'Pamela ;' and Murdoch, then the teacher of English in Ayr, sent the works of Pope. Gilbert writes:-" The summer after we had been at Dalrymple school, my father sent Robert to Ayr to revise his English grammar with his former teacher. He had been there only one week, when he was obliged to return, to assist at the harvest. When the harvest was over he went back to school, where he remained two weeks; and this completes the account of his school education, except one grammar quarter some time afterwards, that he attended the parish school of Kirk Oswald (where he lived with a brother of my mother) to learn surveying." Murdoch happened to be learning French, and he generously imparted his knowledge to his pupil, who entered on the study with such zeal, that in the second week he assaulted "Telemachus." "But now," in the swelling language of the pedagogue, "the plains of Mount Oliphant began to whiten, and Robert was summoned to relinquish the pleasing scenes that surrounded the grotto of Calypso." He took back with him a French grammar, and the beautiful tale of Fénélon; and, in a little time, by the help of these books, he was able to read and understand any French authors who fell in his way. An attack upon Latin was not equally successful; his perseverance seldom outlasting a week, and the study being regarded as a sort of penance, or refuge in ill-humour. He used it for a cold-bath. This, writes the Ettrick Shepherd with pleasant confidence, is exceedingly good, and rates the Latin much as I have always estimated it. English literature, however, retained its full charm, and the love was nurtured by the kindness of a widow lady, Mrs. Paterson, who lent Pope's translation of Homer, and the “ Spectator," to the youthful student.

Mount Oliphant wanted every gleam to cheer it. The parish contained no farm so intractable; the soil being almost the poorest to be found under the plough. On the part of the family, no effort was wanting. Every member

of it taxed his strength to the utmost. Robert was the principal labourer, Gilbert driving the plough, and helping him to thresh the corn. The food of the hermit was indoors, as well as the gloom, butcher's meat being quite unknown.

In this dreary weather Burns reached his sixteenth year, toiling and sad-hearted, until in the harvest-field Love found him. He relates his first passion:-"You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together as partners in the labours of harvest. In my fifteenth autumn 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 idiom—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 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 Æolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious rattan 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 smear sheep, and cast peats, his father living in the moor-lands, he had no more scholar-craft than myself."

And here I am reminded of that sweet passage in Virgil, which Mr. Rogers thought so true to nature, that he must have drawn it from early recollections :-" You were little when I first saw you. You were with your mother, gathering fruit in our orchard, and I was your guide. I was entering my thirteenth year, and just able to reach the boughs from the ground."

At the end of six years, William Burns endeavoured to find a farm of happier promise, but he sought it in vain, and, continuing his anxious toils through five years, he removed, Whitsuntide, 1777, to the larger farm of Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton. There the first four years passed in comfort, until the want of a written agreement involved the landlord and the tenant in legal disputes; and during the long period of three years, William Burns was tossing and whirling in the vortex."

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The little chapter of Lochlea includes some important passages in the story of Burns; for there his good and bad blossoms began to set with large promise of fruit. Although he confesses himself to have been the most ungainly lad in the parish, his mind was growing into shape. He was familiar with the 66 Spectator," and he carried a collection of songs in all his field-work, poring over them as he drove his cart. Slowly, too, the outward man improved, and a spreading rumour of his book-knowledge" made him a welcome guest. But his chief fame was of another kind. Tarbolton was not less amorous than other country places in Scotland, and Robert became the confidant of the parish. He informs us that his curiosity, zeal, and dexterous boldness recommended him for a comrade in every love adventure; and that the secrets of Tarbolton hearts were as gratifying to him as the intrigues of Europe are to the statesman.

In an evil hour Burns turned flaxdresser, in the small

town of Irvine, where he rented a room at a shilling a week. His health and his spirits seem to have been much disordered at this time. He speaks of his sleep as a little sounder, although the weakness of his nerves troubled his whole body at the least anxiety and alarm. He despairs of making a figure in the world; "being neither formed for the bustle of the busy, nor the flutter of the gay;" and when he "glimmered” a little into the future, the only prospect was poverty and contempt. In the midst of these doubts and fears, the flax business was brought to a sudden close; for while he was giving a welcome carousal to the new year, the shop took fire, and Burns found himself among the ashes, and, like a true poet, without a sixpence. His moral loss at Ayr had, probably, been larger than his commercial; for in a young man, whom an American privateer had lately stripped and set ashore, he met a companion and a tempter whose practice appears to have kept up with his theory. Meanwhile, blacker shadows gathered round the homestead of Lochlea. For two years the strength of the old man had been going, and just as the horrors of a jail were full in view, a consumption "kindly stepped in" and carried him away, February 13, 1784. Robert and Gilbert had made some preparation for the support of the family, when their father's affairs drew near a crisis, by taking a neighbouring farm, Mossgiel, which was held in tack, of the Earl of Loudon, by that Mr. Gavin Hamilton whose name is lastingly united to the poet's. The farm contained one hundred and eighteen acres, and the rent was fixed at ninety pounds. We learn the particulars from Gilbert :

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'It was stocked by the property and individual savings of the whole family, and was a joint concern among us. Every member of the family was allowed ordinary wages for the labour he performed on the farm. My brother's allowance and mine was seven pounds per annum each. And during the whole time this family concern lasted, which was four years, as well as during the pre

ceding period at Lochlea, his expenses never in any one year exceeded his slender income. His temperance and frugality were everything that could be wished." But darker scenes were coming.

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There lived in Mauchline a master stone-mason, James Armour, who had a black-eyed daughter, Jean, ranking high among the six belles of the village. It fell out on a certain day, that the poet's dog ran over the clothes which Jean Armour was spreading on the grass, and she flung a stone at the trespasser. The old proverb rose to the tongue of Burns, and the love-story began. It fills a melancholy page in the lives of the man and the woman. They sinned, and they suffered. A meeting of the lovers ended in a gift by Burns to Jean of a written promise, which Scottish law accepts as legal evidence of an irregular" union. The marriage was not to be disclosed until the last moment, and when it came, the stone-mason showed himself less indulgent than the law. His indignation was great; and overpowered by the anger and the grief of her father, Jean destroyed the document, or permitted him to burn it. Under circumstances so afflicting, she became the mother of twins, for the charge of whose maintenance security was demanded of Burns. James Armour proved to be violent and relentless, with a view, it is conjectured, of driving Burns from the country, and setting his daughter free. If he had the design, it was almost fulfilled. Several Scotchmen were at that time engaged as assistant overseers in the West India Plantations. The salary was small, and the disagreeable nature of the occupation may be imagined. But it offered shelter to Burns, and he obtained an appointment in Jamaica, engaging himself to Dr. Douglas, of Port Antonio, for three years, at a salary of thirty pounds. To pay for his passage, he resolved to publish his Poems." They had grown up, silently and sweetly, like the wild-flowers in the fields. The Daisy under the Plough-the Mouse driven from her nest-the Winter-dirge-the Cotter's

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