from whom he seems so loth to part, in one of his songs, was, I am told by John Galt, a relative of his, and less beautiful than witty.

To the charms of Jean Armour I have already alluded. This young woman, the daughter of a devout man and master-mason, lived in Mauchline, and was distinguished less for the beauty of her person, than for the grace of her dancing and the melody of her voice. Burns seems to have become attached to her soon after the loss of his Highland Mary. In one of his joyous moments, he warned the maidens of Mauchline against reading inflammatory novels. "Your fine Tom Jones and Grandisons" served only as snares, he said, for their in

nocence:

"Such witching books are baited hooks

For rakish rooks, like Rob Mossgiel."

31

asked the latter what he thought of Sillar's singing, to which Blane answered that the lad thought so much of it himself, and had so many airs about it, that there was no occasion for others expressing a favourable opinion-yet, he added, "I would not give Jean Armour for a score of him." "You are always talking of this Jean Armour," said Burns, "I wish you could contrive to bring me to see her." Blane readily consented to do so, and next evening, after the plough was loosed, the two proceeded to Mauchline for that purpose. Burns went into a public-house, and Blane went into the singing school, which chanced to be kept in the floor above. When the school was dismissing, Blane asked Jean Armour if she would come to see Robert Burns, who was below, and anxious to speak to her. Having heard of his poetical talents, she said she would like much to see him, but was afraid to go without a female com

"In Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles,

The pride of the place and its neighbourhood a' ;-
Their carriage and dress, a stranger would guess,
In Lon'on or Paris they 'd gotten it a'.
-Miss Miller is fine, Miss Markland's divine,

Miss Smith she has wit, and Miss Betty is braw;
There's beauty and fortune to get wi' Miss Morton,
But Armour's the jewel for me o' them a'."

How the Poet and his Jean became acquainted is easily imagined by those who know the facilities for meetings of the young, which fairs, races, dances, weddings, house-heatings, kirnsuppers, and bleaching scenes on burn-banks afford; of the growth of affection between them it is less easy to give an account; we must trace it by the uncertain light of his poetry.

*

[John Blane, who was for four years and a half farm-servant in the Burns' family at Lochlea and Mossgiel, relates the following interesting circumstances respecting the attachment of the poet to Miss Armour:-There was a singing school at Mauchline, which Blane attended. Jean Armour was also a pupil, and he soon became aware of her talents as a vocalist. He even contracted a kind of attachment to this young woman, though only such as a country lad of his degree might entertain for the daughter of a substantial country mason. One night there was a rocking at Mossgiel, where a lad named Ralph Sillar sung a number of songs in what was considered a superior style. When Burns and Blane had retired to their usual sleeping place in the stable-loft, the former

[This individual is now (1838) residing at Kilmarnock. With Robert Burns, who was eight years his senior, he slept for a long time in the same bed, in the stable loft, at Mossgiel. Burns had a little deal table with a drawer in it, which he kept constantly beside the bed, with a small desk on the top of it. The best of his poems were here written during the hours of rest; the table-drawer being the depository in which he kept them. The "Cotter's Saturday Night," the "Lament,' and the "Vision," were thus composed in the poor garret over a small farmer's stable!

frankness of a Miss Morton-the Miss Morton of the Six Mauchline Belles-Jean went down to the room where Burns was sitting. "From that time," (Blane adds very naïvely) "I had little of the company of Jean Armour."]

In the "Epistle of Davie" he alludes to Jean Armour by name, and calls her his own; in the "Vision" he compliments the Muse of Kyle by comparing her clean, straight, and taper limbs to those of his bonny Jean; and, in one of his lyrics, he speaks of the sighs and vows which have passed between them among the sequestered hills. It would seem, however, that during the season of their courtship the Poet felt less sure of the continuance of her affection than he had looked for, and something like change may be inferred from his omitting a verse in the "Address to the Deil," in which he likened Eve to

Jean Armour :

"A dancin', sweet, young, handsome quean,
Wi' guileless heart."

Gilbert charges his brother with seeing charms in some of the maidens of Kyle which others could not observe; but that may be said of all beautiful things. The ladies whom he celebrated, in the latter days of his inspiration, were

some of them at least-eminently lovely; and we all know that he has imputed no more merit to his Jean than what she possessed. Burns assured Professor Walker that his first desire to excel as a poet arose from the influence of the tender passion; and he informed others that all

the heroines of his songs were real, and not imaginary. He dealt in

"No idly feign'd poetic pains,

No fabl'd tortures quaint and tame."

