**Burns, Robert**, was a native of Ayrshire, one of the western counties of Scotland. He was the son of humble parents; and his father passed through life in the condition of a hired labourer, or of a small farmer. Even in this situation, however, it was not hard for him to send his children to the parish school, to receive the ordinary instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, and the principles of religion. By this course of education young Robert profited to a degree that might have encouraged his friends to destine him to one of the liberal professions, had not his father's poverty made it necessary to remove him from school, as soon as he had grown up, to earn for himself the means of support as a hired ploughboy or shepherd.

The expense of education in the parish-schools of Scotland is so small, that hardly any parents who are able to labour want the means of giving to their children at least such education as young Burns received. From the spring labours of a ploughboy, from the summer employment of a shepherd, the peasant-youth often returns for a few months, eagerly to pursue his education at the parish-school.

It was so with Burns; he returned from labour to learning, and from learning went again to labour, till his mind began to open to the charms of taste and knowledge; till he began to feel a passion for books, and for the subjects of books, which was to give a colour to the whole thread of his future life. On nature, he soon began to gaze with new discernment and with new enthusiasm: his mind's eye opened to perceive affecting beauty and sublimity, where, by the mere grots, peasant, there was sought to be seen but water, earth, and sky—but animals, plants, and foil.

What might perhaps first contribute to dispose his mind to poetical efforts, is one particular in the devotional piety of the Scotch peasantry. It is still common for them to make their children get by heart the Psalms of David, in the version of homely rhymes which is used in their churches. In the morning and in the evening of every day, or at least on the evening of every Saturday and Sunday, these Psalms are sung in solemn family-devotion, a chapter of the Bible is read, and contemporary prayer is fervently uttered. The whole books of the sacred Scriptures are thus continually in the hands of almost every peasant. And it is impossible that there should not be occasionally some souls among them, awakened to the divine emotions of genius by that rich assemblage which those books present, of almost all that is interesting in incidents, or picturesque in imagery, or affectingly sublime or tender in sentiments and character. It is impossible that those rude rhymes, and the simple artless music with which they are accompanied, should not occasionally excite some ear to a fond perception of the melody of verse. That Burns had felt these impulses, will appear undeniably certain to whoever shall carefully peruse his Cor- tar's Saturday's Night; or shall remark, with nice observation, the various fragments of Scripture sentiment, of Scripture imagery, of Scripture language, which are scattered throughout his works.

Still more interesting to the young peasantry are those ancient ballads of love and war, of which a great number are, in the south of Scotland, yet popularly known, and often sung by the rustic maid or matron at her spinning-wheel. They are listened to with ravished ears by old and young. Their rude melody; that mingled curiosity and awe which are naturally excited by the very idea of their antiquity; the exquisitely tender and natural complaints sometimes poured forth in them; the gallant deeds of knightly heroism, which they sometimes celebrate; their wild tales of demons, ghosts, and fairies, in whose existence superstition alone has believed; the manners which they represent; the obsolete, yet picturesque and expressive, language in which they are often clothed—give them wonderful power to transport every imagination, and to agitate every heart. To the soul of Burns they were like a happy breeze touching the wires of an Æolian harp, and calling forth the most ravishing melody.

Beside all this, the Gentle Shepherd, and the other poems of Allan Ramsay, have long been highly popular in Scotland. They fell early into the hands of Burns; and while the fond applause which they received drew his emulation, they presented to him likewise treasures of phraseology and models of versification. He got acquainted at the same time with the poetry of Robert Fergusson, written chiefly in the Scottish dialect, and exhibiting many specimens of uncommon poetical excellence. The Seasons of Thomson too, the Grave of Blair, the far-famed Elegy of Gray, the Paradise Loft of Milton, perhaps the Minstrel of Beattie, were so commonly read, even among those with whom Burns would naturally associate, that poetical curiosity, although even less ardent than his, could in such circumstances have little difficulty in procuring them.

