be, on his brother's testimony, frugal and temperate ; it must have been so, for he had not more than seven pounds a year in cash.

But before leaving Lochlea he had for the first time deviated from propriety in his relations with women, and Elizabeth Paton, his mother's maid - servant, bore him a daughter. The first genuine determination of his mind towards literary effort, the first appreciation of its usual aims and results, appears in certain entries in his Commonplace Book, which are undated, but may, though not without some hesitation, be ascribed

to 1784. There he expressed a strong wish that he might be able to celebrate in verse the scenes of his native county, the locus of many of the actions of the 'Glorious Wallace, the Saviour of his Country,' as 'the excellent Ramsay' and 'the still more excellent Fergusson' had celebrated the scenes with which they were familiar. So he made poetry at once the exposition and the sedative of his passions, wrote a welcome to his illegitimate child,

Burns was never more productive than at this time; it is safe to set down as the output of the later autumn and early winter these poems: 'To a Mouse,' 'Halloween,' 'Man was Made to Mourn,' 'The Cotter's Saturday Night,' 'Address to the Deil,' 'The Jolly Beggars,' 'To James Smith,' 'The Vision,' 'The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer,' 'The Twa Dogs,' 'The Ordination,' and Scotch Drink' the works which formed the foundation of his future fame. Publication

and versified epistles to local brother poets, such as David Sillar and John Lapraik. He threw his whole soul into the task. He fell in love with Jean Armour, daughter of a master-mason in Mauchline. He took sides with the New Lights or Liberal clergy against the Old Lights or Highflyers, of whom his own minister in Mauchline, the Rev. William Auld, was one; wrote skits in verse for the causee-'The Twa Herds,' the 'Epistle to John Goldie,' 'Holy Willie's Prayer' -and was encouraged by the countenance and friendship of clergymen and lawyers who appreciated his cleverness. His poems circulated in manuscript; and as by 1785 Mossgiel, which 'lies very high and mostly on a cold wet bottom,' promised to be no more profitable than Lochlea, he had doubtless come to contemplate publishing.

was precipitated by the discovery that Jean Ar

mour was soon to become a mother. Burns gave her a writing acknowledging her as his wife under certain conditions, but Armour disapproved of the proposal made, and induced his daughter to destroy the document. The poet, rendered wellnigh desperate, resolved to emigrate to Jamaica as book-keeper on the estate of an Ayr family of the name of Douglas. Partly to raise money for his passage, he now brought out his first volume, the famous Kilmarnock edition -Poems chiefly in the Scottish

Dialect-a copy of which was sold in 1898 for five hundred and forty-five guineas. Meantime there seems to have occurred the 'Highland Mary' episode. According to the best hypothesis founded on the few facts that have been ascertained, almost immediately after the breach with the Armour family, Jean having been despatched to Paisley, the poet plighted his troth to Mary Campbell, a Highland maid-servant residing in the neighbourhood, who went home to Dunoon to prepare for marriage, and straightway died, to be apparently forgotten for the moment by Burns (who had never ceased to love Jean), but to live for ever in 'To Mary in Heaven' and other poems.

The success of the Kilmarnock edition of the poems (July 1786) changed the current of the poet's life. He was induced to abandon the Jamaica

scheme, and to proceed to Edinburgh with a view to the publication of a new edition. He arrived on 28th November 1786. By this time fairly well accustomed to 'the tables of the great,' owing to his popularity in Ayrshire, he discovered no shyness or awkwardness in his intercourse with the literati to whom he was introduced through the mediation of an Ayrshire laird, and he was at home among the companions of a 'lower rank' who obtained access to him through John Richmond, clerk, an old Mauchline friend whose bed he shared. Conscious of his power, he met as an equal and was treated as an equal by Dugald Stewart, William Robertson, Hugh Blair, Henry Erskine, besides aristocrats like the Earl of Glencairn. His appearance and manners - he was about five feet ten inches in height (although a stoop made him look shorter), of muscular figure, with dark hair that curled round his forehead, and such a glowing eye as Sir Walter Scott never saw in any other human head—and his frank, vigorous, yet modest conversation, fascinated the Duchess of Gordon and other ladies of fashion.' William Creech, the best-known of the Edinburgh booksellers of the time, undertook to produce a new edition for him, and the gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt were large subscribers. The book brought him four hundred or five hundred pounds; but Creech delayed in making a business settlement. So, after hanging on in Edinburgh for a little, taking stock of his new friends and of the durability of their friendship, delighting the Crochallan Fencibles, a convivial club, with rich and amusing verses, he made a tour of the southern counties. In the first flush of success he had thought of striking into a new line of life. Adam Smith suggested that he might get a salt-officership; and he did not repudiate the hint of Mrs Dunlop of Dunlop, an Ayrshire lady who was henceforth his most constant correspondent, that he had contemplated buying a commission in the army. Very quickly, however, he determined to live the life to which he had been bred, and on this Border tour he visited Dalswinton, near Dumfries Mr Miller, the proprietor, having offered him a farm. On his 'éclatant return,' as he called it, to Mauchline, he was cordially received by Jean Armour, who had borne him twins the previous September, and their relations were restored to the old footing. After a brief stay at Mossgiel, he returned to Edinburgh, only to start on a three weeks' tour in the Highlands, in the course of which he was entertained by the Dukes of Athole and Gordon, and visited his Kincardineshire relatives. Back in Edinburgh, he had to resume the task of badgering Creech for his money; but he would have given up the attempt in December had he not met with a carriage accident which laid him on his back. Simultaneously he fell into a correspondence with a sentimental grass-widow of literary tastes-Mrs Maclehose; the correspondence, carried on in romantic style between