As the Poet rose, and the lover triumphed, the farmer sunk. The farm of Mossgiel lies high, on a cold, wet bottom. During the first four years of the lease, instead of kindly and congenial seasons, the springs were frosty and late, the summers moist and cold; and to this the Poet glances when he makes the old dame, in Halloween, relate her experiences:

"The simmer had been cauld and wat,
And stuff was unco green."

Frosty springs and late cold summers could not be foreseen, but any one might have known high lying land on a wet bottom. Seasons in which the sun is almost scorching other grounds are most congenial for such soils, and no one should venture upon a farm which requires something like a miracle in the weather to render it productive. That Burns took pleasure in the labours of agriculture we have the assurance of many a voice: he often alludes to the holding of the plough, the turning of a handsome furrow; and he rejoices, too, in the growing corn, sees it fall before the sickle, with something of a calculating eye, and raises the rick, and coats it over with broom against sleet and snow, with all the foresight of a farmer. Of his prowess with the flail, he says:

"The thresher's weary flinging tree

The lee-lang day had tir'd me."

And Gilbert says, with the scythe Robert excelled all competitors: he had the sleight which is necessary with strength and activity. In ploughing he was likewise skilful in the "Farmer's Address to his Mare," evidently alluding to himself, he says:—

"Aft thee and I in aught-hours gaun,
In guid March weather,

Hae turned sax rood beside our han'
For days thegither."

Elsewhere the Poet speaks of his toil in committing the seed-corn to the furrow, and makes the muse plead it as an excuse for declining labouring on Parnassus in the month of April:

"Forjeskit sair, wi' weary legs,

Rattlin' the corn out-owre the rigs,
Or dealing through amang the naigs
Their ten-hours bite,

My akwart Muse sair pleads and begs
I wadna write."

Of his farming establishment he gives us some insight, in his facetious inventory to the surveyor of the taxes: it is pleasing to go to the homestead of even the cold and ungenial Mossgiel, and look at the "gudes, and gear, and graith," with Burns for our guide:

Imprimis, then, for carriage cattle,
I have four brutes o' gallant mettle,

As ever drew afore a pettle.

My lan-afore's a gude auld has-been,
An' wight and wilfu' a' his days been.
My lan-ahin's a weel gaun fillie;
That aft has borne me hame frae Killie.
An' your auld burro' mony a time,
In days when riding was nae crime.
My fur-abin's a worthy beast
As e'er in tug or tow was trac'd.
The fourth's a Highland Donald hastie,
A damn'd red-wud Kilburnie blastie !
Forbye a cowt, o' cowts the wale,

As ever ran afore a tail."

Of his milk-cows and calves, ewes and lambs, the mandate required no specification; the Poet proceeds to his farming implements: they are far from numerous :—

"Wheel carriages I ha'e but few,

Three carts, an' twa are feckly new;
An auld wheelbarrow, mair for token,

Ae leg and baith the trams are broken." Ploughs, harrows, shel-bands, rollers, spades, hoes, and fanners were not taxed, and are omitted, which I am sorry for; we come now to the members of his household :

"For men I've three mischievous boys,
Run deils for rantin' and for noise ;
A gaudsman ane, a thrasher t' other,
Wee Davoc hauds the nowt in fother."

Nor is the Bard unmindful of maintaining rule and spreading information amongst his me

nials :

:

"I rule them as I ought, discreetly,
An' aften labour them completely;
And aye on Sundays duly, nightly,

I on the questions targe them tightly."

With respect to maid-servants, as his mother and sisters managed the in-door economy of the house, he had no occasion for any he desired besides, he said, to be kept out of temptation; neither had he a wife, and as for children, one more had been sent to him than he desired :"My sonsie, smirking, dear-bought Bess, She stares the daddie in her face, Enough of ought ye like but grace."

:

Burns saw in the failure of the farm the coming ruin of his mother's household, and, despairing of success in agriculture, revived a notion which he had long entertained of going out as a sort of steward to the plantations, a situation which, for a small salary, requires the presence of many high qualities. Nor did he take this resolution one moment too soon: his poetic account of his condition and sufferings is not at all poetical:

"To tremble under Fortune's cummock,
On scarce a bellyfu' o' drummock,
For his proud, independent stomach,
Could ill agree."