With such means to give his imagination a poetical bias, and to favour the culture of his taste and genius, Burns gradually became a poet. He was not, however, one of those forward children who, from a mistaken impulse, begin prematurely to write and to rhyme, and hence never attain to excellence. Conversing familiarly for a long while with the works of those poets who were known to him; contemplating the aspect of nature in a district which exhibits an uncommon assemblage of the beautiful and the ruggedly grand, of the cultivated and the wild; looking upon human life with an eye quick and keen, to remark as well the stronger and leading, as the nicer and subordinate, features of character; to discriminate the generous, the honourable, the manly, in conduct, from the ridiculous, the base, and the mean—he was distinguished among his fellows for extraordinary intelligence, good sense, and penetration, long before others, or perhaps even himself, suspected him to be capable of writing verses. His mind was mature, and well stored with such knowledge as lay within his reach: he had made himself master of powers of language, superior to those of almost any former writer in the Scottish dialect, before he conceived the idea of surpassing Ramsay and Fergusson.

Hitherto he had conversed intimately only with peasants on his own level; but having got admission into the fraternity of free-masons, he had the fortune, whether good or bad, to attract in the lodges the notice of gentlemen better qualified than his more youthful companions to call forth the powers of his mind, and to show him that he was indeed a poet. A masonic song, a satirical epigram, a rhyming epistle to a friend, attempted with success, taught him to know his own powers, and gave him confidence to try tasks more arduous, and which should command still higher bursts of applause.

The annual celebration of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, in the rural parishes of Scotland, has much in it of those old popish festivals, in which superstition, traffic, and amusement, used to be strangely intermingled. Burns saw, and seized in it one of the happiest of all subjects, to afford scope for the display of that strong and piercing sagacity by which he could almost intuitively distinguish the reasonable from the absurd, and the becoming from the ridiculous; of that picturesque power of fancy, which enabled him to represent scenes, and persons, and groups, and looks, attitude, and gestures, in a manner almost as lively and impressive, even in words, as if all the artifices and energies of the pencil had been employed; of that knowledge which he had necessarily acquired of the manners, passions, and prejudices of the rustics around him, of whatever was ridiculous, no less than of whatever was affectingly beautiful, in rural life.

A thousand prejudices of Popish, and perhaps too of ruder Pagan superstition, have from time immemorial been connected in the minds of the Scotch peasantry, with the annual recurrence of the Eve of the Festival of all the Saints, or Halloween. These were all intimately known to Burns, and had made a powerful impression upon his imagination and feelings. He chose them for the subject of a poem, and produced a piece which is almost to frenzy the delight of those who are best acquainted with its subject; and which will not fail to preserve the memory of the prejudices and usages which it describes, when they shall perhaps have ceased to give one merry evening in the year to the cottage fire-side.

The simple joys, the honest love, the sincere friendship, the ardent devotion of the cottage; whatever in the more solemn part of the rustic's life is humble and artless, without being mean or unseemly—or tender and dignified, without aspiring to affected grandeur, or to unnatural bulked pathos, had deeply impressed the imagination of the rising poet; had, in some sort, wrought itself into the very texture of the fibres of his soul. He tried to express in verse what he most tenderly felt, what he most enthusiastically imagined; and produced the Cottar's Saturday's Night.

These pieces, the true effusions of genius, informed by reading and observation, and prompted by its own native ardour, as well as by friendly applause, were soon handed about amongst the most discerning of Burns's acquaintance; and were by every new reader perused and reperused, with an eagerness of delight and approbation which would not suffer their author long to withhold them from the press. A subscription was proposed; was earnestly promoted by some gentlemen, who were glad to interest themselves in behalf of such signal poetical merit; was soon crowded with the names of a considerable number of the inhabitants of of Ayrshire, who in the proffered purchase sought not less to gratify their own paffion for Scottifh poetry, than to encourage the wonderful ploughman. At Kilmar-nock were the poems of Burns for the first time printed. The whole edition was quickly distributed over the country.

