APPENDIX.

No. 17.-REPUTATION OF BURNS IN HIS LATTER YEARS.

A bent tree is not to be drawn as a straight one; or the truth of history vanishes, and its use as a discipline of knowledge and of wisdom. Hence the representation of my friend's life is unsatisfactory. By the omission of certain portions, it might easily have been made to appear more satisfactory; but then it would have been a lie: and every lie-O that people would believe it!-is at best but a whited sepulchre.'-Hare's Life of Sterling.

THE habits of Burns during his latter years in Dumfries have been the subject of much controversy, and two very decided views of the matter have been taken. We hear, on the one hand, of a life of dissipation. Dr Currie, whose wish was to speak as mildly as might be possible without calling forth exposures by the enemies of the poet, uses the expression: Perpetually stimulated by alcohol in one or other of its various forms.' And he adds: 'He who suffers the pollution of inebriation, how shall he escape other pollution?' Even the notice of Burns's death, which appeared in the most respectable of the Edinburgh newspapers, contains this sentence: 'The public, to whose amusement he has so largely contributed, will learn with regret, that his extraordinary endowments were accompanied with frailties which rendered them useless to himself and his family.' Heron, who wrote the first memoir of the poet's life, says: In Dumfries, his dissipation became still more habitual [that is, than it had been in the country]. . . . . The morals of the town were .. not a little corrupted, and,

though a husband and a father, Burns did not escape suffering by the general contamination, in a manner which I forbear to describe.' On the other hand, strong testimonies in favour of Burns's conduct during this period have been set forth by his superior officer, Mr Alexander Findlater, and by the Rev. James Gray, who was schoolmaster to the poet's sons.

Mr Findlater says: 'My connection with Robert Burns commenced immediately after his admission into the Excise, and continued to the hour of his death. In all that time, the superintendence of his behaviour, as an officer of the revenue, was a

branch of my especial province, and it may be supposed I would not be an inattentive observer of the general conduct of a man and a poct so celebrated by his countrymen. In the former capacity, he was exemplary in his attention; and was even jealous of the least imputation on his vigilance . . . . . it was not till near the end of his days that there was any falling off in this respect; and this was amply accounted for by the pressure of disease and accumulating infirmities. I will further avow, that I never saw him—which was very frequently while he lived at Ellisland, and still more so after he removed to Dumfries-but in hours of business he was quite himself, and capable of discharging the duties of his office: nor was he ever known to drink by himself, or seen to indulge in the use of liquor in a forenoon. . . . . That when set down in an evening with a few friends whom he liked, he was apt to prolong the social hour beyond the bounds which prudence would dictate, is unquestionable; but in his family, I will venture to say, he was never seen otherwise than attentive and affectionate in a high degree.'

Mr Gray's testimony is to much the same purpose. He was intimate with Burns in his last years, and saw him frequently. 'It is not to be denied,' says Mr Gray, 'that he sometimes mingled with society unworthy of him. He was of a social and convivial nature. He was courted by all classes of men for the fascinating powers of his conversation, but over his social scene uncontrolled passion never presided. . . . . Burns was seldom intoxicated. The drunkard soon becomes besotted, and is shunned even by the convivial. Had he been so, he could not long have continued the idol of every party. It came under my own view professionally, that he superintended the education of his children with a degree of care that I have never seen surpassed by any parent in any rank of life whatever. In the bosom of his family, he spent many a delightful hour in directing the studies of his eldest son, a boy of uncommon talents. I have frequently found him explaining to this youth, then not more than nine years of age, the English poets from Shakspeare to Gray, or storing his mind with examples of heroic virtue, as they live in the pages of our most celebrated English historians. I would ask any person of common candour, if employments like these are consistent with habitual drunkenness ?"

He was a kind and attentive father, and took great delight in spending his evenings in the cultivation of the minds of his children. Their education was the grand object of his life, and he did not, like most parents, think it sufficient to send them to public schools; he was their private instructor, and, even at that early age, bestowed great pains in training their minds to habits of thought and reflection, and in keeping them pure from every form of vice. This he considered as a sacred duty, and never, to the period of his last illness, relaxed in his diligence. With his eldest son, a boy of not more than nine years of age, he had read many of the favourite poets, and some of the best historians in our language; and, what is more remarkable, gave him considerable aid in the study of Latin. This boy attended the Grammar School of Dumfries, and soon attracted my notice by the strength of his talent and the ardour

The poet's widow was amongst the most earnest of his defenders. Whatever might have been the aberrations of Burns on some points deeply concerning conjugal peace, his amiable partner had no charge to make against him. The penitence he had himself expressed, and the invariable tenderness of his conduct towards herself, had saved him from all reprobation in that quarter. Mrs Burns always represented the convivial habits of her husband as greatly exaggerated by report. She asserted, that she had never once known him return home at night so greatly affected by liquor but that he was able, as usual, to see that the house was secure, and to take off his own clothes without assistance.

