he was at lengtn about to be engaged. Burns was present, on the 31st of December, at a dinner to celebrate the birth-day of the unfortunate Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and produced on the occasion an ode, part of which Dr. Currie has preserved. The specimen will not induce any regret that the remainder of the piece has been suppressed. It appears to be a mouthing rhapsody-far, far different indeed from the Chevalier's Lament, which the poet composed some months afterwards, with probably the tithe of the effort, while riding alone" through a track of melancholy muirs between Galloway and Ayrshire, it being Sunday." * For six weeks of the time that Burns spent this year in Edinburgh, he was confined to his room, in consequence of an overturn in a hackney coach. "Here I am," he writes, "under the care of a surgeon, with a bruised ́ limb extended on a cushion, and the tints of my mind vying with the livid horrors preceding a midnight thunder-storm. A drunken coachman was the cause of the first, and incomparably the lightest evil; misfortune, bodily constitution, hell, and myself, have formed a quadruple alliance to guarantee the other. I have taken tooth and nail to the Bible, and am got half way through the five books of Moses, and half way in Joshua. It is really glorious book. I sent for my bookbinder to-day, and ordered him to get an 8vo. Bible in sheets, the best paper and print in town, and bind it with all the elegance of his craft."+-In another letter, which opens gaily enough, we find him reverting to the same prevailing darkness of mood. "I can't say I am altogether at my ease when I see any where in my path that meagre, squalid, famine-faced spectre, Poverty, attended as he always is by iron-fisted Oppression, and leering Contempt. But I have sturdily withstood his buffetings many a hard-laboured day, and still my motto is I DARE. My worst enemy is moi-même. There are just two creatures that I would envy a horse in his wild state traversing the forests of Asia, or an oyster on some of the desert shores of Europe. The one has not a wish without enjoyment; the other has neither wish nor fear." -One more specimen may be sufficient." These have been six horrible weeks. Anguish and low spirits have made me unfit to read, write, or think. I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an officer does a commission; for I would not take in any poor ignorant wretch by selling out. Lately, I was a sixpenny private, and God knows a miserable soldier enough: now I march to the campaign a starving cadet, a little more conspicuously wretched. I am ashamed of all this; for though I do not want bravery for the warfare of life, I could wish, like some other soldiers, to have as much fortitude or cunning as to dissemble or conceal my cowardice." It seems impossible to doubt that Burns had in fact lingered in Edinburgh, in the hope that, to use a vague but sufficiently expressive phrase, something would be done for him. He visited and revisited a farm,-talked and wrote about "having a fortune at the plough-tail," and so forth; but all the while nourished, and assuredly it would have been most strange if he had not, the fond dream that the admiration of his country would ere long present itself in some solid and tangible shape. His illness and confinement gave him leisure to concentrate his imagination on the darker side of his prospects; and the letters which we have quoted may teach those who envy the powers and the fame of genius, to pause for a moment over the annals of literature, and think what superior capabilities of misery have been, in the great majority of cases, interwoven with the possession of those very talents, from which all but their possessors derive unmingled gratification. Burns's distresses, however, were to be still farther aggravated. While still under the hands of his surgeon, he received intelligence from Mauchline that his intimacy with Jean Armour had once more exposed her to the reproaches of her family. The father sternly and at once turned her out of doors; and Burns, unable to walk across his room, had to write to his friends in Mauchline to procure shelter for his children, and for her whom he considered as-all but his wife. In a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, written on hearing of this new misfortune, he says, “I wish I were dead, but I'm no like to die.' I fear I am something like-undone; but I hope for the best. You must not desert me. Your friendship I think I can count on, though I should date my letters from a marching regiment. Early in life, and all my life, I reckoned on a recruiting drum as my forlorn hope. Seriously, though, life at present presents me with but a melancholy path— But my limb will soon be sound, and I shall struggle on." * It seems to have been now that Burns at last screwed up his courage to solicit the active interference in his behalf of the Earl of Glencairn. The letter is a brief one. Burns could ill endure this novel attitude, and he rushed at once to his request. "I wish," says he, "to get into the excise. I am told your Lordship will easily procure me the grant from the commissioners; and your lordship's patronage and kindness, which have already rescued me from obscurity, wretchedness, and