It is hardly possible to express with what eager admiration and delight they were everywhere received.—They eminently possessed all those qualities which the most invariably contribute to render any literary work quickly and permanently popular. They were written in a phrasiology, of which all the powers were universally felt; and which being at once antique, familiar, and now rarely written, was hence fitted to serve all the dignified and picturesque uses of poetry, without making it unintelligible. The imagery, the sentiments, were at once faithfully natural, and irresistibly impressive and interesting. Those topics of satire and scandal in which the rustic delights; that humorous imitation of character, and that witty association of ideas familiar and striking, yet not naturally allied to one another, which has force to shake his sides with laughter; those fancies of superstition, at which he fills wonders and trembles; those affecting sentiments and images of true religion, which are at once dear and awful to his heart, were all represented by Burns with all a poet's magic power. Old and young, high and low, grave and gay, learned or ignorant, all were alike delighted, agitated, transported.

In the mean time, some few copies of these fascinating poems found their way to Edinburgh; and having been read to Dr Blacklock, they obtained his warmest approbation. In the beginning of the winter 1786-7 Burns went to Edinburgh, where he was received by Dr Blacklock with the most flattering kindness, and introduced to every man of generosity and taste among that good man's friends. Multitudes now vied with each other in patronizing the rustic poet. Those who possessed at once true taste and ardent philanthropy were soon earnestly united in his praise: they who were disposed to favour any good thing belonging to Scotland, purely because it was Scottifh, gladly joined the cry; those who had hearts and understanding to be charmed, without knowing why, when they saw their native customs, manners, and language, made the subjects and the materials of poetry, could not suppress that voice of feeling which struggled to declare itself for Burns: for the disputatious, the licentious, the malignant wits, and the freethinkers, he was so unfortunate as to have satire, and obloquy, and ridicule of things sacred, sufficient to captivate their fancies; even for the pious he had passages in which the inspired language of devotion might seem to come mended from his pen.

Thus did Burns, ere he had been many weeks in Edinburgh, find himself the object of universal curiosity, favour, admiration, and fondness. He was sought after, courted with attentions the most respectful and afflu-ous, feasted, flattered, caressed, treated by all ranks as the first boast of his country, whom it was scarcely possible to honour and reward to a degree equal to his merits. In comparison with the general favour which now promised to more than crown his most sanguine hopes, it could hardly be called praise at all which he had obtained in Ayrshire.

In this posture of our poet's affairs a new edition of his poems was earnestly called for. He sold the copyright for 100l.; but his friends at the same time suggested, and actively promoted, a subscription for an edition, to be published for the benefit of the author, ere the bookseller's right should commence. Those gentlemen who had formerly entertained the public of Edinburgh with the periodical publication of the papers of the Mirror, having again combined their talents in producing the Lounger, were at this time about to conclude this last series of papers; yet before the Lounger relinquished his pen, he dedicated a number to a commendatory criticism of the poems of the Ayrshire bard.

The subscription-papers were rapidly filled; and it was supposed that the poet might derive from the subscription and the sale of his copy-right a clear profit of at least 700l.

The conversation of even the most eminent authors is often found to be so unequal to the fame of their writings, that he who reads with admiration can listen with none but sentiments of the most profound contempt. But the conversation of Burns was, in comparison with the formal and exterior circumstances of his education, perhaps even more wonderful than his poetry. He affected no soft air or graceful motions of politeness, which might have ill accorded with the rustic plainness of his native manners. Confiscious superiority of mind taught him to associate with the great, the learned, and the gay, without being overawed into any such bashfulness as might have made him confused in thought, or hesitating in elocution. He possessed within an extraordinary share of plain common sense or mother-wit, which prevented him from obtruding upon persons, of whatever rank, with whom he was admitted to converse, any of those effusions of vanity, envy, or self-conceit, in which authors are exceedingly apt to indulge, who have lived remote from the general practice of life, and whose minds have been almost exclusively confined to contemplate their own studies and their own works. In conversation he displayed a sort of intuitive quickness and rectitude of judgment upon every subject that arose. The sensibility of his heart, and the vivacity of his fancy, gave a rich colouring to whatever reasoning he was disposed to advance; and his language in conversation was not at all less happy than in his writings. For these reasons, those who had met and conversed with him once, were pleased to meet and to converse with him again and again.

