the action of fire on some pabulum or fuel, by which the minute parts thereof are put into a violent motion, and some of them affuming the nature of fire themselves, fly off in orbem, while the rest are dissipated in form of vapour or reduced to ashes. See Ignition.
Extraordinary Cases of Burning. We have instances of persons burnt by fire kindled within their own bodies. A woman at Paris, who used to drink brandy to excess, was one night reduced to ashes by a fire from within, all but her head and the ends of her fingers. Signora Corn. Zangari, or, as others call her, Corn. Bandi, an aged lady, of an unblemished life, near Cesena in Romagna, underwent the same fate in March 1731. She had retired in the evening to her chamber somewhat indisposed; and in the morning was found in the middle of the room reduced to ashes, all except her face, legs, skull, and three fingers. The stockings and shoes she had on were not burnt in the least. The ashes were light; and, on pressing between the fingers, vanished, leaving behind a great tinkling moisture with which the floor was smeared; the walls and furniture of the room being covered with a moist cinerious foot, which had not only stained the linen in the chests, but had penetrated into the closet, as well as into the room overhead, the walls of which were moistened with the same viscid humour.—We have various other relations of persons burnt to death in this unaccountable manner.
Sig. Mondini, Bianchini, and Maffei, have written treatises express to account for the cause of so extraordinary an event: common fire it could not be, since this would likewise have burnt the bed and the room; besides that it would have required many hours, and a vast quantity of fuel, to reduce a human body to ashes; and, after all, a considerable part of the bones would have remained entire, as they were anciently found after the fiercest funeral fires. Some attribute the effect to a mine of sulphur under the house; others to a miracle; while others suppose that art of villainy had a hand in it. A philosopher of Verona maintains, that such a conflagration might have arisen from the inflammable matters wherein the human body naturally abounds. Sig. Bianchini accounts for the conflagration of the lady above-mentioned, from her using a bath or lotion of camphorated spirit of wine when she found herself out of order. Maffei supposes it owing to lightning, but to lightning generated in her own body, agreeable to his doctrine, which is, That lightning does not proceed from the clouds, but is always produced in the place where it is seen and its effects perceived. We have have had a late attempt to establish the opinion, that these destroying internal fires are caused in the entrails of the body by inflamed effluvia of the blood; by juices and fermentation in the stomach; by the many combustible matters which abound in living bodies for the purposes of life; and, finally, by the fiery evaporation which exhale from the fettlings of spirit of wine, brandies, and other hot liquors, in the tunica villofa of the stomach and other adipose or fat membranes; within which those spirits engender a kind of camphor, which in the night time, in sleep, by a full respiration, are put in a stronger motion, and are more apt to be set on fire. Others ascribe the cause of such persons being set on fire to lightning; and their burning so entirely, to the greater quantity of phosphorus and other combustible matters they contained.—For our own part, we can by no means pretend to explain the cause of such a phenomenon: but for the interests of humanity, we wish it could be derived from something external to the human body; for if, to the calamities of human life already known, we superadd a suspicion that we may unexpectedly, and without the least warning, be consumed by an internal fire, the thought is too dreadful to be borne.
Brenning, in our old customs, denotes an infectious disease, got in the streets by conversing with lewd women, and supposed to be the same with what we now call the venereal disease.
In a manuscript of the vocation of John Bale to the bishopric of Oxford, written by himself, he speaks of Dr Hugh Wotton, who was dean of Windsor in 1556, but deprived by Cardinal Pole for adultery, thus: "At this day is lecherous Wotton, who is more practised in the arts of breech-burning, than all the whores of the streets. He not long ago burnt a beggar of St Botolph's parish." See Streets.
antiquity, a way of disposing of the dead, much practised by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and still retained by several nations in the East and West Indies. The antiquity of this custom rises as high as the Theban war, where we are told of the great solemnity accompanying this ceremony at the pyre of Menelaus and Archimorus, who were contemporary with Jair, the eighth judge of Israel. Homer abounds with funeral obsequies of this nature. In the inward regions of Asia, the practice was of very ancient date, and the continuance long: for we are told, that, in the reign of Julian, the king of Chionia burnt his son's body, and deposited the ashes in a silver urn. Coeval almost with the first instances of this kind in the east, was the practice in the western parts of the world. The Heruliens, the Getes, and the Thracians, had all along observed it; and its antiquity was as great with the Celts, Sarmatians, and other neighbouring nations. The origin of this custom seems to have been out of friendship to the deceased: their ashes were preserved as we preserve a lock of hair, a ring, or a scarf, which had been the property of a deceased friend.
