(In this Edition the more Objectionable Passages and Pieces are excluded.) THE POETICAL WORKS AND LETTERS OF ROBERT BURN S. WITH LIFE. Eight Engravings on Steel. Edinburgh: GALL & INGLIS, 6 GEORGE STREET; LONDON: HOULSTON & WRIGHT. 1859 280. m. 200. THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. ROBERT BURNS was born on the 25th of January 1759, in a small roadside cottage, which still stands, about a mile and a-half inland from the county-town and bay of Ayr, on the south-western Scottish coast. His father was from the north, the son of a small farmer; but after various independent struggles to get on in other places, had at least gained by experience, and settled down as working-gardener to a gentleman who showed him the kindness of a patron. He was stiff poor man, occupying the rank of a peasant, in a thatched hut, it by his own hands; though with all the intelligence and more than the ordinary integrity of his class, still hopeful of raising himself. The mother belonged to the same station, being a farmer's daughter from the neighbourhood, homely, placid, careful, and of the average education for her degree; looking up to her husband as, what he really was, strong in character, shrewd from knowledge of the world and its trials, an industrious, thoughtful, devout man. In William Burness and Agnes Brown, their first son had at all events the advantage of parents who were models of excellence for their condition in life; and if his childhood was literally that of a peasant, born to toil, there were, as has been well remarked by his last and most adequate biographer, "fortunate circumstances in his position." What part these fortunate circumstances must have had in raising him to conspicuousness above every other peasant who has yet lived, and what part in his lot was unpropitious,-it may be a main object of the following sketch to suggest, while as much as possible separating both these considerations from the merit and the fault which were his own. The father's wish to procure, for all his children, the best education which his means allowed, was characteristic even beyond the usual Scottish desire. Robert was sent in his sixth year to a small school at Alloway Mill, about a mile off; but the anxiety for his instruction was not easily satisfied, and William Burness soon took the chief part in bringing to the immediate vicinity a young man whom he knew, to teach his own along with the neighbours' children, at once more ably, and, doubtless, more under hints from parental notice. Burness himself was a thinking, reading man, with views of his own even on points of orthodoxy: he ruled his family with a firm hand, attentive to every detail of their conduct; nor need it be specially inferred from the household priesthood of the "Cottar's Saturday Night," how their progress in the Shorter Catechism and Bible knowledge was directly seen to, at leisure hours or stated intervals. But the early tutor of Burns and of his next brother, Gilbert, deserves particular mention, as having contributed no slight share among the favourable influences, mental if not moral, which were then profited by. John Murdoch was no common pedagogue, having already, at the age of eighteen, begun to apply improved methods of teaching, afterwards developed by him in publication. He saw the germs of solid ability in the elder of the two boys, making him a favourite pupil, though fancying Gilbert the livelier. He was careful to impress the precise meaning of every word, and, to prevent mere learning by rote, made them frequently turn passages of verse into natural prose order. Among his branches of education was that of vocal psalmody; with regard to which Robert was peculiarly dull, and his attempts tuneless. Murdoch, for his own improvement, subsequently began to learn French, and imparted the benefit of his proficiency to young Burns; he became afterwards, also, the instigator to his acquiring some Latin: in the former of which accomplishments the poet somewhat plumed himself in later life. The positive amount of imparted and regular scholarly learning he possessed in the end was not great, indeed, as distinguished from knowledge acquired at random, by unguided effort; yet Shakspeare had scarcely greater, allowing a good deal for a darker age, which was in reality more alive to classical influence. The chief dif ference seems to have lain in the Scotch peasant's self-educating disadvantages, his poorer country, and the less generous time on which he was cast; under impulses less sustained by common sympathy, less tending to direct emolument, and less accustomed to indulgence or balanced by a view to success in the world. Conceivable ambition of that kind was not very high near Ayr, before steam-engines worked, or profitable books were common, where the drama had never flourished; and such ambition did not so much as enter into the minds of William Burness and John Murdoch, whose teaching combined but two objects,-present fitness to take up a farm, or perhaps enter the parochial ministry, and future welfare in another world. Nor can the merit be added |