For some time he conversed only with the virtuous, the learned, and the wise; and the purity of his morals remained uncontaminated. But, alas! he fell, as others have fallen in similar circumstances. He suffered himself to be surrounded by a race of miserable beings, who were proud to tell that they had been in company with Burns, and had seen Burns as loose and as foolish as themselves. He was not yet irrecoverably lost to temperance and moderation; but he was already almost too much captivated with their wanton rivals, to be ever won back to a faithful attachment to their more sober charms. He now also began to contract something of new arrogance in conversation. Accustomed to be among his favourite associates what is vulgarly but expressively called the cock of the company, he could scarcely refrain from indulging in similar freedom. dom and dictatorial decision of talk, even in the presence of persons who could less patiently endure his presumption.

The subscription edition of his poems, in the meantime, appeared; and although not enlarged beyond that which came from the Kilmarnock press by any new pieces of eminent merit, did not fail to give entire satisfaction to the subscribers. He was now to close accounts with his bookseller and his printer, to retire to the country with his profits in his pocket, and to fix upon a plan for his future life. He talked loudly of independence of spirit, and simplicity of manners, and boasted his resolution to return to the plough; yet still he lingered in Edinburgh, week after week, and month after month, perhaps expecting that one or other of his noble patrons might procure him some permanent and competent annual income, which should set him above all necessity of future exertions to earn for himself the means of subsistence; perhaps unconsciously reluctant to quit the pleasures of that voluptuous town-life to which he had for some time too willingly accustomed himself. An accidental dislocation or fracture of an arm or a leg confining him for some weeks to his apartment, left him during this time leisure for serious reflection; and he determined to retire from the town without longer delay. None of all his patrons interposed to divert him from his purpose of returning to the plough, by the offer of any small pension, or any sinecure place of moderate emolument, such as might have given him competence without withdrawing him from his poetical studies. It seemed to be forgotten that a ploughman thus exalted into a man of letters was unfit for his former toils, without being regularly qualified to enter the career of any new profession; and that it became incumbent upon those patrons who had called him from the plough, not merely to make him their companion in the hour of riot, not simply to fill his purse with gold for a few transient expenses, but to secure him, as far as was possible, from being ever overwhelmed in distresses in consequence of the favour which they had shown him, and of the habits of life into which they had seduced him. Perhaps indeed the same delusion of fancy betrayed both Burns and his patrons into the mistaken idea, that, after all which had passed, it was still possible for him to return in cheerful content to the homely joys and simple toils of undiluted rural life.

In this temper of Burns's mind, in this state of his fortune, a farm and the excise were the objects upon which his choice ultimately fixed for future employment and support. By the surgeon who attended him during his illness, he was recommended with effect to the commissioners of excise; and Patrick Millar, Esq., of Dalwinton, deceived, like Burns himself and Burns's other friends, into an idea that the poet and exciseman might yet be respectable and happy as a farmer, generously proposed to establish him in a farm, upon conditions of leave which prudence and industry might easily render exceedingly advantageous. Burns eagerly accepted the offers of this benevolent patron. Two of the poet's friends from Ayrshire were invited to survey that farm in Dumfriesshire which Mr Millar offered. A lease was granted to the poetical farmer at that annual rent which his own friends declared that the due cultivation of his farm might easily enable him to pay. What yet remained of the profits of his publication was laid out in the purchase of farm stock; and Mr Millar might, for some short time, please himself the liberal patron of genius; had acquired a good tenant upon his estate; and had placed a deserving man in the very situation in which alone he himself desired to be placed, in order to be happy to his wishes.

