"The rustling corn, the fruited thorn, And every happy creature."

At another time the lady is unkind; and the little picture, fresh-breathing of dews and fields, surrounds one figure only in the fantastic depths of youthful despair:

"The merry ploughboy cheers his team,

Wi' joy the tentie seedsman stalks; But life's to me a weary dream

The dream o' ane that never wauks."

Every one of these bursts of song reveals to us the sweet country-side, with all its woods and streams, the tender silence of nature, the "happy living things" which the poet loves with all the natural warmth of a heart that opens wide its inmost doors to everything that lives. The

lark which

""Tween light and dark, Blythe wauken by the daisy's side,”

knowing the intrigues of half the courts in Europe." A prince could not have been more free, more favoured or well thought of; indeed he was in his sphere an absolute prince, "able to set want at defiance," which was all he required for independence, and cumbered with no artificial needs.

Thus Robert Burns lived till he was twenty-three. The anxieties which sometimes overwhelmed him were not for himself, but for his family, that his father's honourable name might be kept pure, and a roof kept over his old mother's head, and the household held together, which it had been old William Burns's aim and pride to keep together. He kept free of debt, which he held in purest terror, upon £7 a year, as his brother Gilbert testifies. Towards the end of this virtuous beginning of his life he went to Irvine to learn the trade of flax-dressing, and there lived upon porridge - on the oatmeal sent him from home as many a farmer's son has done while wearing the academic gown. To this he was moved either by a desire so far to improve his position as to be able to marry, or possibly by the more serious thoughts suggested by an illness, which seems to be referred to in a very is as visible to him as the shepherd that grave, and indeed pathetic letter, written "o'er the moorland whistles shrill; and in the end of 1781, in which he declares all nature is populous to his universal himself to find great comfort in the descripsympathy. A man with such exuberance tion of heaven given in Revelation, and of tender thought and winning words was, says that, "sometimes for an hour or two, as might be expected, welcome everywhere when my spirits are a little lightened, Í to the rustic maidens, to whom it was as glimmer a little into futurity, but my prinsweet as to any princess to receive such cipal, and, indeed, my only pleasurable tuneful homage. And the farmer of employment, is looking backwards and Lochlea's son was a "strappin' youth," "forwards in a moral and religious way." well fitted to take any woman's eye. He despairs, he says, "of ever making a Dark eyes glowing with latent passion figure in life "- a curious idea, one would and fire ("I never saw such another eye suppose, to have so much as entered his in any human head," says Walter Scott, a mind. These utterances of youthful sadtolerable judge); dark hair curling about ness must always, however, be taken with his honest handsome forehead; a stalwart a large allowance for the feeling of the frame, not extravagant in height, but cast moment, and seldom represent anything in the robustest mould; come of a cred- more than temporary depression. And, itable, honourable family; and endowed poor fellow, he had been jilted, badly it with a native wit which no one could would appear, from some letters in his deny, and a genial friendliness towards correspondence of a high and splendid his fellow-creatures which few people tone, much unlike the frank and fresh nacould resist. Nature never set forth a ture of his love-songs. This venture at more hopeful youth in the regions to which Irvine ended in a fire, which consumed. he belonged by birth and breeding. "I flax and tools, and left the young man was generally a welcome guest wherever I without a sixpence. Its consequences visited," he says. "At the plough, scythe, were, however, still worse than pecuniary or reaping-hook I feared no competitor, loss. The society of the little town corand thus I set absolute want at defiance." rupted the country lad, He heard immorHe was in the secret of half the loves in ality spoken of with levity, and probably the parish of Tarbolton, and as proud of was introduced to scenes of dissipation his knowledge "as ever was statesman in' such as could scarcely be found in the

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"What though, like commoners of air,
We wander out, we know not where,

But either house or hall?

Yet Nature's charms, the hills and woods,
The sweeping vales, and foaming floods,
Are free alike to all.

