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This is the language of a man who thought himself obliged. He wrote nothing half so tender or so touching on the death of the beautiful Miss Burnet, which happened about this time; he tried, but the words came with reluctance :

"Life ne'er exulted in so rich a prize

As Burnet, lovely from her native skies;
Nor envious death so triumph'd in a blow

As that which laid th' accomplish'd Burnet low."

Some will like better the compliment which he paid her in prose. On returning from a first visit to Lord Monboddo, his friend Geddes, of Leith, said, "Well, and did you admire the young lady ?” —“I admired God Almighty more than ever," said the Poet; "Miss Burnet is the most heavenly of all His works!" He did not hesitate to use expressions bordering on profanity when speaking of female charms.

"As to my private concerns," he says to Dr. Moore, "I am going on a mighty tax-gatherer before the Lord, and have lately had the interest to get myself ranked on the lists of the Excise as a supervisor. I had an immense loss in the death of the Earl of Glencairn, the patron from whom all my fame and good fortune took its rise; independent of my grateful attachment to him, which was indeed so strong that it pervaded my very soul, and was entwined with the thread of my existence. So soon as the prince's friends had got in, my getting forrd in the Excise would have been an easier siness than otherwise it will be." In these dest hopes the Poet indulged. He had

eady numbered himself with the "prince's nds" but the prince was far from power; 1 had Burns lived till "the dog had," as he d "got his day," he might have found reaa to say with Scripture, "put not your trust princes."

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self-consequence," the Earl of Buchan-to come to the coronation of the bust of Thomson on Ednam-hill, at Dryburgh, on the 22nd of September, 1791.-"Suppose Mr. Burns," so runs the mandate, should, leaving the Nith, go across the country, and meet the Tweed at the nearest point from his farm-and, wandering along the pastoral banks of Thomson's pure parent-stream, catch inspiration in the devious walk, till he finds Lord Buchan sitting on the ruins of Dryburgh; there the Commendator will give him a hearty welcome, and try to light his lamp at the pure flame of native genius, upon the altar of Caledonian virtue." The Poet had the sickle in his hand when the invitation came; he laid it down, took a walk along the banks of the Nith, composed the verses "to the Shade of Thomson," and sent them to apologize for his absence.

If his poetic feelings were awakened by the invitation of Lord Buchan, his jacobitical partialities were gratified by the present of a valuable snuff-box from Lady Winifred Maxwell, the last in direct descent of the noble family of Nithsdale. This was an acknowledgment for his "Lament of Mary Queen of Scots." There was a picture of that ill-starred princess on the lid.-"In the moment of poetic composition," said Burns, "the box shall be my inspiring genius."-The ballad is a pathetic one. He imagines the queen in an English prison; she hears the birds sing-feels the odours of flowers, and her heart swells with the season:

"Now blooms the lily by the bank,

The primrose down the brae;
The hawthorn's budding in the glen,
And milk-white is the slae:
The meanest hind in fair Scotland

May rove their sweets amang;
But I, the queen of a' Scotland,
Maun lie in prison strang!"

He had been reading Percy's ballads, and his
verses caught the olden hue and tone of those
affecting compositions.

In addition to the sorrow which he felt for e loss of valuable friends, his horse fell with m and broke his arm; and his farm having ept away all his ready money, visions of verty began to hover in his sight. "Poverty!" The great Glasgow road ran through the exclaimed, "thou half-sister of Death-thou Poet's ground, and the coach often set down usin-german of hell! oppressed by thee, the west-country passengers, who, trusting to the 1 of genius, whose ill starred ambition plants airt they came from, and the accessibility of the n at the tables of the fashionable and polite, bard, made their sometimes unwelcome appearist see, in suffering silence, his remarks neglect- ance at the door of Ellisland. Such visitations and his person despised: while shallow great---from which no man of genius is free-cons, in his idiot attempts at wit, shall meet with sumed his time and wasted his substance-for countenance and applause." In such sarcastic hungry friends could not be entertained on air. sentiments as these Burns began more and more A neighbour told me that he once found a couple to indulge:-"How wretched is the man," he of Ayr-shire travellers, plaided, capped, and "that hangs upon the favours of the great! over-alled, seated at the door of Burns-their -to shrink from every dignity of man at the sense of etiquette not allowing them to enter approach of a lordly piece of self-consequence, the house in such trim. They were drinking who, amid all his tinsel and glitter, and stately punch, toasting Avr- auld town and new— hauteur, is but a creature formed as thou art vowing that Mauchline was the loveliest of all and, perhaps, not so well formed." spots, and Kyle the heart of Scotland. They found their way into Dumfries some time during the night.

