Threatened
with flying gout.
Robert Forst
Henri.
The Song of Death
1792.
CCXXVI. To Mrs. Dunlop. The animadversions of the Board of Excise
CCXXVII. To Mr. William Smellie. Introducing Mrs. Riddel
CCXXVIII. To Mr. W. Nicol. Ironical reply to a letter of counsel and
reproof
CCXXIX. To Francis Grose, Esq. Dugald Stewart
CCXXX. To the same. Witch stories
CCXXXI. To Mr. S. Clarke. Humorous invitation to teach music to the
M'Murdo family
CCXXXII. To Mrs. Dunlop. Love and Lesley Baillie
CCXXXIII. To Mr. Cunningham. Lesley Baillie
CCXXXIV. To Mr. Thomson. Promising his assistance to his collection of
songs and airs
CCXXXV. To Mrs. Dunlop. Situation of Mrs. Henri
CCXXXVI. To the same. On the death of Mrs. Henri
CCXXXVII. To Mr. Thomson. Thomson's fastidiousness. "My Nannie O," &c.
CCXXXVIII. To the same. With "My wife's a winsome wee thing," and
"Lesley Baillie"
CCXXXIX. To the same. With Highland Mary. The air of Katherine Ogie
CCXL. To the same. Thomson's alterations and observations
CCXLI. To the same. With "Auld Rob Morris," and "Duncan Gray"
CCXLII. To Mrs. Dunlop. Birth of a daughter. The poet Thomson's dramas
CCXLIII. To Robert Graham, Esq. , of Fintray. The Excise inquiry into
his political conduct
CCXLIV. To Mrs. Dunlop. Hurry of business. Excise inquiry
1793.
CCXLV. To Mr. Thomson. With "Poortith cauld" and "Galla Water"
CCXLVI. To the same. William Tytler, Peter Pindar
CCXLVII. To Mr. Cunningham. The poet's seal. David Allan
CCXLVIII. To Thomson. With "Mary Morison"
CCCXLIX. To the same. With "Wandering Willie"
CCL. To Miss Benson. Pleasure he had in meeting her
CCLI. To Patrick Miller, Esq. With the present of his printed poems
CCLII. To Mr. Thomson. Review of Scottish song. Crawfurd and Ramsay
CCLIII. To the same. Criticism. Allan Ramsay
CCLIV. To the same. "The last time I came o'er the moor"
CCLV. To John Francis Erskine, Esq. Self-justification. The Excise
inquiry
CCLVI. To Mr. Robert Ainslie. Answering letters. Scholar-craft
CCLVII. To Miss Kennedy. A letter of compliment
CCLVIII. To Mr. Thomson. Frazer. "Blithe had I been on yon hill"
CCLIX. To Mr. Thomson. "Logan Water. " "O gin my love were yon red
rose"
CCLX. To the same. With the song of "Bonnie Jean"
CCLXI. To the same. Hurt at the idea of pecuniary recompense. Remarks
on song
CCLXII. To the same. Note written in the name of Stephen Clarke
CCLXIII. To the same. With "Phillis the fair"
CCLXIV. To the same. With "Had I a cave on some wild distant shore"
CCLXV. To the same. With "Allan Water"
CCLXVI. To the same. With "O whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad,"
&c.
CCLXVII. To the same. With "Come, let me take thee to my breast"
CCLXVIII. To the same. With "Dainty Davie"
CCLXIX. To Miss Craik. Wretchedness of poets
CCLXX. To Lady Glencairn. Gratitude. Excise. Dramatic composition
CCLXXI. To Mr. Thomson. With "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled"
CCLXXII. To the same. With "Behold the hour, the boat arrive"
CCLXXIII. To the same. Crawfurd and Scottish song
CCLXXIV. To the same. Alterations in "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled"
CCLXXV. To the same. Further suggested alterations in "Scots wha hae"
rejected.
CCLXXVI. To the same. With "Deluded swain, the pleasure," and "Raving
winds around her blowing"
CCLXXVII. To the same. Erskine and Gavin Turnbull
CCLXXVIII. To John M'Murdo, Esq. Payment of a debt. "The Merry Muses"
CCLXXIX. To the same. With his printed poems
CCLXXX. To Captain ----. Anxiety for his acquaintance. "Scots wha hae
wi' Wallace bled"
CCLXXXI. To Mrs. Riddel. The Dumfries Theatre
1794.
