SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. ROBERT BURNS was, as is well known, the son of a farmer in Ayrshire, and afterwards himself a farmer there; but, having been unsuccessful, he was about to emigrate to Jamaica. He had previously, however, attracted some notice by his poetical talents in the vicinity where he lived; and having published a small volume of his poems at Kilmarnock, this drew upon him more general attention. In consequence of the encouragement he received, he repaired to Edinburgh, and there published, by subscription, an improved and enlarged edition of his poems, which met with extraordinary success. By the profits arising from the sale of this edition, he was enabled to enter on a farm in Dumfriesshire; and having married a person to whom he had been long attached, he retired to devote the remainder of his life to agriculture. He was again, however, unsuccessful; and, abandoning his farm, he removed again into the town of Dumfries, where he filled an inferior office in the excise, and where he terminated his life in July, 1796, in his thirty-eighth year. The strength and originality of his genius procured him the notice of many persons distinguished in the republic of letters, and. among others, that of Dr. Moore, well known for his "Views of Society and Manners on the Continent of Europe," for his "Zeluco," and various other works. To this gentleman our poet addressed a letter, after his first visit to Edinburgh, giving a history of his life, up to the period of his writing In a composition never intended to see the light, elegance or perfect correctness of composition will not be expected. These, however. will be compensated by the opportunity of seeing our poet, as he gives the incidents of his life, unfold the peculiarities of his character with all the careless vigour and open sincerity of his mind. "SIR, Mauchline, 2nd August, 1787. "For some months past I have been rambling over 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 ennur, 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, except in the trifling affair of wisdom, I sometimes think 1 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 persued these pages, should you think them trifling and impertinent, I only beg leave to tell you, that the poor author wrote them under some twitching qualms of conscience, arising from a suspicion that he was doing what he ought not to do; a predicament he has more than once been in before. "I have not the most 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 Herald's Office; and, looking through that granary of honours, I found there almost every name in the kingdom; but for me, "My ancient but ignoble blood Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood." Gules, purpure, argent, &c., quite disowned me. "My father was of the north of Scotland, the son of a farmer, and was thrown by early misfortunes on the world at large; where after many years wanderings and sojournings, he picked up a pretty large quantity of observation and experience, to which I am indebted for most of my little pretensions to wisdom. -I have met with few who understood men, their manners, and their ways, equal to him; but stubborn, unirascibility, are disqualifying circumstances; gainly integrity, and headlong, ungovernable 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 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 those years I was by no means a favourite with anybody. 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 tune, we fell into the hands of a factor, who sat for the picture I have drawn of one in my Tale of Twa Dogs.' My father was advanced in life when he married; I was the eldest of seven children; and he, worn out by early hardships, was unfit for labour. My father's spirit was soon irritated, but not easily broken. There was a freedom in his lease in two years more; and to weather these two years, we retrenched our expenses. We lived very poorly; I was a dextrous 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 s---1 factor's insolent threatening letters which used to set us all in tears. 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 ten or eleven 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, deadlights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, en chanted 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 "This kind of life-the cheerless gloom of a of philosophy to shake off these idel terrors. The hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galleyearliest composition that I recollect taking plea-slave, brought me to my sixteenth year; a little sure in, was The Vision of Mirza," and a hymn before which period I first committed the sin of of Addison's, beginning, How are thy servants Rhyme. You know our country custom of coupblest, O Lord!" I particularly remember one halfling a man and woman together as partners in stanza which was music to my boyish ears"For though on dreadful whirls we hung, High on the broken wave-" I met with these pieces in Mason's English Col- my "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 indiscretion, 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 spiritual pride, was, like our catechism-definition of infinitude, without bounds or limits. I formed several connections with other younkers 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 have a just sense of the immense distance between them and their ragged play-fellows. It takes a few dashes into the world, to give the