incidents are as well known to you as to me. His genius having procured him your patronage and friendship, this gave rise to the correspondence between you, in which, I believe, his sentiments were delivered with the most respectful, but most unreserved confidence, and which only terminated with the last days of his life." This narrative of Gilbert Burns may serve as a commentary on the preceding sketch of our poet's life by himself. It will be seen that the distraction of mind which he mentions (p. 16.) arose from the distress and sorrow in which he had involved his future wife.-The whole cir cumstances attending this connexion are certainly of a very singular nature.* therefore expressed a wish to her, that | Edinburgh, or in Dumfriesshire, and its the written papers which respected the marriage should be cancelled, and thus the marriage rendered void. In her melancholy state she felt the deepest remorse at having brought such heavy affliction on parents that loved her so tenderly, and submitted to their entreaties. Their wish was mentioned to Robert. He felt the deepest anguish of mind. He offered to stay at home and provide for his wife and family in the best manner that his daily labours could provide for them; that being the only means in his power. Even this offer they did not approve of; for humble as Miss Armour's station was, and great though her imprudence had been, she still, in the eyes of her partial parents, might look to a better connexion than that with my friendless and unhappy brother, at that time without house or biding place. Robert at length consented to their wishes; but his feelings on this occasion were of the most distracting nature and the impression of sorrow was not effaced, till by a regular marriage they were indissolubly united. In the state of mind which this separation produced, he wished to leave the country as soon as possible, and agreed with Dr. Douglas to go out to Jamaica as an assistant overseer; or, as I believe it is called, a book-keeper, on his estate. As he had not sufficient money to pay his passage, and the vessel in which Dr. Douglas was to procure a passage for him was not expected to sail for some time, Mr. Hamilton advised him to publish his poems in the mean time by subscription, as a likely way of getting a little money, to provide him more liberally in necessaries for Jamaica. Agreeably to this advice, subscription bills were printed immediately, and the printing was commenced at Kilmarnock, his preparations going on at the same time for his voyage. The reception, however, which his poems met with in the world, and the friends they procured him, made him change his resolution of going to Jamaica, and he was advised to go to Edinburgh to publish a second edition. On his return, in happier circumstances, he renewed his connexion with Mrs. Burns, and rendered it permanent by a union for life. tr The reader will perceive, from the foregoing narrative, how much the chil dren of William Burnes were indebted to their father, who was certainly a man of uncommon talents; though it does not appear that he possessed any portion of that vivid imagination for which the subject of these memoirs was distinguished In page 13, it is observed by our poet, that his father had an unaccountable antipathy to dancing-schools, and that his attending one of these brought on him his displeasure, and even dislike. On this observation Gilbert has made the following remark, which seems entitled to im plicit credit:-"I wonder how Robert could attribute to our father that lasting resentment of his going to a dancingschool against his will, of which he was incapable. I believe the truth was, that he, about this time began to see the dangerous impetuosity of my brother's passions, as well as his not being amenable to counsel, which often irritated my father; and which he would naturally think a dancing-school was not likely to correct. But he was proud of Robert's genius, which he bestowed more expense in cultivating than on the rest of the family, in the instances of sending him to Ayr and Kirk-Oswald schools; and he was greatly delighted with his warmth of heart, and *In page 16, the poet mentions his—" skulking from "Thus, Madam, have I endeavoured covert to covert, under the terror of a jail." The to give you a simple narrative of the lead-"pack of the law" was "uncoupled at his heels," to ing circumstances in my brother's early twin children, whom he was not permitted to legiti oblige him to find security for the maintenance of his life. The remaining part he spent in mate by a marriage with their mother. his conversational powers. He had indeed that dislike of dancing-schools which Robert mentions; but so far overcame it during Robert's first month of attendance, that he allowed all the rest of the family that were fit for it to accompany him during the second month. Robert excelled in dancing, and was for some time distractedly fond of it." 66 In the original letter to Dr. Moore, our poet described his ancestors as " renting lands of the noble Keiths of Marischal, and as having had the honour of sharing their fate." I do not," continues he, use the word honour with any reference to political principles; loyal and disloyal, I take to be merely relative terms, in that ancient and formidable court, known in this country by the name of Club-law, where the right is always with the strongest. But those who dare welcome ruin, and shake hands with infamy, for what they sincerely believe to be the cause of their God, or their king, are, as Mark Antony says in Shakespeare of Brutus and Cassius, honourable men. I mention this circumstance because it threw my father on the world at large." would cherish the belief of his father's having been engaged in the daring enterprise of Prince Charles Edward. The generous attachment, the heroic valour, and the final misfortunes of the adherents of the house of Stewart, touched with sympathy his youthful and ardent mind, and influenced his original political opinions.