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 a 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 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 manners, of literature and criticism, I got from the Spectator. These, with Pope's Works, some plays of Shakspeare, 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

'I can hear of no such book as Bayle's Lectures. It is probably a misprint of Currie (who makes many such mistakes) for a work specified in the article of appendix next referred to. 2 See Appendix, 3.

3

According to the recollection of Mrs Begg, the poet's youngest sister, he first possessed a copy of the well-known Tea-Table Miscellany of Allan Ramsay-a collection of songs, including many by the worthy editor himself. At a later period, he obtained a collection of songs entitled The Lark. The first volume of the latter work is before us. Its title-page is as follows: The Lark, being a Select Collection of the most Celebrated and Newest Songs, Scots and English. Edinburgh, printed for W. Gordon, Bookseller in the Parliament Close. 1765.' It contains many of the best Scottish songs, and a few ballads, as Gil Morris, The Babes in the Wood, and Hamilton's Braes of Yarrow, but mixed up, it must be allowed, with a more than sufficient quantity of affectation and fustian.'

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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, comparatively 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 afterwards within the line of innocence. The great misfortune of my life was-to want an aim. I had felt early 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 bargainmaking. 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 native hilarity as from a pride of observation and remark; a constitutional melancholy or hypochondriasm that made me fly to 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 à l'adorable moitié 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 the 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 daresay I felt as much pleasure in being in the secret of half the loves of the parish of Torbolton, as ever did statesman in knowing the intrigues of half the courts of Europe. The very goosefeather in my hand seems to know instinctively the well-worn path of my imagination, the favourite theme of my song, and is

with difficulty restrained from giving you a couple of paragraphs on the love adventures of my compeers, the humble inmates of the farmhouse and cottage; but the grave sons of science, ambition, 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 their enjoyments.'

William Burness (for so he spelt his name), the father of the poet, was a native of Kincardineshire. He had been reared on the estate of Dunnottar, which had been forfeited by the Keith Marischal family in 1716. Whether from this circumstance, or from some family tradition, the poet was fain to think that his immediate forefathers had been actively engaged in promoting the cause of the Stuarts. His brother Gilbert discountenanced the idea; but it is not certain that the poet was so much in error as his brother thought. Family misfortunes, we are told by Gilbert, compelled William Burness and a younger brother to leave the paternal mansion at an early age in search of employment and subsistence. 'I have often,' says Gilbert, 'heard my father describe the anguish of mind he felt when they parted on the top of a hill on the confines of their native place, each going off his several way in search of new adventures, and scarcely knowing whither he went. My father,' he adds, 'undertook to act as a 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 parents; 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.'2

It may be mentioned that an elder brother settled in Montrose, and attained such respectability as to be many years a towncouncillor and elder in the church. His son, a legal practitioner in the same town, was grandfather of Sir Alexander Burnes, killed at Cabul in 1842.

William Burness at length migrated to Ayrshire, where he successively served the Laird of Fairlic and Mr Crawford of

It is ascertained that the poet's father worked for some time at the formation of the walks of what is called Hope Park, a beautiful promenade adjacent to the southern suburbs of the Scottish capital. This was probably about 1749.

2 Sec Appendix, No. 1.

Doonside as gardener. He then took a lease of seven acres of land near the Bridge of Doon, designing to carry on business as a nurseryman. He built on this ground a clay cottage with his own hands, and in December 1757 brought to it a young bride named Agnes Brown, the daughter of a Carrick farmer. In this humble dwelling their eldest child, the poet, saw the light thirteen months after.1

Gilbert Burns related to Dr Currie a circumstance attending the birth of the poet. 'When my father,' he says, 'built his clay bigging, he put in two stone jambs, as they are called, and a lintel, carrying up a chimney in his clay gable. The consequence was, that as the gable subsided, the jambs, remaining firm, threw it off its centre; and one very stormy morning, when my brother was nine or ten days old, a little before daylight, a part of the gable fell out, and the rest appeared so shattered, that my mother, with the young poet, had to be carried through the storm to a neighbour's house, where they remained a week, till their own dwelling was adjusted.' Gilbert adds 'That you may not think too meanly of this house, or my father's taste in building, by supposing the poet's description in "The Vision" (which is entirely a fancy picture) applicable to it, allow me to take notice to you that the house consisted of a kitchen in one end and a room in the other, with a fireplace and chimney; that my father had constructed a concealed bed in the kitchen, with a small closet at the end, of the same materials with the house; and when altogether cast over, outside and in, with lime, it had a neat, comfortable appearance, such as no family of the same rank, in the present improved style of living, would think themselves ill lodged in.'

William Burness, himself a man of uncommon intelligence for his station in life, was anxious that his children should have the best education which their circumstances admitted of. Robert was

therefore sent in his sixth year to a little school at Alloway Mill, about a mile from their cottage: not long after, his father took a lead in establishing a young teacher, named John Murdoch, in

'The entry of the poet's birth in the session-books of Ayr parish is as follows:-' Robert Burns, lawful son of William Burns in Alloway, and Agnes Brown his spouse, was born January 25th, 1759: baptised by Mr William Dalrymple. Witnesses, John Tennant and James Young.' It is remarkable that the name is here spelt in the manner afterwards assumed by the poet. The explanation is, that the name was already established in Ayrshire, and usually spelt in this manner. Mr Dalrymple survived to know Burns as a poet, and to be a subject of panegyric in his verses.

a humble temple of learning nearer hand, and there Robert and his younger brother Gilbert attended for some time. It will have been observed that the poet, in his own narrative, passes over his school attendance with slight notice, in comparison with the legendary lore he derived from the old woman who resided in the family. Gilbert has been more exact on that subject. Referring to Murdoch, in a letter addressed to Dr Currie, he says: With him we learned 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 unfolding 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 an opportunity of reading while he was at school; for 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 the blacksmith who shod our horses.'

The poet was seven years of age when (1766) his father left the clay bigging at Alloway, and settled in the small upland farm of Mount Oliphant, about a couple of miles distant. He and his younger brother, nevertheless, continued to attend Mr Murdoch's school for two years longer, when the little seminary was broken

1 Mrs Begg states that the old woman, whose legendary lore made so deep an impression on the poet's infant mind, was named Betty Davidson. She was the widow of a cousin of Mrs Burness, and mainly dependent on a son whose wife was not very kind to her. For this reason, William Burness used to invite the poor old woman to spend a few months at a time with his family, both at Alloway and Mount Oliphant, where, to requite his kindness, she was most assiduous in spinning, carding, and doing all kinds of good offices that were in her power. She was of a mirthful temperament, and therefore a great favourite with the children. Mrs Begg remembers the particular impression made upon them by a string of uncommonly large amber (Scottice, lammer) beads which she wore round her neck. In the latter days of this legendary oracle, William Burness, finding her neglected by her daughter-in-law, hired at his own expense a woman to attend to her.

'His means was little to his ampler heart.'

Long after Betty's death, when Dr Currie had conferred such a distinguished favour upon the poet's family and friends, it was proposed by Mrs Dunlop of Dunlop to recover Betty Davidson's wonderful string of lammer-beads, and offer them as a gift to Mrs Curric. They were not to be found; but as a succedaneum, a number of uncommonly large amber-beads were obtained from other sources, and formed into one string for this purpose.