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curious scene.

say about everything, and was neither proud nor ashamed of the fact that he was an Ayrshire ploughman. Strange, unintelligible, puzzling apparition! He came and went, and disappeared and was seen no more; and Edinburgh, which had received something of a shock from this peasant Mordecai, who gazed at her pageants in silence, and would not applaud, took a little comfort in whispering stories about him how he had friends, Ayrshire tradesfolk and the like, in humble streets, who were more congenial society for him than the wits and the gentlemen; and how he caroused in these unknown haunts, and spent his time in drinking, and was of anything but a satisfactory character. This was a kind of comfort- though she shook her head and professed to be very - to the injured complacency of the

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His patrons described him, | powers, was startled by this strange apdiscussed him, wondered at him, without parition. She grew serious and silent, quite perceiving — though some of them, and stared with a deeper meaning than we think, had an uneasy consciousness of generally animates the stare even of an init that he saw through them all, and had tellectual crowd, at this man who refused fuller command of the position than they to have his head turned. He talked with had. But, we repeat, it would probably the best of her conversationalists, had have been better for him had he been opinions, extraordinary to without that painful enlightenment, had he been able to throw himself into the new world with enthusiasm, to be dazzled and have his head turned. The awakening, no doubt, would have been bitter, but still he would have had the sweeter flavour of the best kind of social condescending adulation, instead of the worst kind, which he had once received with enthusiasm and the tasting of which had made him as the gods, seeing good and evil. But that was past praying for. And Burns passed through this Edinburgh chapter without either good or harm to speak of, wondered at, gazed at, applauded, considered everywhere the first of miracles and lions; but like a man in a strange country, holding himself separate and apart, with an almost coldness quite foreign to his nature. Among women the case was otherwise. sorry He is said to have made the somewhat cu-intellectual city. rious remark, that whereas he had met, The most charming reminiscence which with men in his own class as wise, as ex- dwells in our minds of this Edinburgh visit cellent, as thoughtful and high-minded as may be found in Dugald Stewart's descripany he had met in the higher circles, yet tion of the poet. "I recollect once he told that an accomplished woman was a being me," says the Professor, "when I was adaltogether new to him. We have doubts miring a distant prospect in one of our whether Burns ever said, or saying, meant morning walks, that the sight of so many this. But such an idea is not necessary to smoking cottages gave a pleasure to his explain his greater enthusiasm and warmth mind which none could understand who among ladies. Notwithstanding all his had not witnessed, like himself, the happirustic adventures, it is clear that a certain ness and the worth they contained." chivalry of feeling towards women existed These dozen words, falling upon us all at in him always and the gentle condescen- once, surprise the tears to our eyes. sion of a lady had nothing unpalatable in What loyalty, what tender thoughtfulness, it to so manly a man. Is not every woman what faithful love of his own, breathe out every man's superior by the gentle laws of them! The wise men had been praying of chivalry, and that visionary courtesy him, almost on their knees, to write a which is at once the root and the finest tragedy, to abandon the Scottish tongue blossom of good manners? It takes noth- -a barbarous dialect, which kept him in ing from a man's manhood to defer to a wo-bondage-and to become a correct and man, to accept whatever grace she gives refined English poet. And Burns, one can as if it came from an eminence of nature, fancy, with a smile on his lips, had played to assume a certain noble inferiority. with the idea, perhaps sincerely by moThis it is, perhaps, which makes such a ments, with a touch of gratified vanity at man always more at his ease, always the notion that all styles were possible to seen to better advantage, and even almost him for we find him talking vaguely and always better understood, by the wo- finely of the advantage it is to a poet to men socially superior to him than by the be able to study life in its full tide; and he went so far as to buy a note-book (never used, heaven be praised!) "to take down his remarks on the spot" of the different new characters he saw. But when he went out beyond the streets, with their

men.