* The father of our poet is described by one who knew him towards the latter end of his life, as above the common stature, thin, and bent with labour. His countenance was serious and expressive, and the scanty locks on his head were gray. He was of a religious turn of mind, and, as is usual among the Scottish peasantry, a good deal conversant in speculative theology. There is in Gilbert's hands a little manual of religious belief, in the form of a dialogue between a father and his son, composed by him for the use of his children, in which the benevolence of his heart seems to have led him to soften the rigid Calvinism of the Scottish Church, into something approaching to Arminianism. He was a devout man, and in the practice of calling his family together to join in prayer. It is known that the exquisite picture, drawn in stanzas *There is another observation of Gilbert Burns on quential a manner. The principal acquaintances we had in Ayr, while boys, were four sons of Mr. Andrew M'Culloch, a distant relation of my mother's, who kept band trade very common at that time. He died while the boys were young, and my father was nominated a tea shop, and had made a little money in the contra This paragraph has been omitted in printing the letter, at the desire of Gilbert Burns; and it would have been unnecessary to have noticed it on the pre- his brother's narrative, in which some persons will be sent occasion, had not several manuscript interested. It refers to where the poet speaks of hig copies of that letter been in circulation. youthful friends. "My brother," says Gilbert Burns, "I do not know," observes Gilbert Burns," seems to set off his early companions in too conse"how my brother could be misled in the account he has given of the Jacobitism of his ancestors.-I believe the earl Marischal forfeited his title and estate in 1715, before my father was born; and among a collection of parish certificates in his possession, I have read one, stating that the bearer had no concern in the late wicked rebellion." On the information of one, who knew William Burnes soon after he arrived in the county of Ayr, it may be mentioned, that a report did vail, that he had taken the field with the young Chevalier; a report which the certificate mentioned by his son was, perhaps, intended to counteract. Strangers from the north, settling in the low country of Scotland, were in those days liable to suspicions of having been, in the familiar also knew the present Dr. Paterson of Ayr, and a phrase of the country, "Out in the forty-younger brother of his now in Jamaica, who were five," (1745) especially when they had any stateliness or reserve about them, as was the case with William Burnes. It may easily be conceived, that our poet pre one of the tutors. The two eldest were bred up shopkeepers, the third a surgeon, and the youngest, the only surviving one, was bred in a counting-house in Glasgow, where he is now a respectable merchant. I believe all these boys went to the West Indies. Then there were two sons of Dr. Malcolm, whom I have mentioned in my letter to Mrs. Dunlop. The eldest, a very worthy young man, went to the East Indies, where he had a commission in the army; he is the person whose heart my brother says the Muny Begun scenes could not corrupt. The other by the interest of Lady Wallace, got an ensigncy in a regiment raised by the Duke of Hamilton, during the American war. I believe neither of them are now (1797) alive. We much younger than us. I had almost forgot to mention Dr. Charles of Ayr, who was a little older than my brother, and with whom we had a longer and closer intimacy than with any of the others, which did not, however, continue in after life.” xii. xiii. xiv. XV. xvi. and xviii. of the Cotter's Saturday Night, represents William Burnes and his family at their evening devotions. Of a family so interesting as that which inhabited the cottage of William Burnes, and particularly of the father of the family, the reader will perhaps be willing to listen to some farther account. What follows is given by one already mentioned with so much honour in the narrative of Gilbert Burns, Mr. Murdoch, the preceptor of our poet, who, in a letter to Joseph Cooper Walker, Esq. of Dublin, author of the Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards, and the Historical Memoirs of the Italian Tragedy, thus expresses himself: "SIR,I was lately favoured with a letter from our worthy friend, the Rev. Wm. Adair, in which he requested me to communicate to you whatever particulars I could recollect concerning Robert Burns, the Ayrshire poet. My business being at present multifarious and harassing, my attention is consequently so much divided, and I am so little in the habit of expressing my thoughts on paper, that at this distance of time I can give but a very imperfect sketch of the early part of the life of that extraordinary genius, with which alone I am acquainted. "William Burnes, the father of the poet, was born in the shire of Kincardine, and bred a gardener. He had been settled in Ayrshire ten or twelve years before I knew him, and had been in the service of Mr. Crawford, of Doonside. He was afterwards employed as a gardener and overseer by Provost Ferguson of Doonholm, in the parish of Alloway, which is now united with that of Ayr. In this parish, on the road side, a Scotch mile and a half from the town of Ayr, and half a mile from the bridge of Doon, William Burnes took a piece of land, consisting of about seven