'Sylvander' and 'Clarinda,' ripened into an ardent friendship, and had she been free he might have married her. However, when he at last got a settlement with Creech, he returned to Mossgiel in February of 1788; married Jean Armour, who had been turned out of her father's house just before her second accouchement-she bore twins again, but they died immediately after birth; went through a course of instruction in the duties of an Excise officer, having obtained, in Edinburgh, a promise of a post in the service should farming fail him again; and took from Miller the farm of Ellisland, on the Dalswinton estate. Having built his house on the banks of the Nith, the poet took his wife thither, and set himself seriously to make 'conduct' his first aim, while not forgetting his destiny to 'mak' a sang at least' for Scotland or fame. His society was sought by the neighbouring gentry, notably by an enthusiastic antiquary, Mr Riddel of Glenriddel, and he used his pen to help the local Whig politicians. He wrote election verses, and, occasion offering, struck another blow for his old friends, the Liberal clergy of Ayrshire. Mrs Dunlop and other friends wrote to and received many letters from him. Captain Riddel and he established a parish library. The struggle for existence was now unfavourable to sustained literary effort. The farm was a bad bargain, and before the end of 1789 Burns had applied for and obtained work as an exciseman; and though his beat was in the environment of Ellisland, it covered ten parishes and involved almost continuous riding. Yet his Muse-he loved the word-was not infertile. He had begun in Edinburgh to contribute to Johnson's Musical Museum, and continued to make and adapt songs for that publication. He wrote an 'Ode to the Departed Regency Bill, 1789,' for Stuart's (London) Star, and was offered and declined a regular engagement on its staff. He refused also to think of the newly founded chair of Agriculture in Edinburgh University, for which Mrs Dunlop and Mr Graham of Fintry, one of the Commissioners of Excise, would have pressed his claim. It was in the autumn of 1790 that he composed 'Tam o' Shanter,' which by many critics is regarded as his masterpiece. In the same year Burns committed a breach of conjugal fidelity--the only one of which there is authentic record-his fellow-sinner being Ann Park, servant in a Dumfries inn; but his wife nursed the child of this connection along with one of her own.

In November 1791 the poet quitted farming in disgust, sold his stock, and became an exciseman pure and simple. He was appointed to a division in Dumfries at a salary of seventy pounds a year, with perquisites, and within a year this was increased by twenty pounds. He had a good friend in Mr Graham, and soon acquired another in Mr Corbet, one of the Supervisors-General, whom Mrs Dunlop interested in him. His prospects of advancement in his profession were excel-{

lent; but his politics now developed into active sympathy with the French Revolutionists. Life, however, went well with him on the whole. He kept on writing songs for Johnson, and more diligently and enthusiastically for George Thomson's Melodies; struck up a friendship with Mrs Maria Riddel, sister-in-law of his friend the Captain; and was on friendly terms with both the county gentry and the townsfolk. He did not, on his own confession, eschew the tavern; but according to the emphatic testimony of his wife, his official superior, Supervisor Findlater, and his immediate neighbour Gray, a teacher in the local Academy, he never became habitually intemperate.