CCLXXXII. To a Lady. In favour of a player's benefit
CCLXXXIII. To the Earl of Buchan. With a copy of "Scots wha hae"
CCLXXXIV. To Captain Miller. With a copy of "Scots wha hae"
CCLXXXV. To Mrs. Riddel. Lobster-coated puppies
CCLXXXVI. To the same. The gin-horse class of the human genus
CCLXXXVII. To the same. With "Werter. " Her reception of him
CCLXXXVIII. To Mrs. Riddel. Her caprice
CCLXXXIX. To the same. Her neglect and unkindness
CCXC. To John Syme, Esq. Mrs. Oswald, and "O wat ye wha's in yon town"
CCXCI. To Miss ----. Obscure allusions to a friend's death. His
personal and poetic fame
CCXCII. To Mr. Cunningham. Hypochondria. Requests consolation
CCXCIII. To the Earl of Glencairn. With his printed poems
CCXCIV. To Mr. Thomson. David Allan. "The banks of Cree"
CCXCV. To David M'Culloch, Esq. Arrangements for a trip in Galloway
CCXCVI. To Mrs. Dunlop.
Threatened with flying gout. Ode on
Washington's birthday
CCXCVII. To Mr. James Johnson. Low spirits. The Museum. Balmerino's
dirk
CCXCVIII. To Mr. Thomson. Lines written in "Thomson's Collection of
songs"
CCXCIX. To the same. With "How can my poor heart be glad"
CCC. To the same. With "Ca' the yowes to the knowes"
CCCI. To the same. With "Sae flaxen were her ringlets. " Epigram to Dr.
Maxwell.
CCCII. To the same. The charms of Miss Lorimer. "O saw ye my dear, my
Phely," &c.
CCCIII. To the same. Ritson's Scottish Songs. Love and song
CCCIV. To the same. English songs. The air of "Ye banks and braes o'
bonnie Doon"
CCCV. To the same. With "O Philly, happy be the day," and "Contented
wi' little"
CCCVI. To the same. With "Canst thou leave me thus, my Katy"
CCCVII. To Peter Miller, jun. , Esq. Excise. Perry's offer to write for
the Morning Chronicle
CCCVIII. To Mr. Samuel Clarke, jun. A political and personal quarrel.
Regret
CCCIX. To Mr. Thomson. With "Now in her green mantle blithe nature
arrays"
1795.
CCCX. To Mr. Thomson. With "For a' that and a' that"
CCCXI. To the same. Abuse of Ecclefechan
CCCXII. To the same. With "O stay, sweet warbling woodlark, stay," and
"The groves of sweet myrtle"
CCCXIII. To the same. With "How cruel are the parents" and "Mark
yonder pomp of costly fashion"
CCCXIV. To the same. Praise of David Allan's "Cotter's Saturday Night"
CCCXV. To the same. With "This is no my ain Lassie. " Mrs. Riddel
CCCXVI. To Mr. Thomson. With "Forlorn, my love, no comfort near"
CCCXVII. To the same. With "Last May a braw wooer," and "Why tell thy
lover"
CCCXVIII. To Mrs. Riddel. A letter from the grave
CCCXIX. To the same. A letter of compliment. "Anacharsis' Travels"
CCCXX. To Miss Louisa Fontenelle. With a Prologue for her
benefit-night
CCCXXI. To Mrs. Dunlop. His family. Miss Fontenelle. Cowper's "Task"
CCCXXII. To Mr. Alexander Findlater. Excise schemes
CCCXXIII. To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle. Written for a
friend. A complaint
CCCXXIV. To Mr. Heron, of Heron. With two political ballads
CCCXXV. To Mrs. Dunlop. Thomson's Collection. Acting as Supervisor of
Excise
CCCXXVI. To the Right Hon. William Pitt. Address of the Scottish
Distillers
CCCXXVII. To the Provost, Bailies, and Town Council of Dumfries.
Request to be made a freeman of the town
1796.
CCCXXVIII. To Mrs. Riddel. "Anarcharsis' Travels. " The muses
CCCXXIX. To Mrs. Dunlop. His ill-health.
CCCXXX. To Mr. Thomson. Acknowledging his present to Mrs. Burns of a
worsted shawl
CCCXXXI. To the same. Ill-health. Mrs. Hyslop. Allan's etchings.
Cleghorn
CCCXXXII. To the same. "Here's a health to ane I loe dear"
CCCXXXIII. To the same. His anxiety to review his songs, asking for
copies
CCCXXXIV. To Mrs. Riddel. His increasing ill-health
CCCXXXV. To Mr. Clarke, acknowledging money and requesting the loan of
a further sum
CCCXXXVI. To Mr. James Johnson. The Scots Musical Museum. Request for
a copy of the collection
CCCXXXVII. To Mr. Cunningham. Illness and poverty, anticipation of
death
CCCXXXVIII. To Mr. Gilbert Burns. His ill-health and debts
CCCXXXIX. To Mr. James Armour. Entreating Mrs. Armour to come to her
daughter's confinement
CCCXL. To Mrs. Burns. Sea-bathing affords little relief
CCCXLI. To Mrs. Dunlop. Her friendship. A farewell
CCCXLII. To Mr. Thomson. Solicits the sum of five pounds. "Fairest
Maid on Devon Banks"
CCCXLIII. To Mr. James Burness. Soliciting the sum of ten pounds
CCCXLIV. To James Gracie, Esq. His rheumatism, &c. &c. --his loss of
appetite
Remarks on Scottish Songs and Ballads
The Border Tour
The Highland Tour
Burns's Assignment of his Works
Glossary
LIFE
OF
ROBERT BURNS.
