press, within the limits of a single small volume, the substance of materials already open to all the world, and sufficient, in every point of view, for those who have leisure to collect, and candour to weigh them. For any little touches of novelty that may be discovered in a Narrative, thus unambitiously undertaken, the writer is indebted to respectable authorities, which shall be cited as he proceeds. As to the earlier part of Burns's history, Currie and Walker appear to have left little unexplored; it is chiefly concerning the incidents of his closing years that their accounts have been supposed to admit of a supplement. LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. CHAPTER I. "My father was a farmer upon the Carrick Border, And soberly he brought me up in decency and order." ROBERT BURNS was born on the 25th of January 1759, in a clay-built cottage, about two miles to the south of the town of Ayr, and in the immediate vicinity of the Kirk of Alloway, and the "Auld Brig o' Doon." About a week afterwards, part of the frail dwelling, which his father had constructed with his own hands, gave way at midnight; and the infant poet and his mother were carried through the storm, to the shelter of a neighbouring hovel. The father, William Burnes or Burness, (for so he spelt his name,) was the son of a farmer in Kincardineshire, whence he removed at 19 years of age, in consequence of domestic embarrassments. The farm on which the family lived, formed part of the estate forfeited, in consequence of the Rebellion of 1715, by the noble house of Keith Marischall; and the poet took pleasure in saying, that his humble ancestors shared the principles and the fall of their chiefs. Indeed, after William Burnes settled in the west of Scotland, there prevailed a vague notion that he himself had been out in the insurrection of 1745-6; but though Robert would fain have interpreted his father's silence in favour of a tale which flattered his imagination, his brother Gilbert always treated it as a mere fiction, and such it was.* It is easy to suppose that when any obscure northern stranger fixed himself in those days in the Low Country, such rumours were likely enough to be circulated concerning him. William Burnes laboured for some years in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh as a gardener, and then found his way into Ayrshire. At the time when Robert was born, he was gardener and overseer to a gentleman of small estate, Mr Ferguson of Doonholm; but resided on a few acres of land, which he had on lease from another proprietor, and where he had originally intended to establish himself as a nurseryman. He married Agnes Brown in December 1757, and the poet was their first-born. William Burnes seems to have been, in his humble station, a man eminently entitled to respect. He had received the ordinary learning of a Scottish parish school, and profited largely both by that and by his own experience in the world. "I have met with few" (said the poet, † after he had himself seen a good deal of mankind) “who under Gilbert found among his father's papers a certificate of the minister of his native parish, testifying that "the bearer, William Burnes, had no hand in the late wicked rebellion." + Letter of Burns to Dr Moore, 22d August 1787. stood men, their manners, and their ways, equal to my father." He was a strictly religious man, There exists in his handwriting a little manual of theology, in the form of a dialogue, which he drew up for the use of his children, and from which it appears that he had adopted more of the Arminian than of the Calvinistic doctrine; a circumstance not to be wondered at, when we consider that he had been educated in a district which was never numbered among the strongholds of the Presbyterian church. The affectionate reverence with which his children ever regarded him, is attested by all who have described him as he appeared in his domestic circle; but there needs no evidence beside that of the poet himself, who has painted, in colours that will never fade, " the saint, the father, and the husband," of the Cottar's Saturday Night. Agnes Brown, the wife of this good man, is described as 66 a very sagacious woman, without any appearance of forwardness, or awkwardness of manner;"* and it seems that, in features, and, as he grew up, in general address, the poet resembled her more than his father. She had an inexhaustible store of ballads and traditionary tales, and appears to have nourished his infant imagination by this means, while her husband paid more attention to "the weightier matters of the law." These worthy people laboured hard for the support of an increasing family. William was occupied with Mr Ferguson's service, and Agnes,-like the wyfe of Auchtermuchtie, who ruled "Baith calvis and kye, And a' the house baith in and out," *Letter of Mr Mackenzie, surgeon at Irvine. Morrison, vol. ii. p. 261. + Ibid. |