most ungainly, awkward boy in the parish-no solitaire was less acquainted with the ways of the world. What I knew of ancient story was gathered from Salmon's and Guthrie's geographical grammars; and the ideas I had formed of modern manner, of literature, and criticism, I got from the Spectator. These, with Pope's Works, some plays of Shakspere, Tull and Dickson on Agriculture,' 'The Pantheon,'' Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, Stackhouse's History of the Bible,.' Justice's British Gardener's Directory, Bayle's Lectures, Allan Ramsay's Works, Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin,' a Select Collection of English Songs, and Hervey's 'Meditations,' had formed the whole of my reading. The collection of songs was my vade mecum. I pored over them driving my cart, or walking to labour, song by song, verse by verse, carefully noting the true tender, or sublime, from affectation and fustian. I am convinced I owe to this practice much of my critic craft, such as it is. "In my seventeenth year, to give my manners a brush, I went to a country dancing-school. My father had an unaccountable antipathy against these meetings; and my going was, what to this moment I repent, in opposition to his wishes. My father, as I said before, was subject to strong passions; from that instance of disobedience in me, he took a sort of dislike to me, which I believe was one cause of the dissipation which marked my succeeding years. I say dissipation, in comparison with the strictness, and sobriety, and regularity of Presbyterian country life: for though the Will-o-Wisp meteors of thoughtless whim were almost the sole lights of my path, yet early ingrained piety and virtue kept me for several years after within the line of innocence. The great misfortune of my life was to want an aim. I had early felt some stirrings of ambition, but they were the blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave. I saw my father's situation entailed on me perpetual labour. The only two openings by which I could enter the temple of Fortune, was the gate of niggardly economy, or the path of little chicaning bargain-making. The first is so contracted an aperture, I never could squeeze myself into it; the last I always hated there was contamination in the very entrance! Thus abandoned of aim or view in life, with a strong appetite for sociability, as well from active hilarity, as from a pride of observation and remark; a constitutional melancholy of hypochondriasm that made me fly solitude; add to these incentives to social life, my reputation for bookish knowledge, a certain wild logical talent, and a strength of thought, something like the rudiments of good sense; and it will not seem surprising that I was generally a welcome guest where I visited, or any great wonder that, always where two or three met together, there was I among them. But far beyond all other impulses of my heart, was un penchant a l'adorable moitie du genre humain. My heart was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other; and as in every other warfare in this world my fortune was various, sometimes I was received with favour, and sometimes I was mortified with a repulse. At the plough, scythe, or reap-hook, I feared no competitor, and thus I set absolute want at defiance; and as I never cared further for my labours than while I was in actual exercise, I spent the evenings in a way after my own heart. A country lad seldom carries on a love-adventure without an assisting confidant. I possessed a curiosity, zeal, and intrepid dexterity, that recommended me as a proper second on these occasions; and I dare say, I felt as much pleasure in being in the secret of half the loves of the parish of Tarbolton, as ever did statesmen in knowing the intrigues of half the courts in Europe. The very goose-feather in my hand seems to know instinctively the well-worn path of my imagination, the favourite theme of my song; and it is with difficulty restrained from giving you a couple of paragraphs on the loveadventures of my compeers, the humble inmates of the farm-house and cottage; but the grave sons of science, arabition, or avarice, baptise these things by the name of follies. To the sons and daughters of labour and poverty, they are matters of the most serious nature; to them, the ardent hope, the stolen interview, the tender farewell, are the greatest and most delicious parts of my enjoyments. "Another circumstance in my life which made some alteration in my mind and manners, was that I spent my nineteenth summer on a smugging coast, a good distance from home, at a noted school, to learn mensuration, surveying, dialling, &c, in which I made a pretty great progress. But I made a greater progress in the knowledge of mankind. The contraband trade was at the time very successful, and it sometimes happened to me to fall in with those who carried it on. Scenes of swaggering riot and roaring dissipation were till this time new to me; but I was no enemy to social life. Here, though I learnt to fill my glass, and to mix without fear in a drunken squabble, yet I went on with a high hand with my geometry, till the sun entered Virgo, a month which is always a carnival in my bosom, when a charming filette who lived next door to the school, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the sphere of my studies. I, however, struggled on with my sines and co-sines, for a few days more! but stepping into the garden one charming noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met my angel, "Like Proserpine gathering flowers, Herself as fairer flower.' It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining week I staid, I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her; and the last two nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless. "I returned home very considerably improved. My reading was enlarged with the very important addition of Thomson's and Shenstone's works; I had seen human nature in a new phasis and I engaged several of my schoolfellows to keep up a literary correspondence with me. This improved me in composition. I had met with a collection of letters of the wits of Queen Anne's reign, and I poured over them most devoutly: I kept copies of any of my own letters that pleased me, and a comparison between them and the composition of most of my correspondents flattered my vanity. I carried this whim so far, that though I had not three farthings' worth of business in the world, yet almost every post brought me as many letters as if I had been a broad plodding son of day-book and ledger. "My life flowed on much