The hum of bees, the linnet's lay of love, And the full choir that wakes the universal grove. "The cottage curs at early pilgrim bark; Crown'd with her pail the tripping milkmaid sings; The partridge bursts away on whirring wings; And shrill lark carols clear from her aerial tower." Such were the Scotchmen who, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, contributed in English to the poetic literature of the country. They, the countrymen of Thomson, began by rejecting the example of Thomson, and reverting to somewhat servile imitations of a school already beginning to be discredited in England. This however proved to be but a passing phase; and if we take them as a whole, we see in these men a growing tendency to seek their models in earlier English literature, or even to go back for hints to the rude fragments of popular poetry. We see in them also evidence of a lyrical revival. And above all we see the beginning of the great romantic movement. CHAPTER X. ROBERT BURNS. ROBERT BURNS was born near Ayr on the 25th of January, 1759. His father, William Burnes, was then and for seven years continued to be gardener to a gentleman in that neighbourhood. In 1766, that he might "have it in his power to keep his children under his own eye, till they could discern between good and evil,”1 he leased from his employer the farm of Mount Oliphant. There he remained till 1777. It was during the years spent upon this farm that Robert Burns received the greater part of his irregular education. A beginning had been made even earlier. Robert was sent first of all to a school at Alloway Mill; but when, after a few months, the teacher received another appointment, William Burnes joined with four of his neighbours to engage a tutor for their children. The person selected, John Murdoch, was a man of sense and character; and though he left that part of the country about the year 1768, he had already exercised a considerable influence upon the future poet's mind. Robert was afterwards sent, at the age of thirteen or fourteen, for a summer quarter to Dalrymple. Either 1 Burns's Letter to Dr. Moore. for economy or because the services of both could not be spared, he and his brother Gilbert attended in alternate weeks. In the following summer Robert went to Ayr to study English grammar under his former teacher Murdoch, who had now returned. His time was so broken with calls to help with the harvest, that he was under tuition only three weeks. During this time however he not only improved his English, but acquired a smattering of French, which he afterwards increased by his own industry. This accomplishment, rare for a peasant's son, procured for Burns some notice; and there is evidence in his letters that he was himself not a little proud of it. A short time which he spent in his nineteenth summer studying surveying at Kirkoswald completes the record of Burns's school education. It seems meagre enough; but his real education was much better than it seems. We have to add the precept and example of a father who, when he could not procure professional instruction for his sons, "borrowed Salmon's Geographical Grammar for us, and endeavoured to make us acquainted with the history and situation of the different countries of the world; while, from a book society in Ayr, he procured for us the reading of Derham's Physics and Astro-Theology, and Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation, to give us some idea of Astronomy and Natural History"; of a father who, moreover, was at great pains, while we accompanied him in the labours of the farm, to lead the conversation to such subjects as might tend to increase our knowledge, or confirm us in habits of virtue." 1 The truth is, Burns received a training not only superior to his 1 Gilbert Burns. position as a peasant's son, but better far than that of multitudes who stood much higher than he in social station. The attempt which has been frequently made by his countrymen to exalt him by exaggerating his difficulties in respect of training, is as unwise as it is uncalled for. It is a poor pedantry which regards education as a thing of schools and colleges only. Burns was fortunate in the moral and intellectual atmosphere of his early home. The material conditions of his life were doubtless painfully cramping-they left him, as we know, at times "half mad, half fed, half sarkit "—but it may be questioned whether the lack of a more extensive and systematic education ever seriously embarrassed his genius. It is possible, perhaps it is not even improbable, that he would have found more hindrance in a palace or a castle than in the "auld clay biggin'." In the year 1777 William Burnes removed to the farm of Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton. There his family lived in comfort for four years; but afterwards there sprang up a dispute between the landlord and his tenant, which was decided by arbitration against Burnes. He died a ruined man in February, 1784. William Burnes was, it is clear, one of the noblest specimens of the Scottish peasant, a man in many respects closely resembling the father of Thomas Carlyle. It need not be matter for surprise that, notwithstanding a good head and a stainless conscience, fortune was uniformly against him. "I have met," says his great son, "with few who understood 'men, their manners, and their ways' equal to him; but stubborn ungainly integrity, and headlong ungovernable irascibility, are disqualifying circumstances; consequently, I was born a very poor man's son.' "1 Before the crisis in their father's affairs came, the brothers, Robert and Gilbert, had taken the farm of Mossgiel in Mauchline parish. This bargain also was a luckless one. Late seasons acting upon a cold soil seriously injured the crops of the four years which Burns spent upon the farm. A considerable part of the stock was lost, and the prospect was black. In the summer of 1786 Burns was on the point of sailing in despair for Jamaica. The means of paying for his passage he got by the publication, almost at the last moment, of a collection of his poems, which yielded him a profit of nearly £20. But for this he must, to use his own phrase, have indented himself. Well known as the passage is, what follows is best told in his own vivid words to Dr. Moore. "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 'hungry ruin had me in the wind.' I had been for some days skulking from covert to covert, under all the terrors of a jail; as some ill-advised people had uncoupled the merciless pack of the law at my heels. I had taken the last farewell of my few friends; my chest was on the road to Greenock; I had composed the last song I should ever measure in Caledonia, The gloomy night is gathering fast,' when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects to my poetic ambition. The doctor belonged to a set of critics for whose applause I had not dared to hope. His 1 Burns to Dr. Moore. |