young great man that proper, decent, unnoticing disregard for the poor insignificant stupid devils, the mechanics and peasantry around him, who were perhaps born in the same village. My young superiors never insulted the clouterly appearance of my plough-boy carcase, the two extremes of which were often exposed to all the inclemencies of the seasons. They would give me stray volumes of books; among them, even then, I could pick up some observations; and one, whose heart I am sure not even the Munny Begum scenes have tainted, helped me to a little French. Parting with these my young friends and benefactors, as they occasionally went off for the East or West Indies, was often to me a sore affliction. But I was soon called to more serious evils. My father's generous master died; the farm proved a ruinou barmin: and, to elench the misfor the labours of harvest. In my fifteenth summer my partner was a bewitching creature a year younger than myself. My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language; but you know the Scottish idoim-she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she altogether, unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and bookworm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below! How she caught the contagion, I cannot tell you medical people talk much of infection from breathing the same air, the touch, &c.; but I never expressly said I loved her. Indeed, I did not know myself why I liked to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labours; why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an Æolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung 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 sung a song, which was said to be composed by a small country laird's son, on one of his father's maids, with whom he was in love! and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he; for, excepting that he could swear sheep, and cast peats, his father living in the moor-lands, he had no more scholar-craft 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 lease, when he entered on a larger farm, about ten miles farther in the country. The nature of the bargain he made was such as to throw a little ready money into his hands at the commencement of his lease, otherwise the affair would have been impracticable. For four years we lived comfortably here; but a difference commencing between him and his landlord, as to terms, after three years tossing and whirling in the vortex of litigation my father was just saved from the horrors of a jail by consumption, which, after two years' promises, kindly stepped in, and carried him away, to where the wicked cease from troubling, and 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 manner, of literature, and criticism, I got from the Spectator. These, with Pope's Works, some plays of Shakspere, Tull and Dickson on Agriculture,' The Pantheon,'' Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, Stackhouse's History of the Bible,s' Justice's British Gardener's Directory, Bayle's Lectures,' Allan Ramsay's Works, Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin,' a Select Collection of English Songs, and Hervey's 'Meditations,' had formed the whole of my reading. The collection of songs was my vade-mecum. I pored over them driving my cart, or walking to labour, song by song, verse by verse, carefully noting the true tender, or sublime, from affectation and fustian. I am convinced I owe to this practice much of my critic craft, such as it is. in Europe. The very goose-feather in my hand seems to know instinctively the well-worn path of my imagination, the favourite theme of my song; and it is with difficulty restrained from giving you a couple of paragraphs on the loveadventures of my compeers, the humble inmates of the farm-house and cottage; but the grave sons of science, ambition, or avarice, baptise these things by the name of follies. To the sons and daughters of labour and poverty, they are matters of the most serious nature; to them, the ardent hope, the stolen interview, the tender farewell, are the greatest and most delicious parts of my enjoyments. sphere of my studies. I, however, struggled on Herself as fairer flower.' It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining week I staid, I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her; and the last two nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless. "Another circumstance in my life which made some alteration in my mind and manners, was that I spent my nineteenth summer on a smugging coast, a good distance from home, at a noted school, to learn mensuration, surveying, dialling, &c, in which I made a pretty great progress. But I made a greater progress in the knowledge of mankind. The contraband trade "In my seventeenth year, to give my manners was at the time very successful, and it somea brush, I went to a country dancing-school. times happened to me to fall in with those who My father had an unaccountable antipathy carried it on. Scenes of swaggering riot and against these meetings; and my going was, roaring dissipation were till this time new to what to this moment I repent, in opposition to me; but I was no enemy to social life. Here, his wishes. My father, as I said before, was though I learnt to fill my glass, and to mix withsubject to strong passions; from that instance out fear in a drunken squabble, yet I went on of disobedience in me, he took a sort of dislike with a high hand with my geometry, till the sun