went into Ayr-shire, and procured employment first from Crawford of Doonside, and second, in the double capacity of steward and gardener, from Ferguson of Doonholm. Imagining now that he had established a resting-place, he took a wife, Dec. 1757, leased a small patch of land for a nursery, and raised that frail shealing, the catastrophe of which has already been related.

During his residence with the laird of Doonholm, a rumour was circulated that William Burness had fought for our old line of princes in the late rebellion, the fatal 1745. His austere and somewhat stately manners caused him to be looked upon as a man who had a secret in reserve, which he desired to conceal; and, as a report of that kind was not calculated for his good, he procured a contradiction from the hand of the clergyman of his native parish, acquitting him of all participation in the late "wicked rebellion." I mention this, inasmuch as the Poet, speaking of his forefathers, says, "they followed boldly where their leaders led,” and hints that they suffered in the cause which crushed the fortunes of their chief. Gilbert Burns, a sensible man, but no poet, imagined he read in his brother's words an imputation on the family loyalty, and hastened to contradict it, long after his father had gone where the loyal or rebellious alike find peace. He considered his father's religious turn of mind, and the certificate of his parish minister, as decisive: and so they are, as far as regards William Burness; but the KeithsMarischall were forfeited before he was born, and the Poet plainly alludes to earlier matters than the affair of the "Forty-five.”—“ My ancestors," he says, " rented lands of the noble Keiths-Marischall, and had the honour of sharing their fate. I mention this circumstance because it threw my father on the world at large." Here he means that the misfortunes of the fathers were felt by the children; he was accurate in all things else, and it is probable he related what his father told him. The feelings of the Poet were very early coloured with Jacobitism.

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Though William Burness sought only at first to add the profits of a small stewardship to those of a little garden or nursery, and toiled along with his wife to secure food and clothing, his increasing family induced him to extend his views; and he accordingly ventured to lease Mount Oliphant, a neighbouring farm of a hundred acres, and entered upon it in 1765, when Robert was between six and seven years old. The elder Burns seems to have been but an indifferent judge of land in a district where much fine ground is in cultivation, he sat down on a sterile and hungry spot, which no labour could render fruitful. He had commenced, too, on borrowed money; the seasons, as well as the soil, proved churlish; and Ferguson his friend dying, a stern factor," says Robert, "whose

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threatening letters set us all in tears," interposed; and he was compelled, after a six years' struggle, to relinquish the lease. This harshness was remembered in other days: the factor sat for that living portrait of insolence and wrong in the "Twa Dogs." How easily may | endless infamy be purchased!

From this inhospitable spot William Burness removed his household to Lochlea, a larger and better farm, some ten miles off, in the parish of Tarbolton. Here he seemed at once to strike i root and prosper. He was still strong in body, ardent in mind, and unsubdued in spirit. Every day, too, was bringing vigour to his sons, who, though mere boys, took more than their proper share of toil; while his wife superintended, with care and success, the whole system of in-door economy. But it seemed as if fortune had determined that nought he set his heart on should prosper. For four years, indeed, seasons were favourable, and markets good; but, in the fifth year, there ensued a change. It was in vain that he laboured with head and hand, and resolved to be economical and saving. In vain Robert held the plough with the dexterity of a man by day, and thrashed and prepared corn for seed or for sale, evening and morning, before the sun rose and after it set. "The gloom of hermits, and the unceasing moil of galley slaves," were endured to no purpose; and, to crown all, a difference arose between the tenant and his landlord, as to terms of lease and rotation of crop. The farmer, a stern man, self-willed as well as devoutly honest, admitted but of one interpretation to ambiguous words. The proprietor, accustomed to give law rather than receive it, explained them to his own advantage; and the declining years of this good man, and the early years of his eminent son, were embittered by disputes, in which sensitive natures suffer and worldly ones thrive.