On the whole, however, Burns made more impression on Edinburgh than Edinburgh made on Burns. The witty city, so full of intellect and so conscious of her

studies of character, and saw the hills of no one of them tried at least to find a more Braid rising soft into the morning sun-worthy position for the poet. We do not shine, and the smoke floating upward from desire to join in any foolish clamour on the the cottages, a sudden sweet revulsion inappropriateness of his occupation. He came to him. His mission and true work himself did not consider it inappropriate, returned like a dove fluttering from the which, after all, is the grand test. But west, where his heart was. Heaven keep how it happened that none of these wellthe cottage smokes, the homely firesides, off people had the bowels to ask what he the plodding, silent folk within! These meant to do, or to help him in doing were the scenes that he knew, the worth something, is a mystery beyond our powand the happiness which he alone of all er of solving. After all, he had to ask for Scottish men understood and could ex- the interest which got him even his humpound, so that all the world might under- ble appointment. Edinburgh did not take stand. One loves to believe that at that so much trouble as that. And he got moment, with so fair a scene before him, £500, or, as some say, £600, for his poems, Burns touched ground again after his a great fortune, which, with sundry other town-spent winter, and bethought him- circumstances, determined his course at self of the true and only life which once. In May 1788 he went home, marawaited him among his pleasant holms ried Jean Armour, and took the farm of and fields. Ellisland, near Dumfries. Jean seems to have made a good and true wife, and the country-side was charitable, and she was not of the class which is "called upon," or expects to receive public recognition by society. But still the circumstances of this new beginning were little likely to encourage a man who had now become sensitive to the opinions of a different class, and who had gained some knowledge of the way in which such matters are regarded elsewhere.

When he left Edinburgh he roamed through Scotland for a short time, penetrating to the edge of the Highlands with almost the temerity of a voyager in an unknown country; for the Highlands then were closed with double barriers, Walter Scott being as yet but a long-headed boy in Edinburgh, whose pulses had tingled down to the very finger-tips with gratification at a word from the older poet on their one encounter. After this he went to Mossgiel, but only for a few days, to Burns remained in Ellisland three years, find all the country-side wondering over and our space requires that we should pass him, and to feel such a visionary sentiment these years over briefly. Things went well of disgust as was naturally to be looked with him at first, but notwithstanding his for in the circumstances, at the extraor-excellence in individual labour, it seems dinary difference between the sentiments very doubtful whether he was ever a good of that little world when he left it in dis- farmer; and the new household was large grace and when he returned to it in hou- and wasteful, and wanted regulation, which our. Then he went off again, unsettled his wife, "sair hadden down by sma' and scarcely happy notwithstanding his family," was not able to give. And perfame, with some money in his pocket but haps he wearied of the monotony of his little comfort in his heart. He wandered work-perhaps felt the fatal restlessness across the Border, he went back to Edin- of one who has tasted ease, and is aware burgh, he looked wistfully about him, won- of the bitter difference between his own dering, perhaps, how it was that none of lot and that of others. He had felt this his many admirers made any attempt to even in his youth; but now he had no help him to a reasonable new beginning longer the easy content and hopefulness of the thread of life. There was some of youth, though its vigour, its impatience, vague idea of a farm on the estate of Dals- its thirst for happiness, still existed in full winton, near Dumfries; and then came force within him. And now he was settled, the suggestion of the Excise, a notion wedded, fixed by fate, with change no which had already crossed his mind. To longer possible. a fact which of itself Burns the post of an exciseman seemed in has often a startling effect upon the mind. no way derogatory. It was his own idea Much can be borne when it is possible to steadily pursued for some time, and which look forward even to the chance of somehe was very glad and thankful to succeed thing better. But here no change could in at last. And perhaps it was as good be. Before long he sought active work as a thing as could have been done for him; an exciseman, and soon was galloping although, after all the assaults upon, and about the country, over a wide district, all the excuses that have been made for, finding, no doubt, refreshment in the his fine friends, the wonder remains why 'variety; but cutting off his last hope of