In days when daisies deck the ground,
And blackbirds whistle clear,
With honest joy our hearts will bound
To see the coming year;

On braes, when we please, then,
We'll sit an' sowth a tune;
Syne rhyme till't, we'll time till't,
And sing't when we hae dune.

"Then let us cheerfu' acquiesce;
Nor make our scanty pleasures less,

By pining at our state;
And, even should misfortunes come,
I, here wha sit, hae met wi' some,

An's thankfu' for them yet,
They gi'e the wit of age to youth;

They let us ken oursel';

They make us see the naked truth,
The real guid and ill.

Though losses, and crosses,

Be lessons right severe,
There's wit there, ye'll get there,
Ye'll find nae other where."

parish of Tarbolton among the comrades sparks of that indignation which young who trusted him with their love-secrets. men feel at the inequalities of fortune :He returned home with the seeds of evil in him. But we are loath to leave this idyllic chapter, this genial and gracious youth. Amid its simple enjoyments there had been one which is curiously illustrative of the intellectual ambition which is natural to the Scotch peasant. When he was twenty-one, he, his brother, and five other young men, established a club in the village of Tarbolton for literary purposes. They were to meet once a-week in the village public-house; but lest the meeting should become an occasion of dissipation, the expenditure of each member was not to exceed threepence on any one night. Their object was "to relax themselves after toil, to promote sociality and friendship, and to improve the mind." As was natural they debated social and sentimental subjects, toasted their mistresses," and cultivated mutual friendship. They "found themselves so happy," says the naïve preamble to their rules, that after this club had existed for more than a year, they resolved to give a dance in its honour. "Accordingly we did meet, each one with a partner, and spent the evening in such innocence and merriment, such cheerfulness and good-humour, that every brother These verses were repeated by the poet will long remember it with pleasure and to his brother Gilbert in the summer of delight." Such were the pleasures of the 1784, shortly after their father's death, young rustics when left to themselves in when they were working together at Mosstheir own sphere, without interference giel, the new farm in which each member from their "betters." When Burns and of the family had embarked all his or her his family removed to Mossgiel, near possessions and labours, in the hope of beMauchline, they originated a similar club ing able to live and toil together. It was there; and though Dr. Currie, with his "in the interval of harder labour, when usual superiority considers their choice of he and I were working in the garden books to have been objectionable, as “be- (kail-yard).” “I believe," adds Gilbert, ing less calculated to increase the knowl-"the first idea of Robert's becoming an edge than to refine the taste' a quality author was started on this occasion." As he evidently considered unnecessary in a they stooped among the kail, the one said peasant yet it is probable the rural so- to the other that the verses were good ciety knew better than its critic. We as good as Allan Ramsay, sweetest praise dwell upon these particulars not so much to the author's tingling gratified ears, and for their absolute importance to Burns's that "they would bear being printed." life, as to show how worthy and even noble The writer and receiver of the letter and were all its circumstances so long as it re- the critic were all "country lads." These mained in its natural channel. The little were the sentiments that naturally occurred Tarbolton club debated whether prudence to, and the style that pleased them. We or inclination should most be considered shall see what was the different tone emin marriage; but not for its edification ployed when the young farmer of Mosswas planned the "Holy Fair." It is con- giel fell into the hands of his betters, and nected with the "Epistle to Davie," a very began to be petted, patronized, and taken different production, and with all the vir- notice of, to the great satisfaction of all tuous innocent thoughts, the simple yet his biographers and his own pleasure and lofty impulses, the cheerful young philoso- pride. phy of that pleasant poem. To his fellowrustic it was thus the rustic poet wrote, with true hope and manful content, yet

The little town of Mauchline would seem then to have possessed a certain jovial society, true men of the time, such

