PREFATORY NOTICE.

vii

The humble purpose of the following Essay was, therefore, no more than to compress, 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.

OCTOBER, 1829.

A new edition of this Narrative being called for, the author has corrected some errors, obligingly pointed out to him by Mr H. Paul, Mr Sillar, and others. He has also been enabled to fill up some lacunæ from Burns's MS. correspondence with the

late Lady Harriet Don, daughter to the Earl of Glencairn; and, above all, he has to acknowledge, with a lively sense of gratitude, the kindness of Mr James Burnes of Montrose, in intrusting him with an interesting and valuable series of the Poet's Letters to his relatives in the North of Scotland, from which various extracts are interwoven in the following pages.

LIFE

OF

ROBERT BURNS.

CHAPTER I.

"My father was a farmer upon the Carrick Border, And carefully 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, after the Rebellion of 1715, by the noble house of KeithMarischall; and the poet took pleasure in be

A

lieving, that his humble ancestors shared the principles and the fall of their chiefs. Though my fathers" (said he after his fame was established) "had not illustrious honours and vast properties to hazard in the contest-though they left their cottages only to add so many units more to the unnoted crowd that followed their leaders, yet what they could they did, and what they had they lost. ... They shook hands with ruin, for what they esteemed the cause of their king and their country. 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

Letter (unpublished) to Lady Winifred Constable, December 16, 1789.

+ 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.'

Brown in December 1757, and the poet was their first-born.

man.

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 himself had seen a good deal of mankind) “ who understood men, their manners, and their ways, equal to my father." He was a strictly religious 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 Cot tar'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 re

* Letter of Burns to Dr Moore, 22d August 1787. + Letter of Mr Mackenzie, surgeon at Irvine. Morrison, vol. ii. p. 261.