Robert Burns, the chief of the peasant poets of Scotland, was born in
a little mud-walled cottage on the banks of Doon, near "Alloway's auld
haunted kirk," in the shire of Ayr, on the 25th day of January, 1759.
As a natural mark of the event, a sudden storm at the same moment
swept the land: the gabel-wall of the frail dwelling gave way, and the
babe-bard was hurried through a tempest of wind and sleet to the
shelter of a securer hovel. He was the eldest born of three sons and
three daughters; his father, William, who in his native
Kincardineshire wrote his name Burness, was bred a gardener, and
sought for work in the West; but coming from the lands of the noble
family of the Keiths, a suspicion accompanied him that he had been
out--as rebellion was softly called--in the forty-five: a suspicion
fatal to his hopes of rest and bread, in so loyal a district; and it
was only when the clergyman of his native parish certified his loyalty
that he was permitted to toil. This suspicion of Jacobitism, revived
by Burns himself, when he rose into fame, seems not to have influenced
either the feelings, or the tastes of Agnes Brown, a young woman on
the Doon, whom he wooed and married in December, 1757, when he was
thirty-six years old. To support her, he leased a small piece of
ground, which he converted into a nursery and garden, and to shelter
her, he raised with his own hands that humble abode where she gave
birth to her eldest son.
The elder Burns was a well-informed, silent, austere man, who endured
no idle gaiety, nor indecorous language: while he relaxed somewhat the
hard, stern creed of the Covenanting times, he enforced all the
work-day, as well as sabbath-day observances, which the Calvinistic
kirk requires, and scrupled at promiscuous dancing, as the staid of
our own day scruple at the waltz. His wife was of a milder mood: she
was blest with a singular fortitude of temper; was as devout of heart,
as she was calm of mind; and loved, while busied in her household
concerns, to sweeten the bitterer moments of life, by chanting the
songs and ballads of her country, of which her store was great. The
garden and nursery prospered so much, that he was induced to widen his
views, and by the help of his kind landlord, the laird of Doonholm,
and the more questionable aid of borrowed money, he entered upon a
neighbouring farm, named Mount Oliphant, extending to an hundred
acres. This was in 1765; but the land was hungry and sterile; the
seasons proved rainy and rough; the toil was certain, the reward
unsure; when to his sorrow, the laird of Doonholm--a generous
Ferguson,--died: the strict terms of the lease, as well as the rent,
were exacted by a harsh factor, and with his wife and children, he was
obliged, after a losing struggle of six years, to relinquish the farm,
and seek shelter on the grounds of Lochlea, some ten miles off, in the
parish of Tarbolton. When, in after-days, men's characters were in the
hands of his eldest son, the scoundrel factor sat for that lasting
portrait of insolence and wrong, in the "Twa Dogs. "
In this new farm William Burns seemed to strike root, and thrive. He
was strong of body and ardent of mind: every day brought increase of
vigour to his three sons, who, though very young, already put their
hands to the plough, the reap-hook, and the flail. But it seemed that
nothing which he undertook was decreed in the end to prosper: after
four seasons of prosperity a change ensued: the farm was far from
cheap; the gains under any lease were then so little, that the loss of
a few pounds was ruinous to a farmer: bad seed and wet seasons had
their usual influence: "The gloom of hermits and the moil of
galley-slaves," as the poet, alluding to those days, said, were
endured to no purpose; when, to crown all, a difference arose between
the landlord and the tenant, as to the terms of the lease; and the
early days of the poet, and the declining years of his father, were
harassed by disputes, in which sensitive minds are sure to suffer.
Amid these labours and disputes, the poet's father remembered the
worth of religious and moral instruction: he took part of this upon
himself. A week-day in Lochlea wore the sober looks of a Sunday: he
read the Bible and explained, as intelligent peasants are accustomed
to do, the sense, when dark or difficult; he loved to discuss the
spiritual meanings, and gaze on the mystical splendours of the
Revelations. He was aided in these labours, first, by the
schoolmaster of Alloway-mill, near the Doon; secondly, by John
Murdoch, student of divinity, who undertook to teach arithmetic,
grammar, French, and Latin, to the boys of Lochlea, and the sons of
five neighboring farmers. Murdoch, who was an enthusiast in learning,
much of a pedant, and such a judge of genius that he thought wit
should always be laughing, and poetry wear an eternal smile, performed
his task well: he found Robert to be quick in apprehension, and not
afraid to study when knowledge was the reward. He taught him to turn
verse into its natural prose order; to supply all the ellipses, and
not to desist till the sense was clear and plain: he also, in their
walks, told him the names of different objects both in Latin and
French; and though his knowledge of these languages never amounted to
much, he approached the grammar of the English tongue, through the
former, which was of material use to him, in his poetic compositions.
