then a regular part of the clerical duty, and a part of it that could never have been at all agreeable to the worthy man whom he satirizes under the appellation of "Daddie Auld." The Poet's Welcome to an Illegitimate Child was composed on the same occasion-a piece in which some very manly feelings are expressed, along with others which can give no one pleasure to contemplate. There is a song in honour of the same occasion, or a similar one about the same period, The rantin' Dog the Daddie o't,— which exhibits the poet as glorying, and only glorying in his shame. When I consider his tender affection for the surviving members of his own family, and the reverence with which he ever regarded the memory of the father whom he had so recently buried, I cannot believe that Burns has thought fit to record in verse all the feelings which this exposure excited in his bosom. "To wave (in his own language) the quantum of the sin," he who, two years afterwards, wrote The Cottar's Saturday Night, had not, we may be sure, hardened his heart to the thought of bringing additional sorrow and unexpected shame to the fireside of a widowed mother. But his false pride recoiled from letting his jovial associates guess how little he was able to drown the whispers of the still small voice; and the fermenting bitterness of a mind ill at ease within itself, escaped (as may be too often traced in the history of satirists) in the shape of angry. sarcasms against others, who, whatever their private errors might be, had at least done him no wrong. It is impossible not to smile at one item of consolation which Burns proposes to himself on this occasion :— The mair they talk, I'm kend the better; E'en let them clash !" This is indeed a singular manifestation of "the last infirmity of noble minds." CHAPTER III. CONTENTS.-The Brothers, Robert and Gilbert, become tenants of Mossgiel— Their incessant labour and moderate habits-The farm cold and unfertile-Not prosperous-The Muse anti-calvinistical—The poet thence involved deeply in local polemics, and charged with heresy-Curious account of these disputes-Early poems prompted by them-Origin of and remarks upon the poet's principal pieces-Love leads him far astray-A crisis- The jail ør the West Indies-The alternative. "The star that rules my luckless lot Has bless'd me wi' a random shot THREE months before the death of William Burnes, Robert and Gilbert took the farm of Mossgiel, in the neighbouring parish of Mauchline, with the view of providing a shelter for their parents, in the storm which they had seen gradually thickening, and knew must soon burst; and to this place the whole family removed on William's death. The farm consisted of 119 acres, and the rent was £90. "It was stocked by the property and individual savings of the whole family, (says Gilbert), and was a joint concern among us. Every member of the family was allowed ordinary wages for the labour he performed on the farm. My brother's allowance and mine was £7 per annum each; and during the whole time this family concern lasted, which was four years, as well as during the preceding period at Lochlea, Robert's expenses never, in any one year, exceeded his slender income." "I entered on this farm," says the poet, "with a full resolution, come, go, I will be wise. I read farming books, I calculated crops, I attended markets; and, in short, in spite of the devil, and the world, and the flesh, I believe I should have been a wise man; but the first year, from unfortunately buying bad seed, the second, from a late harvest, we lost half our crops. This overset all my wisdom, and I returned, like the dog to his vomit, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.” "At the time that our poet took the resolution of becoming wise, he procured," says Gilbert, 66 a little book of blank paper, with the purpose, expressed on the first page, of making farming memorandums. These farming memorandums are curious enough," Gilbert slyly adds, "and a specimen may gratify the reader."-Specimens accordingly he gives; as. "O leave novells, ye Mauchline belles, And then ye're prey for Rob Mossgiel," &c. &c. The four years during which Burns resided on this cold and ungrateful farm of Mossgiel, were the most important of his life. It was then that his genius developed its highest energies; on the works produced in these years his fame was first established, and must ever continue mainly to rest; it was then also that his personal character came out in all its brightest lights, and in all but its darkest shadows; and indeed from the commencement of this period, the history of the man may be traced, step by step, in his own immortal writings. Burns now began to know that nature had meant him for a poet; and diligently, though as yet in secret, he laboured in what he felt to be his destined vocation. Gilbert continued for some time to be his chief, often indeed his only confidant; and any thing more interesting and delightful than this excellent man's account of the manner in which the poems included in the first of his brother's publications were composed, is certainly not to be found in the annals of literary history. The reader has already seen, that long before the earliest of them was known beyond the domestic circle, the strength of Burns's understanding, and the keenness of his wit, as displayed in his ordinary conversation, and more particularly at masonic meetings and debating clubs, (of which he formed one in Mauchline, on the Tarbolton model, immediately on his removal to Mossgiel), had made his name known to some considerable extent in the country about Tarbolton, Mauchline, and Irvine; and this prepared the way for his poetry. Professor Walker gives an anecdote on this head, which must not be omitted. Burns already numbered several clergymen among his acquaintances. One of these gentlemen told the Professor, that after entering on the clerical profession, he had repeatedly met Burns in company, "where," said he, "the acuteness and originality displayed by him, the depth of his discernment, the force of his expressions, and the authoritative energy of his understanding, had created a sense of his power of the extent of which I was unconscious, till it was revealed to me by accident. On the occasion of my second appearance in the pulpit, I came with an assured and tranquil mind, and though a few persons of education were present, advanced some length in the service with my confidence and self-possession unimpaired; but when I saw Burns, who was of a different parish, unexpectedly enter the church, I was affected with a tremor and embarrassment, which suddenly apprised me of the impression which my mind, unknown to itself, had previously received." The Professor adds, that the person who had thus unconsciously been measuring' he stature of the intellectual giant, was not only a man of good talents and education, but remarkable for a more than ordinary portion of con stitutional firmness." Every Scotch peasant who makes any pretension to understanding, is a theological critic-and Burns, no doubt, had long ere this time distinguished himself considerably among those hard-headed groups that may usually be seen gathered