But bodily discomfort was not all: he might,

to use his own language, have braved the bitter blast of misfortune, which, long mustering over his head, was about to descend; but sorrows of a tender nature, from which there was no escape, came pouring upon him in a flood. This part of the Poet's history has been painted variously delicacy towards the living, and respect for the dead, seemed to call for gentle handling; but this could not always be obtained; for rude hands were but too ready to aggravate the outline, and darken the colours. The courtship between Burns and Jean Armour continued for several years; and there is no question, had fortune permitted, but that they would have been man and wife the first year of their acquaintance. But Burns was not poor only he had no chance of becoming rich, and the day of marriage was placed at the mercy of fortune. There were other obstacles: Jean was not only the daughter of a man rigid and devout, but the favourite child of one of the believers in the glory of the Old Light. Her father discountenanced the addresses which "a profane scoffer" and "irreligious rhymer" was making to his child, and the lovers, denied the sanction of paternal care, and the shelter of the domestic roof, had recourse to stolen meetings under the cloud of night, to twilight interviews under the green-wood tree; to the solace of "a cannie hour at e'en," and those "sighs and vows among the knowes" of which the Poet has sung with so much passion. In protracted courtship there is always danger; prudence seldom takes much care of the young and the warm-hearted: Jean was not out of her teens, and thought more of her father's ungentleness than of her own danger; the Poet's respect for sweetness and innocence protected her for a while-but he was doomed to feel what he afterwards sung :

"Wha can prudence think upon,

And sic a lassie by him?
Wha can prudence think upon,
And sae in love as I am ?"

These convoyings home in the dark, and meetings under "the milk-white thorn," ended in the Poet being promised to be made a father before he had become a husband. This, to one so destitute and utterly poor as Burns, was a stunning event: but that was not the worst ;— the father of Jean Armour heard, with much anguish, of his favourite daughter's condition; and when, on her knees before him, she implored forgiveness, and shewed the marriage Lines as the private acknowledgment of marriage, without the sanction of the kirk, is called -his anguish grew into anger which overflowed all bounds, and heeded neither his daughter's honour nor her husband's fame. He snatched her marriage certificate from her, threw it into the fire, and commanded her to think herself no longer the wife of the Poet. It must be accepted as a proof of paternal power

that Jean trembled and obeyed: she forgot that Burns was still her husband in the sight of Heaven, and according to the laws of man: she refused to see him, or hearken to aught he could say; and, in short, was ruled in everything by the blind hatred of her father.

[Another event occurred to add to the torments of the unhappy poet. Jean, to avoid the immediate pressure of her father's displeasure, went about the month of May (1786) to Paisley, and took refuge with a relation of her mother, one Andrew Purdie, a wright. There was at Paisley a certain Robert Wilson, a good looking young weaver, a native of Mauchline, and who was realising wages to the amount of perhaps three pounds a-week by his then flourishing profession. Jean Armour had danced with this " gallant weaver" at the Mauchline dancing-school balls, and, besides her relative Purdie, she knew no other person in Paisley. Being in much need of a small supply of money, she found it necessary to apply to Mr. Wilson, who received her kindly, although he did not conceal that he had a suspicion of the reason of her visit to Paisley. When the reader is reminded that village life is not the sphere in which high-wrought and romantic feelings are most apt to flourish, he will be prepared in some measure to learn that Robert Wilson not only relieved the necessities of the fair applicant, but formed the wish to possess himself of her hand. He called for her several times at Purdie's, and informed her that, if she should not become the wife of Burns, he would engage himself to none while she remained unmarried. Mrs. Burns long after assured a female friend that she never gave the least encouragement to Wilson; but, nevertheless, his visits occasioned some gossip, which soon found its way to Mauchline, and entered the soul of the poet like a demoniac possession. He now seems to have regarded her as lost to him for ever, and that not purely through the objections of her relations, but by her own cruel and perjured desertion of one whom she acknowledged as her husband. These particulars are requisite to make us fully understand much of what Burns wrote at this time, both in prose and verse. Long afterwards, he became convinced that Jean, by no part of her conduct with respect to Wilson, had given him just cause for jealousy: it is not improbable that he learned in time to make it the subject of sport, and wrote the song, "Where Cart rins rowing to the sea," in jocular allusion to it. But for months-and it is distressing to think that these were the months during which he was putting his matchless poems for the first time to press he conceived himself the victim of a faithless woman, and life was to him, as he himself describes it,

" a weary dream,

The dream of ane that never wauks." CHAMBERS.] D

What the Poet thought of all this we have abundance of testimony. Though his indignation against Mr. Armour could not but be high, it is to his honour that he refrained from giving him further pain than he had inflicted already he spoke, too, of Jean, more in sorrow than in anger. In the first outburst of passion, on finding that she refused to call herself his wife, and had allowed her marriage lines to be burnt, he indulged in a sort of bitter mirth; and, in a poem of great merit, and greater freedom of expression, sang of the vexation which Kyle and her maidens must feel at parting with one who could doubly soothe them with love-making and song. He alludes to the cause of his departure to the West Indies

"He saw Misfortune's cauld nor-west,
Lang mustering up a bitter blast;

A Jillet brak his heart at last,

Ill may she be !