exile, embolden me to ask that interest. You have likewise put it in my power to save the little tie of home, that sheltered an aged mother, two brothers, and three sisters from destruction. There, my lord, you have bound me over to the highest gratitude. My heart sinks within me at the idea of applying to any other of The Great who have honoured me with their countenance. I am ill qualified to dog the heels of greatness with the impertinence of solicitation; and tremble nearly as much at the thought of the cold promise as of the cold denial." It would be hard to think that this letter was coldly or negligently received; on the contrary, we know that Burns's gratitude to Lord Glencairn lasted as long as his life. But the excise appointment which he coveted was not procured by any exertion of his noble patron's influence. Mr. Alexander Wood, surgeon, (still affectionately remembered in Edinburgh as "kind old Sandy Wood,") happening to hear Burns, while his patient, mention the object of his wishes, went immediately, without dropping any hint of his intention, and communicated the state of the poet's case to Mr. Graham of Fintray, one of the commissioners of excise, who had met Burns at the Duke of Athole's in the autumn, and who immediately had the poet's name put on the roll." I have chosen this, my dear friend," (thus wrote Burns to Mrs. Dunlop)," after mature deliberation. The question is not at what door of Fortune's palace shall we enter in; but what doors does she open to us? I was not likely to get any thing to do. I wanted un bût, which is a dangerous, an unhappy situation. I got this without any hanging on or mortifying solicitation. It is immediate bread, and, though poor in comparison of the last eighteen months of my existence, 'tis luxury in comparison of all my preceding life. Besides, the commissioners are some of them my acquaintances, and all of them my firm friends." + • Reliques, p. 48. + General Correspondence, No. 40. + Reliques, p. 50. Our poet seems to have kept up an angry correspondence during his con finement with his bookseller, Mr. Creech, whom he also abuses very heartily in his letters to his friends in Ayrshire. The publisher's accounts, however, when they were at last made up, must have given the impatient author a very agreeable surprise; for, in his letter above quoted, to Lord Glencairn, we find him expressing his hopes that the gross profits of his book might amount to "better than £200," whereas, on the day of settling with Mr. Creech, he found himself in possession of 1500, if not of £600. Mr. Nicoll, the most intimate friend Burns had, writes to Mr John Lewars, excise officer at Dumfries, immediately on hearing of the poet's death,-" He certainly told me that he received 4600 for the first Edinburgh edition, and £100 afterwards for the copyright."-Dr. Currie states the gross product of Creech's edition at £500, and Burns himself, in one of his printed letters, at £400 only. Nicoll hints, in the letter already referred to, that Burns had contracted debts while in Edinburgh, which he might not wish to avow on all occasions; and if we are to believe this-and, as is probable, the expense of printing the subscription edition, should, moreover, be deducted from the £700 stated by Mr. Nicoll-the apparent contradictions in these stories may be pretty nearly reconciled. There appears to be reason for thinking that Creech subsequently paid more than £100 for the copyright. If he did not, how came Burns to realize, as Currie states it at the end of his Memoir, "nearly £900 in all by his poems?" This supply came truly in the hour of need; and it seems to have elevated his spirits greatly, and given him for the time a new stock of confidence; for he now resumed immediately his purpose of taking Mr. Miller's farm, retaining his excise commission in his pocket as a dernier resort, to be made use of only should some reverse of fortune come upon him. His first act, however, was to relieve his brother from his difficulties, by advancing £180 or £200, to assist him in the management of Mossgiel. "I give myself no airs on this," he generously says, in a letter to Dr. Moore, "for it was mere selfishness on my part. I was conscious that the wrong scale of the balance was pretty heavily charged, and I thought that the throwing a little filial piety and fraternal affection into the scale in my favour, might help to smooth matters at the grand reckoning.” * • General Correspondence, No. GG. CHAPTER VII. CONTENTS. Marries Announcements, (apologetical), of the event-Remarks-Becomes (1788) Farmer at Elliesland, on the Nith, in a romantic vicinity, six miles from Dumfries→→→ The Muse wakeful as ever, while the Poet maintains a varied and extensive literary correspondence with all and sundry-Remarks upon the correspondence-Sketch of his person and habits at this period by a brother poet, who shows cause against success in farming— The untoward conjunction of Gauger to Farmer-The notice of the squirearchy, and the calls of admiring visitors, lead too uniformly to the ultra convivial life-Leaves Elliesland (1791) to be exciseman in the town of Dumfries. "To make a happy fireside clime For weans and wife That's the true pathos and sublime BURNS, as soon as his bruised limb was able for a journey, went