Kings were burnt in cloth made of the asbestos stone, that their ashes might be preserved pure from any mixture with the fuel and other matters thrown on the funeral pile. The same method is still observed with the princes of Tartary. Among the Greeks, the body was placed on the top of a pile, on which were thrown divers animals, and even slaves and captives, besides unguents and perfumes. In the funeral of Patroclus we find a number of sheep and oxen thrown in, then four horses, followed by two dogs, and lastly by 12 Trojan prisoners. The like is mentioned by Virgil in the funerals of his Trojans; where, besides oxen, swine, and all manner of cattle, we find eight youths condemned to the flames. The first thing was the fat of the beasts, wherewith the body was covered, that it might consume the sooner: it being reckoned great felicity to be quickly reduced to ashes. For the like reason, where numbers were to be burnt at the same time, care was taken to mix with the rest some of humid constitutions, and therefore more easily to be inflamed. Thus we are assured by Plutarch and Macrobius, that for every ten men it was customary to put in one woman. Soldiers usually had their arms burnt with them. The garments worn by the living were also thrown on the pile, with other ornaments and presents; a piece of extravagance which the Athenians carried to so great a height, that some of their lawgivers were forced to restrain them, by severe penalties, from defrauding the living by their liberality to the dead.—In some cases, burning was expressly forbidden among the Romans, and even looked upon as the highest impiety. Thus infants, who died before the breeding of teeth, were interred unburnt in the ground, in a particular place set apart for this purpose, called fugurundarium. The like was practised with regard to those who had been struck dead with lightning, who were never to be burnt again. Some say that burning was denied to suicides.—The manner of burning among the Romans was not unlike that of the Greeks; the corpse, being brought out without the city, was carried directly to the place appointed for burning it; which, if it joined to the sepulchre, was called cibulum; if separate from it, ufrina; and there laid on the rugus or pyra, a pile of wood prepared on which to burn it, built in shape of an altar, but of different height, according to the quality of the deceased. The wood used was commonly from such trees as contain most pitch or rosin; and if any other were used, they split it, for the more easy catching fire: round the pile they set cypresses trees, probably to hinder the noisome smell of the corpse. The body was not placed on the bare pile, but on the couch or bed whereon it lay. This done, the next of blood performed the ceremony of lighting the pile; which they did with a torch, turning their faces all the while the other way, as if it were done with reluctance. During the ceremony, decursions and games were celebrated; after which came the offugium, or gathering of the bones and ashes; also washing and anointing them, and repotting them in urns.
Burning, among surgeons, denotes the application of an actual cautery, that is, a red-hot iron instrument, to the part affected; otherwise denominated cauterization. The whole art of physic among the Japanese lies in the choice of places proper to be burnt: which are varied according to the disease. In the country of the Mogul, the colic is cured by an iron ring applied red-hot about the patient's navel. Certain it is, that some very extraordinary cures have been performed accidentally by burning. The following case is recorded in the Memoirs of the academy of sciences by M. Homberg. A woman of about 35 became subject to a head- Burning, which at times was so violent that it drove her out of her senses, making her sometimes stupid and foolish, at other times raving and furious. The seat of the pain was in the forehead, and over the eyes, which were inflamed, and looked violently red and sparkling; and the most violent fits of it were attended with nausea and vomitings. In the times of the fits, she could take no food; but out of them, had a very good stomach. Mr Homberg had in vain attempted her cure for three years with all kinds of medicines; only opium succeeded; and that but little, all its effect being only the taking off the pain for a few hours. The redness of her eyes was always the sign of an approaching fit. One night, feeling a fit coming on, she went to lie down upon the bed; but first walked up to the glass with the candle in her hand, to see how her eyes looked: in observing this, the candle set fire to her cap: and as she was alone, her head was terribly burnt before the fire could be extinguished. Mr Homberg was sent for, and ordered bleeding and proper dressings: but it was perceived, that the expected fit this night never came on; the pain of the burning wore off by degrees; and the patient found herself from that hour cured of the headache, which had never returned in four years after, which was the time when the account was communicated. Another case, not less remarkable than the former, was communicated to Mr Homberg by a physician at Bruges. A woman, who for several years had her legs and thighs swelled in an extraordinary manner, found some relief from rubbing them before the fire with brandy every morning and evening. One evening the fire chanced to catch the brandy she had rubbed herself with, and slightly burnt her. She applied some brandy to her burn; and in the night all the water her legs and thighs were swelled with was entirely discharged by urine, and the swelling did not again return.