Amid all these toils and trials, William Burness remembered the worth of religious instruction, and the usefulness of education in the rearing of his children. The former task he took upon himself, and in a little manual of devotion still extant, sought to soften the rigour of the Calvinistic creed into the gentler Arminian. He set, too, the example which he taught. He abstained from all profane swearing and vain discourse, and shunned all approach to levity of conversation or behaviour. A weekday in his house wore the sobriety of a Sunday; nor did he fail in performing family worship in a way which enabled his son to give the world that fine picture of domestic devotion, the "Cotter's Saturday Night." The depressing cares of the world, and a consciousness, perhaps, that he was fighting a losing battle, brought an almost habitual gloom to his brow. He had nothing to cheer him but a sense of having done his duty. The education of his sons he confided to other hands. At first he sent Robert |

to a small school at Alloway Miln, within a mile of the place of his birth; but the master was removed to a better situation, and his place was supplied by John Murdoch, a candidate for the honours of the church, who undertook, at a moderate salary, to teach the boys of Lochlea, and the children of five other neighbouring farmers, reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, and Latin. He was a young man, a good scholar, and an enthusiastic instructor, with a moderate knowledge of human nature, and a competent share of pedantry. He made himself acceptable to the elder Burness by engaging in conversations on speculative theology, and in lending his learning to aid the other's sagacity and penetration; and he rendered himself welcome to Robert by bringing him knowledge of any kind-by giving him books-telling him about eminent men--and teaching him the art-which he was not slow in learning-of opening up fresh sources of information for himself.

Of the progress which Robert made in knowledge, his teacher has given us a very clear account. In reading, writing and arithmetic, he excelled all boys of his own age, and took rank above several who were his seniors. The New Testament, the Bible, the English Grammar, and Mason's collection of verse and prose, laid the foundation of devotion and knowledge. As soon as he was capable of understanding composition, Murdoch taught him to turn verse into its natural prose order; sometimes to substitute synonymous expressions for poetical words, and to supply all the ellipses. By these means he perceived when his pupil knew the meaning of his author, and thus sought to instruct him in the proper arrangement of words, as well as variety of expression. For some two years and a half, Robert continued to receive the instructions of his excellent teacher under his father's roof. On Murdoch's nomination to the Grammar School of Ayr, his pupil did not forsake him, but took lodgings with him; and, during the ordinary school hours, walks in the evening, and other moments of leisure, he sought to master the grammar, in order to take upon himself the task of instructing his brothers and sisters at home. Under the same kind instructor he strove to obtain some knowledge of French. "When walking together, and even at meals," says Murdoch, "I was constantly telling him the names of different objects, as they presented themselves, in French, so that he was hourly laying in a stock of words, and sometimes little phrases. In short, he took such pleasure in learning, and I in teaching, that it was difficult to say which of the two was most zealous in the business; and about the end of our second week of study of the French, we began to read a little of the Adventures of Telemachus, in

Fenelon's own words." All the French which the young Poet picked up, during one fortnight's

course of instruction, could not be much; the coming of harvest called him to more laborious duties; nor did he, save for a passing hour or so, ever seriously resume his studies in Telemachus.

"At

Of these early and interesting days, during which the future man was seen, like fruit shaping amid the unfolded bloom, we have a picture drawn by the Poet's own hand, and touched off in his own vivid manner. seven years of age I was by no means a favourite with any body. I was a good deal noted for a retentive memory, a stubborn sturdy something in my disposition, and an enthusiastic idiot piety—I say idiot piety, because I was then but a child. Though it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made an excellent English scholar; and, by the time I was ten or eleven years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. The earliest composition that I recollect taking pleasure in was the vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's, beginning,

"How are thy servants blest, O Lord!"'

I particularly remember one half-stanza, which was music to my ear—

"For though on dreadful whirls we hung,

High on the broken wave."

I met with these in Mason's English collection, one of my school-books. The first two books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two I have read since, were the Life of Hannibal, and the History of the Acts and Deeds of Sir William Wallace. Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest."