to Mossgiel, and went through the ceremony of a Justice-of-Peace marriage with Jean Armour, in the writing-chambers of his friend Gavin Hamilton. He then crossed the country to Dalswinton, and concluded his bargain with Mr. Miller as to the farm of Elliesland, on terms which must undoubtedly have been considered by both parties, as highly favourable to the poet; they were indeed fixed by two of Burns's own friends, who accompanied him for that purpose from Ayrshire. The lease was for four successive terms, of nineteen years each,-in all seventy-six years; the rent for the first three years and crops £50; during the remainder of the period £70 per annum. Mr. Miller bound himself to defray the expense of any plantations which Burns might please to make on the banks of the river; and, the farm-house and offices being in a delapidated condition, the new tenant was to receive £300 from the proprietor, for the erection of suitable buildings. Burns entered on possession of his farm at Whitsuntide 1788, but the necessary rebuilding of the house prevented his removing Mrs. Burns thither until the season was far advanced. He had, moreover, to qualify himself for holding his excise commission by six weeks' attendance on the business of that profession at Ayr. From these circumstances, he led all the summer a wandering and unsettled life, and Dr. Currie mentions this as one of his chief misfortunes. The poet, as he says, was continually riding between Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire, and often spending a night on the road," sometimes fell into company, and forgot the resolutions he had formed." What these resolutions were, the poet himself shall tell us. On the third day of his residence at Elliesland, he thus writes to Mr. Ainslie : -"I have all along hitherto, in the warfare of life, been bred to arms, among the light-horse, the piquet guards of fancy, a kind of hussars and Highlanders of the brain; but I am firmly resolved to sell out of these giddy battalions. Cost what it will, I am determined to buy in among the grave squadrons of heavy-armed thought, or the artillery corps of plodding con trivance. Were it not for the terrors of my ticklish situation respecting a family of children, I am decidedly of opinion that the step I have taken is vastly for my happiness." * To all his friends he expresses himself in terms of similar satisfaction in regard to his marriage. "Your surmise, Madam," he writes to Mrs. Dunlop," is just. I am indeed a husband. I found a once much-loved, and still much-loved female, literally and truly cast out to the mercy of the naked elements, but as I enabled her to purchase a shelter; and there is no sporting with a fellow-creature's happiness or misery. The most placid goodnature and sweetness of disposition; a warm heart, gratefully devoted with all its powers to love me; vigorous health and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to the best advantage by a more than commonly handsome figure; these, I think, in a woman, may make a good wife, though she should never have read a page but the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, nor danced in a brighter assembly than a penny-pay wedding. To jealousy or infidelity I am an equal stranger; my preservative from the first, is the most thorough consciousness of her sentiments of honour, and her attachment to me; my antidote against the last, is my long and deeprooted affection for her. In housewife matters, of aptness to learn, and activity to execute, she is eminently mistress, and during my absence in Nithsdale, she is regularly and constantly an apprentice to my mother and sisters in their dairy, and other rural business. You are right, that a bachelor state would have ensured me more friends; but from a cause you will easily guess, conscious peace in the enjoyment of my own mind, and unmistrusting confidence in approaching my God, would seldom have been of the number." + Some months later he tells Miss Chalmers that his marriage "was not, perhaps, in consequence of the attachment of romance,"-(he is addressing a young lady),—" but," he continues, "I have no cause to repent it. If I have not got polite tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse of boarding-school affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the country. Mrs. Burns believes as firmly as her creed, that I am le plus bel esprit et le plus honnête homme in the universe; although she scarcely ever, in her life, except the Scriptures and the Psalms of David in Metre, spent five minutes together on either prose or verse-I must except also a certain late publication of Scots poems, which she has perused very devoutly, and all the ballads of the country, as she has (O the partial lover, you will say), the finest woodnote-wild I ever heard."-It was during this honeymoon, as he calls it, while chiefly resident in a miserable hovel at Elliesland, and only occasionally spending a day or two in Ayrshire, that he wrote the beautiful song: "Of a' the airts the wind can blaw I dearly like the west, There wildwoods grow, and rivers row, and mony a hill between ; O blaw, ye westlin winds, blaw saft amang the leafy trees, Reliques, p. 63. + See General Correspondence, No. 53; and Reliques, p. 60. Ibid. p. 273. |