**Burning-Glass**, Sec. BUSH.
**Burning-Glass**, a convex glass commonly spherical, which being exposed directly to the sun, collects all the rays falling thereon into a very small space called the focus; where wood or any other combustible matter being put, will be set on fire. The term burning-glass is also used to denote those concave mirrors, whether composed of glass quicksilvered, or of metallic matters, which burn by reflection, condensing the sun's rays into a focus similar to the former.
The use of burning-glasses appears to have been very ancient. Diodorus Siculus, Lucian, Dion, Zonaras, Galen, Anthemius, Euclidius, Tzetzes, and others, attest, that by means of them Archimedes set fire to the Roman fleet at the siege of Syracuse. Tzetzes is so particular in his account of this matter, that his description suggested to Kircher the method by which it was probably accomplished. That author says, that "Archimedes set fire to Marcellus's navy, by means of a burning glass composed of small square mirrors moving every way upon hinges; which, when placed in the sun's rays, directed them upon the Roman fleet, so as to reduce it to ashes at the distance of a bow shot."
A very particular testimony we have also from Anthemius of Lydia, who takes pains to prove the possibility of setting fire to a fleet, or any other combustible body, at such a distance.
That the ancients were also acquainted with the use of catoptric or refracting burning-glasses, appears from a passage in Aristophanes's comedy of The Clouds, which clearly treats of their effects. The author introduces Socrates as examining Strephades about the method he had discovered of getting clear of his debts. He replies, that "he thought of making use of a burning-glass which he had hitherto used in kindling his fire;" "for (says he) should they bring a writ against me, I'll immediately place my glass in the sun at some little distance from it, and set it on fire." Pliny and Lactantius have also spoken of glasses that burn by refraction. The former calls them balls or globes of glass or crystal, which, exposed to the sun, transmit a heat sufficient to set fire to cloth, or corrode the dead flesh of those patients who stand in need of cauteries; and the latter, after Clemens Alexandrinus, takes notice that fire may be kindled by interposing glasses filled with water between the sun and the object, so as to transmit the rays to it.
It seems difficult to conceive how they should know such glasses would burn without knowing they would magnify, which it is granted they did not, till towards the close of the 13th century, when spectacles were first thought on. For as to those passages of spectacles, M. de la Hire observes, they do not prove any such thing; and he solves this, by observing, that their burning-glasses being spheres, either solid or full of water, their foci would be one-fourth of their diameter distant from them. If then their diameter were supposed half a foot, which is the most we can allow, an object must be at an inch and a half distance to perceive it magnified; those at greater distances do not appear greater, but only more confused through the glass than out of it. It is no wonder, therefore, the magnifying property of convex glasses was unknown, and the burning one known. It is more wonderful there should be 300 years between the invention of spectacles and telescopes.
Among the ancients, the burning mirrors of Archimedes and Proclus are famous: the former we have already taken notice of; by the other, the navy of Vitellius besieging Byzantium, according to Zonaras, was burnt to ashes.
Among the moderns, the most remarkable burning mirrors are those of Settala, of Villette, of Tschirnhausen, of Buffon, of Trudaine, and of Parker.
Settala, canon of Padua, made a parabolic mirror, which, according to Shottus, burnt pieces of wood at the distance of 15 or 16 paces. The following things are noted of it in the Acta Eruditorum. 1. Green wood takes fire instantaneously, so as a strong wind cannot extinguish it. 2. Water boils immediately; and eggs in it are presently edible. 3. A mixture of tin and lead, three inches thick, drops presently; and iron and steel plate becomes red-hot presently, and a little after burns into holes. 4. Things not capable of melting, as stones, bricks, &c., become soon red-hot, like iron. 5. Slate becomes first white, then a black glass. 6. Tiles are converted into a yellow glass, and shells into a blackish yellow one. 7. A pumice stone, emitted from a volcano, melts into white glass; and 8. A piece of crucible also vitrifies in eight minutes. 9. Bones are soon turned into an opaque glass, and earth into a black one. The breadth of this mirror is near three Leipsic cells, its focus two cells from it; it is made of copper, and and its substance is not above double the thickness of the back of a knife.
