him. He was ready, when Mary's image rose on his fancy, to pour out his feelings in song: he was more than usually inspired whenever he thought of her. The thorn, under whose shade the lovers sat, is still pointed out and held sacred by the peasantry. The season of winter was propitious to the muse of Burns: there was something of old habit in this: the long evenings bring leisure to the farmer, and the farmer was still strong in him. "Auld Rob Morris" was written in November; the idea is taken from an earlier song, but the Burns-spirit soon gained the ascendant: he has painted the portrait of his heroine in similes : "She's fresh as the morning, the fairest in May; She's sweet as the evening amang the new hay; And dear to my heart as the light to my e'e." "Duncan Gray" came to the world in December, had he come in summer, he could not have been more "a lad of grace;" he went a wooing in a pleasant time, on gude Yule night, when all were joyous-but “Maggie coost her head fu' high, of the intrepid Douglasses brought recollections Where the wa' flower scents the dewy air, And tells the midnight moon her care- And the distant-echoing glens reply." While enjoying the scene, and looking on the northern streamers, the Vision of Liberty descended or arose before him: not the bloodstained nymph of that name beloved by the Jacobin Club, but a Liberty of Scottish extraction, stern and stalwart, of the rougher sex, attired like an ancient minstrel, carrying a harp, and wearing the symbol of freedom. The majestic apparition touched his harp, and chanted a strain which spoke of former joys and present sorrows, in language which the Poet durst only describe. This fine lyric was intended, with some modifications, to be wrought into the drama of "The Bruce," a subject never wholly He was not however to be daunted with this: out of the Bard's fancy. he knew woman better: "Duncan fleech'd, and Duncan pray'd, Meg was deaf as Ailsa craig; Duncan sigh'd baith out and in; She relented." Duncan Gray," said the Poet, "is a light horse-gallop of an air which precludes sentiment the ludicrous is its ruling feature." "O! poortith, cauld and restless love" is a song full of other feelings: the heroine is said to have been Jean Lorimer, the lass of Craigieburn wood; and this is countenanced by the sentiment of one impassioned verse :— "Her een sae bonny blue betray O wha can prudence think upon, A being of a more celestial nature inspired that magnificent lyric, "The Vision." The ruined college of Lincluden, which stands among antique trees on a beautiful plot of rising ground, where the Cluden unites with the Nith, a little above Dumfries, was a favourite haunt of the Poet, as it is of all lovers of landscape beauty. On a moonlight evening he imagined himself musing alone among the splendid ruins: the dust of a Scottish princess, and the bones of one 66 An From musing on woman's love and man's freedom, Burns was rudely awakened. inquiry regarding the sentiments which he entertained, and the language in which he had indulged concerning Thrones and Dominions,' was directed to be made by the Commissioners received from high quarters. It will probably of Excise, pursuant to instructions, it is said, never be known who the pestilent informer against the Poet was: some contemptible wretch who had suffered from his wit, or who envied his fame, gave the information on which the Board of Excise acted, and he was subjected to a sort of inquisition. The times indeed in which he ! lived were perilous, and government found it no easy thing to rule or tranquillize the agitated passions of the people. A new light had arisen on the nations: freedom burst out like a summer's sun in France; monarchy was trampled under foot; democracy arose in its place; equality in all, save intellect, was preached up, and the true order of nature was to be restored to the delighted world. This doctrine was welcomed widely in Scotland: it resembled, in no small degree, the constitution of the Calvinistic kirk, which is expressly democratic; and it accorded with the sentiments which education and knowledge awaken-for who is so blind as not to see that idols, dull and gross, occupy most of the high places which belong to genius as a birthright? It corresponded wondrously too with the notions of Burns: it harmonised with the plan which he perceived in nature, and was in strict keep-commissioners, and which was laid before the ing with his sentiments of free-will and inde- Board. In the second epistle, Burns disclaimed pendence. "He was disposed," says Professor all idea of setting up a republic, and declared Walker, "from constitutional temper, from that he stood by the constitutional principles