Burns was, even in those early days, a sort of enthusiast in all that
concerned the glory of Scotland; he used to fancy himself a soldier of
the days of the Wallace and the Bruce: loved to strut after the
bag-pipe and the drum, and read of the bloody struggles of his country
for freedom and existence, till "a Scottish prejudice," he says, "was
poured into my veins, which will boil there till the flood-gates of
life are shut in eternal rest. "
In this mood of mind Burns was unconsciously approaching the land of
poesie. In addition to the histories of the Wallace and the Bruce, he
found, on the shelves of his neighbours, not only whole bodies of
divinity, and sermons without limit, but the works of some of the best
English, as well as Scottish poets, together with songs and ballads
innumerable. On these he loved to pore whenever a moment of leisure
came; nor was verse his sole favourite; he desired to drink knowledge
at any fountain, and Guthrie's Grammar, Dickson on Agriculture,
Addison's Spectator, Locke on the Human Understanding, and Taylor's
Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, were as welcome to his heart as
Shakspeare, Milton, Pope, Thomson, and Young. There is a mystery in
the workings of genius: with these poets in his head and hand, we see
not that he has advanced one step in the way in which he was soon to
walk, "Highland Mary" and "Tam O' Shanter" sprang from other
inspirations.
Burns lifts up the veil himself, from the studies which made him a
poet. "In my boyish days," he says to Moore, "I owed much to an old
woman (Jenny Wilson) who resided in the family, remarkable for her
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,
dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted
towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds
of poesie; but had so strong an effect upon my imagination that to
this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a look-out on
suspicious places. " Here we have the young poet taking lessons in the
classic lore of his native land: in the school of Janet Wilson he
profited largely; her tales gave a hue, all their own, to many noble
effusions. But her teaching was at the hearth-stone: when he was in
the fields, either driving a cart or walking to labour, he had ever in
his hand a collection of songs, such as any stall in the land could
supply him with; and over these he pored, ballad by ballad, and verse
by verse, noting the true, tender, and the natural sublime from
affectation and fustian. "To this," he said, "I am convinced that I
owe much of my critic craft, such as it is. " His mother, too,
unconsciously led him in the ways of the muse: she loved to recite or
sing to him a strange, but clever ballad, called "the Life and Age of
Man:" this strain of piety and imagination was in his mind when he
wrote "Man was made to Mourn. "
He found other teachers--of a tenderer nature and softer influence.
"You know," he says to Moore, "our country custom of coupling a man
and woman together as partners in the labours of harvest. In my
fifteenth autumn my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger
than myself: she was in truth a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass, and
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. How she caught the
contagion I cannot tell; I never expressly said I loved her: indeed I
did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her,
when returning in the evenings from our labours; why the tones of her
voice made my heart strings thrill like an AEolian 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 other love-inspiring qualities, she sang sweetly, and
it was her favourite reel to which I attempted to give an embodied
vehicle in rhyme; thus with me began love and verse. " This intercourse
with the fair part of the creation, was to his slumbering emotions, a
voice from heaven to call them into life and poetry.
From the school of traditionary lore and love, Burns now went to a
rougher academy. Lochlea, though not producing fine crops of corn, was
considered excellent for flax; and while the cultivation of this
commodity was committed to his father and his brother Gilbert, he was
sent to Irvine at Midsummer, 1781, to learn the trade of a
flax-dresser, under one Peacock, kinsman to his mother. Some time
before, he had spent a portion of a summer at a school in Kirkoswald,
learning mensuration and land-surveying, where he had mingled in
scenes of sociality with smugglers, and enjoyed the pleasure of a
silent walk, under the moon, with the young and the beautiful. At
Irvine he laboured by day to acquire a knowledge of his business, and
at night he associated with the gay and the thoughtless, with whom he
learnt to empty his glass, and indulge in free discourse on topics
forbidden at Lochlea. He had one small room for a lodging, for which
he gave a shilling a week: meat he seldom tasted, and his food
consisted chiefly of oatmeal and potatoes sent from his father's
house. In a letter to his father, written with great purity and
simplicity of style, he thus gives a picture of himself, mental and
bodily: "Honoured Sir, I have purposely delayed writing, in the hope
that I should have the pleasure of seeing you on new years' day, but
work comes so hard upon us that I do not choose to be absent on that
account. My health is nearly the same as when you were here, only my
sleep is a little sounder, and on the whole, I am rather better than
otherwise, though I mend by very slow degrees: the weakness of my
nerves had so debilitated my mind that I dare neither review past
wants nor look forward into futurity, for the least anxiety or
perturbation in my breast produces most unhappy effects on my whole
frame. Sometimes indeed, when for an hour or two my spirits are a
little lightened, I _glimmer_ a little into futurity; but my principal
and indeed my only pleasurable employment is looking backwards and
forwards in a moral and religious way.