The education of Burns was not over when the school-doors were shut. The peasantry of Scotland turn their cottages into schools; and when a father takes his arm-chair by the to his children whatever knowledge he possesses evening fire, he seldom neglects to communicate himself. Nor is this knowledge very limited; it extends, generally, to the history of Europe, and to the literature of the island; but more particularly to the divinity, the poetry, and what may be called the traditionary history of Scotland. An intelligent peasant is intimate with all those skirmishes, sieges, combats, and quarrels, domestic or national, of which public writers take no account. chief families are quite familiar to him. He Genealogies of the has by heart, too, whole volumes of songs and ballads; nay, long poems sometimes abide in

[* Idiot, for idiotic. CURRIE.]

his recollection; nor will he think his knowledge much, unless he knows a little about the lives and actions of the men who have done most honour to Scotland. In addition to what he has on his memory, we may mention what he has on the shelf. A common husbandman is frequently master of a little library history, divinity, and poetry, but most so the latter, compose his collection. Milton and Young are favourites; the flowery Meditations of Hervey, the religious romance of the Pilgrim's Progress, are seldom absent; while of Scottish books, Ramsay, Thomson, Fergusson, and now Burns, together with songs and ballad-books innumerable, are all huddled together, soiled with smoke, and frail and tattered by frequent use. The household of William Burness was an example of what I have described; and there is some truth in the assertion that in true knowledge the Poet was, at nineteen, a better scholar than nine-tenths of our young gentlemen when they leave school for the college.

Let us look into this a little more closely; nor can we see with a clearer light than what Burns himself has afforded us." What I knew of ancient story," he observes, "was gathered from Salmon 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 Heathen Pantheon, Locke on the Human Understanding, Stackhouse's History of the Bible, Justice's British Gardener's Dictionary, Boyle's Lectures, Allan Ramsay's Works, Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, Á Select Collection of English Songs, and Hervey's Meditations, had formed the whole of my reading." But when to these we add Young's Night Thoughts, which his own poems prove him to have admired, we cannot see that we have advanced far on the way in which he walked, when he disciplined himself for the service of the Scottish muse. In truth, none of the works we have enumerated, save the poems of Allan Ramsay, could be of farther use to him than to fill his mind with information, and shew him what others had done. The "Address to the Deil," "Highland Mary," and "Tam o' Shanter" are the fruit of far different studies

Burns had, in truth, a secret school of study, in which he set up other models for imitation than Pope or Hervey.-"In my infant and boyish days," he observes to Doctor Moore, "I owed much to an old woman who resided in the family (Jenny Wilson by name), remarkable for her ignorance, 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 in suspicious places." Here we have the Poet taking lessons in the classic lore of his native land and profiting largely; || yet, to please a scholar like his correspondent, he calls his instructress an ignorant old woman, and her stories idle trumpery. Let the name of Jenny Wilson be reverenced by all lovers of the northern muse; her tales gave colour and character to many fine effusions. The supernatural in these legends was corrected and modified by the natural which his growing sense saw in human life and found in the songs of his native land. "The collection of songs," he says," 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." He is rarely if ever wrong in his remarks on the songs of Scotland. They had, in no remote day, the advantages of the schooling which in these early hours he gave his fancy and understanding. He had not yet completed these unconscious studies. In his farther progress his mother was his instructress. Her rectitude of heart, and the fine example of her husband, made an impression too strong to be ever effaced from the mind of her son. This was strengthened by the songs and ballads which she commonly chanted; they all wore a moral hue. The ballad which she loved most to sing, or her son to hear, is one called "The Life and Age of Man." It is a work of imagination | and piety, full of quaintness and nature; it compares the various periods of man's life to the months of the year; and the parallel is both ingenious and poetic.-"I had an old grand-uncle," says Burns, "with whom my mother lived a while in her girlish years: the good old man, for such he was, was long blind! ere he died, during which time his highest enjoyment was to sit down and cry, while my mother would sing the simple old song of "The Life and Age of Man.'" The mother of the Poet, on being questioned respecting it by Cromek, some years before her death, repeated the ballad word for word, saying it was one of the many nursery songs of her mother, and that she first heard and learned it from her seventy years before. The noble poem of "Man was made to mourn," bears a close resemblance to this old strain, both in language and sentiment. It taught Burns the art, which too few learn, of adding a moral aim to his verse; and though he rose in song to the highest pitch of moral pathos and sublimity, he took his first lesson from this now neglected ballad. In all his letters and memoranda, we