success as a farmer. On the whole, proba- maiden-pure, of his Mary dead; and who bly, the life suited him very well. He had can tell what dead hopes, what schemes a great deal of riding as much as two untold, what better life that might have hundred miles in a week, some one says; been? Not a word of these could he say, and wherever he went, every door of rich in honour and justice, to the woman by and poor flew open to the poet. He must his side, who stood and begged and imporhave had actual enjoyment of his popu- tuned, no doubt, that he would not lie larity, such as falls to the lot of few writ- there and get his death of cold. He went ers, in these wanderings over the country. in instead and wrote to a confidante who The very face of that pleasant land bright- would not betray him — to Mary in heaven. ened with smiles to see him. In the farm And how tender, how wistful and longing, and the cottage as well as in the hall, he are those lovely lines! How clear before was received with enthusiasm. Now and him, in that winterly-autumnal night, with then he could do a kindness which grati- early frost in the air making all the stars fied his good heart, and increased his glow and glitter, rises the never-to-be-forpopularity. No doubt he liked it well gotten summer day, when — enough. And yet by times there would come over him a dreary thought of better things which might have been. He encouraged himself in his career with words which would seem but an ostentatious brag of his devotion to his duty if they did not mean something deeper. Thus, when he laments over his office of gauging auld wives' barrels, he ends with a recollection of its needfulness:

"Thae moving things ca'ed wife and weans
Would move the very heart of stanes."
And he repeats the sentiment so often,
that it would weary and almost disgust the
reader, but for something infinitely sad
and sorrowful which lies below:-

"To make a happy fireside chime
To bairns and wife,

That's the true pathos and sublime
Of human life."

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Ayr, gurgling, kissed his pebbled shore,

O'erhung with wild woods, thickening green;" and flowers and birds mingled their sweet existence in the lovers' meeting! Can he ever forget that sacred hour? His heart swells, and idle tears come to his eyes as the good housewife bustles round him; and life, with its fireside comfort and unescapable reality, embraces and binds him in a hundred chains. Perhaps the dead Mary was no wiser, no loftier, than goodhumoured forbearing Jean; but with her the life of dreams and imagination, the life that might have been, had departed. Where was their place of rest?

Nothing can be more touching than the silent, inexpressible pathos of this scene. Like a man of honour, he said nothing to his wife about it, nor indeed to any other mortal. And not even to his celestial confidante does he unbosom the heaviness How often does he say it!- reminding of the dragging chain, and that sense of himself of what he had to think of, of what deadly weight and oppression which comes he must work for with pathetic reitera- upon a man when fate closes round him, tion. No; he would not allow himself to and he feels that nothing can better him, forget them, would not permit all these nothing make his future different from substantial reasons for living and working, the past. His anguish breaks from him in and holding by his existence, to fade out the only way that was lawful and honourof his mind. But that September night, able to such a man, in such a way that when his anxious wife followed him out to even a jealous woman could scarcely take the barnyard, and found him "striding up offence; and Jean does not seem to have and down slowly, and contemplating the been jealous, or anything but a good, easy, sky, which was singularly clear and star-sweet-tempered soul. But what worlds ry," what thoughts of the might-have-been of suggestion breathed out of that paswere those which were surging up gloomi- sionate remembrance, that sacred and unly and sadly into the poet's mind? The forgotten grief! wife went in, hoping he would follow; but, Professor Wilson treats this period of coming out again, fearing that his cold Burns's life, as his defender and champion would get worse by this exposure, found is sufficiently justified in treating it; and him lying on a heap of straw, with his with a dazzling play of special pleading eyes fixed on a beautiful planet which almosts succeeds in proving to his bewilshone like another moon.' Those poet dered reader that the life of his poet, then eyes that glowed and dilated through the as at all other times, was perfectly successdew of unshed tears, what were they gaz-ful, spotless, and splendid. We fear, howing at? A star, and the sweet image, ever, that this theory will not stand against