There

is abundant evidence that he was attentive to his official duties; it goes without saying that he was the most careful and affectionate of fathers. Yet he did not take pains in word or act to conceal his sympathy with French Revolutionists or British Reformers. Although Graham of Fintry remained his steadfast friend, his outspokenness led to a delay in his promotion and to his being 'cut' by a section of Dumfries 'society;' and a somewhat mysterious quarrel with Mrs Riddel gave him much pain and cost him some friendships. Yet when 'Haughty Gaul' threatened invasion, his patriotic songs rang through the country and brought back any popularity he had lost; and the difference with Mrs Riddel did not last a year. A supervisorship was in sight, and not without reason he looked forward to obtaining, through political influence, a collectorship, which meant a life of literary leisure with a decent competence;' but an attack of rheumatic fever in the winter of 1795-96, following the loss of a daughter, proved too much for his constitution. He deliberately prepared for death and met it calmly misunderstandings due to delirium deserve no serious consideration-on 21st July 1796.

The world of criticism, following the sure-footed judgment of the Scottish people, has given up the attempt to separate Burns the man from Burns the lyrist, humorist, and thinker. Than this there could be no better evidence that he was to all intents and purposes a poet sui generis. The events of his life, the details of his moral and intellectual experience, as realistically reproduced, idealized, or reflected upon in letters and poems, have the unity of a continuous self-revelation. In extent and intensity, that revelation is probably unique. There are mysteries in the life of Burns, such as the episode of the 'Highland Mary' of immortality, the Mary Campbell of tradition, which will probably never be cleared up; he dwelt so far apart from such of his contemporaries as he came in contact with, that, notwithstanding his emphatic preference of the 'social' to the self-contained man, he must have kept 'something to himsel' he wadna tell to ony.' Yet, like Goethe, he declined to join that almost universal 'conspiracy of silence' which regards the incidents of self-development as things to be

ashamed of and consigned to a decent oblivion. Like Goethe also, he regarded his own character and life as so much grist for his artistic mill; and as he had imperious natural impulses which 'raged like demons,' and 'well-nigh the finest brain conceivable,' that grist was not inconsiderable. Though, as he anticipated in his fragment of autobiography, 'Whim and Fancy, keen sensibility and riotous passions, made him zigzag in his path of life,' and although his poetic career may be accounted a 'faithful failure' in the sense that he died before he had scaled

The wished-for height,

Where, Man and Nature fairer in her sight, His Muse could imp her wing for some sublimer flight, his genius, his absolute command of the technique of his art, and his remorseless sincerity, made of these zigzags the Wilhelm Meister's Pilgrimage of Humanity. The wild abandonment of reckless joy, the anguish of an upbraiding conscience, the whole struggle of the soul with itself, reverence for the mysterious Power on which all things depend, scorn of cant and falsehood, contempt of folly, mirthful appreciation of the oddities of life and man, indignation at baseness and tyranny, delight in friendship, resentment against intrusive pride, pity for the suffering of all that feels, aspiration after a juster and happier structure of society, wise and sober contemplation of life and duty, the raptures of the hopeful, the anxieties of the despairing, the heart-breaking disappointment of the rejected or deserted lover, the hilarities of welcome, the sadness of farewell -these intensities of everyday life he reproduced as they never were reproduced before and may never be reproduced again. Hence it is that the 'universal plan' of Burns can never be grasped either in its reality or in its breadth, until the complete output of his life and art be carefully considered. Burns must be compared with Burns: Burns in despair must be read with Burns on the topmost wave of hope; Burns humorous must be interpreted by Burns serious, Burns resentful by Burns cheerfully acquiescent, Burns the Jacobite by Burns the Democrat. 'Scotch Drink' and the 'Peck o' Maut' must be collated with 'The Beadsman of Nithside;' any seeming condonation of license must be read in the light of the 'Epistle to a Young Friend' or a 'Bard's Epitaph; the Burns who had the courage to say that his marriage, like that of every other man, was a venture in the lottery of life, must not be quoted to the prejudice of the Burns who, according to his widow, found 'the true pathos and sublime of human life' as the affectionate husband of Jean Armour and the devoted father of Jean Armour's children; the Burns who fiercely proclaimed his right to be 'independent in his sinning' in 'The Kirk an' State may gang to Hell, but I'll gang to my Anna,' must not be reprobated, and the Burns who brooded over his

lapse from his own ideal in a silence which paralysed poetic effort and only found vent in agonised letters, absolutely ignored.

a

A consideration of Burns in all his aspects and triumphs leads to the conclusion that an instinct for thoroughness is the 'miraculous' or inexplicable element in him which has made him at once a ready-reckoner in mundane ethics and a joy for ever in the case of at least a moiety of the Anglo-Saxon race. He was equally thorough as 'a victim of fair enslavers,' as preacher of self-control, as a student of his own nature, as a devotee of the rhymer's art, as a practitioner of his cardinal doctrine that while impulse must select subjects for poetic treatment, infinite patience and labour can alone make the treatment successful. Only by bringing together a few of his sentences and verses can the 'harmony not understood' of his artistic performance be effectually illustrated.

