They have their humours and their leisure hours this vacation, to devote

Thus give your tend'rest passions asked if he could pun upon the

Since you must both resign your breath, When Dido found Aneas would not

Select Biography.

"No part of History is more in structive and delightful than the Lives of great and worthy Men."

BURNETT.

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

NARRATIVE OF THE INFANCY AND be often at my own expence; for

YOUTH OF

ROBERT BURNS, THE POET.

(Written by himself.)

Robert Burns was, as is well known, the son of a farmer in Ayrshire.

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 The strength and originality of and folly; and like him too, frehis genius procured him the no-quently shaken hands with intoxitice of many persons distinguish- cating friendship..

ed in the Republic of Letters; "After you have perused these and, among others, that of Dr. pages, should you think them Moore, well known for his " Views trifling and impertinent, I only of Society and Manners on the beg leave to tell you, that the Continent of Europe," for his " "Ze- poor author wrote them under luco," and various other works. some twitching qualms of consciTo this gentleman our poet ad-ence, arising from a suspicion dressed the following letter, after his first visit to Edinburgh, giving a history of his life up to the period of his writing,

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

“Mauchline, August 2, 1787. pretensions to assume that cha

SIR,

racter which the pye-coated guardians of escutcheons call a gentleman. When at Edinburgh last

"For some months past I have been rambling over the country, but am now confined winter, I got acquainted in the hewith some lingering complaints, rald's office, and looking through originating, as I take it, in the the granary of honours, I there stomach. To divert my spirits found almost every name of the a little in this miserable fog of kingdom; but for me,

ennui, I have taken a whim to "My ancient but ignoble blood give you a history of myself. My "Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood."

name has made some little noise

in this country; you have done Gules, Purpure, Argent, &c. me the honour to interest yourself quite disowned me:

Z

"My father was of the north school-master some thrashings, I of Scotland, the son of a farmer, made an excellent English schoand was thrown by early misfor- lar; and the time I was ten or tunes on the world at large; where, | eleven years of age, I was a critic after many years' wanderings and in substantives, verbs, and partisojournings, he picked up a pret- cles. In my infant and boyish ty large quantity of observation days too, I owed much to an old and experience, to which I am in-woman who resided in the family, debted for most of my little pre- remarkable for her ignorance, tensions to wisdom.-I have met credulity, and superstition. She with few who understood men, had, I suppose, the largest collectheir manners, and their ways, tion in the country of tales and equal to him; but stubborn un- songs concerning devils, ghosts, gainly integrity, and headlong fairies, brownies, witches, warungovernable irrascibility, are locks, kelpies, elf-candles, deaddisqualifying circumstances; con- lights, wraiths, apparitions, consequently I was born a very poor

'man's son.

traips, giants, inchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery."For the first six or seven This cultivated the latent seeds of years of my life, my father was a poetry; but had so strong an efgardener to a worthy gentleman fect on my imagination, that to of small estate in the neighbour- this hour, in my nocturnal ramhood of Ayr. Had he continued bles, I sometimes keep a sharp in that station, I must have march-look-out in suspicious places: ed off to be one of the little un- and though nobody can be more derlings about a farm-house; sceptical than I am in such matbut it was his dearest wish and ters, yet it often takes an effort of prayer to have it in his power to philosophy to shake off these idle keep his children under his own terrors. The earliest composition eye, at least till they could dis- that I recollect taking pleasure in cern between good and evil; so was The Vision of Mirza, and a with the assistance of his gener-Hymn of Addison's beginning, ous master, my father ventured "How are thy servants blest, O on a small farm on his estate. At Lord!" I particularly remember these years I was by no means a one half-stanza which was music favourite with any body. I was to my boyish ear—

a good deal noted for a retentive" For though in dreadful whirls we memory, a stubborn sturdy some- hung

thing in my disposition, and an "High on the broken wave." enthusiastic ideot piety.-I say I met with these pieces in Mason's ideot piety, because I was but English Collection, one of my then a child. Though it cost the school-books. The two first

books I ever read in private, and that our young gentry have a just

It takes a few

since, were the Life of Hannibal, play-fellows.

and the History of Sir William dashes into the world, to give the

Wallace. Hannibal gave my young great man that deproper, young ideas such a turn, that I cent, unnoticing disregard for the used to strut in raptures up and poor, insignificant, stupid devils, down after the recruiting drum the mechanics and peasantry aand bag-pipe, and wished myself round him, who were perhaps tall enough to be a soldier; while born in the same village. My the story of Wallace poured a young superiors never insulted Scottish prejudice into my veins, the louterly appearance of my which will boil along there, till plough-boy carcase, the two exthe flood-gates of life shut in eter-tremities of which were often exnal rest. posed to all the inclemencies of "Polemical divinity about this the seasons. They would give time was setting the country half me stray volumes of books; amad, and I, ambitious of shining mong them, even then, I could in conversation-parties on Sun- pick up some observations, and days between sermons, at funerals, one, whose heart I am sure not &c. used, a few years afterwards, even the Munny Begum scenes to puzzle Calvinism with so much have tainted, helped me to a little heat and indiscretion, that it raised French. Parting with these, my a hue-and-cry of heresy against young friends and benefactors, as me, which has not ceased to this they occasionally went off for the hour. East or West Indies, was often to My vicinity to Ayr was of me a very sore affliction, but I some advantage to me. My soci- was soon called to more serious al disposition, when not checked evils. My father's generous masby some modification of spited ter died; the farm proved a pride, was, like our catechism de- ruinous bargain; and, to clench finition of infinitude, without the misfortune, we fell into the bounds or limits. I formed con- hands of a factor, who sat for the nections who possessed superior picture I have drawn of one in advantages; the youngling actors my Tale of the Twa Dogs. My who were busy in the rehearsal of father was advanced in life when parts in which they were shortly he married; I was the eldest of to appear on the stage of life, seven children, and he, worn out where, alas! I was destined to by early hardships, was unfit for drudge behind the scenes. It is labour. My father's spirit was not commonly at this green age, soon irritated, but not easily bro

66

ken. There was a freedom in the contagion I cannot tell; you his lease in two years more, and to weather these two years we retrenched our expences. We lived very poorly; I was an excellent plough-man 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 scoundrel factor's insolent threatening letters, which used to set us all in tears.

medical people talk much of infection from breathing the same air, &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 Eolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan when I looked over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her love-inspiring qualities, she sang sweetly; and "This kind of life, the cheer- it was her favourite reel to which less gloom of a hermit with the I attempted giving an embodied unceasing moil of a galley-slave, vehicle in rhyme. I was not so brought me to my 16th year; a presumptuous as to imagine, that I little before which period I first could make verses like printed committed the sin of rhyme. You ones, composed by men who had know our country custom of Greek and Latin; but my girl coupling a man and woman toge-sang a song which was said to be ther as partners in the labours of composed by a small country harvest. In my 15th autumn, laird's son, on one of his father's my partner was a bewitching maids, with whom he was in love; creature, a year younger than and I saw no reason why I might myself. My scarcity of English not rhyme as well as he; for, denies me the power of doing her excepting that he could shear justice in that language, but you sheep, and cast peats, his father know the Scottish ideom; she living in the moorlands, he had was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. no more scholar-craft than myself. In short, she altogether, unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disappointment, ginhorse prudence, and book-worm my highest enjoyment. philosophy, I hold to be the first

of human joys, our dearest blessing here below! How she caught

"Thus with me began love and poetry, which at times have been my only, and, till within the last twelve months, have been

To be continued.