says,

He could scarcely resist, however, the request of one of the vainest of those "lordly pieces of

In the course of this summer two English gentlemen, who had met Burns in Edinburgh, paid him a visit at Ellisland. On calling at the house, they were told he had walked out on the banks of the Nith. They proceeded in search of him, and found him

"In sooth it was in strange array."

elegant than the upright stub of a burdock; and that from something innate and independent of all association of ideas;-these I had set down as irrefragable, orthodox truths, until perusing your book shook my faith." "This," says Dugald Stewart, I remember to have read with some degree of surprise at the distinct conception he appeared from it to have formed of the general principles of the law of association." It would seem, however, that the Poet, if convinced, was convinced against his will: he was slow in believing that at any time a burdock was esteemed equal in loveliness to a rose, or the chirp of a hedge-sparrow reckoned as noble as the cry of an eagle.

["It may naturally excite some surprise," says Lockhart, "that of the convivial conversation of so distinguished a convivialist, so few specimens have been preserved in the Memoirs of his Life. The truth seems to be that those of his companions who chose to have the best memory for such things happened also to have the keenest relish for his wit and his humour, when exhibited in their coarser phases. Among a heap of MS. memoranda with which I have been favoured, I find but little that one could venture to present in print; and the following specimens of that little must, for the present, suffice.

On a rock that projected into the stream they saw a man angling; he had a cap of fox-skin on his head, a loose great-coat fixed round him by a belt from which hung an enormous Highland broadsword ;-it was Burns. He received them with great cordiality, and asked them to share his humble dinner. On the table they found boiled beef, with vegetables and barleybroth, of which they partook heartily. After dinner, the bard told them he had no wine to offer, nothing better than Highland whiskey, of which Mrs. Burns set a bottle on the table, and placed his punch-bowl of Scottish marble before him. He mixed the spirit with water and sugar, filled their glasses, and invited them to drink. They were in haste-whiskey, to their southern stomachs, was scarcely tolerable; but the ardent hospitality of the Poet prevailed -the punch began to disappear, and his conversation was unto them as a charm. He ranged over a great variety of topics, illuminating whatever he touched. He related the tales "A gentleman who had recently returned of his infancy and of his youth; he recited from the East Indies, where he had made a large some of the gayest and some of the tenderest of fortune, which he showed no great alacrity his poems; in the wildest of his strains of mirth about spending, was of opinion, it seems, one he threw in some touches of melancholy, and day, that his company had had enough of wine, spread around him the electric emotions of his rather sooner than they came to that conclusion: powerful mind. The Highland whiskey im- he offered another bottle in feeble and hesitating proved in its flavour; the marble bowl was terms, and remained dallying with the corkagain and again emptied and replenished; the screw, as if in hopes that some one would interPoet's guests forgot the flight of time and the fere, and prevent further effusion of Bordeaux. prudence becoming visiters, at the hour of Sir,' said Burns, losing temper, and betraying midnight, lost their way returning to Dumfries, in his mood something of the old rusticity-and could scarcely count its three steeples assisted Sir, you have been in Asia, and for aught I by the morning dawn. know, on the Mount of Moriah, and you seem to hang over your tappit-hen as remorsefully as Abraham did over his son Isaac.-Come, Sir, to the sacrifice!'—

Burns still maintained his intercourse with the literati of Scotland. He visited Edinburgh once more, and finally arranged his affairs with the difficult Creech; called on some of his former intimates, and left his card at the door of several lords; but his reception seems, save from one or two, to have been uncordial. What the learned thought of the grasp of the Poet's mind may be gathered from the surprise which one of them expresses at his comprehending the meaning of Alison's work on the principles of taste:"I own, sir," said the Poet to the philosopher," that at first glance several of your propositions startled me as paradoxical. That the martial clangour of a trumpet had something in it vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime than the twingle-twangle of a Jew's harp; that the delicate flexure of a rose-twig, when the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of the dawn, was infinitely more beautiful and

"At another party, the society had suffered considerably from the prosing of a certain wellknown provincial Bore of the first magnitude: and Burns as much as any of them; although overawed, as it would seem, by the rank of the nuisance, he had not only submitted, but condescended to applaud. The grandee being suddenly summoned to another company in the same tavern, Burns immediately addressed himself to the chair, and demanded a bumper. The president thought he was about to dedicate his toast to the distinguished absentee: 'I give,' said the Bard, 'I give you the health, gentlemen all, of the waiter that called my Lord out of the room!"]