I pored over it [a selection of English poems] driving my cart or walking to labour song by song, verse by verse; carefully noting the tender or sublime from fustian. . . . I engaged several of my schoolfellows to keep up a literary correspondence with me.

On braes when we please then,

We'll sit and sowth a tune,
Syne rhyme tell't we'll time tell 't,
And sing 't when we ha'e dune.

Whene'er my Muse does on me glance,
I jingle at her.

I have two or three times in my life composed from the wish rather than from the impulse, but I have never succeeded to any purpose.

How the subject theme may gang,

Let time and chance determine;
Perhaps it may turn out a sang,
Perhaps turn out a sermon.

I weighed myself alone; I balanced myself with others; I watched every means of information, how much ground I occupied as a man and a poet; I studied assiduously Nature's design, where she seemed to have intended the various lights and shades in my character. I firmly believe that excellence in the profession is the fruit of industry, labour, attention, and pains. . . . I have no great faith in the boastful pretensions to intuitive propriety and laboured elegance. The rough material of fine writing is certainly the gift of genius; but I as firmly believe that the workmanship is the united effort of pains, attention, and repeated trial. . . . Those who think that composing a Scotch song is a trifling business -let them try it. . . . I had rather be the author of five well-written songs than of ten otherwise. . . . I rhyme for fun. . . . The heart of the man and the fancy of the poet are the two grand considerations for which I live.

Grant me but this, I ask no more,

Aye rowth o' rhymes.

'A style of perfect plainness, relying for effect solely on the weight of that which with entire fidelity it utters,' has been rightly recognised by

Matthew Arnold as the citadel of Burns's strength. That style he would never have acquired but for his infinite capacity for taking pains, and for the experiences, including even the 'thoughtless follies,' that temporarily laid him low and stain'd his name.' It is his style of perfect plainness, rendering actual experiences, physical or mental, with entire fidelity, and reaching its height in lines of ecstasy or of exquisite clarity, that has made Burns a dictionary of poetical quotations. Such lines as these have become part of the current coin of literature:

To see her is to love her,

And love but her for ever;

For Nature made her what she is,
And never made anither.

Then down ye 'll hurl, deil nor ye never rise!
And dash the gumlie jaups up to the pouring skies.

Rough, rude, ready-witted Rankine,
The wale o' cocks for fun and drinkin'.

The heart's aye the part aye That makes us right or wrang.

Come, firm Resolve, take thou the van,
Thou stalk o' carl-hemp in man!

Know prudent, cautious self-control
Is wisdom's root.

The sky was blue, the wind was still,
The moon was shining clearly.

He was the king o' a' the core,

To guard, or draw, or wick a bore;
Or up the rink like Jehu roar,
In time o' need.

To make a happy fireside clime
To weans and wife,

That's the true pathos and sublime

Of human life.

The best-laid schemes o' mice and men
Gang aft agley.

Man to man the warld o'er
Shall brothers be for a' that.
Rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.
A fig for those by law protected,
Liberty's a glorious feast;
Courts for cowards were erected,

Churches built to please the priest.
They reeled, they set, they crossed, they cleekit,
Till ilka carlin swat and reekit,
And coost her duddies to the wark,
And linket at it in her sark!

'The rank of Burns is the very first of his art’ is the verdict of Byron, who also in advance effectively answered criticisms directed against his predecessor's courageously Teniersish treatment of certain features and phases of life by saying, ‘A man may be coarse and yet not vulgar, and the reverse. Burns is often coarse but never vulgar.'

