TO THE PUBLIC. VERY little need be said in introducing to the public such an edition of the popular Scotch bard's poems as the present one. It is the cheapest ever issued from the press, and will come within the means of the humblest and poorest members of the community. But in order to produce the work at the lowest possible price, no abridgement or omission has been had recourse to, either in respect to the prose or poetical contents of original editions. On the contrary, this edition is positively the most complete of all that have ever been published, because a careful research having been made through the earlier collections of Burns' Poems, several pieces have been therein found that have been omitted in more recent editions, but which are included in the present volume. SKETCH LIFE OF OF THE ROBERT BURNS. ROBERT BURNS was, as is well known, the son of a farmer in Ayrshire, and afterwards himself a farmer there; but, having been unsuccessful, he was about to emigrate to Jamaica. He had previously, however, attracted some notice by his poe ical talents in the vicinity where he lived; and having published a small volume of his poems at Kilinarnock, this drew upon him more general attention. In consequence of the encouragement he received, he repaired to Edinburgh, and there published, by subscription, an improved and enlarged edition of his poems, which met with extraordinary success. By the profits arising from the sale of this edition, he was enabled to enter on a farm in Dumfriesshire and having married a person to whom he had been long attached, he retired to devote the remainder of his life to agriculture. He was again, however, unsuccessful; and, abandoning his farm, he removed again into the town of Dumfries, where he filled an inferior office in the excise, and where he terminated his life in July, 1796, in his thirty-eighth year. honest narrative; though I know it will be often at my own expense:-for I assure you, sir, I have, like Solomon, whose character, except in the trifling affair of wisdom, I sometimes think I resemble,-I have, I say, like him, turned my eyes to behold madness and folly, and like him, too, frequently shaken hands with their intoxicating friendship. ** * After you have persued these pages, should you think them trifling and impertinent, I only beg leave to tell you, that the poor author wrote them under some twitching qualms of conscience, arising from a suspicion that he was doing what he ought not to do; a predicamen: he has more than once been in before. I have not the most distant pretensions to assume that character which the pye-coated guardians of escutcheons call a Gentleman. When at Edinburgh last winter, I got acquainted in the Herald's Office; and, looking through that granary of honours, I found there almost every name in the kingdom; but for me, "My ancient but ignoble blood Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood." The strength and originality of his genius procured him the notice of many persons distinguished in the republic of letters, and. among others, that of Dr Moore, well known for his Gules, purpure, argent, &c., quite disowned me. "Views of Society and Manners on the Continent "My father was of the north of Scotland, the of Europe," for his "Zeluco," and various other son of a farmer, and was thrown by early misworks. To this gentleman our poet addressed a fortunes on the world at large: where after letter, after his first visit to Edinburgh, giving a many years wanderings and sojournings, he history of his life, up to the period of his writing picked up a pretty large quantity of observation In a composition never intended to see the and experience, to which I am indebted for most light, elegance or perfect correctness of composi- of my little pretensions to wisdom-I have met tion will not be expected. These, however, will with few who understood men, their manners, be compensated by the opportunity of seeing and their ways, equal to him: but stubborn, unour poet, as he gives the incidents of his life, ungainly integrity, and headlong. ungovernable fold the peculiarities of his character with all the careless vigour and open sincerity of his mind. "SIR, Mauchline, 2nd August, 1787. "For some months past I have been rambling Over the country; but I am now confined with some lingering complaints, originating, as I take it, in the stomach To divert my spirits a little in this miserable fog of ennui, I have taken a whim to give you a history of myself. My name has made some little noise in this country; you have done me the honour to interest yourself very warmly in my behalf; and I think a faithful account of what character of a man I am, and how I came by that character, may perhaps amuse you in an idle moment, I will give you an irascibility, are disqualifying circumstances; consequently I was born a very poor man's son. For the first six or seven years of my life, my father was a gardener to a worthy gentleman of small estate in the neighbourhood of Ayr. Had he continued in that station, I must have marched off to be one of the little underlings about a farm-house; but it was his dearest wish and prayer to have it in his power to keep his children under his own eye till they could discern between good and evil; so, with the assistance of his generous master, my father ventured on a small farm on his estate. At those years I was by no means a favourite with anybody. I was a good deal noted for a retentive memory, a stubborn sturdy something in my disposition, and an enthusiastic idiot piety. I say idiot piety, because I was then but a child. Though it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made an excellent English scholar; and by the time I was ten or eleven years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. In my infant and boyish days, too, I owed much to an old woman who resided in the family, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, deadlights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical than I ain in such matters, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy to shake off these idel terrors. The earliest composition that I recollect taking pleasure in, was The Vision of Mirza," and a hymn of Addison's, beginning, "How are thy servants brest, O Lord!" I particularly remember one half stanza which was music to my boyish ears "For though on dreadful whirls we hung, High on the broken wave-" I met with these pieces in Mason's English Collection," one of my school-books. The two first books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were, "The Life of Hannibal," and "The History of Sir William Wallace." Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn, that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bag-pipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into veins, which will boil along there till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest. my "Polemical divinity about this time was putting the country half mad; and I, ambitious of shining in conversation parties on Sundays, between sermons, at funerals, &c., used, a few years afterwards, 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. "My vicinity to Ayr was of some advantage to me. My social disposition, when not checked by some modifications of spiritual pride, was, like our catechism-definition of infinitude, without bounds or limits. I formed several connections with other younkers who possessed superior advantages, the youngling actors, who were busy in the rehearsal of parts in which they were shortly to appear on the stage of life, where, alas! I was destined to drudge behind the scenes. It is not commonly at this green age that our young gentry have a just sense of the immense distance between them and their ragged play-fellows. It takes a few dashes into the world, to give the young great man that proper, decent, unnoticing disregard for the poor insignificant stupid devils, the mechanics and peasantry around him, who were perhaps born in the same village. My young superiors never insulted the clouterly appearance of my plough-boy carcase, the two extremes of which were often exposed to all the inclemencies of the seasons. They would give me stray volumes of books; among them, even then, I could pick up some observations; and one, whose heart I am sure not even the Munny Begum scenes have tainted, helped me to a little French. Parting with these my young friends and benefactors, as they occasionally went off for the East or West Indies, was often to me a sore affliction. But I was soon called to more serious evils. My father's generous master died; the farm proved a ruinous bargain; and, to clench the misfor tune, we fell into the hands of a factor, who sat for the picture I have drawn of one in my Tale of Twa Dogs.' My father was advanced in life when he married; I was the eldest of seven children; and he, worn out by early hardships, was unfit for labour. My father's spirit was soon irritated, but not easily broken. There was a freedom in his lease in two years more; and to weather these two years, we retrenched our expenses. We lived very poorly; I was a dextrous ploughman, for my age; and the next eldest to me was a brother (Gilbert), who could drive the plough very well, and help me to thrash the corn. A novel-writer might perhaps have viewed these scenes with some satisfaction; but so did not I; my indignation yet boils at the recollection of the s---1 factor's insolent threatening letters which used to set us all in tears. "This kind of life-the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galleyslave, brought me to my sixteenth year; a little before which period I first committed the sin of Rhyme. You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together as partners in the labours of harvest. In my fifteenth summer my partner was a bewitching creature a year younger than myself. My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language; but you know the Scottish idoim-she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she altogether, unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and bookworm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, cur dearest blessing here below! How she caught the contagion, I cannot tell; you medical people talk much of infection from breathing the same air, the touch, &c.; but I never expressly said I loved her. Indeed, I did not know myself why I liked to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labours; why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an Æolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; and it was her favourite reel, to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine that I could make verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin; but my girl sang a song, which was said to be composed by a small country laird's son, on one of his father's maids, with whom he was in love! and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he; for, excepting that he could swear sheep, and cast peats, his father living in the moor-lands, he had no more scholar-craft than myself. Thus with me began love and poetry, which at times have been my only, and till within the last twelve months, have been my highest enjoyment. My father struggled on till he reached the freedom in his lease, when he entered on a larger farm, about ten miles farther in the country. The nature of the bargain he made was such as to throw a little ready money into his hands at the commencement of his lease, otherwise the affair would have been impracticable. For four years we lived comfortably here; but a difference commencing between him and his landlord, as to terms, after three years tossing and whirling in the vortex of litigation, my father was just saved from the horrors of a jail by consumption, which, after two years' promises, kindly stepped in, and carried him away, to where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. "It is during the time that we lived on this farm, that my little story is most eventful. I was, at the beginning of this period, perhaps the |