If his poems of this year are not numerous, the "Elegy on Captain Matthew Henderson”

of printing it separately with the air, which is a fine old Highland one; some one whom he consulted advised him against this, and so pre

is one of the sweetest and most beautiful of his latter compositions. He calls on nature, animate and inanimate, to lament the loss of one who held his honours immediately from God:-vented him from making his country acquainted

"Mourn, ye wee songsters o' the wood;
Ye grouse that crap the heather-bud;
Ye curlews calling thro' a clud;

Ye whistling plover:

An' mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood-
He's gane for ever!':

He copied out the poem, and sending it to his friend, M'Murdo, said, "You knew Henderson; I have not flattered his memory." The hero of this noble poem was a soldier of fortune: one who rose by deeds, and not by birth: he was universally esteemed in the northern circles for the generosity of his nature, his courtesy and gentlemanly bearing: he died young.

an

Burns wrote several new songs, and amended some old ones, during this season, for his friend Johnson's work. "Afton water" was offering of other days to the accomplished lady of Stair and Afton. "Bonnie Bell" is in honour of the charms of a Nithsdale dame, and "The deuk's dang o'er my daddie" had its origin in an old chant, some of the words of which the song still retains. "She's fair and fause" records the unfortunate termination of a friend's courtship; there is all or more than the bitterness of disappointed love in the concluding

verse:

"Whoe'er ye be that woman love,

To this be never blind,

Nae ferlie 'tis, tho' fickle she prove,
A woman has't by kind.

O woman! lovely woman fair!

An angel form's fa'n to thy share,
"Twad been o'er meikle to gi'en thee mair-
I mean an angel mind."

"The Deil's awa' wi' the Exciseman" is at once witty and ludicrous. It harmonized with the feelings of the north, where a gauger was long looked on as a national grievance, or rather insult. "The Song of Death" is the last lyric which the rural walks of Ellisland inspired. On the 17th of December, 1791, he copied it for Mrs. Dunlop, and said, "I have just finished the following song, which, to a lady, the descendant of Wallace, and herself the mother of several soldiers, needs neither preface nor apology." He imagines a field of battle, and puts his truly heroic song into the mouths of men wounded and dying; the sentiments uttered were those of his heart :

"In the field of proud honour, our swords in our hands,
Our king and our country to save,-
While victory shines on life's last ebbing sands,
Oh! who would not die with the brave!"

"This hymn," says Currie, "is worthy of the Grecian muse, when Greece was most conspicuous for genius and valour." Burns thought

with his unaltered feeling, at a time when his character was beginning to be maligned by the secret whisperer and the pensioned spy.

Burns briefly, in his letters to his brother and others, intimates the loss he endured by continu. ing in Ellisland; but he has no where assigned reasons, nor entered into explanations. This has been misinterpreted to his injury. He alludes to his own trials, when he says to Mrs. Dunlop:-"I wish the farmer great joy of his new acquisition to his family: I cannot say that I give him joy of his life as a farmer. "Tis, as a cursed life! As to a laird farming his own a farmer paying a dear, unconscionable rent, property, sowing his own corn in hope, and reaping it in spite of brittle weather, in gladness, knowing that none can say unto him, his flocks, rejoicing at Christmas, and begetting "What dost thou ?'-fattening his herds, shearing sons and daughters, until he be the venerated, grey-haired leader of a little tribe-'tis a heavenly life! but devil take the life of reaping the fruits that another must eat!"

When it was made known in December, 1791, that Burns was about to relinquish the lease of Ellisland, his merits as a farmer were eagerly canvassed by the husbandmen around. One imputed his failure to the duties of the Excise; to his being compelled to gallop two hundred miles per week, to inspect yeasty barrels, when his farm required his presence; another said that Mrs. Burns was intimate with a town life, but ignorant of the labours of barn and byre; while a third observed that Ellisland was out of heart, and, in short, was the dearest farm on Nithsdale. The failure of his farming projects, and the limited income with which he was compelled to support an increasing family and an expensive station in life, preyed upon his spirits; and, during these fits of despair, he was willing too often to become the companion of the thoughtless and the gross. I am grieved to say that, besides leaving the book too much for the bowl, and grave and wise friends for lewd and reckless companions, he was also in the occasional practise of composing songs, in which he surpassed the licentiousness, as well as the wit and humour, of the old Scottish muse. These have unfortunately found their way to the press, and I am afraid they cannot be recalled. "The reader," says Lockhart, "must be sufficiently prepared to hear that, from the time when he entered on his excise duties, the Poet more and more neglected the concerns of his farm: occasionally he might be seen holding the plough, an exercise in which he excelled, and was proud of excelling, or stalking down his furrows, with the white sheet of grain wrapt about him, a 'teaty seedsman;'

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but he was more commonly occupied in far different pursuits.'