in the same course till my twenty-third year. Vive l'amour, et vive la bagatelle, were my sole principles of action. The addition of two more authors to my library gave me great pleasure; 'Sterne' and 'M'Kenzie -Tristram Shandy' and The Man of Feeling'were my bosom favourites. Poesy was still a darl ing walk for my mind; but it was only indulged in according to the humour of the hour. I had usually half a dozen or more pieces on hand; I took up one or other, as it suited the momentary tone of the mind, and dismissed the work as it bordered on fatigue. My passion, when once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they got vent in rhyme; and then the conning over my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet. None of the rhymes of those days are in print, "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 a view of bettering his situation in life. The patron dying just as he was ready to launch out into the world, the poor little 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 everything. I cannot quit this poor fellow's story, without adding, that he is at this time master of a large West Indiaman belonging to the Thames. books; I calculated crops; I attended markets; and in short, in spite of the devil, and the world and he 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 romit and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire. "I now began to be known in the neighbourhood as a maker of rhymes. The first of my poetic offspring that saw the light, was a burlesque lamentation on a quarrel between two reverend Calvinists, both of them dramatis personce in my Holy Fair.' I had a notion myself, that the piece had some merit; but to prevent the worst, I gave a copy of it to a friend who was very fond of such things, and told him that I could not guess who was the author of it, but that I thought it pretty clever. With a certain description of the clergy, as well as laity, it met with a roar of applause. "Holy Willie's Prayer" next made its appearance, and alarmed the kirk session so much, that they held several meetings to look over their spiritual artillery, if haply any of it might be pointed against profane rhymers. Unluckily for me, my wanderings led me on another side, within point-blank shot of their heaviest metal. This is the unfortunate story that gave rise to my printed poem, "The Lament." This was a most melancholy affair, which I cannot yet bear to reflect on, and had very nearly given me one or two of the principal qualifications for a place among those who have lost the chart, and mistaken the reckoning of rationality. I gave up my part of the farm to my brother; in truth it was only nominally mine; and made what little preparation was in my power for Jamaica. But, before leaving my native country for ever, I resolved to publish my poems. I weighed my productions as impartially as was in my power: I thought they had merit; and it was a delicious idea that I should be called a clever fellow, even though it should never reach my ears-a poor negrodriver,-or perhaps a victim of that inhospitable clime, and gone to the world of spirits! I can truly say, that paurre inconnu as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high an idea of myself and of my works as I have at this moment when the public has decided in their favour. It ever was my opinion, that the mistakes and blunders, both in a rational and religious point of view, of which we see thousand daily guilty, are owing to their ignorance of themselves -To know myself, had been all along my constant study. I weighed myself alone; I balanced myself with others: I watched every means of information, to see how much ground I occupied as a man and as a poet; I studied assiduously nature's design in my formation-where the lights and shades in my character were intended. I was pretty confident my poems would meet with some applause: but, at the worst, the roar of the Atlantic would deafen the voice of censure, and the novelty of West Indian scenes make me forget neglect. I threw off six hun "His mind was fraught with independence, magnanimity, and every manly virtue. I loved and admired him to a degree of enthusiasm, and of course tried 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 woman 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; and the consequence was that soon after I resumed the plough, I wrote the 'Poet's Welcome.' My reading only increased. while in this town, by two stray volumes of Pamela' and one of Ferdinand Count Fathom," which gave me some idea of novels. Rhyme, except some re-dred copies, of which I had go subscriptions for ligious pieces that are in print, I had given up; but meeting with Ferguson's Scottish Poems," I strung anew my wildly-sounding lyre with emulating vigour When my father died. his all went among the hell-hounds that growl in the kennel of justice: but we made a shift to collect a little money in the family amongst us, with which, to keep us together, my brother and I took a neighbouring farm. My brother wanted my hair-brained imagination, as well as my social and amorous madness: but in good sense, and every sober qualification, he was far my superior I entered on this farm with a full resolution, 'Come, go tò, I will be wise! I read farming about three hundred and fifty.-My vanity was highly gratified by the reception I had met with from the public; and besides I pocketed, all expenses deducted, nearly twenty pounds This sum came very seasonably, as I was thinking of indenting myself, for want of money to procure my passage As soon as I was master of nine guineas, the price of wafting me to the torrid zone. I took a steerage passage in the first ship that was to sail from the Clyde; for "Hungry ruin had me in the wind.' *An explanation of this will be found here after. "I had been for some days skulking from physician in Ayr, with the view of commencing covert to covert, under all the terrors of a jail; nurseryman and public gardener; and having as some ill-advised people had uncoupled the built a house upon it with his own hands, merciless pack of the law at my heels. I had married in December, 1757, Agnes Brown, the taken the last farewell of my few friends; my mother of our poet, who still survives. The first chest was on the road to Greenock; I had com- fruit of this marriage was Robert, the subject of posed the last song I should ever measure in these memoirs, born on the 29th of January, Caladonia, The gloomy night is gathering fast:" 1759, as has already been mentioned. Before When a letter from Dr. Blacklock, to a friend of William