person, and delightful in conversation; but expressed himself so as to appear to her to mean, that she was fond of speaking: to which the Gallic dame indignantly replied, that it was quite as common for poets to be impertinent, as for women to be loquacious. At the age of nineteen he received a few months' instruction in land surveying.-Such is the scanty history of his education, which is interesting simply because its opportunities were so few and precarious, and such as only a gifted mind could have turned to any account. Of his early reading, he tells us, that a life of Hannibal, which Murdoch gave him when a boy, raised the first stirrings of his enthusiasm ; and, he adds, with his own fervid expression," that the life of Sir William Wallace poured a tide of Scottish prejudices into his veins, which would boil along there till the floodgates of life were shut in eternal restt." In his sixteenth year he had read some of the plays of Shakspeare, the works of Pope and Addison, and of the Scottish poets Ramsay and Fergusson. From the volumes of Locke, Ray, Derham, and Stackhouse, he also imbibed a smattering of natural history and theology; but his brother assures us, that until the time of his being known as an author, he continued to be but imperfectly acquainted with the most eminent of our English writers. Thanks to the songs and superstition of his native country, his genius had some fostering aliments, which perhaps the study of classical authors might have led him to neglect. His inspiration grew up like the flower, which owes to heaven, in a barren soil, a natural beauty and wildness of fragrance that would be spoiled by artificial culture. He learned an infinite number of old ballads, from hearing his mother sing them at her wheel; and he was instructed in all the venerable heraldry of devils and witches by an ancient woman in the neighbourhood, "the Sybelline nurse of his Muse," who probably first imparted to him the story of Tam o' Shanter. "Song was his favourite and first pursuit." "The Song-book," he says, was my Vade Mecum: I pored over it constantly, driving my cart, or walking to labour." It would be pleasing to dwell on this era of his youthful sensibility, if his life had been happy; but it was far otherwise. He was the eldest of a family, buffeted by misfortunes, toiling beyond their strength, and living without the support of animal food. At thirteen years of age he used to thresh in his father's barn; and, at fifteen, was the principal labourer on the farm. After the toils of the day, he usually sunk in the evening into dejection of spirits, and was afflicted with dull headaches, the joint result of anxiety, low diet, and fatigue. "This kind of life," (he says) "the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the un[* This story is in no account of Burns's life that we have ever seen, before or since Mr. Campbell wrote.] + From his letter to Dr. Moore. 66 ceasing moil of a galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth year, when love made me a poet." The object of his first attachment was a Highland girl, named Mary Campbell, who was his fellowreaper in the same harvest-field‡. She died very young; and when Burns heard of her death, he was thrown into an ecstacy of suffering much beyond what even his keen temperament was accustomed to feel. Nor does he seem ever to have forgotten her. His verses "To Mary in Heaven;" his invocation to the star that rose on the anniversary of her death; his description of the landscape that was the scene of their day of love and parting vows, where "flowers sprang wanton to be press'd ;" the whole luxury and exquisite passion of that strain, evince that her image had survived many important changes in himself. From his seventeenth to his twenty-fourth year he lived, as an assistant to his father, on another farm in Ayrshire, at Lochlea, to which they had removed from Mount Oliphant. During that period his brother Gilbert and he, besides labouring for their father, took a part of the land on their own account, for the purpose of raising flax; and this speculation induced Robert to attempt establishing himself in the business of flax-dressing, in the neighbouring town of Irvine. But the unhealthiness of the business, and the accidental misfortune of his shop taking fire, induced him, at the end of six months, to abandon it. Whilst his father's affairs were growing desperate at Lochlea, the poet and his brother had taken a different farm on their own account, as an asylum for the family in case of the worst; but, from unfavourable seasons and a bad soil, this speculation proved also unfortunate, and was given up. By this time Burns had formed his connexion with Jean Armour, who was afterwards his wife, a connexion which could no longer be concealed, at the moment when the ruinous state of his affairs had determined him to cross the Atlantic, and to seek his fortune in Jamaica. He had even engaged himself as assistant overseer to a plantation. He proposed, however, to legalise the private contract of marriage which he had made with Jean; and, though he anticipated the necessity of leaving her behind him, he trusted to better days for their being reunited. But the parents of Jean were unwilling to dispose of her to a husband who was thus to be separated from her, and persuaded her to renounce the informal marriage. Burns also agreed to dissolve the connexion, though deeply wounded at the apparent willingness of his mistress to give him up, and overwhelmed with feelings of the most distracting nature. He now [1786] prepared to embark for Jamaica, where his first situation would, in all probability, have [ Mr. Campbell is mistaken in this: Burns's first love was his handsome Nell; his