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the concurring evidence of all his biogra- gave up his farm at Ellisland, and rephers. His life was full of temptation, full moved into a small house at Dumfries. of opportunity for those convivial enjoy- There he lived five years and died. ments which were not only counted ex-Through all this time he was, to use a cusable by the temper of the time, but homely phrase, burning the candle at both gloried in by all whose heads were strong ends. He rode fast and far, and attended enough to indulge in them without ruin. diligently to all the duties of his vocation. And to ourselves it appears little wonder He poured forth floods of songs-songs that a man to whom such unbounded full of passion and fervour - and which hopes had once opened up, and to whom were not mere creations of the brain, but such moderate realization of hope had commemorated—in warmer terms than who felt himself fatally distanced was probably called for by one out of fifty of in the race, and whose heart had failed these relationships - an amount of agreehim along with his hopes-to us it is lit-able intercourse with his fellow-creatures tle wonder that he fell into greater and which must have occupied no small portion greater indulgence in that easy way of of his time. He wrote numerous letters; forgetfulness. He had failed even as a he entered warmly, sometimes too warmly, farmer, and he had failed in finding any into politics; he often spent half the night higher standing-ground; but in every tav- after this active employment of the day in ern, and at every uproarious table where merry companies, of which he was the inhe chanced to find himself, there was ob-spiration, and where his talk was more faslivion, there was honour and admiration cinating than the wine or, to speak more and enthusiastic homage. He might be truly, if less poetically, the toddy - which but a hard-riding gauger in the morning, flowed freely enough all the same. And but at night he was a king. And of all into all these multifarious occupations he things in the world to be kept in lawful rushed with the impetuosity and unity of and moderate bounds, this habit is the most his nature, doing nothing by halves. He difficult. To "fetter flames with silken threw himself into Thomson's book of band is an enterprise as easy. There Songs with zeal as great as if it had been seems no doubt that the entire country- the only work he had in hand; and withal, side, great and small, abetted and en- neither pleasure nor poetry prevented him couraged Burns thus to forget his sorrows from doing his work as an exciseman with -until the moment came when the more the most punctilious exactitude. And prudent persons in it perceived that the Thomson accepted the songs, and was excitement of his life was becoming too easily, very easily convinced that the auintense, and the race towards some preci- thor wanted no remuneration; and all the pice of downfall more headlong than could gentleman who had known him, and did be encouraged any longer. Then they know him, and to some of whom even he stopped short in their invitations "for his had told his hopes and wishes, stood by, good," and advised him for his good, and not even helping him on to be a supervisbecame exhortatory and full of admo- or, the most modest bit of promotion. nitions. It is very likely that the poet His hope was that he might, on securing took it badly and with reason enough. this step, have been eligible for the post For no man had so befriended him, so of collector, which was well paid, and helped him in his difficult way, as to have would have given him abundant leisure for the right of exhortation. They had in- literary work. We do not remember vited him to their houses, so long as his whether this easy possibility of improving visit was an honour - they had feted him, his position has been much dwelt on by so long as fêting Burns was a distinction his biographers; but the neglect of it is a to themselves; and now what right had much more serious sin to be charged they to stop short and advise? So he against the Dumfriesshire gentry than the quarrelled with some hotly, and with original offence of giving him an exciseothers coldly, feeling a mist of separation man's place, which has been thrown in grow between him and many whom he had their teeth so often. A little trouble, a held in warm esteem: and the country- little steady backing from one or two inside gathered itself away from him and fluential persons, might have easily raised stood by, with that stillness and awful in- Burns to this modest eminence, and given terest which marks the spectators of every him all his heart desired. But this backdesperate tragedy, to see how long the ing no one gave. It would seem incrediheadlong race would last, and how soon ble were it not very far from a solitary inthe catastrophe would come. stance of such strange carelessness. Were it to be done over again, no doubt the

The race did not last long. In 1791 he

same would happen. The patrons were ready to give a fluctuating hospitality and good advice, and a subscription for a book, or even a little money in genteel alms, would he have accepted it; but to take the trouble to hoist him gently on in the way chosen by himself, that is what they would not do.