Villette, a French artist of Lyons, made a large mirror, which was bought by Tavernier and presented to the king of Persia; a second, bought by the king of Denmark; a third, presented by the French king to the Royal Academy; a fourth has been in England, where it was publicly exposed. The effects hereof, as found by Dr Harris and Dr Desaguliers, are, that a silver sixpence is melted in 7½", a King George's halfpenny in 16", and runs with a hole in 34". Tin melts in 3", cast iron in 16", flate in 3"; a fossil shell calcines in 7"; a piece of Pompey's pillar at Alexandria vitrifies, the black part in 50", the white in 54"; copper ore in 8"; bone calcines in 4", vitrifies in 33". An emerald melts into a substance like a turquoise stone; a diamond weighing four grains loses seven-eighths of its weight: the asbestos vitrifies; as all other bodies will do, if kept long enough in the focus; but when once vitrified, the mirror can go no farther with them. This mirror is 47 inches wide, and is ground to a sphere of 76 inches radius; so that its focus is about 38 inches from the vertex. Its substance is a composition of tin, copper, and tin-glass.
Every lens, whether convex, plano-convex, or concavo-convex, collects the sun's rays, dispersed over its convexity, into a point by refraction; and is therefore a burning glass. The most considerable of this kind is that made by M. de Tschirnhaufen: the diameters of his lenses are three and four feet, the focus at the distance of 12 feet, and its diameter an inch and a half. To make the focus the more vivid, it is collected a second time by a second lens parallel to the first, and placed in that point where the diameter of the cone of rays formed by the first lens is equal to the diameter of the second: so that it receives them all; and the focus, from an inch and a half, is contracted into the space of eight lines, and its force increased proportionally.
This glass vitrifies tiles, flates, pumice-stones, &c., in a moment. It melts sulphur, pitch, and all rosin, under water; the ashes of vegetables, woods, and other matters, are transmuted into glass; and every thing applied to its focus is either melted, turned into a calx, or into smoke. Tschirnhaufen observes, that it succeeds best when the matter applied is laid on a hard charcoal well burnt.
Sir Isaac Newton presented a burning-glass to the royal society, consisting of seven concave glasses, so placed as that all their foci join in one physical point. Each glass is about 11 inches and a half in diameter; five of them are placed round the seventh, to which they are all contiguous; and they form a kind of segment of a sphere, whose subtense is about 34 inches and a half, and the central glass lies about an inch farther in than the rest. The common focus is about 22 inches and a half distant, and about an inch in diameter. This glass vitrifies brick or tile in 1", and melts gold in 30".
It would appear, however, that glass quicksilvered is a more proper material for burning-glasses than metals; for the effects of that specimen wherewith Mr Macquer melted the platina seem to have been superior to those above mentioned, though the mirror itself was much smaller. The diameter of this glass was only 22 inches, and its focal distance 28. Black flint, when exposed to the focus, being powdered to prevent its crackling and flying about, and secured in a large piece of charcoal, bubbled up and ran into transparent glass in less than half a minute. Hessian crucibles, and glass-house pots, vitrified completely in three or four seconds. Forged iron smoked, boiled, and changed into a vitreous scoria as soon as it was exposed to the focus. The gypsum of Montmartre, when the flat sides of the plates or leaves of which it is composed were presented to the glass, did not show the least disposition to melt; but, on presenting a transverse section of it, or the edges of the plates, it melted in an instant, with a hissing noise, into a brownish yellow matter. Calcareous stones did not completely melt: but there was detached from them a circle more compact than the rest of the mass, and of the size of the focus; the separation of which seemed to be occasioned by the shrinking of the matter which had begun to enter into fusion. The white calx of antimony, commonly called diaphoretic antimony, melted better than the calcareous stones, and changed into an opaque pretty glossy substance like white enamel. It was observed, that the whiteness of the calcareous stones and the antimonial calx was of great disadvantage to their fusion, by reason of their reflecting great part of the sun's rays; so that the subject could not undergo the full activity of the heat thrown upon it by the burning-glass. The case was the same with metallic bodies; which melted so much the more difficulty as they were more white and polished; and this difference was so remarkable, that in the focus of this mirror, so fusible a metal as silver, when its surface was polished, did not melt at all.