together in the church-yard after the sermon is over. It may be guessed that from the time of his residence at Irvine, his stric tures were too often delivered in no reverend vein. "Polemical divinity," says he to Dr. Moore, in 1787, " about this time, was putting the country half mad, and I, ambitious of shining in conversation-parties on Sundays, at funerals, &c., used to puzzle Calvinism with so much heat and indiscretion, that I raised a hue-and-cry of heresy against me, which has not ceased to this hour." To understand Burns's situation at this time, at once patronized by a number of clergymen, and attended with "a hue-and-cry of heresy," we must remember his own words," that polemical divinity was putting the country half mad." Of both the two parties which, ever since the revolution of 1688, have pretty equally divided the Church of Scotland, it so happened that some of the most zealous and conspicuous leaders and partizans were thus opposed to each other, in constant warfare, in this particular district; and their feuds being of course taken up among their congregations, and spleen and prejudice at work, even more furiously in the cottage than in the manse, he who, to the annoyance of the one set of belligerents, could talk like Burns, might count pretty surely, with whatever alloy his wit happened to be mingled, on the applause and countenance of the enemy. And it is needless to add, they were the less scrupulous sect of the two that enjoyed the co-operation, such as it was then, and far more important, as in the sequel it came to be, of our poet. William Burnes, as we have already seen, though a most exemplary and devout man, entertained opinions very different from those which commonly obtained among the rigid Calvanists of his district. The worthy and pious old man himself, therefore, had not improbably infused into his son's mind its first prejudice against these persons. The jovial spirits with whom Burns associated at Irvine, and afterwards, were of course habitual deriders of the manners, as well as the tenets of the "Orthodox, orthodox, wha believe in John Knox." We have already observed the effect of the young poet's own first collision with the ruling powers of presbyterian discipline; but it was in the very act of settling at Mossgiel that Burns formed the connexion, which, more than any circumstance besides, influenced him as to the matter now in question. The farm belonged to the estate of the Earl of Loudoun, but the brothers held it on a sub-lease from Mr. Gavin Hamilton, writer (i. e. attorney) in Mauchline, a man, by every account, of engaging manners, open, kind, generous, and high-spirited, between whom and Robert Burns, a close and intimate friendship was ere long formed. Just about this time it happened that Hamilton was at open feud with Mr. Auld, the minister of Mauchline, (the same who had already rebuked the poet), and the ruling elders of the parish, in consequence of certain irregularities in his personal conduct and deportment, which, according to the usual strict notions of kirk discipline, were considered as fairly demanding the vigorous interference of these authorities. The notice of this person, his own landlord, and, as it would seem, one of the principal inhabitants of the village of Mauchline at the time, must, of course, have been very flattering to our polemical young farmer. He espoused Gavin Hamilton's quarrel warmly. Hamilton was naturally enough disposed to mix up his personal affair with the standing controversies whereon Auld was at variance with a large and powerful body of his brother clergymen; and by degrees Mr. Hamilton's ardent protegé came to be as vehemently interested in the church politics of Ayrshire, as he could have been in politics of another order, had he happened to be a freeman of some open borough, and his patron a candidate for the honour of representing it in St. Stephen's. Mr. Cromek has been severely criticised for some details of Mr. Gavin Hamilton's dissensions with his parish minister; but perhaps it might have been well to limit the censure to the tone and spirit of the narrative, since there is no doubt that these petty squabbles had a large share in directing the early energies of Burns's poetical talents. Even in the west of Scotland, such matters would hardly excite much notice now-a-days, but they were quite enough to produce a world of vexation and controversy forty years ago; and the English reader to whom all such details are denied, will certainly never be able to comprehend either the merits or the demerits of many of Burns's most remarkable productions. Since I have touched on this matter at all, I may as well add, that Hamilton's family, though professedly adhering to the Presbyterian Establishment, had always lain under a strong suspicion of Episcopalianism. Gavin's grandfather had been curate of Kirkoswald in the troubled times that preceded the Revolution, and incurred great and lasting popular hatred, in consequence of being supposed to have had a principal hand in bringing a thousand of the Highland host into that region in 1677-8. The district was commonly said not to have entirely recovered the effects of that savage visitation in less than a hundred years; and the descendants and representatives of the Covenanters, whom the curate of Kirkoswald had the reputation at least of persecuting, were commonly supposed to regard with any thing rather than ready good-will, his grandson, the witty writer of Mauchline. A well-nursed prejudice of this kind was likely enough to be met by counter-spleen, and such seems to have been the truth of the case. The lapse of another generation has sufficed to wipe out every trace of feuds, that were still abundantly discernible, in the days when Ayrshire first began to ring with the equally zealous applause and vituperation of, It is impossible to look back now to the civil war, which then raged among the churchmen of the west of Scotland, without confessing, that on either side there was much to regret, and not a little to blame. Proud and haughty spirits were unfortunately opposed to each other; and in the superabundant display of zeal as to doctrinal points, neither party seems to have mingled much of the charity of the Christian temper. The whole exhibition was unlovely-the spectacle of such indecent violence among the leading Ecclesiastics of the district, acted most unfavourably on many men's minds-and no one can doubt that in the unsettled state of Robert Burns's principles, the effect must have been powerful as to him. Macgill and Dalrymple, the two ministers of the town of Ayr, had long been suspected of entertaining heterodox opinions on several points, particularly the doctrine of original sin, and even of the Trinity; and the former at length published an Essay, which was considered as demanding the notice of the Church-courts. More than a year was spent in the discussions which arose out of this; and at last Dr. Macgill was fain to acknowledge his errors, and promise that he would take an early opportunity of apologizing for them to his own congregation from the pulpit-which promise, however, he never performed. The gentry of the country took, |