Burns, with his Jane, whom he now married, took up their residence upon his farm. The neighbouring farmers and gentlemen, pleased to obtain for an inmate among them the poet by whose works they had been delighted, kindly sought his company, and invited him to their houses. He found an inexplicable charm in fitting down beside his wife, at his own fireside; in wandering over his own grounds; in once more putting his hand to the spade and the plough; in forming his inclosures, and managing his cattle. For some months he felt almost all that felicity which fancy had taught him to expect in his new situation. He had been for a time idle; but his muscles were not yet unbraced for rural toil. He now seemed to find a joy in being the husband of the mistress of his affections, in feeling himself the father of her children, such as might promise to attach him for ever to that modest, humble, and domestic life, in which alone he could hope to be permanently happy. Even his engagements in the service of the excise did not, at the very first, threaten necessarily to debauch him by association with the mean, the grog, and the profligate, to contaminate the poet, or to ruin the farmer.

But it could not be: it was not possible for Burns now to assume that soberness of fancy and passions, that sedateness of feeling, those habits of earnest attention to grog and vulgar cares, without which success in his new situation was not to be expected. A thousand difficulties were to be encountered and overcome, much money was to be expended, much weary toil was to be exercised, before his farm could be brought into a state of cultivation, in which its produce might enrich the occupier. This was not a prospect encouraging to a man who had never loved labour, and who was at this time certainly not at all disposed to enter into agriculture with the enthusiasm of a projector. The business of the excise too, as he began to be more and more employed in it, distracted his mind from the care of his farm, led him into grog and vulgar society, and exposed him to many unavoidable temptations to drunken excess, such as he had no longer sufficient fortitude to resist. Amidst the anxieties, distractions, and seductions which thus arose to him, home became insensibly less and less pleasing; even the endearments of his Jane's affection began to lose their hold on his heart; he became every day less and less unwilling to forget in riot those gathering sorrows which he knew not to subdue.

Mr Millar and some others of his friends would gladly have exerted an influence over his mind which might have preserved him in this situation of his affairs, equally from despondency and from dissipation; but Burns's temper spurned all control from his superiors in fortune. He resented, as an arrogant encroachment upon his independence, that tenor of conduct by which Mr Millar wished to turn him from dissolute conviviality, to that steady attention to the business of his farm, without which it was impossible to thrive in it. His crosses and disappointments drove him every day more and more into dissipation; and his dissipation tended to enhance whatever was disagreeable and perplexing in the state of his affairs. He sunk, by degrees, into the boon companion of mere excisemen; and almost every drunken fellow, who was willing to spend his money lavishly in the alehouse, could easily command the company of Burns. The care of his farm was thus neglected; waste and losses wholly consumed his little capital; he resigned his lease into the hands of his landlord; and retired, with his family, to the town of Dumfries, determining to depend entirely for the means of future support upon his income as an excise-officer.

Yet during this unfortunate period of his life, which passed between his departure from Edinburgh to settle in Dumfriesshire, and his leaving the country in order to take up his residence in the town of Dumfries, the energy and activity of his intellectual powers appeared not to have been at all impaired. In a collection of Scotch songs, which were published (the words with the music) by Mr. Johnson, engraver in Edinburgh, in 4 vols 8vo, Burns, in many instances, accommodated new verses to the old tunes with admirable felicity and skill. He assisted in the temporary institution of a small subscription library, for the use of a number of the well-disposed peasants in his neighbourhood. He readily aided, and by his knowledge of genuine Scottish phraseology and manners greatly enlightened, the antiquarian researches of the late ingenious Captain Grofe. He still carried on an epistolary correspondence, sometimes gay, sportive, humorous, but always enlivened by bright flashes of genius, with a number of his old friends, and on a very wide diversity of topics. At times, as it should seem from his writings of this period, he reflected, with inexplicable heart-bitterness, on the high hopes from which he had fallen; on the errors of moral conduct into which he had been hurried by the ardour of his soul, and in some measure by the very generosity of his nature; on the disgrace and wretchedness into which he saw himself rapidly sinking; on the sorrow with which his misconduct oppressed the heart of his Jane; on the want and destitute misery in which it seemed probable that he must leave her and their infants; nor amidst these agonizing reflections did he fail to look, with an indignation half vindictive, half contemptuous, on those who, with moral habits not more excellent than his, with powers of intellect far inferior, yet basked in the sunlight of fortune, and were loaded with the wealth and honours of the world, while his follies could not obtain pardon, nor his wants an honourable supply. His wit became from this time more gloomily sarcastic; and his conversation and writings began to assume something of a tone of misanthropical malignity, by which they had not been before, in any eminent degree, distinguished. But with all these failings, he was still that exalted mind which had raised itself above the depravation of its original condition: with all the energy of the lion, pawing to set free his hinder limbs from the yet encumbering earth, he still appeared not less than archangel ruined!

