At Whitsunday, 1766, Mr. Burns took the farm of Mount Oliphant from Mr. Ferguson. He had no capital, nor could he get his own little property sold to stock his farm; but his landlord lent him £100 for this purpose. This sum, though a sufficient proof of Mr. Ferguson's confidence in William Burns's honest industry, was totally inadequate to the profitable occupancy of a farm extending to seventy acres of bad land, for which a rent was payable of £40 annually during the first six years, and £45 afterwards. This farm, Gilbert Burns says, is "almost the very poorest soil I know of in a state of cultivation," and, "notwithstanding the extraordinary rise in the value of lands in Scotland, it was, after a very considerable sum laid out in improving it by the proprietor, let a few years ago £5 per annum lower than the rent paid for it by my father thirty years ago." The picture which follows is too affecting to be touched by the hand of a stranger.

"My father," continues Gilbert, "in consequence of this, soon came into difficulties, which were increased by the loss of several of his cattle by accidents and disease. To the buffetings of misfortune we could only oppose hard labour and the most rigid economy. We lived very sparingly. For several years butchers' meat was a stranger in the house, while all the members of the family exerted themselves to the utmost of their strength, and rather beyond it, in the labours of the farm. My brother, at the age of thirteen, assisted in thrashing the crop of corn, and at fifteen was the principal labourer on the farm, for we had no hired servant, male or female. The anguish of mind we felt at our tender years under these straits and difficulties was very great. To think of our father growing old (for he was now above fifty), broken down with the long-continued fatigues of his life, with a wife and five other children, and in a declining state of circumstances; these reflections produced in my brother's mind and mine sensations of the deepest distress. I doubt not but the hard labour and sorrow of this period of his life was, in a great measure, the cause of that depression of spirits with

which Robert was so often afflicted through his whole life afterwards. At this time he was almost constantly afflicted in the evenings with a dull headache, which at a future period of his life was exchanged for a palpitation of the heart, and a threatening of fainting and suffocation in his bed in the night-time. By a stipulation in my father's lease, he had a right to throw it up if he thought proper at the end of every sixth year. He attempted to fix himself in a better farm at the end of the first six years, but failing in that attempt, he continued where he was for six years more. He then took the farm of Lochlee, of 130 acres, at the rent of twenty shillings an acre, in the parish of Tarbolton, of Mr. then a merchant in Ayr, and now (1797) a merchant in Liverpool. He removed to this farm at Whitsunday, 1777, and possessed it only seven years. No writing had ever been made out of the conditions of the lease; a misunderstanding took place respecting them; the subjects in dispute were submitted to arbitration, and the decision involved my father's affairs in ruin. He lived to know of this decision, but not to see any execution in consequence of it. He died on the 13th of February, 1784."

Previously to the death of his venerable and unfortunate father, Burns and his brother Gilbert, with the view of rendering this farm more productive, attempted to raise a little flax; and an establishment for the sale of it in Irvine was projected. Thither, therefore, Robert went in 1781 to superintend the sales, and to carry on the business of a flax-dresser; but ofter a few months' residence the shop was accidentally burnt, and that speculation being thus terminated, he returned to Lochlee and participated in the anguish and the toil which his father's successless struggles, poverty, and death left as the portion of his widow and children.

William Burns's family were now bereaved of his affectionate protection, and were, indeed, without a home in which to shelter their heads. Robert and Gilbert, in anticipation of adversity, had previously taken the farm

of Mossgiel as an asylum for them all. This was intended to be a joint establishment, in which every member of the family should contribute a proportion of what they could give; and in calculating the value of their respective contributions, Robert's services were rated as worth £7 per annum of wages-a sum so entirely adequate to all his wants that his expenses never exceeded its scanty amount, although his acquaintance with scenes beyond the circle of domestic worth and innocence began to open up to him new and less salutary channels of expenditure.

During his residence at Mossgiel he formed an acquaintance with Jean Armour, his future wife. This led to an intimacy which was to be regretted on account of its immediate consequences; but although the familiarity which ensued was, in any point of view, imprudent, it was characterised from first to last by every feature of a guileless and honourable attachment. It became expedient, however, that a marriage should be declared; and Burns avowed, by a written document, and by appearing in presence of a magistrate circumstances sufficient according to the law of Scotland-that his intercourse with Miss Armour had been in the privileged and legal, though for a time unacknowledged, relation of a husband.