of education, and from accidents of life, to a jea- the revolution of 1688 at the same time he lousy of power, and a keen hostility against felt that corruptions had crept in, which every every system which enabled birth and opulence patriotic Briton desired to see amended."This to intercept those rewards which he conceived last remark," says the Poet, in his celebrated to belong to genius and virtue." That he letter to John Francis Erskine, afterwards Earl desired to see true genius honoured, and wealthy of Mar, "gave great offence; and one of our presumption checked-that he wished to take supervisors-general, a Mr. Corbet, was instructhis place on the table-land among peers and ed to inquire on the spot, and to document me princes, and obtain station and importance-to-That my business was to act, not to think; adorn which his high powers, he believed, were and that whatever might be men or measures, given-were desires natural to a gifted mind; it was for me to be silent and obedient.' Mr. and it could not be but galling for him to see Corbet was my steady friend; so, between Mr. men who had not a tithe of his talent rolling Graham and him, I have been partly forgiven; in luxury, while he was doomed to poverty and only I understand that all hopes of my getting dependence. That these sentiments were in the officially forward are blasted." heart of Burns I know; that he ever sought to give them full utterance, or entertained them farther than as theories grateful to his mind, it would be difficult to find proof. The above words were written by the Poet, April 13, 1793; yet Mr. Findlater, then his superior officer, says, "I may venture to assert that when Burns was accused of a leaning to democracy, and an inquiry into his conduct took place, he was subjected, in consequence thereof, to no more than perhaps a private or verbal caution, to be more circumspect in future. Neither do I believe his promotion was thereby From these charges Burns strove to defend himself: he addressed his steady friend Graham, of Fintry, on the subject; the letter is dated December, 1792.—“I have been surprised, confounded, and distracted by Mr. Mitchell, the collector, telling me that he has re-affected, as has been stated." Burns, I appreceived an order from your Board to inquire into hend, knew best how this was; an order to act, my political conduct, and blaming me as a and not to think; and, whatever might be men person disaffected to government. Sir, you are and measures, to be silent and obedient, seems a husband-and a father. You know what you a sharp sort of private caution. That the rewould feel to see the much-loved wife of your cords of the Excise-office, as some one assured bosom, and your helpless, prattling little ones, Lockhart, exhibit no traces of this too memorturned adrift into the world, degraded and dis-able matter, is not to be wondered at: expulgraced from a situation in which they had been sions alone are entered-or, if the records say respectable and respected. I would not tell a more, memoranda, so little to the honour of the deliberate falsehood, no, not though even worse commissioners, will neither be eagerly sought horrors-if worse can be than those I have for, nor willingly found. That Burns never mentioned-hung over my head; and I say got forward is certain; that he ceased to speak that the allegation, whatever villain has made of his hopes of advancement, is also true. it, is a lie! To the British Constitution, on What was the cause of this? That it did not revolution principles, next, after my God, I am arise from his want of skill or his inattention to most devoutly attached. Fortune, sir, has his duties, Findlater furnishes undeniable testimade you powerful and me impotent-has given mony, and other evidence can readily be found; you patronage and me dependence. I would nor was it because death slipt too early in and not, for my single self, call on your humanity; frustrated the desire of the Board to advance I could brave misfortune-I could face ruin- him, for he survived their insulting and crushfor, at the worst, 'Death's thousand doors standing inquiry more than three years and a half. open;' but the tender concerns which I have mentioned the claims and ties which I see at this moment, and feel around me how they unnerve courage and wither resolution! To your patronage, as a man of some genius, you have allowed me a claim; and your esteem, as an honest man, I know is my due. To these, sir, permit me to appeal; by these may I adjure you to save me from that misery which threatens to overwhelm me; and which, with my latest breath I will say it, I have not deserved." These are the words of his private letter: it enclosed another, intended for the eye of the He survived, indeed, but he was no longer the bright and enthusiastic being who looked forward with eager hope; who ascended in fancy the difficult steeps of fame, and who set coteries in a roar of laughter, or moved them to tears. Reasons for this harshness on the part of Government-for the Board of Excise was but the acting servant-have been anxiously sought, in the words and deeds of Burns.