acres; part of which he laid out in garden ground, and part of which he kept to graze a cow, &c. still continuing in the employ of Provost Ferguson. Upon this little farm was erected an humble dwelling, of which William Burnes was the architect. It was, with the exception of a little straw, literally a tabernacle of clay. In this mean cottage, of which I myself was at times an inhabitant, I really believe there dwelt a larger portion of content than in any palace in Europe. The Cotter's Saturday Night will give some idea of the temper and manners that prevailed there. "In 1765, about the middle of March, Mr. W. Burnes came to Ayr, and sent to the school where I was improving in writing, under my good friend Mr. Robinson, desiring that I would come and speak to him at a certain inn, and bring my writing-book with me. This was immediately complied with. Having examined my writing, he was pleased with it-(you will readily allow he was not difficult,) and told me that he had received very satisfactory information of Mr. Tennant, the master of the English school, concerning my improvement in English, and his method of teaching. In the month of May following, I was engaged by Mr. Burnes, and four of his neighbours, to teach, and accordingly began to teach the little school at Alloway, which was situated a few yards from the argillaceous fabric above-mentioned. My five employers undertook to board me by turns, and to make up a certain salary, at the end of the year, provided my quarterly payments from the different pupils did not amount to that sum. "My pupil, Robert Burns, was then between six and seven years of age; his preceptor about eighteen. Robert, and his younger brother, Gilbert, had been grounded a little in English before they were put under my care. They both made a rapid progress in reading, and a tolerable progress in writing. In reading, dividing words into syllables by rule, spelling without book, parsing sentences &c. Robert and Gilbert were generally at the upper end of the class, even when ranged with boys by far their seniors The books most commonly used in the school were the Spelling Book, the New Testament, the Bible, Mason's Collection of prose and verse, and Fisher's English Grammar. They committed to memory the hymns, and other poems of that collection, with uncommon facility. This facility was partly owing to the method pursued by their father and me in instructing them, which was, to make them tho roughly acquainted with the meaning of every word in each sentence that was to be committed to memory. By the by, this may be easier done, and at an earlier period than is generally thought. As soon as they were capable of it, I taught them to turn verse into its natural prose order; sometimes to substitute synonymous AY pressions for poetical words, and to sup- "Now there was little else to be heard ply all the ellipses. These, you know, but the declension of nouns, the conjugaare the means of knowing that the pupil tion of verbs, &c. When walking togeunderstands his author. These are ex-ther, and even at meals, I was constantly cellent helps to the arrangement of words in sentences, as well as to a variety of expression. telling him the names of different objects, as they presented themselves, in French; so that he was hourly laying in a stock of words, and sometimes little phrases. In short, he took such pleasure in learning, and I in teaching, that it was difficult to say which of the two was most zealous in the business; and about the end of the second week of our study of the French, we began to read a little of the Adventures of Telemachus, in Fenelon's own words. "Gilbert always appeared to me to possess a more lively imagination, and to be more of the wit than Robert. I attempted to teach them a little churchmusic: here they were left far behind by all the rest of the school. Robert's ear, in particular, was remarkably dull, and his voice untunable. It was long before I could get them to distinguish one tune from another. Robert's countenance was "But now the plains of Mount Oliphant generally grave, and expressive of a se- began to whiten, and Robert was sumrious, contemplative, and thoughtful mind. moned to relinquish the pleasing scenes Gilbert's face said, Mirth, with thee I mean that surrounded the grotto of Calypso ; to live; and certainly, if any person who and, armed with a sickle, to seek glory knew the two boys, had been asked which by signalizing himself in the fields of Ceof them was most likely to court the res-and so he did; for although but muses, he would surely never have guess-about fifteen, I was told that he performed that Robert had a propensity of thated the work of a man. kind. "In the year 1769, Mr. Burnes quitted nis mud edifice, and took possession of a farm (Mount Oliphant) of his own improving, while in the service of Provost Ferguson. This farm being at a considerable distance from the school, the boys could not attend regularly; and some changes taking place among the other supporters of the school, I left it, having continued to conduct it for nearly two years and a half. "In the year 1772, I was appointed (being one of five candidates who were examined) to teach the English school at Ayr; and in 1773, Robert Burns came to board and lodge with me, for the purpose of revising the English grammar, &c. that ae might be better qualified to instruct his brothers and sisters at home. He was now with me day and night in school, at all meals, and in all my walks. At the end of one week, I told him, that as he was now pretty much master of the parts of speech, &c. I should like to teach him something of French pronunciation; that when he should meet with the name of a French town, ship, officer, or the like, in the