ous vocations of the day, to shed a tear over their glorious but unfortunate stories. In those boyish days I remember in particular being struck with that part of Wallace's story where these lines occur Syne to the Leglen wood, when it was late, "I chose a fine summer day, the only day my line of life allowed, and walked half a dozen miles to pay my respects to the Leglen wood, with as much devout enthusiasm as ever pilgrim did to Loretto; and explored every den and dell where I could suppose my heroic countryman to have lodged." Murdoch continued his instructions until the family had been about two years at Mount Oliphant-when he left for a time that part of the country. "There being no school near us," says Gilbert Burns, "and our little services being already useful on the farm, my father undertook to teach us arithmetic in the winter evenings by candle light-and in this way my two elder sisters received all the education they ever received." Gilbert tells an anecdote which must not be omitted here, since it furnishes an early instance of the liveliness of his brother's imagination. Murdoch, being on a visit to the family, read aloud one evening part of the tragedy of Titus Andronicus-the circle listened with the deepest interest until he came to Act 2, sc. 5, where Lavinia is introduced "with her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out." At this the children entreated, with one voice, in an agony of distress, that their friend would read no more. "If ye will not hear the play out," said William Burnes, "it need not be B left with you."-"If it be left," cries Robert, "I will burn it." His father was about to chide him for this return to Murdoch's kindness-but the good young man interfered, saying he liked to see so much sensibility, and left The School for Love in place of his truculent tragedy. At this time Robert was nine years of age. 66 Nothing," continues Gilbert Burns, "could be more retired than our general manner of living at Mount Oliphant; we rarely saw anybody but the members of our own family. There were no boys of our own age, or near it, in the neighbourhood. Indeed the greatest part of the land in the vicinity was at that time possessed by shopkeepers, and people of that stamp, who had retired from business, or who kept their farm in the country, at the same time that they followed business in town. My father was for some time almost the only companion we had. He conversed familiar ly on all subjects with us, as if we had been men ; and was at great pains, while we accompanied him in the labours of the farm, to lead the conversation to such subjects as might tend to increase our knowledge, or confirm us in virtuous habits. He borrowed Salmon's Geographical Grammar for us, and endeavoured to make us acquainted with the situation and history of the different countries in the world; while, from a book-society in Ayr, he procured for us the reading of Derham's Physico and Astro-Theology, and Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation, to give us some idea of astronomy and natural history. Robert read all these books with an avidity and industry scarcely to be equalled. My father had been a subscriber to Stackhouse's History of the Bible. From this Robert collected a competent know ledge of ancient history; for no book was so voluminous as to slacken his industry, or so antiquated as to damp his researches." A collection of letters by eminent English authors, is mentioned as having fallen into Burns's hands much about the same time, and greatly delighted him. When Burns was about thirteen or fourteen years old, his father sent him and Gilbert "week about, during a summer quarter," to the parish school of Dalrymple, two or three miles distant from Mount Oliphant, for the improvement of their penmanship. The good man could not pay two fees; or his two boys could not be spared at the same time from the labour of the farm! "We lived very poorly," says the poet. "I was a dexterous ploughman for my age; and the next eldest to me was a brother, (Gilbert,) who could drive the plough very well, and help me to thrash the corn. A novel writer might perhaps have viewed these scenes with some satisfaction, but so did not I. My indignation yet boils at the recollection of the scoundrel factor's insolent letters, which used to set us all in tears." Gilbert Burns gives his brother's situation at this period in greater detail-" To the buffetings of misfortune," says he," 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 headach, 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." The year after this, Burns was able to gain three weeks of respite, one before, and two after the harvest, from the labours which were thus straining his youthful strength. His tutor Murdoch was now established in the town of Ayr, and the boy spent one of these weeks in revising the English grammar with him; the other two were given to French. He laboured enthusiastically in the new pursuit, and came home at the end of a fortnight with a dictionary and a Telemaque, of which he made such use at his leisure hours, by himself, that in a short time (if we may believe Gilbert) he was able to understand any ordinary book of French prose. His progress, whatever it really amounted to, was looked on as something of a prodigy; and a writing-master in Ayr, a friend of Murdoch, insisted that Robert Burns must next attempt the rudiments of the Latin tongue. He did so, but with little perseverance, we may be sure, since the results were of no sort of value. Burns's Latin consisted of a few scraps of hackneyed quotation, such as many that never looked into Ruddiman's Rudiments can apply, on occasion, quite as skilfully as he ever appears to have done. The matter is one of no importance; we might perhaps safely dismiss it with parodying what Ben Jonson said of Shakspeare ; he had little French, and no Latin; and yet it is proper to mention, that he is found, years after he left Ayrshire, writing to Edinburgh in some anxiety about a copy of Moliere. He had read, however, and read well, ere his sixteenth year elapsed, no contemptible amount of the literature of his own country. In addition to the books which have already been mentioned, he tells us that, ere the family quitted Mount Oliphant, he had read" the Spectator, some plays of Shakspeare, Pope, (the Homer included,) Tull and Dickson on Agriculture, Locke on the Human Understanding, Justice's British Gardener's Directory, Boyle's Lectures, Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, A Select Collection of English Songs, Harvey's Meditations," (a book which has ever been very popular among the Scottish peasantry,)" and the Works of Allan Ramsay;" and Gilbert adds to this list Pamela, (the first novel either of the brothers read,) two stray volumes of Peregrine Pickle, two of Count Fathom, and a single volume of "some English historian," containing the reigns of James I., and his son. The "Collection of Songs," says Burns,* "was my vade mecum. I pored over them, driving my cart, or walking to labour, song by song, verse by verse; carefully noticing the true, tender, or sublime, from * Letter to Dr Moore, 1787. |