to me, which I believe was one cause of the dis- entered Virgo, a month which is always a carnisipation which marked my succeeding years. I val in my bosom, when a charming filette who say dissipation, in comparison with the strict-lived next door to the school, overset my trigoness, and sobriety, and regularity of Presby-nometry, and set me off at a tangent from the terian country life: for though the Will-o'-Wisp meteors of thoughtless whim were almost the sole lights of my path, yet early ingrained piety and virtue kept me for several years after within the line of innocence. The great misfortune of my life was to want an aim. I had early felt some stirrings of ambition, but they were the blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cave. I saw my father's situation entailed on me perpetual labour. The only two openings by which I could enter the temple of Fortune, was the gate of niggardly economy, or the path of little chicaning bargain-making. The first is so contracted an aperture, I never could squeeze myself into it; the last I always hated there was contamination in the very en- "I returned home very considerably improved. trance! Thus abandoned of aim or view in life, My reading was enlarged with the very imporwith a strong appetite for sociability, as well tant addition of Thomson's and Shenstone's from active hilarity, as from a pride of observa- works; I had seen human nature in a new tion and remark; a constitutional melancholy of phasis: and I engaged several of my schoolhypochondriasm that made me fly solitude; add fellows to keep up a literary correspondence to these incentives to social life, my reputation with me. This improved me in composition. I for bookish knowledge, a certain wild logical had met with a collection of letters of the wits talent, and a strength of thought, something like of Queen Anne's reign, and I poured over them the rudiments of good sense; and it will not most devoutly; I kept copies of any of my own seem surprising that I was generally a welcome letters that pleased me, and a comparison beguest where I visited, or any great wonder that, tween them and the composition of most of my always where two or three met together, there correspondents flattered my vanity. I carried was I among them. But far beyond all other this whim so far, that though I had not three impulses of my heart, was un penchant a l'ador-farthings' worth of business in the world, yet able moitie du genre humain. My heart was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other; and as in every other warfare in this world my fortune was various, sometimes I was received with favour, and sometimes I was mortified with a repulsé. At the plough, scythe, or reap-hook, I feared no competitor, and thus I set absolute want at defiance; and as I never cared further for my labours than while I was in actual exercise, I spent the evenings in a way after my own heart. A country lad seldom carries on a love-adventure without an assisting confidant. I possessed a curiosity, zeal, and intrepid dexterity, that recommended me as a proper second on these occasions; and I dare say, I felt as much pleasure in being in the secret of half the loves of the parish of Tarbolton, as ever did statesmen in knowing the intrigues of half the courts almost every post brought me as many letters as if I had been a broad plodding son of day-book and ledger. "My life flowed on much in the same course till my twenty-third year. Vive l'amour, et vive la bagatelle, were my sole principles of action. The addition of two more authors to my library gave me great pleasure; 'Sterne' and 'M'Kenzie' Tristram Shandy' and The Man of Feeling' were my bosom favourites. Poesy was still a darling walk for my mind; but it was only indulged in according to the humour of the hour. I had usually half a dozen or more pieces on hand; I took up one or other, as it suited the momentary tone of the mind, and dismissed the work as it bordered on fatigue. My passion, when once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they got vent in rhyme; and then the conning over my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet. None of the rhymes of those days are in print, except Winter, a Dirge,' the eldest of my printed pieces; 'Death of Poor Mailie,' 'John Barleycorn,' and The Songs,' first, second, and third. Song second was the ebullition of that passion which ended the forementioned school business. "My twenty-third year was to me an important era. Partly through whim, and partly that I wished to set about doing something in life, I joined a flax-dresser in a neighbouring town (Irvine) to learn his trade. This was an unlucky affair. My- --; and, to finish the whole, as we were giving a welcome carousal to the new year, the shop took fire and burnt to ashes; and 1 was left like a true poet, not worth a sixpence. "I was obliged to give up this scheme: the clouds of misfortune were gathering thick round my father's head; and what was worst of all, he was visibly far gone in a consumption; and to crown my distresses, a belle fille whom I adored, and who had pledged her soul to me in the field of matrimony, jilted me, with peculiar circumstances of mortification. The finishing evil that brought up the rear of this infernal file, was, my constitutional melancholy being increased to such a degree, that for three months I was in a state of mind scarcely to be envied by the hopeless wretches who have got their mittimus-Depart from me, ye accursed! "From