This verdict is now universally accepted. Yet, being a poet sui generis, he cannot profitably be compared with any of his predecessors or successors in English literature who may be accounted his equals in natural faculty. Goethe pronounced him the first of lyrists, and that in virtue of the two hundred and fifty songs which he wrote or improved in the intervals of work as a farmer and gauger, and while he was, not without reason, looking forward to a decent competence and 'literary leisure.' The author of 'The Jolly Beggars,' 'Tam o' Shanter,' and 'Holy Willie's Prayer;' of 'The Bard's Epitaph,' 'The Epistle to a Young Friend,' and 'A man's a man for a' that,' holds an assured place among 'inevitable' humourists and moralists. Of Scottish poets he is the first, the second being Dunbar, whom he scarcely if at all surpasses in biting trenchancy of sarcasm, but whom he greatly surpasses in the riot of good-humour and in sympathy with Humanity in general. His relation to Ramsay, and reverence for Fergusson and the others of the vernacular' or Scottish Renaissance school of poetry, is very much that of a master to pupils who have been preparing work in the studio for him. They gave him rhymes, including his favourite 'Mouse' stanza; and in the case of Ramsay and Fergusson, subjects for treatment, points of view, even phrases and verses. What he supplemented them with was original genius of the first order, consummate art, and the power of rising from Scotland into a conception of the world as a whole. It is a familiar saying that Burns won his greatest triumphs in and with the vernacular. That saying need not be gainsaid. It must, however, be remembered that he was the superior of his predecessors in English as well as in Scottish verse. 'Thou Lingering Star,' one of his greatest achievements in the impassioned as distinguished from the passionate, is in English. So also are 'Man was made to mourn,' the impassioned stanzas on the wounded hare, the 'Ode to the Memory of Mrs Oswald' (which Carlyle terms a piece that might have been chanted by the Furies of Eschylus), the best half of the 'Mountain Daisy,' the finest reflective and descriptive passages in 'Tam o' Shanter,' practically the whole of the superb Macpherson's Farewell,' 'Afton Water,' the 'Song of Death,' 'The Gloomy Night is Gathering Fast,' the best of 'Scots wha hae,' 'Go fetch to me a pint of wine,' 'Had we never loved so kindly;' and the most elevated passages in 'The Vision' and 'The Cotter's Saturday Night.' Whenever, in fact, he soared from the particular to the universal in sentiment, in humour, and in reflection, he glided from Scottish into English. Thus it is that Burns's mission and achievement-his pre-eminence as a Scottish, his excellence as an English, poet -mean the triumphant assertion by Scotland of its rights of inheritance in British and general literature.

Tam o' Shanter.-A Tale.

thirsty

road

ale

Of Brownyis and of Bogillis full is this Buke.-GAWIN DOUGlas.
When chapman billies leave the street, packman fellows
And drouthy neebors neebors meet;
As market-days are wearing late,
An' folk begin to tak' the gate;
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
An' getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

This truth fand honest Tam o' Shanter,
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter:
(Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses
For honest men and bonie lasses).

mellow-very

gaps

found

have taken

rogue idle talker

one

every

meal-grinding

money

O Tam, had'st thou but been sae wise, As taen thy ain wife Kate's advice! She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum, A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum; That frae November till October, Ae market-day thou was nae sober; That ilka melder wi' the miller, Thou sat as lang as thou had siller; That ev'ry naig was ca'd a shoe on, The smith and thee gat roaring fou on; Thar at the Lord's house, even on Sunday, Thou drank wi' Kirkton Jean till Monday. She prophesied that, late or soon, Thou would be found deep drown'd in Doon, Or catch'd wi' warlocks in the mirk By Alloway's auld haunted kirk.

Ah! gentle dames! it gars me greet To think how monie counsels sweet, How monie lengthen'd sage advices The husband frae the wife despises !

nag-shod drunk

wizards

makes-weep

fireside-blazing

Cobbler thirsty booncompanion

But to our tale :-Ae market-night,
Tam had got planted unco right,
Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely,
Wi' reaming swats, that drank divinely; foaming-new ale
And at his elbow, Souter Johnie,
His ancient, trusty, drouthie cronie:
Tam lo'ed him like a very brither;
They had been fou for weeks thegither.
The night drave on wi' sangs and clatter;
And ay the ale was growing better:
The landlady and Tam grew gracious
Wi' favours secret, sweet and precious:
The Souter tauld his queerest stories;
The landlord's laugh was ready chorus:
The storm without might rair and rustle,
Tam did na mind the storm a whistle.

Care, mad to see a man sae happy,
E'en drown'd himsel amang the nappy.
As bees flee hame wi' lades o' treasure,
The minutes wing'd their way wi' pleasure:
Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious,
O'er a' the ills o' life victorious!

But pleasures are like poppies spread :
You seize the flow'r its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white-then melts forever;
Or like the borealis race

That flit ere you can point their place;

roar

ale