Mary Campbell an after acquaintance.] TT been that of a negro-driver, when, before bidding a last adieu to his native country, he happily thought of publishing a collection of his poems. By this publication he gained about £20, which seasonably saved him from indenting himself as a servant, for want of money to procure a passage. With nine guineas out of this sum he had taken a steerage passage in the Clyde for Jamaica; and, to avoid the terrors of a jail, he had been for some time skulking from covert to covert. He had taken a last leave of his friends, and had composed the last song which he thought he should ever measure to Caledonia*, when the contents of a letter, from Dr. Blacklock of Edinburgh, to one of his friends, describing the encouragement which an edition of his poems would be likely to receive in the Scottish capital, suddenly lighted up all his prospects, and detained him from embarking. "I immediately posted," he says, “ to Edinburgh, without a single acquaintance or letter of introduction. The baneful star, which had so long shed its blasting influence on my zenith, for once made a revolution to the nadir." Though he speaks of having had no acquaintance in Edinburgh, he had been previously introduced in Ayrshire to Lord Daer, to Dugald Stewart, and to several respectable individuals, by the reputation which the first edition of his poems had acquired. He arrived in Edinburgh in 1786, and his reception there was more like an agreeable change of fortune in a romance, than like an event in ordinary life. His company was everywhere sought for; and it was soon found that the admiration which his poetry had excited, was but a part of what was due to the general eminence of his mental faculties. His natural eloquence, and his warm and social heart expanding under the influence of prosperity -which, with all the pride of genius, retained a quick and versatile sympathy with every variety of human character-made him equally fascinating in the most refined and convivial societies. For a while he reigned the fashion and idol of his native capital. The profits of his new edition enabled him in the succeeding year, 1787, to make a tour through a considerable extent both of the south and north of Scotland. The friend who accompanied him in this excursion gives a very interesting description of the impressions which he saw produced in Burns's mind from some of the romantic After he had been caressed and distinguished so much in Edinburgh, it was natural to anticipate that among the many individuals of public influence and respectability, who had countenanced his genius, some means might have been devised to secure to him a competent livelihood in a proper station of society. It was probably with this hope in his mind that he returned to Edinburgh after his summer excursion; and, unfor tunately for his habits, spent the winter of 1788 in accepting a round of convivial invitations. The hospitality of the north was not then what it now is. Refinement had not yet banished to the tavern the custom of bumper-toasts, and of pressing the bottle; and the master of the house was not thought very hospitable unless the majority of his male guests, at a regular party, were at least half intoxicated. Burns was invited and importuned to those scenes of dissipation; and beset, at least as much by the desire of others to enjoy his society when he was exhilarated, as by his own facility to lend it. He probably deluded his own reflections, by imagining, that in every fresh excess he was acquiring new friend, or attaching one already acquired But with all the admiration and declarations of personal friendship which were lavished on him, the only appointment that could be obtained for him was that of an officer of excise. In the mean time he had acquired a relish for a new and over-excited state of life. He had been expected to shine in every society; and, to use his own phrase," had been too often obliged to give his company a slice of his constitution." At least he was so infatuated as to think so. He had now to go back to the sphere of society from which he had emerged, with every preparatory er cumstance to render him discontented with it, that the most ingenious cruelty could have devised. After his appointment to the office of a gau, he took a farm at Ellisland, on the banks of the Nith, and settled in conjugal union with his Jean. But here his unhappy distraction betwee two employments, and his mode of life as ar exciseman, which made the public-house his fre quent abode, and his fatigues a temptation excesses, had so bad an influence on his affairs that at the end of three years and a half he see his stock, and gave up his farm. By promotion in the excise, his income had risen to £70 a year. and with only this income in immediate prosper he repaired to Dumfries, the new place of duty that was assigned to him by the board of commissioners Here his intemperate habits became confirme and his conduct and conversation grew da more unguarded. Times of political ranc had also arrived, in which he was too ardent : spirit to preserve neutrality. He took popular side, and became exposed to charges » disloyalty. He spurned, indeed, at those charge and wrote a very spirited explanation of his priz ciples. But his political conversations had been reported to the Board of Excise, and it required the interest of a powerful friend to support him in the humble situation which he held. It was at Dumfries that he wrote the finest of his songs for Thomson's "Musical Collection," and dated many of the most eloquent of his letters. In the winter of 1796 his constitution, broken by cares, irregularities, and passions, fell into a rapid decline. The summer returned; but only to shine