newspapers, he might be able to pronounce it something like a French word. Robert was glad to hear this proposal, and immediately we attacked the French with great courage. "Thus was I deprived of my very apt pupil, and consequently agreeable companion, at the end of three weeks, one of which was spent entirely in the study of English, and the other two chiefly in that of French. I did not, however, lose sight of him; but was a frequent visitant at his father's house, when I had my half-holiday; and very often went, accompanied with one or two persons more intelligent than myself, that good William Burnes might enjoy a mental feast. Then the labouring oar was shifted to some other hand. The father and the son sat down with us, when we enjoyed a conversation, wherein solid reasoning, sensible remark, and a moderate seasoning of jocularity, were so nicely blended as to render it palatable to all parties. Robert had a hundred questions to ask me about the French, &c.; and the father, who had always rational information in view, had still some question to propose to my more learned friends, upon moral or natural philosophy, or some such interesting subject. Mrs. Burnes too was of the party as much as possible; But still the house affairs would draw her thence, and particularly that of her husband. At ed to him with a more marked attention | to aristocratical arrogance. But I must than to any body else. When under the necessity of being absent while he was speaking, she seemed to regret, as a real loss, that she had missed what the good man had said. This worthy woman, Agnes Brown, had the most thorough esteem for her husband of any woman I ever knew. I can by no means wonder that she highly esteemed him; for I myself have always considered William Burnes as by far the best of the human race that ever I had the pleasure of being acquainted with-and many a worthy character I have known. I can cheerfully join with Robert, in the last line of his epitaph (borrowed from Goldsmith,) "And even his failings lean'd to virtue's side." "He was an excellent husband, if I may judge from his assiduous attention to the ease and comfort of his worthy partner, and from her affectionate behaviour to him, as well as her unwearied attention to the duties of a mother. selves are averse. "He was a tender and affectionate father; he took pleasure in leading his children in the path of virtue; not in driving them as some parents do, to the performance of duties to which they themHe took care to find fault but very seldom; and therefore, when he did rebuke, he was listened to with a kind of reverential awe. A look of disapprobation was felt; a reproof was severely so; and a stripe with the tawz, even on the skirt of the coat, gave heartfelt pain, produced a loud lamentation, and brought forth a flood of tears. "He had the art of gaining the esteem and good-will of those that were labourers under him. I think I never saw him angry but twice; the one time it was with the foreman of the band, for not reaping the field as he was desired; and the other time, it was with an old man, for using smutty inuendoes and double entendres. Were every foul mouthed old man to receive a seasonable check in this way, it would be to the advantage of the rising generation. As he was at no time overbearing to inferiors, he was equally incapable of that passive, pitiful, paltry spirit, that induces some people to keep booing and booing in the presence of a great man. He always treated superiors with a becoming respect but he never gave the smallest encouragement not pretend to give you a description of all the manly qualities, the rational and Christian virtues, of the venerable William Burnes. Time would fail me. I shall only add, that he carefully practised every known duty, and avoided every thing that was criminal; or, in the apos tle's words, Herein did he exercise himself in living a life void of offence towards God and towards men. O for a world of men of such dispositions! We should then have no wars. I have often wished, for the good of mankind, that it were as customary to honour and perpetuate the memory of those who excel in moral rec titude, as it is to extol what are called heroic actions: then would the mausoleum of the friend of my youth overtop and surpass most of the monuments I see in Westminster Abbey. Although I cannot do justice to the character of this worthy man, yet you will perceive from these few particulars, what kind of person had the principal hand in the education of our poet. He spoke the English language with more propriety (both with respect to diction and pronunciation,) than any man I ever knew with no greater advantages. This had a very good effect on the boys, who began to talk, and reason like men, much sooner than their neighbours. I do not recollect any of their contemporaries, at my little seminary, who afterwards made any great figure, as literary characters, except Dr. Tennant, who was chaplain to Colonel Fullarton's regiment, and who is now in the East Indies. He is a man of genius and learning; yet affable, and free from pedantry. "Mr. Burnes, in a short time, found and that he could not rear his numerous that e had over-rated Mount Oliphant family upon it. After being there some years, he removed to Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton, where, I believe, Robert wrote most of his poems. "But here, Sir, you will permit me to tive to our poet. I shall, however, in my pause. I can tell you but little more relanext, send you a copy of one of his letters one since, but it is mislaid. Please reto me, about the year 1783. I received member me, in the best manner, to my worthy friend Mr. Adair, when you see him, or write to him. "Hart-street, Bloomsbury-Square, |