically attached to the study of medicine, he had added the sale of a few medicines to his little trade. He had got a shop-bill printed, at the bottom of which, overlooking his own incapacity, he had advertised, that "Advice "would be given in common disorders at the "shop gratis." Robert was at a mason-meeting in Tarbolton, when the Dominie unfortunately made too ostentatious a display of his medical skill. As he parted in the evening from this mixture of pedantry and physic, at the place where he describes his meeting with Death, one of those floating ideas of apparition he mentions in his letter to Dr. Moore, crossed his mind; this set him to work for the rest of the way home. These circumstances he related when he repeated the verses to me next afternoon, as

I was holding the plough, and he was letting the water off the field beside me. The Epistle to John Lapraik was produced exactly on the occasion described by the author. He says in that poem, On fasten-e'en we had a rockin, (p. 235.) I believe he has omitted the word rocking in the glossary. It is a term derived from those primitive times, when the country-women employed their spare hours in spinning on the rock, or distaff. This simple implement is a very portable one, and well fitted to the social inclination of meeting in a neighbour's house; hence the phrase of going a rocking, or with the rock. As the connexion the phrase had with the implement was forgotten when the rock gave place to the spinning-wheel, the phrase came to be used by both sexes on social occasions, and men talk of going with their rocks as well as women.

It was at one of these rockings at our house, when we had twelve or fifteen young people with their rocks, that Lapraik's song, beginning— "When I upon thy bosom lean," was sung, and we were informed who was the author. Upon this, Robert wrote his first epistle to Lapraik; and his second in reply to his answer. The verses to the Mouse and Mountain-Daisy were composed on the occasions mentioned, and while the author was holding the plough; I could point