-"He stood," says Walker, "on a lofty eminence, surrounded by enemies as well as by friends, and no indiscretion which he committed was suffered to escape." His looks were watched; his words weighed; and, wheresoever he went, the eyes of the malignant and the envious were on him. I have been told, by one incapable of misleading me, that Burns sometimes made his appearance in a club of obscure individuals in Dumfries, where toasts were given, and songs sung which required closed doors. I have also been informed that when invited to a private dinner, where the entertainer proposed "the health of William Pitt," the Poet said sharply, "Let us drink the health of a greater and better manGeorge Washington;" and it is also true that when Dumourier, the republican general, deserted the cause of his country, and joined her enemies, Burns rashly chanted that short song, beginning was "You are welcome to despots, Dumourier." Nay more, I have the proof before me that he wrote a scoffing ballad on the foreign sovereigns who united to crush French liberty; but then all these matters happened after, not before, he "documented" by the Board of Excise. That he forgot now and then what was due to the dignity of his genius, is no new admission. The club which sung songs with closed doors, did so to hinder the landlady, not the landlord, from hearing; the dinner where he toasted Washington, and was sullen because it was not drunk, took place in 1793. In Midsummer the same year, Dumourier forsook the standard of his country, and was welcomed by despots; and with regard to the ballad on the sovereigns, I am sure the gravest of them all would have laughed heartily at the vivid but indecorous wit of the composition. That Burns was nevertheless very indiscreet, it would be vain to deny. "I was at the play in Dumfries, October, 1792," thus writes, in 1835, a gentleman of birth and talent, "the Caledonian Hunt being then in town-the play was' As you like it; Miss Fontenelle, Rosalind-when God save the King' was called for and sung; we all stood up, uncovered-but Burns sat still in the middle of the pit, with his hat on his head. There was a great tumult, with shouts of Turn him out!' and 'Shame, Burns!' which continued a good while, at last he was either expelled or forced to take off his hat I forget which." A more serious indiscretion has been imputed to him. Lockhart relates that, on the 27th of February, 1792, a smuggling brig entered the Solway, and Burns was one of the party of officers appointed to watch her motions. It was soon discovered that her crew were numerous, well armed, and likely to resist; upon which Lewars, a brother exciseman, galloped off to Dumfries, and Crawford, the superintendent, went to Ecclefechan for military assistance. Burns manifested much impatience at being left on a cold exposed beach, with a force unequa to cope with those to whom he was opposed and exclaimed against the dilatory movements of Lewars, wishing the devil might take him. Some one advised him to write a song about it; on which the Poet, taking a few strides among the shells and pebbles, chanted "The deil's awa' wi' the exciseman." The song was hardly composed, when up came Lewars with his soldiers, on which Burns, putting himself at their head, his pistols in his pockets, and his sword in his hand, waded mid-waist deep into the sea, and carried the smuggler. She was armed. The Poet, whose conduct was much commended, purchased four of her brass guns, and sent them as a present to the French Directory. These, with the letter which accompanied them, were intercepted on their way to France. The suspicions of government were awakened by this breach of decorum, and men in power turned their eyes on the bard, and opened their ears to all his unguarded sayings. That the smuggler was captured chiefly by the bravery of Burns I have been often told; but I never heard it added that he purchased her guns and sent them to the Directory. The biographer seems to have had his information from persons connected with the Excise; but I suspect the story is not more accurate than that, when accused of a leaning to democracy, "he was subjected to no more than perhaps a verbal or private caution to be more circumspect in future." Burns felt humbled and hurt: he was de graded in his own eyes; he was pushed rudely down from his own little independent elevation, and treated like an imbecile, whose words and actions were to be regulated by the ungentle members of the Board of Excise.