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as have figured in many a reminiscence of tle finer than his own, the mass of addithe end of last century- men half-way tional books which probably they had between the rude and loud squires of read, their superior power of expressing Fielding and the jovial lawyers of Scott, themselves, their possession of that gift of with that smack of free-thinking which be- education which is the god of the poor longed to their special generation, as well Scotchman, made his admission to their as of the free living which was character- company like entrance into Elysium. istic of the class up to a comparatively re- They were his betters; it was the natural cent period. Even yet the character has reward of his superior genius to be adnot sufficiently died out of Scotland to remitted among them; his hopes could not quire much stretch of memory to identify have reached so far had not Poetry opened it. The writer," who held one of the the tavern door, or the more difficult parhighest places in the little half-town half-lour, and admittted him to make sport for village society, was probably a younger the gentlemen. And he was young, and son of a laird, or possessed at least some had that glamour in his eyes which confers family connection or standing-ground in nobleness and beauty on all it looks on. the neighbourhood. By this right of Thus he who had lived all his life among family he was set free from all the bonds the wholesome fields, and had begun to which restrain men who have their charac- sing of them in soft delightful strains, ter and position to make; and his educa- fresh as the very voice of nature, was tion, his coarse wit, the familiarity which dragged into another atmosphere, an air he was free to indulge in with the common laden with fumes of toddy, and hot with people, aware that it would never lessen the excitement of local squabbles — squabthe importance which was derived not bles which were not even confined to the from himself but from his family - a fa- ground of politics, but which raged in that miliarity which hid infinite rude arrogance field where vituperation is always the behind its convivial good fellowship- loudest, and temper the highest, and levity earned him the superficial suffrages of the most profane the field of religious conunthinking multitude. His natural incli- tention. And when we add that our nation to rude and riotous scepticism was Burns, the first great, truly national, poet blown to a certain polemical heat by the of Scotland, began his public career with events and commotions of the time, and a string of verses in which bad taste and he had it in his power to be irreligious at profane meaning have not even wit or fun once and immoral, to drink and swear, and to veil them, or the headlong race of posneer and roar in boisterous merriment, at etic excitement to excuse them, we say in every thing that pretended to goodness or a word all that his introduction to better purity, without losing his right to be con- society, his admission to a higher class, his sidered a gentleman. He united the vices contact with men of education and family, of the rough-riding squire to those of the did for him. From the "Epistle to professional man of the town; and but for Davie" to the "Twa Herds," what an ina certain wild cleverness and good-nature, conceivable downfall! The first full of all had very few redeeming qualities about the tranquil sweetness of nature, the sohim. Such was the kind of man who was ber yet ever pleasant and cheerful light the aristocrat of the little Ayrshire burghs. of morning, before misfortune had become Sometimes he was the doctor, sometimes personal, or individual passion or anguish the writer, sometimes even, softened down had disturbed the early daylight - a a little and put into a more respectable poem gently intelligible to all men, wide garb, he became the parish minister, and as humanity and poetry and all-compendrank, and laughed, and made question- sating youth; the other a miserable local able jokes with the best. squib, requiring pages of explanation, It was into the hands of this fashion of filled with strange names of persons we man that Robert Burns, farmer at Moss- know nothing about, bristling with allugiel, who had already begun to write sions that are lost upon us, and possessing Robert Burns, poet," across the pages of no zest or flavour except to those who unhis scrap-books, fell. It was a "rise in derstood all the temporary commotions of life," for the ambitious ploughman. This the country-side. How, with this curious wild, rude, boisterous society was the so- contrast before them, people can still comciety of gentlemen. The young man was plain that Burns was not sufficiently nodazzled by the new light that thus shone ticed by the higher classes in his neighrpon him. Men who were the equals of bourhood, and that it would have been salall the lairs and lords in the country-side vation to him had he shared their educamade him their equal. Their accent a lit-tion and breeding, instead of that of his