1792.
CCXXVI. To Mrs. Dunlop. The animadversions of the Board of Excise
CCXXVII. To Mr. William Smellie. Introducing Mrs. Riddel
CCXXVIII. To Mr. W. Nicol. Ironical reply to a letter of counsel and
reproof
CCXXIX. To Francis Grose, Esq. Dugald Stewart
CCXXX. To the same. Witch stories
CCXXXI. To Mr. S. Clarke. Humorous invitation to teach music to the
M'Murdo family
CCXXXII. To Mrs. Dunlop. Love and Lesley Baillie
CCXXXIII. To Mr. Cunningham. Lesley Baillie
CCXXXIV. To Mr. Thomson. Promising his assistance to his collection of
songs and airs
CCXXXV. To Mrs. Dunlop. Situation of Mrs. Henri
CCXXXVI. To the same. On the death of Mrs. Henri
CCXXXVII. To Mr. Thomson. Thomson's fastidiousness. "My Nannie O," &c.
CCXXXVIII. To the same. With "My wife's a winsome wee thing," and
"Lesley Baillie"
CCXXXIX. To the same. With Highland Mary. The air of Katherine Ogie
CCXL. To the same. Thomson's alterations and observations
CCXLI. To the same. With "Auld Rob Morris," and "Duncan Gray"
CCXLII. To Mrs. Dunlop. Birth of a daughter. The poet Thomson's dramas
CCXLIII. To Robert Graham, Esq. , of Fintray. The Excise inquiry into
his political conduct
CCXLIV. To Mrs. Dunlop. Hurry of business. Excise inquiry
1793.
CCXLV. To Mr. Thomson. With "Poortith cauld" and "Galla Water"
CCXLVI. To the same. William Tytler, Peter Pindar
CCXLVII. To Mr. Cunningham. The poet's seal. David Allan
CCXLVIII. To Thomson. With "Mary Morison"
CCCXLIX. To the same. With "Wandering Willie"
CCL. To Miss Benson. Pleasure he had in meeting her
CCLI. To Patrick Miller, Esq. With the present of his printed poems
CCLII. To Mr. Thomson. Review of Scottish song. Crawfurd and Ramsay
CCLIII. To the same. Criticism. Allan Ramsay
CCLIV. To the same. "The last time I came o'er the moor"
CCLV. To John Francis Erskine, Esq. Self-justification. The Excise
inquiry
CCLVI. To Mr. Robert Ainslie. Answering letters. Scholar-craft
CCLVII. To Miss Kennedy. A letter of compliment
CCLVIII. To Mr. Thomson. Frazer. "Blithe had I been on yon hill"
CCLIX. To Mr. Thomson. "Logan Water. " "O gin my love were yon red
rose"
CCLX. To the same. With the song of "Bonnie Jean"
CCLXI. To the same. Hurt at the idea of pecuniary recompense. Remarks
on song
CCLXII. To the same. Note written in the name of Stephen Clarke
CCLXIII. To the same. With "Phillis the fair"
CCLXIV. To the same. With "Had I a cave on some wild distant shore"
CCLXV. To the same. With "Allan Water"
CCLXVI. To the same. With "O whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad,"
&c.
CCLXVII. To the same. With "Come, let me take thee to my breast"
CCLXVIII. To the same. With "Dainty Davie"
CCLXIX. To Miss Craik. Wretchedness of poets
CCLXX. To Lady Glencairn. Gratitude. Excise. Dramatic composition
CCLXXI. To Mr. Thomson. With "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled"
CCLXXII. To the same. With "Behold the hour, the boat arrive"
CCLXXIII. To the same. Crawfurd and Scottish song
CCLXXIV. To the same. Alterations in "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled"
CCLXXV. To the same. Further suggested alterations in "Scots wha hae"
rejected.
CCLXXVI. To the same. With "Deluded swain, the pleasure," and "Raving
winds around her blowing"
CCLXXVII. To the same. Erskine and Gavin Turnbull
CCLXXVIII. To John M'Murdo, Esq. Payment of a debt. "The Merry Muses"
CCLXXIX. To the same. With his printed poems
CCLXXX. To Captain ----. Anxiety for his acquaintance. "Scots wha hae
wi' Wallace bled"
CCLXXXI. To Mrs. Riddel. The Dumfries Theatre
1794.