His morals were not mended by his removal from the country. In Dumfries his dissipation became still more deeply habitual; he was here more exposed than in the country to be solicited to share the riot of the dissolute and the idle: foolish young men flocked eagerly about him, and from time to time pressed him to drink with them, that they might enjoy his wicked wit. The Caledonian Club, too, and the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Hunt, had occasional meetings in Dumfries after Burns went to reside there, and the poet was of course invited to share their conviviality, and hesitated not to accept the invitation.

In the intervals between his different fits of intemperance, he suffered still the keenest anguish of remorse, and horribly afflictive foresight. His Jane still beheld with a degree of maternal and conjugal tenderness and prudence, which made him feel more bitterly the evil of his misconduct, although they could not reclaim him. At last crippled, emaciated, having the very power of animation wasted by disease, quite broken-hearted by the sense of his errors, and of the hopeless miseries in which he saw himself and his family deprived; with his soul still tremblingly alive to the sense of shame, and to the love of virtue; yet even in the last feebleness, and amid the last agonies of expiring life, yielding readily to any temptation that offered the semblance of intemperate enjoyment, he died at Dumfries, in the summer of 1796, while he was yet three or four years under the age of 40, furnishing a melancholy proof of the danger of suddenly elevating even the greatest mind above its original level.

After his death it quickly appeared that his failings had not effaced from the minds of his more respectable acquaintance either the regard which had once been won by his social qualities, or the reverence due to his intellectual talents. The circumstances of want in which he left his family were noticed by the gentlemen of Dumfries with earnest commiseration. His funeral was celebrated by the care of his friends with a decent solemnity, and with a numerous attendance of mourners, sufficiently honourable to his memory. Several copies of verses were inserted in different newspapers upon the occasion of his death. A contribution, by subscription, was proposed, for the purpose of raising a small fund, for the decent support of his widow, and the education of his infant children.

From the preceding detail of the particulars of this poet's life, the reader will naturally and justly infer him to have been an honest, proud, warm-hearted man; of high passions and found understanding, and a vigorous and excursive imagination. He was never known to descend to any act of deliberate meanness. In Dumfries he retained many respectable friends, even to the last. It may be doubted whether he has not, by his writings, exercised a greater power over the minds of men, and, by consequence, on their conduct, upon their happiness and misery, and upon the general system of life, than has been exercised by any half dozen of the most eminent statesmen of the present age. The power of the statesman is but shadowy, so far as it acts upon externals alone: the power of the writer of genius subdues the heart and the understanding, and having thus made the very spring of action its own, through them moulds almost all life and nature at its pleasure. Burns has not failed to command one remarkable fort of homage, such as is never paid but to great original genius: a crowd of poetasters started up to imitate him, by writing verses as he had done, in the Scottish dialect; but, *O imitatores! servum pecu*! To persons to whom the Scottish dialect, and the customs and manners of rural life in Scotland, have no charm, too much may appear to have been said about Burns; by those who passionately admire him, a great deal more, perhaps, was expected.