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Had Mr. Miller of Dalswinton been on the same friendly terms with the Poet as when, in a fit of generous feeling, he offered him the choice of his farms at a rent of his own fixing, Burns might have lived long, and, perhaps, prosperously, in Ellisland. But they were too haughty in their natures to continue friends; Miller required respect and submission, which the Poet was not disposed to pay; and I have heard it averred by one who was in a situation to know, that the former was not loth to get rid of a tenant by whose industry he had no chance of being enriched, from whom he could not well exact rent, and whose wit paid little respect to persons. The Poet dispersed his stock and implements by auction, among many eager purchasers; restored the land and onstead to the proprietor; and, paying him one pound fourteen shillings for dilapidations in thatch, glass, and slating, moved off with his household to Dumfries, leaving nothing at Ellisland but a putting-stone, with which he loved to exercise his strength-a memory of his musings which can never die, and three hundred pounds of his money sunk beyond redemption, in a speculation from which all augured happiness.

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BURNS removed his wife and children, with his humble furniture, to a house near the lower end of the Bank-Vennel in Dumfries. The neighbourhood was to his mind; and, as this was near the stamp-office, it is probable that John Syme, the "Stamp-office Johnnie," of the Poet's election ballad, influenced his choice. He had other neighbours whom he could not but esteem: Captain Hamilton lived on the opposite side of the way; Provost Staig, with whose family Burns was already intimate, was but a few doors off, while Dr. Maxwell, a skilful physician, an accomplished gentleman, and a confirmed republican, dwelt in the next street. The Sands, where cattle are bought and sold, was beside him, the Nith was within a good stone's cast-the town too is compact and beautiful.

The Poet had no expensive acquaintance to entertain; and his wife, with a single servant, was frugal, and anxious to make the little they had go far. But he had no longer the rough abundance of a farm to resort to; his meal, his malt, his butter, and his milk, were all to buy, and his small salary required the guidance of a considerate head and hand. To calculate was easy, had it been possible to lay down an exact system of expenditure; as a man of genius, he was liable to the outlay of correspondence, distant and often unexpected; he was exposed to the inroads of friends and admirers, who consumed his time and his sub

stance also; he longed for knowledge, which, to obtain, he had to buy; he desired to see by books what the republic of literature, of which he was a member, was about, and this required money; and he was, moreover, of a nature kindly and hospitable, and could not live in that state of frugal circumspection which a gentleman who kept a house, and sometimes a horse, on seventy pounds per annum, required.

Even the wandering poor were to the Poet a heavy tax; he allowed no one to go past his door without a halfpenny or a handful of meal. He was kind to such helpless creatures as are weak in mind, and saunter harmlessly about: a poor half-mad creature-the Madge Wildfire, it is said, of Scott-always found a mouthful ready for her at the bard's fire-side; nor was he unkind to a crazy and tippling prodigal named Quin. "Jamie," said the Poet one day, as he gave him a penny, "you should pray to be turned from the evil of your ways; you are ready to run now to melt that into whiskey." "Turn," said Jamie, who was a wit in his way, "I wish some one would turn me into the worm o' Will Hyslop's whiskey-still, that the drink might dribble continually through me." "Well said, Jamie!" answered the Poet, "you shall have a glass of whiskey once a week for that, if you'll come sober for it." A friend rallied Burns for indulging such creatures:-" You don't understand the matter," said he, "they are poets: they have the madness of the muse, and all they want is the inspiration—a mere trifle!"

The labours of the excise now and then led him along a barren line of sea-coast, extending from Caerlaverock-Castle, where the Maxwells dwelt of old, to Annan water. This district fronts the coast of England; and, from its vicinity to the Isle of Man, was in those days infested with daring smugglers, who poured in brandy, Holland-gin, tea, tobacco, and salt, in vast quantities. Small farmers, and persons engaged in inland traffic, diffused these commodities through the villages; they were generally vigorous and daring fellows, in whose hearts a gauger or two bred no dismay. They were well mounted, acquainted with the use of a cutlass, an oak-sapling, or a whip loaded with lead; and, when mounted between a couple of brandy-kegs, and their horses' heads turned to the hills, not one exciseman in ten dared to stop them. To prevent the disembarkation of rungoods, when a smuggling craft made its appearance, was a duty to which the Poet was liable to be called, and many a darksome hour he was compelled to keep watch, that the peasantry might not have the pleasure of drinking tea or brandy duty free. There was something which suited his fancy in all this. He had, galloping from point to point, much excitement of mind, and hopes of golden booty, but not without blows.