-"Have I not," he says to Erskine, "a more precious stake in my country's welfare than the richest dukedom in it? I have a large family of children, and the prospect of many more. I have three sons, who, I sec already, have brought into the world souls ill qualified to inhabit the bodies of slaves." It is pleasing to escape with the Poet from the racks of the Board of Excise, and accompany him on his excursions along the banks of the Nith, where he soothed his spirit by composing songs for the publications of Thomson or Johnson. In January, 1793, he wrote "Lord Gregory;" in March, "Wandering Willie" and "Jessie," and in April, "The Poor and Honest Sodger." The first is borrowed in some measure from the exquisite old ballad of "The Lass of Lochroyan," the second is more original :— "Loud blew the cauld winter winds at our parting; The third was written in honour of the young and the lovely Jessie Staig of Dumfries; and Ideal loveliness sometimes appeared to him in his solitary wanderings. Autumn he reckoned a propitious season for verse: he wrote thus to Thomson in the month of August :-"I roved out yestreen for a gloaminshot at the muses; when the muse that presides over the shores of Nith, or, rather, my old inspiring dearest nymph, Coila, whispered me the following: I have two reasons for thinking that it was my early, sweet, simple inspirer that was by my elbow, smooth gliding without step,' and pouring the song on my glowing fancy. In the first place, since I left Coila's the fourth was awakened by the prospect of coming war, which ended not till it laid many kingdoms desolate, and put the half of Britain into mourning. In the remarks of Thomson on his songs he was not always acquiescent. "Give me leave," he says, "to criticise your taste in the only thing in which it is reprehensible. You know I ought to know something of my own trade; of pathos, sentiment, and point you are a complete judge: but there is a quality more necessary than either in a song, and which is the very essence of a ballad, I mean simplicity. Now, if I mistake not, this last feature you are apt to sacrifice to the fore-native haunts, not a fragment of a poet has going." He was as anxious about the purity of Scottish music as about the simplicity of the verse. "One hint," he says to Thomson, "let me give you whatever Pleyel does, let him not alter one iota of the original Scottish airs; let our national music preserve its native features. They are, I own, frequently wild and irreducible to the more modern rules, but on that very eccentricity, perhaps, depends a great part of their effect." The beauties whom Burns met on Nithside inspired many of the sweetest of his songs: "As in the bosom o' the stream The moonbeam dwells at dewy e'en: Her sister Phillis, a young lady equally beau- "While larks, with little wing, Fann'd the pure air, The other contains that fine verse: "Her voice is the song of the morning, That wakes through the green-spreading grove, On music, and pleasure, and love." arisen to cheer her solitary musings, by catching "Come, let me take thee to my breast, The world's wealth and grandeur." quarter:- "O May! thy morn was ne'er so sweet, Burns was as ready with his verse to solace the woes of others, as to give utterance to his own. You, my dear sir," he says to Thomson, "will remember an unfortunate part of our worthy friend Cunningham's story, which happened about three years ago. That struck my fancy, and I endeavoured to do the idea justice as follows."-The song expressing the sentiments of his friend is that sublime one "Had I a cave on some wild distant shore." The concluding verse, a lady told me, always made her shudder : "Falsest of womankind! canst thou declare, To thy new lover hie, To the influence of thunder, lightning, and rain we owe, we are told, the heroic address of 6 Bruce at Bannockburn. I abridge the legend of John Syme, who accompanied the Poet on a tour in Galloway :-"I got Burns a grey Highland sheltie to ride on. We dined the first day, July 27, 1793, at Glendinning's of Parton a beautiful situation on the banks of the Dee. In the evening we walked out and viewed the Alpine scenery around; immediately opposite, we saw Airds, where dwelt Lowe, the author of Mary's Dream. This was classic ground for Burns; he viewed the highest hill which rises o'er the source of Dee,' and would have staid till the passing spirit' appeared, had we not resolved to reach Kenmore that night. We arrived as the Gordons' were