father's cottage, we are unable to con- impulse of pride and pleasure with which ceive. Would to heaven that his betters he had come, carried him on to a certain had left the poet alone! that they gratification in being thus, as it were, had left him to schoolmaster Davie and made one of the clique, and initiated into ploughman Gilbert, to his peasant society, all their personal hatreds and jocular ento his musings afoot and afield, and not mities; till at last, in his perfectly real dragged him into their miserable and pet- yet fictitious enthusiasm, he lifted the clear ty circles, their profane polemics, their voice given him for so much nobler purcoarse village disputes and personalities! pose, to sing to the confusion of his patThis was what they did for the young soul rons' adversaries, adding sharp darts of coming fresh out of God's hands (though his own to the vulgar gibe and coarse badalready, God forgive him! soiled with inage, which was not his, poor boy, nor stains of the earth). And were it not ever would have entered his soul. Mightithat we have no right to judge individu- ly pleased, no doubt, were the patrons als, and that the men are dead and have with this celestial slave they had gotten, had their reckoning, we protest we should this Samson whom they poked in his big be disposed in good faith to endorse ribs, and made to stretch out his muscles for Holy Willie's profane petitions, so far as their admiration till the moment came those "patrons " of Burns's youth when they had enough of him, and rethose "gentlemen" of whose friendship quired no more. This natural inevitable the ploughman was so proud are con- process ruined Burns's life, and broke his cerned. heart; and it seemed for one terrible moment as if it might ruin his work too. But happily genius has better guards than those that fall to the lot of mere humanity, and the poet broke his bondage; the poet but not the man.

And to our own mind all the sad secret of the poet's life, the problem which it is so hard to read, is contained herein. He was nobly qualified, nobly trained for his true office, which lay among that class broadly and naturally entitled the comWhen we state our conviction that this mon people," the same who crowded the was his curse and the secret of his ruin, hillsides and clustered about the shores of we do not pretend to say that we can see the Lake in Galilee, listening — when how it could have been avoided. It might their betters did not care to listen. have been avoided indeed, had the so-called Burns was their born exponent in his day, superior classes been really superior, their minstrel, their prophet; but the mo- greater in mind, purer in moral tone, and ment his head appeared above the level, possessed with a fuller appreciation of and those frank fervid eyes, aglow with real truth and beauty than their humbler the poet's passion of surprised delight in neighbours. But they were not so; and the newness and loveliness of all he saw, we dare not assert that they are so now, the world beheld, stared, wondered, and or ever will be until the end of time. asked itself what to do? This strange ap- Equality is a miserable fiction as between parition was like an unexpected visitor at man and man, but as between class and the door. Of course he had to be ad- class it is a truth, which no thoughtful mitted somehow. The conventional su- mind, we think, can dispute. The levels perstition which is just strong enough to of humanity are extraordinarily like each keep common minds in awe, and extort other- as like as rivers are, or mountains, those ceremonial observances which super- or any other species. There are differstition finds refuge in, of respect to genius ences in accent, differences in phraseology, -made it inevitable that when once the immense differences in costume and asman became visible, he should be made to pect; but the biggest metropolitan society mount up higher, at least for the moment, resembles the cliques of a village with a and to sit down at the master's table. perfectly appalling likeness. Yet it is the And the young man went up with his common sentiment, the instinct of the glowing eyes, expecting to find everything world, that the worth which makes a man there that imagination paints of noble and illustrious on one level should raise him to graceful and refined and found a flutter another; and hoisted up he must be accordof small-talk, the gossip of a clique, the ingly, though we know he will gain nothcleverness of local malice, instead of that ing by it, and may lose much. We cannot feast of reason and flow of soul which fan-resist this natural impulse, this doctrine cy had looked for. But fancy is strong, and would not let him believe all that in the first shock he must have felt, of bewildered disappointment and amaze. The

of social reward for everything that is supremely excellent. Bad as it often is in its results, it would be worse still if the world were destitute of it, if soci

