the world, shows how ardently he wished for honourable fame; and his contempt of life, founded on this despair, is the genuine expression of a youthful and generous mind. In such a state of reflection, and of suffering, the imagination of Burns naturally passed the dark boundaries of our earthly horizon, and rested on those beautiful representations of a better world, where there is neither thirst, nor hunger, nor sorrow, and where happiness shall be in proportion to the capacity of happiness."-Life, p. 102.

Unhappily for himself and for the world, it was not always in the recollections of his virtuous home and the study of his Bible, that Burns sought for consolation amidst the heavy distresses which "his youth was heir to." Irvine is a small sea-port; and here, as at Kirkoswald's, the adventurous 'spirits of a smuggling coast, with all their jovial habits, were to be met with in abundance. "He contracted some acquaintance," says Gilbert, "of a freer manner of thinking and living than he had been used to, whose society prepared um for overleaping the bounds of rigid virtue, which had hitherto restrained him."

One of the most intimate companions of Burns, while he remained at Irvine, seems to have been David Sillar, to whom the Epistle to Davie, a Brother Poet, was subsequently addressed. Sillar was at this time a poor schoolmaster in Irvine, enjoying considerable reputation as a writer of local verses: and, according to all accounts, extremely jovial in his life and conversation.

Burns himself thus sums up the results of his residence at Irvine :"From this adventure I learned something of a town life; but the principal thing which gave my mind a turn, was a friendship I formed with a young fellow, a very noble character, but a hapless son of misfortune He was the son of a simple mechanic; but a great man in the neighbourhood, taking him under his patronage, gave him a genteel education, with view of bettering his situation in life. The patron dying just as he was realy to launch out into the world, the poor fellow in despair went to sea; where, after a variety of good and ill fortune, a little before I was acquainted with him, he had been set ashore by an American privateer, on the wild coast of Connaught, stripped of every thing. . . His mind was fraught with independence, magnanimity, and every manly virtue. I loved and admired him to a degree of enthusiasm, and of course strove to imitate him. In some measure I succeeded; I had pride before, but he taught it to flow in proper channels. His knowledge of the world was vastly superior to mine; and I was all attention to learn. He was the only man I ever saw who was a greater fool than myself, where women was the presiding star; but he spoke of illicit love with the levity of a sailor-which hitherto I had regarded with horror. Here his friendship did me a mischief." Professor Walker, when preparing to write his Sketch of the Poet's life, was informed by an aged inhabitant of Irvine, that Burns's chief delight while there was in discussing religious topics, particularly in those circles which usually gather in a Scotch churchyard after service. The senior added, that Burns commonly took the high Calvinistic side in such debates; and concluded with a boast, that "the lad" was indebted to himself in a great measure for the gradual adoption of "more liberal opinions." It was during the same period, that the poet was first initiated in the mysteries of free masonry, "which was," says his brother, "his first introduction to the life of a boon companion." He was introduced to St. Mary's Lodge of Tarbolton by

John Ranken, a very dissipated man of considerable talents, to whom he afterwards indited a poetical epistle, which will be noticed in its place.

"Rhyme," Burns says, "I had given up ;" (on going to Irvine)" but meeting with Ferguson's Scottish Poems, I strung anew my wildly sounding lyre with emulating vigour." Neither flax-dressing nor the tavern could keep him long from his proper vocation. But it was probably this accidental meeting with Ferguson, that in a great measure finally determined the Scottish character of Burns's poetry; and indeed, but for the lasting sense of this obligation, and some natural sympathy with the personal misfortunes of Ferguson's life, it would be difficult to account for the very high terms in which Burns always mentions his productions.

Shortly before Burns went to Irvine, he, his brother Gilbert, and some seven or eight young men besides, all of the parish of Tarbolton, had formed themselves into a society, which they called the Bachelor's Club; and which met one evening in every month for the purposes of mutual entertainment and improvement. That their cups were but modestly filled is evident; for the rules of the club did not permit any member to spend more than threepence at a sitting. A question was announced for discussion at the close of each meeting; and at the next they came prepared to deliver their sentiments upon the subject-matter thus proposed. Burns drew up the regulations, and evidently was the principal person. He introduced his friend Sillar during his stay at Irvine, and the meetings appear to have continued as long as the family remained in Tarbolton. Ôf the sort of questions discussed, we may form some notion from the minute of one evening, still extant in Burns's hand-writing.-QUESTION FOR HALLOWEEN, (Nov. 11), 1780.-" Suppose a young man, bred a farmer, but without any fortune, has it in his power to marry either of two women, the one a girl of large fortune, but neither handsome in person, nor agreeable in conversation, but who can manage the household affairs of a farm well enough; the other of them a girl every way agreeable in person, conversation, and behaviour, but without any fortune: which of them shall he choose?" Burns, as may be guessed, took the imprudent side in this discussion.