The farm occupied by the family was unprofitable, notwithstanding all their exertions: being destitute of capital, and four bad crops occurring in succession, they were obliged to relinquish the lease of Mossgiel. Robert was therefore quite unable at the time to support a wife and family, and having manfully and honestly rescued the reputation of his wife from reproach, he proposed to leave her under her father's protection until better fortune, which he expected to shine on him in Jamaica, should enable him to place her in a situation better suited to his wishes; but her parents expressed such a repugnance to the union that they induced their daughter to dissolve her connection with Burns, by destroying the evidence of her marriage, and submitting to the inevitable disrepute of such a measure. Burns, in agony and distraction, under

such untoward circumstances, was willing to remain at home and provide as he best could for his family; but, with a peculiarity of views quite unaccountable, her relatives spurned all connection with a poor man, and even employed legal measures against him for aliment to the fruits of his marriage; for in the eye of morality and of law, Burns and Jean Armour must be regarded as married at the period to which we allude, although the ceremony was not formally celebrated until more fortunate occurrences had removed the objections of his wife's relations. In this situation he resolved to persevere in his Jamaica adventure, and procured the promise of a situation as Overseer on an estate belonging to Dr. Douglas. But when nothing prevented his departure but want of money to pay the expense of his voyage, he was rescued, by the expedient which he adopted to procure it, from the pestilential life and death of a West Indian slave driver, and appeared before his country as an author of such uncommon power as to have rendered the most minute details of his short and eventful life a subject of extraordinary and still undiminished interest.

Without, however, entering on these, we shall merely state that in the year 1786 he published at Kilmarnock a volume of Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect— that their excellence was immediately acknowledged by the rapid sale of six hundred copies and the warm commendation of every class of readers into whose hands they found their way-that he made £20 of profit on the sale; and, although he had taken leave of his friends, was induced by this gleam of success, and at the suggestion of Dr. Blacklock, to relinquish his plan of going abroad, and came to Edinburgh in November, 1786, for the purpose of publishing another edition of his poems. In Edinburgh he was applauded, caressed, and befriended by the most eminent characters for rank, learning, or benevolence; and no similar instance, perhaps, ever occurred in the history of genius of a transition so rapid from the very depths of distress and obscurity into an overwhelming blaze of admiration.

The second edition of his poems was published at Edinburgh in the year 1787. During his stay he adorned the circles of literature and fashion in Edinburgh with the native charms of his unaffected and masculine powers of sociality, newly awakened to the world, and displayed the wonders of his genius more impressively, perhaps, in his conversational eloquence than even in his poetry. Not to copy details which will be found in other parts of this volume, we shall only glance at the subsequent events in his life, which serve as landmarks for tracing out the lineaments of his moral and poetic character.

In February, 1788, he settled accounts with his bookseller, and after defraying all the expenses recently incurred, he found himself worth £500 sterling. To his brother Gilbert, the brother of his warmest affections, and the protector of the little family group, he lent £200, intending with the remainder to commence a separate establishment, and receive Mrs. Burns into his own house. He accordingly took a farm, and at Whitsunday, 1788, entered on Ellisland, on the estate of Mr. Millar of Dalswinton, about six miles distant from Dumfries. The virtual marriage of Burns had been disguised by the intervention of his wife's relatives, and every proof of it destroyed; but the incorruptible honour of his spirit prompted him when he felt himself able in a pecuniary sense to proclaim with all legal solemnity the existence of a union with Mrs. Burns, which, indeed, had all along legally existed. "Her happiness or misery were in my hands," said he, "and who could trifle with such a deposite ?"

In order to eke out the emoluments of his farm, Burns conceived the unhappy design of adding to the pursuits which it required the income of a revenue officer-a situation which was extremely unfit for him, if we consider his social propensities, the tone of his mind, and the high place which he was destined to fill in the estimation and literature of his country. He was soon enabled to realise his wishes, and became an Excise officer; but the constant attention to minute concerns, which alone