A complete edition of his works in 4 vols 8vo, was published under the superintendence of Dr Currie of Liverpool, who drew up an elaborate and valuable account of the life of the poet, which is prefixed. From the profits of this edition his widow and family have received a handsome sum. The following letter from Burns to the late Dr Moore, gives so interesting an account of the transactions of his early years, and affords so good a specimen of vigour of thought and force of expression in his prose composition, that we hope it will prove acceptable to our readers.

"Maucline, August 2, 1787.—Sir, For some months past I have been rambling up and down the country, but I am now confined with some lingering complaints, originating, as I take it, in the stomach. To divert my spirits a little in this miserable fog of ennui, I have taken a whim to give you a history of myself. My name has made some little noise in this country; you have done me the honour to interest yourself very warmly in my behalf; and I think a faithful account of what character of a man I am, and how I came by that character, may perhaps amuse you in an idle moment. I will give you an honest narrative, though I know it will be often at my own expense; for I assure you, Sir, I have, like Solomon, whose character, excepting in the trifling affair of wisdom, I sometimes think I resemble, I have, I say, like him turned my eyes to behold madness and folly, and like him too, frequently shaken hands with their intoxicating friendship."

After you have perused these pages, should you think them trifling and impertinent, I only beg leave to tell you, that the poor author wrote them under some twitching qualms of conscience, arising from a suspicion that he was doing what he ought not to do; a predicament he has more than once been in before.

"I have not the most dilatory pretensions to assume that character which the pye-coated guardians of escutcheons call, a gentleman. When at Edinburgh last winter, I got acquainted in the heralds office, and looking through that granary of honours, I there found almost every name of the kingdom; but for me,

My ancient but ignoble blood Has crept thro' scoundrels ever since the flood. Gules, purpure, argent, &c. quite disowned me.

"My father was of the north of Scotland, the son of a farmer, and was thrown by early misfortunes on the world at large; where, after many years wanderings and sojournings, he picked up a pretty large quantity of observation and experience, to which I am indebted for most of my little pretensions to wisdom.—I have met with few who understood men, their manners, and their ways, equal to him; but stubborn unyielding integrity, and headlong ungovernable irascibility, are disqualifying circumstances; consequently I was born a very poor man's son. For the first six or seven years of my life, my father was a gardener to a worthy gentleman of a small estate in the neighbourhood of Ayr. Had he continued in that station, I must have marched off to be one of the little underlings about a farm-house; but it was his dearest wish and prayer to have it in his power to keep his children under his own eye, till they could discern between good and evil; so with the affluence of his generous master, my father ventured on a small farm on his estate. At these years I was by no means a favourite with any body. I was a good deal noted for a retentive memory, a stubborn sturdy something in my disposition, and an enthusiastic idiot piety. I say idiot piety, because I was then but a child. Though it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made an excellent English scholar; and by the time I was 10 or 12 years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. In my infant and boyish days too, I owed much to an old woman who resided in the family, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraps, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical than I am in such matters, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors. The earliest composition that I recollect taking pleasure in, was the Vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's, beginning, 'How are thy servants blest, O Lord?' I particularly remember one half-flanza which was music to my boyish ear—

For though on dreadful whirls we hung High on the broken wave.

I met with these pieces in Mason's English Collection, one of my school-books. The two first books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were, The Life of Hannibal, and The History of Sir William Wallace. Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn, that I used to flirt in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bag-pipe, and with myself tall enough to be a solderer; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there, till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest.

"Polemical divinity about this time was putting the country half mad, and I, ambitious of shining in conversation parties on Sundays between sermons, at funerals, &c. used a few years afterwards to puzzle Calvinism with so much heat and indirection, that I raised a hue and cry of merely against me, which has not ceased to this hour.