So took a birth afore the mast,

An' owre the sea."

He speaks, too, of his way of life, and accounts for the poverty of a poet with a clear income of seven pounds a year!—

"He ne'er was gi'en to great misguiding,
Yet coin his pouches wad na bide in;
Wi' him it ne'er was under hiding,
He dealt it free!

The Muse was a' that he took pride in,
That's owre the sea."

This mirthful mood did not last long; there is little gaiety in his letter to David Bryce, of June 12th, 1786.—“ I am still in the land of the living, though I can scarcely say in the place of hope. What poor ill-advised Jean thinks of her conduct, I don't know; but one thing I do know she has made me completely miserable. Never man loved, or rather adored, a woman more than I did her; and, to confess a truth between you and me, I do still love her to distraction after all. My poor dear unfortunate Jean! It is not the losing her that makes me so unhappy, but for her sake I feel most severely I foresee she is in the road to, I am afraid, eternal ruin. May Almighty God forgive her ingratitude and perjury to me, as I from my very soul forgive her; and may his grace be with her and bless her in all her future life! I can have no nearer idea of the place of eternal punishment than what I have felt in my own breast on her account. I have tried often to forget her; I have run into all kinds of dissipation and riots, mason-meetings, drinkingmatches, and other mischief, to drive her out of my head, but all in vain. And now for a grand cure the ship is on her way home that is to take me out to Jamaica; and then farewell, dear old Scotland! and farewell, dear ungrateful Jean! for never, never will I see you more." In this touching letter the Poet sets off his own sufferings against Jean

Armour's shame; and we may calculate their depth and acuteness from his looking on her as ungrateful.

He gave vent to the same feeling in the most pathetic of all modern poems, "The Lament for the unfortunate Issue of a Friend's Amour:" every stanza is most exquisitely mournful:"No idly-feign'd poetic pains

My sad, love-lorn lamentings claim;
No shepherd's pipe-Arcadian strains;
No fabled tortures, quaint and tame :
The plighted faith; the mutual flame;
The oft-attested Pow'rs above,
The promis'd father's tender name-
These were the pledges of
my
love!"

The account rendered by Gilbert, which makes Robert consent to the destruction of the marriage lines, is at least doubtful. In truth there was much anguish on all sides; and, condemning the stern father as we do, we cannot help reverencing the feeling which sacrificed his daughter's peace in this world, in the belief that he was securing happiness for her in the next. That he doubted her constancy, I have heard affirmed by those who had an opportunity of knowing; and, to remove temptation from her path, he acquiesced in the Poet's resolution to push his fortune in Jamaica; though there is no foundation, perhaps, for the surmise that he more than tolerated the parish authorities to pursue Burns, according to law, for the maintenance of the promised babe, in order to hasten his departure. This is, nevertheless, countenanced by the circumstance of his ability to keep the child. Had he promised this, the Poet would not have been obliged to skulk "from covert to covert, under all the terrors of a gaol;" and he means more than the usual parochial authorities, when he says "Some ill-advised persons had uncoupled the merciless pack of the law at my heels."

[In this dark period, or immediately before it, the poet signed an instrument, in anticipation of his immediately leaving the kingdom, by which he devised all property of whatever kind he might leave behind, including the copyright of his poems, to his brother Gilbert, in consideration of the latter having undertaken to support his daughter Elizabeth, the issue of "Elizabeth Paton in Largieside." Intimation of this instrument was publicly made at the Cross of Ayr, two days after, by William Chalmers, writer. If he had been upon better terms with the Armours, it seems unlikely that he would have thus devised his property without a respect for the claims of his offspring by Jean.

After this we hear no more of the legal severities of Mr. Armour-the object of which was, not to abridge the liberty of the unfortunate Burns, but to drive him away from the country, so as to leave Jean more effectually disengaged. The Poems now appeared, and probably had some effect in allaying the hostility of the old