CCLXXXII. To a Lady. In favour of a player's benefit
CCLXXXIII. To the Earl of Buchan. With a copy of "Scots wha hae"
CCLXXXIV. To Captain Miller. With a copy of "Scots wha hae"
CCLXXXV. To Mrs. Riddel. Lobster-coated puppies
CCLXXXVI. To the same. The gin-horse class of the human genus
CCLXXXVII. To the same. With "Werter. " Her reception of him
CCLXXXVIII. To Mrs. Riddel. Her caprice
CCLXXXIX. To the same. Her neglect and unkindness
CCXC. To John Syme, Esq. Mrs. Oswald, and "O wat ye wha's in yon town"
CCXCI. To Miss ----. Obscure allusions to a friend's death. His
personal and poetic fame
CCXCII. To Mr. Cunningham. Hypochondria. Requests consolation
CCXCIII. To the Earl of Glencairn. With his printed poems
CCXCIV. To Mr. Thomson. David Allan. "The banks of Cree"
CCXCV. To David M'Culloch, Esq. Arrangements for a trip in Galloway
CCXCVI. To Mrs. Dunlop.
Threatened with flying gout. Ode on
Washington's birthday
CCXCVII. To Mr. James Johnson. Low spirits. The Museum. Balmerino's
dirk
CCXCVIII. To Mr. Thomson. Lines written in "Thomson's Collection of
songs"
CCXCIX. To the same. With "How can my poor heart be glad"
CCC. To the same. With "Ca' the yowes to the knowes"
CCCI. To the same. With "Sae flaxen were her ringlets. " Epigram to Dr.
Maxwell.
CCCII. To the same. The charms of Miss Lorimer. "O saw ye my dear, my
Phely," &c.
CCCIII. To the same. Ritson's Scottish Songs. Love and song
CCCIV. To the same. English songs. The air of "Ye banks and braes o'
bonnie Doon"
CCCV. To the same. With "O Philly, happy be the day," and "Contented
wi' little"
CCCVI. To the same. With "Canst thou leave me thus, my Katy"
CCCVII. To Peter Miller, jun. , Esq. Excise. Perry's offer to write for
the Morning Chronicle
CCCVIII. To Mr. Samuel Clarke, jun. A political and personal quarrel.
Regret
CCCIX. To Mr. Thomson. With "Now in her green mantle blithe nature
arrays"
1795.
CCCX. To Mr. Thomson. With "For a' that and a' that"
CCCXI. To the same. Abuse of Ecclefechan
CCCXII. To the same. With "O stay, sweet warbling woodlark, stay," and
"The groves of sweet myrtle"
CCCXIII. To the same. With "How cruel are the parents" and "Mark
yonder pomp of costly fashion"
CCCXIV. To the same. Praise of David Allan's "Cotter's Saturday Night"
CCCXV. To the same. With "This is no my ain Lassie. " Mrs. Riddel
CCCXVI. To Mr. Thomson. With "Forlorn, my love, no comfort near"
CCCXVII. To the same. With "Last May a braw wooer," and "Why tell thy
lover"
CCCXVIII. To Mrs. Riddel. A letter from the grave
CCCXIX. To the same. A letter of compliment. "Anacharsis' Travels"
CCCXX. To Miss Louisa Fontenelle. With a Prologue for her
benefit-night
CCCXXI. To Mrs. Dunlop. His family. Miss Fontenelle. Cowper's "Task"
CCCXXII. To Mr. Alexander Findlater. Excise schemes
CCCXXIII. To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle. Written for a
friend. A complaint
CCCXXIV. To Mr. Heron, of Heron. With two political ballads
CCCXXV. To Mrs. Dunlop. Thomson's Collection. Acting as Supervisor of
Excise
CCCXXVI. To the Right Hon. William Pitt. Address of the Scottish
Distillers
CCCXXVII. To the Provost, Bailies, and Town Council of Dumfries.
Request to be made a freeman of the town
1796.
CCCXXVIII. To Mrs. Riddel. "Anarcharsis' Travels. " The muses
CCCXXIX. To Mrs. Dunlop. His ill-health.
CCCXXX. To Mr. Thomson. Acknowledging his present to Mrs. Burns of a
worsted shawl
CCCXXXI. To the same. Ill-health. Mrs. Hyslop. Allan's etchings.
Cleghorn
CCCXXXII. To the same. "Here's a health to ane I loe dear"
CCCXXXIII. To the same. His anxiety to review his songs, asking for
copies
CCCXXXIV. To Mrs. Riddel. His increasing ill-health
CCCXXXV. To Mr. Clarke, acknowledging money and requesting the loan of
a further sum
CCCXXXVI. To Mr. James Johnson. The Scots Musical Museum. Request for
a copy of the collection
CCCXXXVII. To Mr. Cunningham. Illness and poverty, anticipation of
death
CCCXXXVIII. To Mr. Gilbert Burns. His ill-health and debts
CCCXXXIX. To Mr. James Armour. Entreating Mrs. Armour to come to her
daughter's confinement
CCCXL. To Mrs. Burns. Sea-bathing affords little relief
CCCXLI. To Mrs. Dunlop. Her friendship. A farewell
CCCXLII. To Mr. Thomson. Solicits the sum of five pounds. "Fairest
Maid on Devon Banks"
CCCXLIII. To Mr. James Burness. Soliciting the sum of ten pounds
CCCXLIV. To James Gracie, Esq. His rheumatism, &c. &c. --his loss of
appetite
Remarks on Scottish Songs and Ballads
The Border Tour
The Highland Tour
Burns's Assignment of his Works
Glossary
LIFE
OF
ROBERT BURNS.