this adventure, I learned something of a town life; but the principal thing which gave my mind a turn, was a friendship I formed with a young fellow, a very noble character, but a hapless son of misfortune. He was the son of a simple mechanic; but a great man in the neighbourhood taking him under his patronage gave him a genteel education, with a view of bettering his situation in life. The patron dying just as he was ready to launch out into the world, the poor little fellow in despair went to sea; where after a variety of good and ill fortune, a little before I was acquainted with him, he had been set ashore by an American privateer, on the wild coast of Connaught, stripped of everything. I cannot quit this poor fellow's story, without adding, that he is at this time master of a large West Indiaman belonging to the Thames. "His mind was fraught with independence, magnanimity, and every manly virtue. I loved and admired him to a degree of enthusiasm, and of course tried to imitate him. In some measure, I succeeded; I had pride before, but he taught it to flow in proper channels. His knowledge of the world was vastly superior to mine, and I was all attention to learn. He was the only man I ever saw, who was a greater fool than myself, where woman was the presiding star; but he spoke of illicit love with the levity of a sailor, which hitherto I had regarded with horror. Here his friendship did me a mischief; and the consequence was that soon after I resumed the plough, I wrote the 'Poet's Welcome.' My reading only increased, while in this town, by two stray volumes of Pamela' and one of "Ferdinand Count Fathom," which gave me some idea of novels. Rhyme, except some religious pieces that are in print, I had given up but meeting with Ferguson's Scottish Poems," I strung anew my wildly-sounding lyre with emulating vigour. When my father died, his all went among the hell-hounds that growl in the kennel of justice; but we made a shift to collect a little money in the family amongst us, with which, to keep us together, my brother and I took a neighbouring farm. My brother wanted my hair-brained imagination, as well as my social and amorous madness: but in good sense, and every sober qualification, he was far my superior. I entered on this farm with a full resolution, Come, go to, I will be wise!' I read farming "I now began to be known in the neighbourhood as a maker of rhymes. The first of my poetic offspring that saw the light, was a burlesque lamentation on a quarrel between two reverend Calvinists, both of them dramatis personce in my Holy Fair.' I had a notion myself, that the piece had some merit; but to prevent the worst, I gave a copy of it to a friend who was very fond of such things, and told him that I could not guess who was the author of it, but that I thought it pretty clever. With a certain description of the clergy, as well as laity, it met with a roar of applause. "Holy Willie's Prayer" next made its appearance, and alarmed the kirk session so much, that they held several meetings to look over their spiritual artillery, if haply any of it might be pointed against profane rhymers. Unluckily for me, my wanderings led me on another side, within point-blank shot of their heaviest metal. This is the unfortunate story that gave rise to my printed poem, "The Lament." This was a most melancholy affair, which I cannot yet bear to reflect on, and had very nearly given me one or two of the principal qualifications for a place among those who have lost the chart, and mistaken the reckoning of rationality.* I gave up my part of the farm to my brother; in truth it was only nominally mine; and made what little preparation was in my power for Jamaica. But, before leaving my native country for ever, I resolved to publish my poems. I weighed my productions as impartially as was in my power: I thought they had merit; and it was a delicious idea that I should be called a clever fellow, even though it should never reach my ears-a poor negrodriver,-or perhaps a victim of that inhospitable clime, and gone to the world of spirits! I can truly say, that pauvre inconnu as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high an idea of myself and of my works as I have at this moment when the public has decided in their favour. It ever was my opinion, that the mistakes and blunders, both in a rational and religious point of view, of which we see thousands daily guilty, are owing to their ignorance of themselves.-To know my.. self, had been all along my constant study. I weighed myself alone; I balanced myself with others: I watched every means of information, to see how much ground I occupied as a man and as a poet; I studied assiduously nature's design in my formation-where the lights and shades in my character were intended. I was pretty confident my poems would meet with some applause; but, at the worst, the roar of the Atlantic would deafen the voice of censure, and the novelty of West Indian scenes make me forget neglect. I threw off six hundred copies, of which I had got subscriptions for about three hundred and fifty.-My vanity was highly gratified by the reception I had met with from the public; and besides I pocketed, all expenses deducted, nearly twenty pounds. This sum came very seasonably, as I was thinking of indenting myself, for want of money to procure my passage. As soon as I was master of nine guineas, the price of wafting me to the torrid zone, I took a steerage passage in the first ship that was to sail from the Clyde; for |