It is equally,

ety was so indifferent to genius as not Prayer" is quite different. even to gape and stare. The principle or indeed more profane, but it is pure must be accepted and even encouraged satire, strong and trenchant, awful even for the good of the universe; but yet in its vivid reality. This temendous sketch what pain, what trouble, what terrible pos- wants no explanatory notes, no foolish sibilities of ruin do we lay up for our low-disguise of initials. The man stands out ly men of genius by accepting it! We before us in a blaze of infernal light, a lay up for them the certainty of getting being whose existence we can neither tinsel for gold; of having the false so pre- doubt nor deny. We are not sure even sented to them that they will accept it for that we can regret the profane inspiration a time as true; of receiving flattery which which turned the poet's eye upon such a is more contemptuous than scorn, and figure, for its truth and power redeems its commendation which is more insulting profanity. It may be laughable to the than insolence; and of finally dropping shallow reader, but it is appalling to the back into their native sphere, disgusted, thoughtful; and no virtuous prejudice disenchanted, sore, and wroth, with the should be allowed to interfere with the beauty gone out of everything, and no fur-place which it has gained by sheer vigour, ther possibility in their minds of believing power, and truth. "The Holy Fair" is in excellence or generosity. It happened not so grand; but yet in it the poet has in Burns's day that the humbler level from which he was raised was infinitely better and purer than, at least, the next step of the social scale-which made the process yet more fatal to him than it might have been; and still we do not see how it could have been helped. Should another Burns arise now, we do not even know how we could profit by past experience, and avoid the danger for him. Did we neglect him or allow him to be neglected, it would be a bitter wrong and shame to humanity; while in "noticing," in "elevating," we incur the awful risk of ruining. We cannot even suggest how the difficulty is to be got over- but in our hearts we believe it was his friendly Gavin Hamiltons with their "takin' arts," his "glib-tongued Aikens," his good-natured, admiring, coarse, and commonplace patrons, and not his own education or want of education, which injured Burn's life and broke his heart.

The "Twa Herds" was not the only local and polemical satire produced by the unfortunate introduction of the poet into this new sphere. The "Kirk's Alarm" and "The Ordination" followed; all of which, we are bold to say, would be glad ly left out of any future edition of Burns by all who esteem him as he ought to be esteemed. They are the sort of verses which would naturally be produced by the coarse and clever poet of a village, the man whose personal satires are always received by his limited circle with "a roar of applause," until somebody who knows better happens to see them, and makes the whole gaping audience at once ashamed of itself. We know no reason why they should have been retained in print so long, for they are neither brilliant nor melodious, but petty, foolish, and vulgar to an almost incredible extent. "Holy Willie's

asserted himself as a poet. The profanity is less excusable in this than in "Holy Willie," which stands altogether on higher ground; it is a kind of profanity, too, of which William Burns's son never could have been guilty in his father's lifetime, and which probably, had any true voice suggested it to him, the still ingenuous young man would have blushed for with overwhelming shame; but still it is poetry, and full of animation and melodious vigour, and that reality of rural feeling which he knew so well. We regret that he should have treated the subject in such a way: but we cannot condemn.

to

The two years he spent at Mossgiel, however though his habits seem have lost their first purity, and some real stains (stains which we have no doubt have been much exaggerated) had crept upon his name - were the richest and most poetic of his life. He wrote most of his finest poems in this chilly farmhouse, the "auld clay biggin'," where, as he sat and eyed the smoke which filled the air with a "mottie misty" haze, the vision of Coila, blushing "sweet, like modest worth," with her "wildly witty, rustic grace" and her illuminated mantle, "stepped ben," stopping the rash vow which he was about to make, to rhyme no more. Rich, and beautiful, and happy and sad, were these years. Affairs went but badly with the brothers, yet with manful modest souls they laboured at their days' work, sweetening it with such communion by the common roads and laborious fields as falls to the lot of very few. We have already instanced the poem communicated to Gilbert's brotherly ears, while the two were weeding in the kail-yard. The days and the places where such communications were made to him he remembered ever