Robert Burns, the chief of the peasant poets of Scotland, was born in
a little mud-walled cottage on the banks of Doon, near "Alloway's auld
haunted kirk," in the shire of Ayr, on the 25th day of January, 1759.
As a natural mark of the event, a sudden storm at the same moment
swept the land: the gabel-wall of the frail dwelling gave way, and the
babe-bard was hurried through a tempest of wind and sleet to the
shelter of a securer hovel. He was the eldest born of three sons and
three daughters; his father, William, who in his native
Kincardineshire wrote his name Burness, was bred a gardener, and
sought for work in the West; but coming from the lands of the noble
family of the Keiths, a suspicion accompanied him that he had been
out--as rebellion was softly called--in the forty-five: a suspicion
fatal to his hopes of rest and bread, in so loyal a district; and it
was only when the clergyman of his native parish certified his loyalty
that he was permitted to toil. This suspicion of Jacobitism, revived
by Burns himself, when he rose into fame, seems not to have influenced
either the feelings, or the tastes of Agnes Brown, a young woman on
the Doon, whom he wooed and married in December, 1757, when he was
thirty-six years old. To support her, he leased a small piece of
ground, which he converted into a nursery and garden, and to shelter
her, he raised with his own hands that humble abode where she gave
birth to her eldest son.
The elder Burns was a well-informed, silent, austere man, who endured
no idle gaiety, nor indecorous language: while he relaxed somewhat the
hard, stern creed of the Covenanting times, he enforced all the
work-day, as well as sabbath-day observances, which the Calvinistic
kirk requires, and scrupled at promiscuous dancing, as the staid of
our own day scruple at the waltz. His wife was of a milder mood: she
was blest with a singular fortitude of temper; was as devout of heart,
as she was calm of mind; and loved, while busied in her household
concerns, to sweeten the bitterer moments of life, by chanting the
songs and ballads of her country, of which her store was great. The
garden and nursery prospered so much, that he was induced to widen his
views, and by the help of his kind landlord, the laird of Doonholm,
and the more questionable aid of borrowed money, he entered upon a
neighbouring farm, named Mount Oliphant, extending to an hundred
acres. This was in 1765; but the land was hungry and sterile; the
seasons proved rainy and rough; the toil was certain, the reward
unsure; when to his sorrow, the laird of Doonholm--a generous
Ferguson,--died: the strict terms of the lease, as well as the rent,
were exacted by a harsh factor, and with his wife and children, he was
obliged, after a losing struggle of six years, to relinquish the farm,
and seek shelter on the grounds of Lochlea, some ten miles off, in the
parish of Tarbolton. When, in after-days, men's characters were in the
hands of his eldest son, the scoundrel factor sat for that lasting
portrait of insolence and wrong, in the "Twa Dogs. "
In this new farm William Burns seemed to strike root, and thrive. He
was strong of body and ardent of mind: every day brought increase of
vigour to his three sons, who, though very young, already put their
hands to the plough, the reap-hook, and the flail. But it seemed that
nothing which he undertook was decreed in the end to prosper: after
four seasons of prosperity a change ensued: the farm was far from
cheap; the gains under any lease were then so little, that the loss of
a few pounds was ruinous to a farmer: bad seed and wet seasons had
their usual influence: "The gloom of hermits and the moil of
galley-slaves," as the poet, alluding to those days, said, were
endured to no purpose; when, to crown all, a difference arose between
the landlord and the tenant, as to the terms of the lease; and the
early days of the poet, and the declining years of his father, were
harassed by disputes, in which sensitive minds are sure to suffer.
Amid these labours and disputes, the poet's father remembered the
worth of religious and moral instruction: he took part of this upon
himself. A week-day in Lochlea wore the sober looks of a Sunday: he
read the Bible and explained, as intelligent peasants are accustomed
to do, the sense, when dark or difficult; he loved to discuss the
spiritual meanings, and gaze on the mystical splendours of the
Revelations. He was aided in these labours, first, by the
schoolmaster of Alloway-mill, near the Doon; secondly, by John
Murdoch, student of divinity, who undertook to teach arithmetic,
grammar, French, and Latin, to the boys of Lochlea, and the sons of
five neighboring farmers. Murdoch, who was an enthusiast in learning,
much of a pedant, and such a judge of genius that he thought wit
should always be laughing, and poetry wear an eternal smile, performed
his task well: he found Robert to be quick in apprehension, and not
afraid to study when knowledge was the reward. He taught him to turn
verse into its natural prose order; to supply all the ellipses, and
not to desist till the sense was clear and plain: he also, in their
walks, told him the names of different objects both in Latin and
French; and though his knowledge of these languages never amounted to
much, he approached the grammar of the English tongue, through the
former, which was of material use to him, in his poetic compositions.