"My vicinity to Ayr was of some advantage to me. My social disposition, when not checked by some modifications of spirited pride, was, like our catechism definition of infinitude, without bounds or limits. I formed several connexions with other youngsters who possessed superior advantages; the youngling actors who were busy in the rehearsal of parts in which they were shortly to appear on the stage of life, where, alas! I was destined to drudge behind the scenes. It is not commonly at this green age, that our young gentry..." gentry have a just sense of the immense distance between them and their ragged play-fellows. It takes a few dashes into the world, to give the young great man that proper, decent, unnoticing disregard for the poor, insignificant, stupid devils, the mechanics and pedantry around him, who were perhaps born in the same village. My young superiors never insulted the clouterly appearance of my plough-boy carcass, the two extremes of which were often exposed to all the inclemencies of all the seasons. They would give me stray volumes of books; among them, even then, I could pick up some observations, and one, whose heart I am sure not even the Munny Begum scenes have tainted, helped me to a little French. Parting with these my young friends and benefactors, as they occasionally went off for the East or West Indies, was often to me a sore affliction, but I was loon called to more serious evils. My father's generous master died; the farm proved a ruinous bargain; and to clench the misfortune, we fell into the hands of a factor, who sat for the picture I have drawn of one in my tale of Twa Dogs. My father was advanced in life when he married; I was the eldest of seven children, and he, worn out by early hardships, was unfit for labour. My father's spirit was soon irritated, but not easily broken. There was a freedom in his lease in two years more, and to weather these two years, we retrenched our expenses. We lived very poorly: I was a dexterous ploughman for my age; and the next oldest to me was a brother (Gilbert) who could drive the plough very well, and help me to thrash the corn. A novel-writer might perhaps have viewed these scenes with some satisfaction, but so did not I; my indignation yet boils at the recollection of the fact—factor's insolent threatening letters, which used to set us all in tears.

"This kind of life—the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave, brought me to my 16th year, a little before which period I first committed the sin of rhyme. You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together as partners in the labours of harvest. In my 15th autumn, my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language, but you know the Scottish idiom; she was a bonnie, sweet, fondie lass. In short, she altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blesting here below! How she caught the contagion I cannot tell; you medical people talk much of infection from breathing the same air, the touch, &c. but I never expressly said I loved her.—Indeed I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labours; why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an Æolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-tilings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; and it was her favourite recl to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine that I could make verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin; but my girl sung a song which was said to be composed by a small country laird's son, on one of his father's maids, with whom he was in love; and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he; for excepting that he could shear sheep, and calf peats, his father living in the moorlands, he had no more scholarship than myself.

"Thus with me began love and poetry; which at times have been my only, and, till within the last 12 months, have been my highest enjoyment. My father struggled on till he reached the freedom in his lease, when he entered on a larger farm, about ten miles farther in the country. The nature of the bargain he made was such as to throw a little ready money into his hands at the commencement of his lease, otherwise the affair would have been impracticable. For four years we lived comfortably here; but a difference commencing between him and his landlord as to terms, after three years toiling and whirling in the vortex of litigation, my father was just saved from the horrors of a jail, by a consumption, which, after two years promises, kindly stepped in, and carried him away, to "where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest!"

"It is during the time that we lived on this farm, that my little story is most eventful. I was, at the beginning of this period, perhaps the most ungainly awkward boy in the parish—no solitary was less acquainted with the ways of the world. What I knew of ancient story was gathered from Salmon's and Guthrie's geographical grammars; and the ideas I had formed of modern manners, of literature, and criticism, I got from the Spectator. These, with Pope's Works, some plays of Shakespear, Tull and Dickson on Agriculture, the Pantheon, Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, Stackhoufe's History of the Bible, Justice's British Gardener's Directory, Bayle's Lectures, Allan Ramsay's Works, Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, a Select Collection of English Songs, and Hervey's Meditations, had formed the whole of my reading. The collection of songs was my vade mecum. I pored over them driving my cart, or walking to labour, song by song, verse by verse; carefully noting the true tender, or sublime, from affectation and fustian. I am convinced I owe to this practice much of my critic-craft, such as it is." (Monthly Mag. and Currie's Life of Burns.)