Burnes had made much progress in premine, overthrew all my schemes, by opening paring his nursery, he was withdrawn from that new prospects to my poetic ambition." The undertaking by Mr. Ferguson, who purchased Doctor belonged to a set of critics, for whose ap- the estate of Doonside, in the immediate neighplause I had not dared to hope. His opinion bourhood, and engaged him as his gardener and that I would meet with encouragement in Edin- overseer; and this was his situation when our burgh for a second edition, fired me so much, poet was born. Though in the service of Mr. that away I posted for that city, without a single Ferguson, he lived in his own house, his wife acquaintance, or a single letter of introduction. managing her family and little dairy, which conThe baneful star, that had so long shed its blast-sisted sometimes of two, sometimes of three ing influence in my zenith, for once made a re- milch cows; and this state of un-ambitious convolution to the nadir; and a kind Providence tent continued till the year 1766. His son Robert placed me under the patronage of one of the was sent by him, in his sixth year, to a school at noblest of men, the Earl of Glencairn. Oublie Alloway Miln, about a mile distant, taught by a mo, Grand Dieu, si jamais je l'oublie. person of the name of Campbell; but this teacher being in a few months appointed master of the workhouse at Ayr, William Burnes, in conjunction with some other heads of families, engaged John Murdoch in his stead. The education of our poet, and of his brother Gilbert, was in common; and of their proficiency under Mr. Murdoch we have the following account: "With him we learnt to read English tolerably well, and to write a little. He taught us, too, the English grammar. I was too young to profit much from his lessons in grammar, but Robert made some proficiency in it-a circumstance of considerable weight in the upholding of his genius and character; as he soon became remarkable for the fluency and correctness of his expression, and read the few books that came in his way with much pleasure and improvement; for even then he was a reader, when he could get a book. Murdoch, whose library at that time had no great variety in it, lent him The Life of Hannibal,' which was the first book he read (the school-books excepted), and almost the only one he had the opportunity of reading while he was at school; The Life of Wallace, which he classes with it in one of his letters to you, he did not see for some years afterwards, when he borrowed it from a blacksmith who shod our horses." "I need relate no further. At Edinburgh I was in a new world: I mingled among many classes of inen, but all of them new to me, and I was all attention to catch the characters and the manners living as they rise. Whether I have profited time will show. At the period of our poet's death, his brother Gilbert Burns, warignorant that he had himself written the foregoing narrative of his life while in Ayrshire; and having been applied to by Mrs. Dunlop for some memoirs of his brother, he complied with her request in a letter, from which the following narrative is chiefly extracted. When Gilbert Burns afterwards saw the letter of our poet to Dr. Moore, he made some annotations upon it, which shall be noticed as we proceed. Robert Burns was born on the 29th day of January, 1759, in a small house about two miles from the town of Ayr, and within a few hundred yards of Alloway Church, which his poem of Tam o' Shanter" has rendered immortal. The name which the poet and his brother modernized into Burns, was originally Burnes or Burness. Their father, William Burnes, was the son of a farmer in Kincardineshire, and had received the education common in Scotland to persons in his condition of life: he could read and write, and had some knowledge of arithmetic. His family having fallen into reduced circumstances, he was compelled to leave his home in his nineteenth year, and turned his steps towards the south in quest of a livelihood. The same necessity attended his elder brother Robert. "I have often heard my father," says, Gilbert Burns, in his letter to Mrs. Dunlop, "describe the anguish of mind he felt when they parted on the top of the hill on the confines of their native place, each going off his several way in search of new adventares, and scarcely knowing whither he went. My father undertook to act as gardener, and shaped his course to Edinburgh, where he wrought hard when he could get work, passing through a variety of difficulties. Still, however, he endeavoured to spare something for the support of his aged parent; and I recollect hearing him mention his having sent a bank-note for this purpose when money of that kind was so scarce in Kincardineshire, that they scarcely knew how to employ it when it arrived." From Edinburgh William Burnes past westward into the county of Ayr, where he engaged himself as gardener to the laird of Fairley, with whom he lived two years; then changing his service for that of Crawford of Doonside. At length, being desirous of settling in life, he took a perpetual lease of seven acres of land from Dr. Campbell, In It appears that William Burnes improved himself greatly in the service of Mr. Ferguson, by his intelligence, industry, and integrity. consequence of this, with a view of promoting his interest, Mr. Ferguson leased him a farm, of which we have the following account: "The farm was upwards of seventy acres (between eighty and ninety, English statute measure), the rent of which was to be forty pounds annually for the first six years, and afterwards forty-five pounds. My father endeavoured to sell his leasehold property for the purpose of stocking this farm, but at that time was unable, and Mr. Fergusson lent him a hundred pounds for that purpose. He removed to his new situation at Whitsuntide, 1766. It was, I think, not above two years after this, that Murdoch, our tutor and friend, left this part of the country; and there being no school near us, and our little services being useful on the farm, my father undertook to teach us arithmetic in the winter evenings, by candle-light; and in this way my two elder sisters got all the education they received. 1 remember a circumstance that happened at this time, which, though trifling in itself, is fresh in my memory, and may serve to illustrate the early character of my brother. Murdoch came to spend a night with us, and to take his leave, when he was about to go into Carrick. He brought us a present and memorial of him, a small compendium of English Grammar, and the tragedy of Titus Andronicus;' and by |