In whatever adventure he was engaged, "still his speech was song.” Mounted on the successor of Jenny Geddes, whose mortal career closed at Ellisland, he "muttered his wayward fancies as he roved," and sang the beauty of the maidens of the land, and the pastoral charms of the country. It was in one of his expeditions against the smugglers that he wrote the brief but exquisite lyric, "Louis, what reck I by thee?" To say much in a few words is one of the characteristics of his

muse:

"Louis, what reck I by thee, Or Geordie on his ocean? Dyvor, beggar loons to me,

I reign in Jeannie's bosom !"

"Out over the Forth" is another of his short and lucky compositions. "The carding o't" belongs to the same class; nothing in all the compass of lyric verse is more truly natural:

"I coft a stane o' haslock woo'

To make a coat to Johnnie o't;
For Johnnie is my only jo,

I lo'e him best of ony yet.
For though his locks be lyart grey,

And though his brow be beld aboon,
Yet I hae seen him on a day

The pride of a' the parishen."

One day, during the month of August, he was surprised by a visit from Miss Lesley Baillie, afterwards Mrs. Cuming of Logie, a beauty of the west of Scotland.- "On which," says Burns to Mrs. Dunlop, "I took my horse, though God knows I could ill spare the time, accompanied her father and her fourteen or fifteen miles, and dined and spent the day with them. 'Twas about nine, I think, when I left them, and, riding home, I composed the following Some of the verses of this song are

ballad."

in his best manner:

"To see her is to love her,

And love but her for ever:
For nature made her what she is,
And never made anither!
The deil he couldna skaith thee,

Nor aught that wad belang thee,
He'd look into thy bonny face,

And say, 'I canna wrang thee.'"'

Most of the songs which I have hitherto noticed were written for the Museum of Johnson. A candidate of higher pretence now made his appearance: this was George Thomson. "I have," said he, in a letter to Burns, "employed many leisure hours in selecting and collecting the best of our national melodies for publication. I have engaged Pleyel, the most agreeable composer living, to put accompaniments to these, and also to compose an instrumental prelude and conclusion to each air. To render this work perfect, I am desirous of having the poetry improved, wherever it seems unworthy of the music; and that it is so, in many instances, is allowed by every one con

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versant with our musical collections. remove this reproach would be an easy task to the author of the Cotter's Saturday Night; and, for the honour of Caledonia, I would fain hope he may be induced to take up the pen."

An application such as this appealed to too many associations for Burns to resist; he replied with something like the enthusiasm of a lover when his mistress asks a favour, “As the request you make," said the Poet, September 16, 1792,

will positively add to my enjoyments in complying with it, I shall enter into your undertaking with all the small portion of abilities I have, strained to their utmost exertion by the impulse of enthusiasm. If you are for English verses, there is, on my part, an end of the matter. Whether in the simplicity of the ballad, or the pathos of the song, I can only hope to please myself in being allowed, at least, a sprinkling of our native tongue. As to any remuneration, you may think my songs either above or below price; for they shall absolutely be the one or the other. In the honest enthusiasm in which I embark in your undertaking, to talk of money would be downright prostitution of soul!"

To stipulations such as these Thomson could have no objections to offer: he was glad to get the Bard on his own romantic terms. The first fruits of the bargain was "The Lea Rig." Though a beautiful song, it seems not to have "I tried been to the satisfaction of the Poet. my hand on the air," he says, "and could make nothing more of it than the verses which I enclose. Heaven knows they are poor enough! All my earlier love songs were the breathings of ardent passion; and though it might have been easy, in after times, to have given them the polish, yet that polish would have defaced the legend of my heart which was so faithfully inscribed on them."

The

"Highland Mary" followed this. lyrical flow of the verse, and the truth and pathos of the sentiments, make it a favourite with all who have voices or feelings. "I think," says the Poet, "the song is in my happiest manner: it refers to one of the most interesting passages in my youthful days; and I own I should be much flattered to see the verses set to an air which would ensure celebrity. Perhaps, after all, 'tis the still glowing prejudice of my heart that throws a borrowed lustre over the merits of the composition." He makes inanimate nature a sharer in his rapture :

"How sweetly bloom'd the gay green birk!
How rich the hawthorn's blossom!
As underneath their fragrant shade
I clasp'd her to my bosom !
The golden hours, on angel wings,
Flew o'er me and my dearie;
For dear to me, as light and life,

Was my sweet Highland Mary !"

This exquisite lyric proves how much the passionate affections of his youth still moved

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