"His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow, His auld ane looked better than mony ane's

new,

But now he lets't wear any way it will hing,
And casts himsel dowie upon the corn bing.
Oh were we young, as we ance hae been,
We suld have been galloping down on yon green.
And linking it ower the lily-white lea,
And werena my heart licht I would dee.'"

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Meanwhile he did his humble work with less and less hope, and tried his best to It seems impossible to conceive that get such good as was possible out of the such a story could have been invented. dregs of his broken life. Much gentle and To show that his forlorn heart was still kind domestic virtue lingered about him licht," God help him! Burns took the to the end, notwithstanding all his vaga- young man home and made him merry. ries. He would help his boys to learn What words these are! and with what untheir lessons, and read poetry with them, speakable meaning they must have fallen directing their childish taste; and for years from the poet's lips. Sad courage, endurthere might be seen of an afternoon by ance, gaiety, and profound untellable deany chance passer-by, in a little back street spair —not any great outburst, but an alin Dumfries, through the ever-open door, most tranquil ordinary state of mind. one of the greatest of British poets, sitting" Werena my heart licht I would dee "— it reading, with half-a-dozen noisy children is the sentiment of all his concluding years. about, and their mother busy with a house- And thus he died - thirty-seven years wife's ordinary labour. This, we say, was visible to everybody who chanced to pass that way; and the days ran on quietly, and the world grew used to the sight, and it never seems to have occurred to any one how many blockheads had comfortable libraries to maunder in, while this man sole of his race in Scotland, and almost in the kingdom, for Wordsworth and Coleridge were still little more than boys had neither quiet nor retirement possible. With an inconceivable passive quiet the good people went and came, and took it as the course of nature. A little later they were proud of having seen it; in the meantime it moved them not an inch. Neither would it now, were it all to be done over again.

There is one pathetic scene still, which appears to us out of the mists before death and peace come to end all. Professor Wilson rejects the story with that scornful laughter which is shrill with coming tears. But we see no reason to reject it. On the contrary, all the internal evidence is in its favour. The story is told by a young country gentleman, who rode into Dumfries on a fine summer evening, to attend a ball, and saw Burns walking by himself down the side of the street, while various county people, drawn together by the evening's entertainment, were shopping or walking on the other.

"The horseman dismounted and joined Burns, who, on his proposing to him to cross the street, said, Nay, nay, my young friend, that's all over now; and quoted, after a pause, some verses of Lady Grizel Baillie's pathetic ballad:—

worn out. His old terror of a jail came over him again like a spectre at the end, but he died owing no man anything, stern in his independence to the last. Of course his friends in Dumfries would not have allowed him to go to jail for five or ten pounds, Mr. Lockhart says. And we answer No, of course they would not- they dared not. But nobody came forward to say, Here is my purse. Nobody even attempted to pay his poor little seaside lodging for him, as Professor Wilson remarks, or to lift a single obstacle out of his way. It was easy to say that he was proud, and would accept help from no one; and no one, so far as we can see, ever attempted, with generous comprehension of a generous pride, to chase these scruples away.

He died cheerfully and manfully like a Christian; though with his heart rent asunder by fears for the helpless children whom he was leaving behind him. And the moment he was dead his friends came and buried him : and red-coated splendours lined the streets, and a certain noble officer who would not in his lifetime permit the gauger to be introduced to him, played mourner to the dead poet. Strange satire, enough to tempt devils to laughter, but men to very different feelings. And while there was scarce a meal left in the penniless house the bells tolled and the shops were closed, and a great procession swept through the streets, and volleys were fired over the grave of him who had been carried out of that home of poverty. What a change all in a moment!- because he was dead, and neglect or honour, help or desertion, could effect him nevermore.

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