* 'Graithing' literally means 'harness.' Here Burns uses it, not quite respectfully, to indicate vestments.

Her whigship was wonderful pleased,

But charmingly tickled wi' ae thing;
Her fingers I lovingly squeezed,

And kissed her and promised her-naething.

And my friendship, by G-, when ye 've naething.

THE FAREWELL.

The valiant, in himself, what can he suffer?
Or what does he regard his single woes?
But when, alas! he multiplies himself,
To dearer selves, to the lov'd tender fair,

To those whose bliss, whose beings hang upon him,
To helpless children,-then, Oh then he feels
The point of misery festering in his heart,

And weakly weeps his fortune like a coward :
Such, such am I !—undone !

THOMSON'S Edward and Eleanora.

Farewell, old Scotia's bleak domains,
Far dearer than the torrid plains,

Where rich ananas † blow!

* Burns here alludes to the prolonged 'persecution' of Gavin Hamilton by Mr Auld and the Mauchline kirk-session.

Burns here refers to the ananassa sativa, whose fruit is the anana or pine-apple, and which is indigenous to the West Indies, whither he was about to proceed. Possibly the allusion was suggested by Thomson's

Witness thou, best anana, thou the pride

Of vegetable life.'

Farewell, a mother's blessing dear!
A brother's sigh! a sister's tear!
My Jean's heart-rending throe!
Farewell, my Bess! tho' thou 'rt bereft
Of my paternal care,

A faithful brother I have left,
My part in him thou 'lt share!
Adieu too, to you too,

My Smith, my bosom frien';
When kindly you mind me,
O then befriend my Jean!

What bursting anguish tears my heart;
From thee, my Jeany, must I part!
Thou, weeping, answ'rest-No!'
Alas! misfortune stares my face,
And points to ruin and disgrace,
I for thy sake must go!
Thee, Hamilton, and Aiken dear,
A grateful, warm adieu!
I, with a much-indebted tear,

Shall still remember you!

All-hail then, the gale then,

Wafts me from thee, dear shore!

It rustles, and whistles.

I'll never see thee more!

LINES WRITTEN ON A BANK NOTE.*

Wae worth thy power, thou cursed leaf,

Fell source o' a' my woe and grief;

For lack o' thee I've lost my lass,

For lack o' thee I scrimp my glass:

wo worth

stint

'The above verses, in the handwriting of Burns, are copied from a bank-note in the possession of Mr James F. Gracie of Dumfries. The note is of the Bank of Scotland, and is dated so far back as 1st March 1780,'-MOTHERWELL. The verses appear to have been first published in The Morning Chronicle of 27th May 1814; they appeared in the Scots Maga zine for September of the same year.

KYLE.

I see the children of affliction

Unaided, through thy cursed restriction:
I've seen the oppressor's cruel smile
Amid his hapless victim's spoil;
And for thy potence vainly wished,

To crush the villain in the dust:

For lack o' thee, I leave this much-lov'd shore,
Never, perhaps, to greet old Scotland more.

WRITTEN

R. B.

ON A BLANK LEAF OF A COPY OF THE POEMS.'*

Once fondly lov'd, and still remember'd dear,
Sweet early object of my youthful vows,
Accept this mark of friendship, warm, sincere,
Friendship! 'tis all cold duty now allows.-

And when you read the simple artless rhymes,
One friendly sigh for him, he asks no more,
Who, distant, burns in flaming torrid climes,

Or haply lies beneath th' Atlantic roar.

* Burns included these verses in the collection he made for Captain Riddel, with the note Written on the blank leaf of a copy of the first edition of my Poems, which I presented to an old sweetheart then married. "Twas the girl I mentioned in my letter to Dr Moore, where I speak of taking the sun's altitude. Poor Peggy! Her husband is an old acquaintance and a most worthy fellow. When I was taking leave of my Carrick relations, intending to go to the West Indies, when I took farewell of her, neither she nor I could speak a syllable. Her husband escorted me three miles on my road, and we both parted with tears.' 'Kirkoswald Peggy' had married John Neilson, farmer of Monnyfee, in the same parish, towards the end of 1784.

B

CHAPTER VII.

MOSSGIEL, 1786 (continued).

URNS, as has been seen, had made an engagement with Charles Douglas of Port Antonio, in Jamaica, to act as bookkeeper, or assistant-overseer, on the estate which

he managed, for three years, at the salary of thirty pounds a year. John Hutchinson, a correspondent of the poet at St Ann's, Jamaica, afterwards congratulated him on being saved from going thither, as,' says he, I have great reason to believe that Mr Douglas's employ would by no means have answered your expectations.'* So doubtful was the alternative to which the precariousness of his position at home had reduced him, that Burns feared poverty would oblige him to indent himself'-bind himself as an apprentice that his employer might pay his passage to the West Indies. From this last humiliation he was saved by the success of his volume. As soon as he had nine guineas in his possession, he took a steeragepassage in a vessel which was expected to sail from Greenock at the beginning of September.

During August the poet seems to have been engaged in collecting the money due for his Poems. In all the principal towns of his own district he had friends who had exerted themselves

* Currie's edition of Burns, General Correspondence, No. xxxii. It does not follow, however, that Charles Douglas would have been an exceptionally hard taskmaster. Mr Leslie Stephen, in his biography of his brother, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, relates that, in 1775, James Stephen, their grandfather, afterwards a Master in Chancery, had been thinking of volunteering under Washington, and had then accepted the offer of a 'bookkeeper's' place in Jamaica. He afterwards discovered that a bookkeeper' was an intermediate between the black slave-driver and the white overseer, and was doomed to a miserable and degrading life. He abandoned the idea, and went with his brother to Aberdeen University.