on his sickness and his grave. In July his mind wandered into delirium; and in the same month, a fever, on the fourth day of its continuance, closed his life and sufferings, in his thirty-eighth year. Whatever were the faults of Burns, he lived unstained by a mean or dishonest action. To have died without debt, after supporting a family on £70 a year, bespeaks, after all, but little of the spendthrift. That income, on account of his incapacity to perform his duty, was even reduced to one half of its amount, at the period of his dying sickness; and humiliating threats of punishment, for opinions uttered in the confidence of private conversation, were among the last returns which the government of Scotland made to the man, whose genius attaches agreeable associations to the name of his country. His death seemed to efface the recollection of his faults, and of political differences, still harder to be forgotten. All the respectable inhabitants of Dumfries attended his funeral, whilst the volunteers of the city, and two regiments of native fencibles, attended with solemn music, and paid military honours at the grave of their illustrious countryman. Burns has given an elixir of life to his native dialect. The Scottish "Tam o' Shanter" will be read as long as any English production of the same century. The impression of his genius is deep and universal; and, viewing him merely as a poet, there is scarcely any other regret connected with his name, than that his productions, with all their merit, fall short of the talents which he possessed. That he never attempted any great work of fiction or invention, may be partly traced to the cast of his genius, and partly to his circumstances and defective education. His poetical temperament was that of fitful transports, rather than steady inspiration. Whatever he might have written, was likely to have been fraught with passion. There is always enough of interest in life to cherish the feelings of a man of genius; but it requires knowledge to enlarge and enrich his imagination. Of that knowledge which unrolls the diversities of human manners, adventures, and characters to a poet's study, he could have no great share; although he stamped the little treasure which he possessed in the mintage of sovereign genius. It has been asserted, that he received all the education which is requisite for a poet; he had learned reading, writing, and arithmetic; and he had dipped into French and geometry. To a poet, it must be owned, the three last of those acquisitions were quite superfluous. His education, it is also affirmed, was equal to Shakspeare's; but, without intending to make any comparison between the genius of the two bards, it should be recollected that Shakspeare lived in an age within the verge of chivalry, an age overflowing with chivalrous and romantic reading; that he was led by his vocation to have daily recourse to that kind of reading; that he dwelt on a spot which gave him constant access to it; and was in habitual intercourse with men of genius. Burns, after growing up to manhood under toils which exhausted his physical frame, acquired a scanty knowledge of modern books, of books tending for the most part to regulate the judgment more than to exercise the fancy. In the whole tract of his reading, there seems to be little that could cherish his inventive faculties. One material of poetry he certainly possessed, independent of books, in the legendary superstitions of his native country. But with all that he tells us of his early love of those superstitions, they seem to have come home to his mind with so many ludicrous associations of vulgar tradition, that it may be doubted if he could have turned them to account in an elevated work of fiction. Strongly and admirably as he paints the supernatural in "Tam o' Shanter," yet there, as everywhere else, he makes it subservient to comic effect. The fortuitous wildness and sweetness of his strains may, after all, set aside every regret that he did not attempt more superb and regular structures of fancy. He describes, as he says, the sentiments which he saw and felt in himself and his rustic compeers around him. His page is a lively image of the contemporary life and country from which he sprung. He brings back old Scotland to us with all her homefelt endearments, her simple customs, her festivities, her sturdy prejudices, and orthodox zeal, with a power that excites, alternately, the most tender and mirthful sensations. After the full account of his pieces which Dr. Currie has given, the English reader can have nothing new to learn respecting themt. On one powerfully comic piece Dr. Currie has not disserted, namely," The Holy Fair." It is enough, however, to mention the humour of this production, without recommending its subject. Burns, indeed, only laughs at [* Even, if Shakspeare's education was as humble as what Farmer supposed it to have been, it was beyond Burns's.] [Since this was written, much has been done to illustrate the life, writings, and genius of Burns; edition after edition has been called for of his works, and memoir after memoir. The lives by Mr. Lockhart and Mr. Allan Cunningham are too well known for eulogy or quotation; the vigorous vindicatory tone of the former, and the calm, clear, and earnest language of the latter, with the fullness of its information, leave little for succeeding writers to say by way of justification or illustration.] the abuses of a sacred institution; but the theme was of unsafe approach, and he ought to have avoided it. He meets us, in his compositions, undisguisedly as a peasant. At the same time, his observations go extensively into life, like those of a man who felt the proper dignity of human nature in the character of a