Plate CXXXI, fig. 1, represents M. Buffon's burning mirror, which he with great reason supposes to be of the same nature with that of Archimedes. It consists of a number of small mirrors of glass quicksilvered, all of which are held together by an iron frame. Each of these small mirrors is also moveable by a contrivance on the back part of the frame, so that their reflections may all coincide in one point. By this means they are capable of being accommodated to various heights of the sun, and to different distances. The adjusting them in this manner takes up a considerable time; but after they are so adjusted, the focus will continue unaltered for an hour or more.
Fig. 2, represents a contrivance of M. Buffon's for diminishing the thickness of very large refracting lenses. He observes, that in the large lenses of this kind, and which are most convenient for many purposes, the thickness of the glass in the middle is so great as very much to diminish their force. For this reason he proposes to form a burning-glass of concentric circular pieces of glass, each resting upon the other, as represented in the figure. His method is to divide the convex arch of the lens into three equal parts. Thus, suppose the diameter to be 26 inches, and the thickness in the middle to be three inches: By dividing the lens into three concentric circles, and laying the one over the other, the thickness of the middle piece needs be only one inch; at the same time that the lens will have the same convexity, and almost the same focal distance, as in the other case; while the effects of it must be much greater, on account of the greater thinness of the glass.
M. Trudaine, a French gentleman, constructed a burning lens on a new principle. It was composed of two circular segments of glass spheres, each four feet in diameter, applied with their concave sides towards each other. The cavity was filled with spirit of wine, of which it contained 40 pints. It was presented by the maker to the royal academy of sciences, but was not long after, broken by accident. The expense of constructing it amounted to about £1000 sterling. After all, it does not appear that the effects of this lens were very great. Mr Magellan informs us, that it could only coagulate the particles of platinum in 20 minutes, while Mr Parker's lens entirely melted them in less than two.
A large burning lens, indeed, for the purpose of fusing and vitrifying such substances as resist the fires of ordinary furnaces, and especially for the application of heat in vacuo, and in other circumstances in which heat cannot be applied by any other means, has long been a desideratum among persons concerned in philosophical experiments: And it appears now to be in a great degree accomplished by Mr Parker. His lens is three feet in diameter, made of flint-glass, and which, when fixed in its frame, exposes a surface two feet eight inches and a half in the clear.
In the Elevation represented on Plate CXXXII, A is the lens of the diameter mentioned: thickness in the centre, three inches and one-fourth: weight, 212 pounds: length of the focus, six feet eight inches; diameter of ditto, one inch. B, a second lens, whose diameter in the frame is 16 inches, and shows in the clear 13 inches: thickness in the centre, one inch five-eighths: weight 21 pounds: length of focus 29 inches: diameter of ditto, three-eighths of an inch. When the two above lenses are compounded together, the length of the focus is five feet three inches: diameter of ditto, half an inch. C, a truncated cone, composed of 21 ribs of wood: at the larger end is fixed the great lens A; at the smaller extremity the lesser lens B: near the smaller end is also fixed a rack D, passing through the pillar L, moveable by a pinion turning in the said pillar, by means of the handle E, and thus giving a vertical motion to the machine. F, a bar of wood, fixed between the two lower ribs of the cone at G; having, within a chafed mortice in which it moves, an apparatus H, with the iron plate I, fixed thereto; and this part turning on a ball and socket, K, a method is thereby obtained of placing the matter under experiment, so as to be acted upon by the focal rays in the most direct and powerful manner. LL, a strong mahogany frame, moving on castors, MM. Immediately under the table N are three friction wheels, by which the machine moves horizontally. O, a strong iron bow, in which the lens and the cone hang.
Section.—a, The great lens marked A in the elevation. b, The frame which contains the lens. c, The small lens marked B. d, The frame which contains the small lens. e, The truncated cone, marked C. f, The bar on which the apparatus marked F moves. g, The iron plate marked I. h, The cone of rays formed by the refraction of the great lens a, and falling on the lens c. i, The cone of rays formed by the refraction of the lens c. Front-view.—k, The great burning lens. l, The frame containing it. m, The strong iron bow in which it hangs.