To the perplexity arising from all this conflicting testimony, the conduct of Mr Gilbert Burns adds not a little. When Dr Currie's memoir came out, the brother of the poet expressed himself as perfectly satisfied with it, and for several years he uttered no remonstrance against the admissions which it had made with respect to Robert Burns's habits. In 1816, he announced his intention of entering a defence of his brother against the unjust or exaggerated picture which Dr Currie had drawn; and when this announcement drew a somewhat indignant notice from Mr Roscoe, as the friend of the late Dr Currie, Gilbert accounted for the apparent inconsistency of his conduct by saying that, having seen little of his brother for some years, and consequently knowing little about his habits at Dumfries, he had been unable to say anything in contradiction of what Dr Currie had stated; but now, knowing from the testimony of Mr Findlater and Mr Gray that the poet had been misrepresented, he felt it to be his duty, with all grateful deference to the memory of the biographer, to vindicate his brother's memory. He acted upon this feeling of duty by publishing, in his edition of the poet's works in 1820, the letters of Mr Findlater and Mr Gray, as being all-sufficient to clear the name of Robert Burns from the stigma which had been fastened upon it by Currie.

The same defensive tone has been assumed by various subsequent writers, and by none with greater force of language than by Professor Wilson.' Indeed, the modern fashion is to write of Burns as if he had been a man of comparatively temperate and pure life, who had been remarkably unfortunate in his early biographers.

of his ambition. Before he had been a year at school, I thought it right to advance him a form, and he began to read Cæsar, and gave me translations of that author of such beauty as I confess surprised me. On inquiry, I found that his father made him turn over his dictionary, till he was able to translate to him the passage in such a way that he could gather the author's meaning, and that it was to him he owed that polished and forcible English with which I was so greatly struck. I have mentioned this incident merely to shew what minute attention he paid to this important branch of parental duty.'-Letter from the Rev. James Gray to Mr Gilbert Burns. See his edition, vol. I., Appendix, No. V. 1 Essay on the Genius and Character of Burns, Land of Burns, 1840.

The subject is a difficult and a critical one; but I believe it may be possible to admit the truth of what is directly advanced by Findlater and Gray, and yet to see that the original representations of Burns's character were not so unfaithful to truth as has been assumed.

It is, I believe, incontestable that Burns was a good and efficient officer, always fit for duty during the business part of the day, never known to drink by himself or to indulge in liquor in the forenoon. It is also true that he was amiable in his private domestic relations. Such are the positive averments of Findlater. Mr Gray says he was not a habitual drunkard, which is nearly the same thing that Findlater has advanced; and he draws a delightful picture of the poet's habits in his family, inferring that one who took so great a charge of his son's education, and whose mind was so clear in the morning, could have no habits which society is entitled to condemn. The facts advanced by Mr Gray may be admitted, but the illogical character of his inference is palpable.

There is not, in reality, anything in Findlater and Gray's statements which denies that Burns, in his latter years at Dumfries, did indulge in tavern and other convivialitics to a degree which even for that age was excess. On the contrary, these gentlemen make admissions pretty much to that effect. Neither do they positively deny, what is hinted at by Currie, that our bard descended even lower in the scale of sensual habits. All that they can fairly be said to do, is to refute the notion, whether arising from Currie's memoir or in any other way, that Burns was a habitual drunkard.

What, then, was the fact? From all that can now be learned on respectable testimony, I believe it to have been this: Robert Burns never at any period of his life was habitually under the influence of a love of liquor; he never was, properly speaking, its victim on this point the statements of Dr Currie are certainly unjust towards the name of Burns. Our bard was nevertheless facile towards social enjoyment, and had himself an immense power of promoting it. Wherever he lived, he naturally fell among the gay and good-natured part of society, and he unavoidably partook of their convivialities, and even, latterly at least, helped to encourage the replenishment of the bowl and the pulling of the fresh bottle-not that he cared much for the liquor, but that, once involved in the flow of merriment, he did not like to interrupt it by leaving the table. Thus, while he was far from being a regular toper, his occasional convivialities occurred, during the latter years of his life, with a degree of frequency, and were carried to a degree of excess, which were much to be deplored. It did not matter much, perhaps, that there was no indulgence before the early dinnerhour of that time and place-which was three o'clock-if he very often spent the evenings over the bowl, and not unfrequently prolonged the merry-making past the midnight hour. It may be asked what is meant by very often; and this it is not easy to