peasant. The writer of some of the severest strictures that ever have been passed upon his poetry conceives that his beauties are considerably defaced by a portion of false taste and vulgar sentiment, which adhere to him from his low education. That Burns's eduIcation, or rather the want of it, excluded him from much knowledge, which might have fostered his inventive ingenuity, seems to be clear; but his circumstances cannot be admitted to have communicated vulgarity to the tone of his sentiments. They have not the sordid taste of low condition. It is objected to him, that he boasts too much of his own independence; but, in reality, this boast is neither frequent nor obtrusive; and it is in itself the expression of a manly and laudable feeling. So far from calling up disagreeable recollections of rusticity, his sentiments triumph, by their natural energy, over those false and fastidious distinctions which the mind is but too apt to form in allotting its sympathies to the sensibilities of the rich and poor. He carries us into the humble scenes of life, not to make us dole out our tribute of charitable compassion to paupers and cottagers, but to make us feel with them on equal terms, to make us enter into their passions and interests, and share our hearts with them as with brothers and sisters of the human species. a favourite with poets. Nor should his maxims, which inculcate charity and candour in judging of human frailties, be interpreted as a serious defence of them, as when he says, "Then gently scan your brother man, "Who made the heart, 'tis He alone He knows each chord, its various tone, It is still more surprising, that a critic, capable Or add fresh perfume to the violet† ;" but to debase the metal, and to take the odour and colour from the flower. It is exactly this superiority to "abasement" and polish which is the charm that distinguishes Burns from the herd of erotic songsters, from the days of the troubadours to the present time. He wrote from impulses more sincere than the spirit of chivalry, and even Lord Surrey and Sir Philip Sidney are cold and uninteresting lovers in comparison with the rustic Burns. The praises of his best pieces I have abstained from re-echoing, as there is no epithet of admiration which they deserve which has not been be stowed upon them. One point must be conceded to the strictures on his poetry, to which I have fierce and acrimonious. I am not, however, dis posed to consider his attacks on Rumble Jeha. and Holy Willie, as destitute of wit; and his poem on the clerical settlements at Kilmarnos blends a good deal of ingenious metaphor with his accustomed humour. Even viewing him as He is taxed, in the same place, with perpetually affecting to deride the virtues of prudence, regularity, and decency; and with being imbued with the sentimentality of German novels. Any- already alluded, that his personal satire was thing more remote from German sentiment than Burns's poetry could not easily be mentioned. But is he depraved and licentious in a comprehensive view of the moral character of his pieces? The over-genial freedom of a few assuredly ought not to fix this character upon the whole of them. It is a charge which we should hardly expect to see preferred against the author of "The Cotter's Saturday Night." He is the enemy, indeed, of that selfish and niggardly spirit which shelters itself under the name of prudence; but that pharisaical disposition has seldom been * Critique on the character of Burns, in the Edinburgh Review. Article, Cromek's Reliques of Burns. [By Lord Jeffrey. Mr. Campbell's reply to Lord Jeffrey is thought by the Edinburgh Reviewer of these Specimens to be substantially successful. See Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxi. p. 492.] a satirist, the last and humblest light in which ne can be regarded as a poet, it may still be said of him, "His style was witty, though it had some gall; Something he might have mended-so may all." [ This version by no means improves the origins! which is as follows: To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, King John, Act iv. Scene is A great poet quoting another should be correct.—BYBOR. Works, vol. xvi. p. 124.] THE TWA DOGS. "Twas in that place o' Scotland's isle, When wearing through the afternoon, The first I'll name, they ca'd him Cæsar, His locked, letter'd, braw brass collar Show'd him the gentleman and scholar : But though he was o' high degree, The fient a pride na pride had he; But wad hae spent an hour caressin, Ev'n with a tinkler-gipsy's messin. At kirk or market, mill or smiddie, Nae tawted tyke, though e'er sae duddie, But he wad stan't, as glad to see him, And stroan't on stanes an' hillocks wi' him. The tither was a ploughman's collie, His breast was white, his towzie back Nae doubt but they were fain o' ither, CÆSAR. I've aften wonder'd, honest Luath, Our Laird gets in his racked rents, A TALE. He ca's his coach, he ca's his horse; As lang's my tail, whare, through the steeks, Frae morn to e'en it's nought but toiling, At baking, roasting, frying, boiling; An' though the gentry first are stechin, Yet ev'n the ha' folk fill their pechan Wi' sauce, ragouts, and sic like trashtrie, That's little short o' downright wastrie. Our Whipper-in, wee blastit wonner, Poor worthless elf, it eats a dinner, Better than ony tenant man His Honour has in a' the lan': An' what poor cot-folk pit their painch in, I own it's past my comprehension. LUATH. Trowth, Caesar, whyles they're fash't enough; Wi' dirty stanes biggin a dyke, CESAR. But then to see how ye're negleckit, I've noticed, on our Laird's court-day, I see how folk live that hae riches; But surely poor folk maun be wretches! LUATH. They're nae sae wretched's ane wad think; |