To crown all, a belle

-he was visibly far gone in a consumption. fille whom I adored, and who had pledged her soul to meet me in the fields of matrimony, jilted me, with peculiar circumstances of mortification. The finishing evil that brought up the rear of this infernal file, was my hypochondriac complaint being irritated to such a degree, that for three months I was in a diseased state of body and mind, scarcely to be envied by the hopeless wretches who have just got their sentence, "Depart from me, ye cursed! &c."

*

'From this adventure I learned something of a Town life; but the principal thing which gave my mind a turn was-I formed a bosom friendship with a young fellow, the first created being I had ever seen, but a hapless son of misfortune. He was the son of a plain mechanic; but a great man in the neighbourhood taking him under his patronage, gave him a genteel education, with a view to bettering his situation in life. The patron dying, and leaving my friend unprovided for, just as he was ready to launch forth into the world, the poor fellow, in despair, went to sea; where, after a variety of good and bad fortune, he was, a little before I was acquainted with him, set a-shore by an American privateer, on the wild coast of Connaught, stript of everything. I cannot quit this poor fellow's story without adding, that he is at this moment Captain of a large West Indiaman belonging to the Thames.

This gentleman's mind was fraught with courage, independence, and magnanimity, and every noble, manly virtue. I loved him; I admired him to a degree of enthusiasm, and I strove to imitate him. I in some measure succeeded; I had the 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 when Woman was the presiding star; but he spoke of a certain fashionable failing with levity, 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 enclosed "Welcome."

My reading was only increased by two stray volumes of Pamela, and one of Ferdinand Count Fathom, which gave me some idea of novels. Rhyme, except some religious pieces which * Richard Brown, afterwards one of Burns's correspondents.

are in print, I had given up; but meeting with Fergusson's Scotch Poems, I strung anew my wildly-sounding, rustic lyre with emulating vigour. When my Father died, his all went among the rapacious hell-hounds that growl in the Kennel of Justice; but we made a shift to scrape 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 harebrained 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 to, I will be wise!" I read farming books, I calculated crops; I attended markets; and in short, in spite of the devil, the world, and the flesh, I believe I should have been a wise man; but the first year, from unfortunately buying in bad seed; the second, from a late harvest, we lost half of both 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." 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 personæ in my "Holy Fair." I had an idea myself that the piece had some merits; but, to prevent the worst, I gave a copy of it to a friend who was very fond of these things, and told him I could not guess who was the author of it, but that I thought it pretty clever. With a certain side of both clergy and 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 three several meetings to look over their holy artillery, if any of it was pointed against profane rhymers. Unluckily for me, my idle wanderings led me on another side, point-blank, within reach of their heaviest metal. This is the unfortunate story alluded to in my printed poem, "The Lament." 'Twas a shocking affair, which I cannot yet bear to recollect, and it 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; as in truth it was only nominally mine (for stock I had none to embark in it), and made what little

preparation was in my power for Jamaica. Before leaving my native country, however, I resolved to publish my poems. I weighed my productions as impartially as in my power; I thought they had merit; and 'twas a delicious idea that I should be called a clever fellow, even tho' it should never reach my ears a poor negro-driver-or perhaps gone to the world of spirits, a victim to that inhospitable clime. I can truly say, that paurre inconnu as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high an idea of myself and my works as I have at this moment. It was ever my opinion that the great, unhappy mistakes and blunders, both in a rational and religious point of view, of which we see thousands daily guilty, are owing to their ignorance or mistaken notions 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, how much ground I occupied as a man and as a poet; I studied assiduously Nature's design, where she seemed to have intended the various lights and shades in my character. I was pretty sure 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 would make me forget Neglect. I threw off six hundred copies, of which I had got subscriptions for about three hundred and fifty. My vanity was highly gratified by the reception I met with from the public; besides pocketing (all expenses deducted) near twenty pounds. This last came very seasonably, as I was about to indent myself, for want of money to pay my freight. So soon as I was master of nine guineas, the price of wafting me to the Torrid Zone, I bespoke a passage in the very first Ship that was to sail,

for

Hungry ruin had me in the wind.

'I had for some time been skulking from covert to covert, under all the terrors of a jail; as some ill-advised, ungrateful people had uncoupled the merciless legal pack at my heels. I had taken the last farewell of my few friends; my chest was on the road to Greenock; I had composed a song, "The gloomy night is gathering fast," which was to be the last effort of my muse in Caledonia, when a letter from Dr Blacklock to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes, by rousing my poetic ambition. The

Doctor belonged to a class of critics for whose applause I had not even dared to hope. His idea, that I would meet with every encouragement for a second edition, fired me so much that away I posted for Edinburgh, without a single acquaintance in town, or a single letter of recommendation in my pocket. The baneful star that had so long presided in my Zenith, for once made a revolution to the Nadir; and the providential care of a good God placed me under the patronage of one of his noblest creatures, the Earl of Glencairn. "Oubliez moi, grand Dieu, si

jamais je l'oublie !"

'I need relate no farther. At Edinburgh I was in a new world; I mingled among many classes of men, but all of them new to me, and I was all attention to "catch the manners living as they rise."

'You can now, Sir, form a pretty near guess of what sort of Wight he is, whom for some time you have honored with your correspondence. That Whim and Fancy, keen sensibility and riotous passions, may still make him zig-zag in his future path of life, is very probable; but, come what will, I shall answer for him— the most determinate integrity and honor [shall ever characterise him]; and though his evil star should again blaze in his meridian with tenfold more direful influence, he may reluctantly tax friendship with pity, but no more.'

CHAPTER II.

A

BIRTH AND ANCESTRY.

LITTLE over two miles from the town of Ayr, on the highroad to Maybole, there still stands, in the village of Alloway, the two roomed cottage in which Robert Burns was born, on the 25th of January 1759. Ayr, with its population of 25,000, is at present one of the largest and most prosperous of the county towns of Scotland. Four years before Burns's birth its population was returned at 2964. The district in its immediate vicinity, which includes Alloway, is at the present time in a state of high cultivation. It was not always so. Alloway' is said to be a word of Celtic origin, and to mean 'barren place.' In 1690, the parish was almost entirely covered with furze and heath. No doubt, however, when William Burnes took a lease of seven acres of land in Alloway, intending to carry on business as a nurseryman, and built the clay cottage in which his eldest son was born, the plough had worked wonders. In natural beauty, at all events, the native country of Burns remains what it was. Now, as in 1759, there rises from the southern bank of the Doon, and within a short distance of Alloway village, the Brown Carrick Hill, commanding views of the Firth of Clyde, with the Mull of Cantyre, the Heads of Ayr, the hills of Arran, and Ailsa Craig, and of the fertile Ayrshire districts of Kyle and Cunningham, with their seaports of Ayr, Irvine, Troon, and Ardrossan. Unfortunate in so many respects, Burns was eminently fortunate in the region of his birth.

On the side of both father and mother, Burns belonged to the