sitting down to supper. Here is a genuine baron's seat; the castle, an old building, stands on a large natural moat, and in front the Ken winds for several miles through a fertile and beautiful holm. We spent three days with The Gordons,' whose hospitality is of a polished and endearing kind. We left Kenmore and went to Gatehouse. I took him the moor road, where savage and desolate regions extended wide around. The sky was sympathetic with the wretchedness of the soil; it became lowering and dark-the winds sighed hollow-the lightnings gleamed-the thunders rolled. The Poet enjoyed the awful scene; he spoke not a word, but seemed rapt in meditation. In a little while the rain began to fall; it poured in floods upon us. For three hours did the wild elements rumble their belly ful upon our defenceless heads. We got utterly wet; and, to revenge ourselves, the Poet insisted, at Gatehouse, on our getting utterly drunk. I said that in the midst of the storm, on the wilds of the Kenmore, Burns was rapt in meditation. What do you think he was about? He was charging the English army along with Bruce at Bannockburn. He was engaged in the same manner in our ride home from St. Mary's Isle, and I did not disturb him. Next day he produced me the Address of Bruce to his troops, and gave me a copy for Dalzell." Two or three plain words, and a stubborn date or two, will go far, I fear, to raise this pleasing legend into the regions of romance. The Galloway adventure, according to Syme, happened in July; but in the succeding September, the Poet communicated the song to Thomson in these words: "There is a tradition which I have met with in many places in Scotland, that the old air of 'Hey, tuttie taitie,' was Robert Bruce's march at the battle of Bannockburn. This thought, in my yesternight's evening walk, warmed me to a pitch of enthusiasm on the theme of liberty and independence, which I threw into a kind of Scottish ode, fitted to the air, that one might suppose to be the gallant Royal Scot's address to his heroic followers on that eventful morning. I shewed the air to Urbani, who was highly pleased with it, and begged me to make soft verses for it: but I had no idea of giving myself any trouble on the subject, till the accidental recollection of that glorious struggle for freedom, associated with the glowing ideas of some other struggles of the same nature, not quite so ancient, roused up my rhyming mania." Currie, to make the letter agree with the legend, altered "Yesternight's evening walk" into "solitary wanderings." Burns was, indeed, a remarkable man, and yielded, no doubt, to strange impulses: but to compose a song "In thunder, lightning, and in rain," intimates such self-possession as few possess. He thus addressed the Earl of Buchan, to whom he sent a copy of the song:-"Independent of my enthusiasm as a Scotsman, I have rarely met with anything in history which interests my feelings as a man, equal to the story of Bannockburn. On the one hand, a cruel, but able, extinguish the last spark of freedom among a usurper, leading on the finest army in Europe to greatly-daring and greatly-injured people; on the other hand, the desperate relics of a gallant nation, devoting themselves to rescue their bleeding country, or perish with her. Liberty! thou dearly bought!" The simplicity and vigour of art a prize truly; never canst thou be too this most heroic of modern lyrics were injured by lengthening the fourth line of each verse to suit the air of Lewie Gordon. hae wi' Wallace bled," were to form part of The "Vision of Liberty," and "Scots, wha the long-meditated drama of "The Bruce." This the Poet intimated to his friends in conversation, and also in pencil memoranda on one of the blank leaves of Collins's poems. Several lines of verse are scattered among the prose-all shewing on what topic he was musing:— "Where Bannockburn's en sanguined flood, Saw Edward's myriads struck with deep dismay, [As the letter of Mr. Syme, written soon after the excursion took place, gives an animated picture of the Poet, by a correct and masterly hand, the remainder is now presented to the reader : "From Gatehouse, we went next day to Kirkcudbright, through a fine country. But here I must tell you that Burns had got a pair of jemmy boots for the journey, which had been thoroughly wet, and which had been dried in such a manner that it was not possible to get them on again. The brawny Poet tried force, and tore them to shreds. A whiffling vexation of this sort is more trying to the temper than a serious calamity. We were going to Saint Mary's Isle, the seat of the Earl of Selkirk, and the forlorn Burns was discomfited at the thought of his ruined boots. A sick stomach |