Burns was, even in those early days, a sort of enthusiast in all that
concerned the glory of Scotland; he used to fancy himself a soldier of
the days of the Wallace and the Bruce: loved to strut after the
bag-pipe and the drum, and read of the bloody struggles of his country
for freedom and existence, till "a Scottish prejudice," he says, "was
poured into my veins, which will boil there till the flood-gates of
life are shut in eternal rest. "
In this mood of mind Burns was unconsciously approaching the land of
poesie. In addition to the histories of the Wallace and the Bruce, he
found, on the shelves of his neighbours, not only whole bodies of
divinity, and sermons without limit, but the works of some of the best
English, as well as Scottish poets, together with songs and ballads
innumerable. On these he loved to pore whenever a moment of leisure
came; nor was verse his sole favourite; he desired to drink knowledge
at any fountain, and Guthrie's Grammar, Dickson on Agriculture,
Addison's Spectator, Locke on the Human Understanding, and Taylor's
Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, were as welcome to his heart as
Shakspeare, Milton, Pope, Thomson, and Young. There is a mystery in
the workings of genius: with these poets in his head and hand, we see
not that he has advanced one step in the way in which he was soon to
walk, "Highland Mary" and "Tam O' Shanter" sprang from other
inspirations.
Burns lifts up the veil himself, from the studies which made him a
poet. "In my boyish days," he says to Moore, "I owed much to an old
woman (Jenny Wilson) who resided in the family, remarkable for her
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,
dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted
towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds
of poesie; but had so strong an effect upon my imagination that to
this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a look-out on
suspicious places. " Here we have the young poet taking lessons in the
classic lore of his native land: in the school of Janet Wilson he
profited largely; her tales gave a hue, all their own, to many noble
effusions. But her teaching was at the hearth-stone: when he was in
the fields, either driving a cart or walking to labour, he had ever in
his hand a collection of songs, such as any stall in the land could
supply him with; and over these he pored, ballad by ballad, and verse
by verse, noting the true, tender, and the natural sublime from
affectation and fustian. "To this," he said, "I am convinced that I
owe much of my critic craft, such as it is. " His mother, too,
unconsciously led him in the ways of the muse: she loved to recite or
sing to him a strange, but clever ballad, called "the Life and Age of
Man:" this strain of piety and imagination was in his mind when he
wrote "Man was made to Mourn. "
He found other teachers--of a tenderer nature and softer influence.
"You know," he says to Moore, "our country custom of coupling a man
and woman together as partners in the labours of harvest. In my
fifteenth autumn my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger
than myself: she was in truth a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass, and
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. How she caught the
contagion I cannot tell; I never expressly said I loved her: indeed I
did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her,
when returning in the evenings from our labours; why the tones of her
voice made my heart strings thrill like an AEolian 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 other love-inspiring qualities, she sang sweetly, and
it was her favourite reel to which I attempted to give an embodied
vehicle in rhyme; thus with me began love and verse. " This intercourse
with the fair part of the creation, was to his slumbering emotions, a
voice from heaven to call them into life and poetry.
From the school of traditionary lore and love, Burns now went to a
rougher academy. Lochlea, though not producing fine crops of corn, was
considered excellent for flax; and while the cultivation of this
commodity was committed to his father and his brother Gilbert, he was
sent to Irvine at Midsummer, 1781, to learn the trade of a
flax-dresser, under one Peacock, kinsman to his mother. Some time
before, he had spent a portion of a summer at a school in Kirkoswald,
learning mensuration and land-surveying, where he had mingled in
scenes of sociality with smugglers, and enjoyed the pleasure of a
silent walk, under the moon, with the young and the beautiful. At
Irvine he laboured by day to acquire a knowledge of his business, and
at night he associated with the gay and the thoughtless, with whom he
learnt to empty his glass, and indulge in free discourse on topics
forbidden at Lochlea. He had one small room for a lodging, for which
he gave a shilling a week: meat he seldom tasted, and his food
consisted chiefly of oatmeal and potatoes sent from his father's
house. In a letter to his father, written with great purity and
simplicity of style, he thus gives a picture of himself, mental and
bodily: "Honoured Sir, I have purposely delayed writing, in the hope
that I should have the pleasure of seeing you on new years' day, but
work comes so hard upon us that I do not choose to be absent on that
account. My health is nearly the same as when you were here, only my
sleep is a little sounder, and on the whole, I am rather better than
otherwise, though I mend by very slow degrees: the weakness of my
nerves had so debilitated my mind that I dare neither review past
wants nor look forward into futurity, for the least anxiety or
perturbation in my breast produces most unhappy effects on my whole
frame. Sometimes indeed, when for an hour or two my spirits are a
little lightened, I _glimmer_ a little into futurity; but my principal
and indeed my only pleasurable employment is looking backwards and
forwards in a moral and religious way.