From a great number of experiments made with this lens, in the presence of many scientific persons, the following are selected as specimens of its powers.
| Substances fused, with their weight and time of fusion. | Weight in Grains | Time in Seconds | |----------------------------------------------------------|-----------------|----------------| | Gold, pure | 20 | 3 | | Silver, do | 20 | 4 | | Copper, do | 33 | 20 | | Platinum, do | 10 | 3 | | Nickel, | 16 | 3 | | Bar iron, a cube | 10 | 12 | | Cast iron, a cube | 10 | 3 | | Steel, a cube | 10 | 12 | | Scoria of wrought iron | 12 | 2 | | Terra ponderosa, or barytes | 10 | 7 | | Topaz, or chrysolite | 3 | 45 | | An oriental emerald | 2 | 25 | | Crystal pebble | 7 | 6 | | White agate | 10 | 30 | | Flint, oriental | 10 | 30 | | Rough cornelian | 10 | 75 | | Jasper | 10 | 25 | | Onyx | 10 | 20 | | Garnet | 10 | 17 | | White rhomboidal spar | 10 | 60 | | Zeolites | 10 | 23 | | Rotten stone | 10 | 80 | | Common slate | 10 | 2 | | Asbestos | 10 | 10 | | Common lime-stone | 10 | 55 | | Pumice-stone | 10 | 24 | | Lava | 10 | 7 | | Volcanic clay | 10 | 60 | | Cornish moor-stone | 10 | 60 |
Burning Mountains. See Etna, Hecla, Vesuvius, and Volcano, with the plates accompanying them.
Burning Springs. Of these there are many in different parts of the world; particularly one in Dauphiny near Grenoble; another near Hermannstadt in Transylvania; a third at Chermay, a village near Switzerland; a fourth in the canton of Friburg; and a fifth not far from the city of Cracow in Poland. There also is, or was, a famous spring of the same kind at Wigan in Lancashire, which, upon the approach of a lighted candle, would take fire and burn like spirit of wine for a whole day. But the most remarkable one of this kind, or at least that of which we have the most particular description, was discovered in 1711 at Broseley in Shropshire. The following account of this remarkable spring was given by the reverend Mr Mason, Woodwardian professor at Cambridge, dated February 18, 1746. "The well for four or five feet deep is six or seven feet wide; within that is another hole of like depth dug in the clay, in the bottom whereof is placed a cylindric earthen vessel, of about four or five inches diameter at the mouth, having the bottom taken off, and the sides well fixed in the clay." rammed close about it. Within the pot is a brown water, thick as puddle, continually forced up with a violent motion beyond that of boiling water, and a rumbling hollow noise, rising or falling by fits five or six inches; but there was no appearance of any vapour rising, which perhaps might have been visible, had not the sun shone so bright. Upon putting a candle down at the end of a stick, at about a quarter of a yard distance, it took fire, darting and flailing after a very violent manner for about half a yard high, much in the manner of spirits in a lamp, but with great agitation. It was said, that a tea-kettle had been made to boil in about nine minutes time, and that it had been left burning for 48 hours without any sensible diminution. It was extinguished by putting a wet mop upon it; which must be kept there for a little time, otherwise it would not go out. Upon the removal of the mop there arises a sulphurous smoke lasting about a minute, and yet the water is very cold to the touch." In 1755, this well totally disappeared by the sinking of a coal-pit in its neighbourhood.
The cause of the inflammable property of such waters is, with great probability, supposed to be their mixture with petroleum, which is a very inflammable substance, and has the property of burning on the surface of water.
**Burning of Colours**, among painters. There are several colours that require burning; as,
First, Lamp-black, which is a colour of so greasy a nature, that, except it is burnt, it will require a long time to dry. The method of burning, or rather drying, lamp black, is as follows: Put it into a crucible over a clear fire, letting it remain till it be red hot, or so near it that no manner of smoke arises from it.
Secondly, Umber, which, if it be intended for colour for a horse, or to be a shadow for gold, then burning fits it for both these purposes. In order to burn umber, you must put it into the naked fire, in large lumps, and not take it out till it is thoroughly red hot; if you have a mind to be more curious, put it into a crucible, and keep it over the fire till it be red hot.