"On one solitary occasion," says he, "we resolved to meet at Tarbolton in July, on the race-night, and have a dance in honour of our society. Accordingly, we did meet, each one with a partner, and spent the evening in such innocence and merriment, such cheerfulness and good humour, that every brother will long remember it with delight." There can be no doubt that Burns would not have patronized this sober association so long, unless he had experienced at its assemblies the pleasure of a stimulated mind; and as little, that to the habit of arranging his thoughts, and expressing them in somewhat of a formal shape, thus early cultivated, we ought to attribute much of that conversational skill which, when he first mingled with the upper world, was generally considered as the most remarkable of all his personal accomplishments.--Burns's associates of the Bachelor's Club, must have been young men possessed of talents and acquirements, otherwise such minds as his and Gilbert's could not have persisted in measuring themselves against theirs; and we may believe that the periodical display of the poet's own vigour and resources, at these club-meetings, and (more frequently than his brother approved) at the Free Mason Lodges of Irvine and Tarbolton, extended his rural reputation; and, by degrees, prepared persons not immediately included in his own circle, for the extraordinary impression which his poetical efforts were ere long to create all over "the Carrick border."

David Sillar gives an account of the beginning of his own acquaintance with Burns, and introduction into this Bachelor's Club, which will always be read with much interest." Mr. Robert Burns was some time in the parish of Tarbolton prior to my acquaintance with him. His social disposition easily procured him acquaintance; but a certain satirical seasoning with which he and all poetical geniuses are in some degree influenced, while it set the rustic circle in a roar, was not unaccompanied with its kindred attendant, suspicious fear. I recollect hearing his neighbours observe, he had a great deal to say for himself, and that they suspected his principles. He wore the only tied hair in the parish; and in the church, his plaid, which was of a particular colour, I think fillemot, he wrapped in a particular manner round his shoulders. These surmises, and his exterior, had such a magnetical influence on my curiosity, as made me particularly solicitous of his acquaintance. Whether my acquaintance with Gilbert was casual or premeditated, I am not now certain. By him I was introduced, not only to his brother, but to the whole of that family, where, in a short time, I became a frequent, and I believe, not unwelcome visitant. After the commencement of my acquaintance with the bard, we frequently met upon Sundays at church, when, between sermons, instead of going with our friends or lasses to the inn, we often took a walk in the fields. In these walks, I have frequently been struck with his facility in addressing the fair sex; and many times, when I have been bashfully anxious how to express myself, he would have entered into conversation with them with the greatest ease and freedom; and it was generally a death-blow to our conversation, however agreeable, to meet a female acquaintance. Some of the few opportunities of a noontide walk that a country life allows her laborious sons, he spent on the banks of the river, or in the woods, in the neigh bourhood of Stair, a situation peculiarly adapted to the genius of a rural bard. Some book (generally one of those mentioned in his letter to Mr. Murdoch) he always carried and read, when not otherwise employed. It was likewise his custom to read at table. In one of my visits to Lochlea, in time of a sowen supper, he was so intent on reading, I think Tristram Shandy, that his spoon falling out of his hand, made him exclaim, in a tone scarcely imitable, Alas, poor Yorick !' Such was Burns, and such were his associates, when, in May 1781, I was admitted a member of the Bachelor's Club."

The misfortunes of William Burnes thickened apace, as has already been seen, and were approaching their crisis at the time when Robert came home from his flax-dressing experiment at Irvine. The good old man died soon after; and among other evils which he thus escaped, was an affliction that would, in his eyes, have been severe. The poet had not, as he confesses, come unscathed out of the society of those persons of "liberal opinions" with whom he consorted in Irvine; and he expressly attributes to their lessons, the scrape into which he fell soon after "he put his hand to plough again." He was compelled, according to the then all but universal custom of rural parishes in Scotland, to do penance in church, before the congregation, in consequence of the birth of an illegitimate child; and whatever may be thought of the propriety of such exhibitions, there can be no difference of opinion as to the culpable levity with which he describes the nature of his offence, and the still more reprehensible bitterness with which, in his Epistle to Ranken, he inveighs against the clergyman, who, in rebuking him, only performed what was

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:

66 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 or the West Indies-The alternative.

"The star that rules my luckless lot
Has fated me the russet coat,
And damn'd my fortune to the groat;
But in requit,

Has bless'd me wi' a random shot
O' country wit."

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, "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.