Ivory also must be burnt to make black, thus: Fill two crucibles with shavings of ivory, then clap their two mouths together, and bind them fast with an iron wire, and lute the joints close with clay, salt, and horse-dung, well beaten together; then set it over the fire, covering it all over with coals; let it remain in the fire till you are sure that the matter enclosed is thoroughly red hot; then take it out of the fire; but do not open the crucibles till they are perfectly cold; for were they opened while hot, the matter would turn to ashes; and so it will be, if the joints are not luted close.
**Burnisher**, a round polished piece of steel serving to smooth and give a lustre to metals.
Of these there are different kinds of different figures, straight, crooked, &c. Half burnishers are used to folder silver, as well as to give a lustre.
Burnishers for gold and silver are commonly made of a dog's or wolf's tooth, set in the end of an iron or wooden handle. Of late, agates and pebbles have been introduced, which many prefer to the dog's tooth.
The burnishers used by engravers in copper, usually serve with one end to burnish, and with the other to burnisher scrape.
**Burnishing**, the art of smoothing or polishing a metallic body, by a brisk rubbing of it with a burnisher.
Book-binders burnish the edges of their books, by rubbing them with a dog's tooth.
**Burnley**, a town of Lancashire in England, situated in W. Long. 2° 5'. N. Lat. 51° 38'.
**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 delude 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 gross peasant, there was sought to be seen but water, earth, and sky—but animals, plants, and soil.
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 extemporary 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 Cottar's. 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 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 Lost 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 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 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 feasted 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, attitudes, 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 fireside.
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 unfeeling—or tender and dignified, without aspiring to stilted 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 effusion 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 intercede themselves in behalf of such signal poetical merit; was soon crowded with the names of a considerable number of the inhabitants of Burns of Ayrshire, who in the proffered purchase sought not less to gratify their own passion for Scotch poetry, than to encourage the wonderful ploughman. At Kilmarnock 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 phraseology, 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 still 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 Scotch, 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 dissipated, 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 assiduous, flattered, 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 copy-right 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, were the bookeller'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. Conscious 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 withal 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 judgement 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 loath 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 more 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 his patrons proposed 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 undisturbed 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 Miller, Esq., of Dalhinton, 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 leave 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 Miller might, for some short time, please himself with the persuasion that he had approved 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 inexpressible charm in sitting 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 seeing 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 infensibly 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 excitement; 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 Scotch phraseology and manners greatly enlightened, the antiquarian researches of the late ingenious Captain Grose. 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 destitution 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 invincible, half contemptuous, on those who, with moral habits not more excellent than his, with powers of intellect far inferior, yet basked in the sunshine 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 depression of its original condition; with all the energy of the lion, pawing to set free his hinder limbs from the yoke 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 behoved 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 depressed; 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 temperate 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 executive 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 sort 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 Scotch dialect; but, O imitatores! servum pecus! To persons to whom the Scotch 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.
"Mauchline, 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 quails 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 distant 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 understand men, their manners, and their ways, equal to him; but stubborn ungainly 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 assistance 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, wreaths, 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-stanza 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 Mafon'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 strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bag-pipe, and with myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scotch 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 indiscrétion, that I raised a hue and cry of heresy 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, unnoticeable disregard for the poor, insignificant, stupid devils, the mechanics and peasantries around him, who were perhaps born in the same village. My young superiors never insulted the clouterly appearance of my plough-boy carefree, 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 Mummy 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 soon called to more serious evils. My father's generous master died; the farm proved a ruinous bargain; and to elench the misfortune, we fell into the hands of a factor, who sat for the picture I have drawn of one in my tale of Two 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 leave 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 eldest 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 f—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 uneasing moil of a galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth 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 sixteenth 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 Scotch idiom; she was a bonnie, sweet, fondie lass. In short, the 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 the 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 rate when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-rings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sang sweetly; and it was her favourite reel 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 sang 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 smear sheep, and cast 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 twelve months, have been my highest enjoyment. My father struggled on till he reached the freedom in his leave, 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 leave, 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 tossing 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 ease 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 solitaire 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 Shakespeare, Tull and Dickson on Agriculture, the Pantheon, Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, Stackhouse'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 affection and fulsion. I am convinced I owe to this practice much of my critic-craft, such as it is. (Month. Mag. and Currie's Life of Burns).