culture. He learned an infinite number of old ballads, from hearing his mother sing them at her wheel; and he was instructed in all the venerable heraldry of devils and witches by an ancient woman in the neighbourhood, "the Sybelline nurse of his Muse," who probably first imparted to him the story of Tam o' Shanter. 66 Song was his favourite and "first pursuit." "The Song-book," he says, "was "my Vade Mecum: I pored over it constantly, driving my cart, or walking to labour." It would be pleasing to dwell on this era of his youthful sensibility, if his life had been happy; but it was far otherwise. He was the eldest of a family, buffeted by misfortunes, toiling beyond their strength, and living without the support of animal food. At thirteen years of age he used to thresh in his father's barn; and, at fifteen, was the principal labourer on the farm. After the toils of the day, he usually sunk in the evening into dejection of spirits, and was afflicted with dull headachs, the joint result of anxiety, low diet, and fatigue. "This kind of life," (he says) "the cheerless gloom of a hermit, and the "toil of a galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth

year, when love made me a poet." The object of his first attachment was a highland girl, named Mary Campbell, who was his fellow-reaper in the same harvest-field. She died very young; and when Burns heard of her death, he was thrown into an ecstasy of suffering much beyond what even his keen temperament was accustomed to feel. Nor does he

"To

seem ever to have forgotten her. His verses Mary in Heaven;" his invocation to the star that rose on the anniversary of her death; his description of the landscape that was the scene of their day of love and parting vows, "where flowers sprang wanton to be press'd;" the whole luxury and exquisite passion of that strain, evince that her image had survived many important changes in himself.

From his seventeenth to his twenty-fourth year he lived, as an assistant to his father, on another farm in Ayrshire, at Lochlea, to which they had removed from Mount Oliphant. During that period his brother Gilbert and he, besides labouring for their father, took a part of the land on their own account, for the purpose of raising flax; and this speculation induced Robert to attempt establishing himself in the business of flax-dressing, in the neighbouring town of Irvine. But the unhealthiness of the business, and the accidental misfortune of his shop taking fire, induced him, at the end of six months, to abandon it. Whilst his father's affairs were growing desperate at Lochlea, the poet and his brother had taken a different farm on their own account, as an asylum for the family in case of the worst; but, from unfavourable seasons and a bad soil, this speculation proved also unfortunate, and was given up. By this time Burns had formed his connexion with Jane Armour, who was afterwards his wife, a connexion which could no longer be concealed, at the moment when the ruinous state of his

affairs had determined him to cross the Atlantic, and to seek his fortune in Jamaica. He had even engaged himself as assistant overseer to a plantation. He proposed, however, to legalize the private contract of marriage which he had made with Jane; and, though he anticipated the necessity of leaving her behind him, he trusted to better days for their being re-united. But the parents of Jane were unwilling to dispose of her to a husband who was thus to be separated from her, and persuaded her to renounce the informal marriage. Burns also agreed to dissolve the connexion, though deeply wounded at the apparent willingness of his mistress to give him up, and overwhelmed with feelings of the most distracting nature. He now prepared to embark for Jamaica, where his first situation would, in all probability, have been that of a negro-driver, when, before bidding a last adieu to his native country, he happily thought of publishing a collection of his poems. By this publication he gained about £20, which seasonably saved him from indenting himself as a servant, for want of money to procure a passage. With nine guineas out of this sum he had taken a steerage passage in the Clyde for Jamaica; and, to avoid the terrors of a jail, he had been for some time skulking from covert to covert. He had taken a last leave of his friends, and had composed the last song which he thought he should ever measure to Caledonia', when the

"The gloomy night is gathering fast."

contents of a letter, from Dr. Blacklock of Edinburgh, to one of his friends, describing the encouragement which an edition of his poems would be likely to receive in the Scottish capital, suddenly lighted up all his prospects, and detained him from embarking. "I immediately posted," he says, "to "Edinburgh, without a single acquaintance or letter "of introduction. The baneful star, which had so "long shed its blasting influence on my zenith, for "once made a revolution to the nadir."

Though he speaks of having had no acquaintance in Edinburgh, he had been previously introduced in Ayrshire to Lord Daer, to Professor Stewart, and to several respectable individuals, by the reputation which the first edition of his poems had acquired. He arrived in Edinburgh in 1786, and his reception there was more like an agreeable change of fortune in a romance, than like an event in ordinary life. His company was every where sought for; and it was soon found, that the admiration which his poetry had excited, was but a part of what was due to the general eminence of his mental faculties. His natural eloquence, and his warm and social heart expanding under the influence of prosperity-which, with all the pride of genius, retained a quick and versatile sympathy with every variety of human character-made him equally fascinating in the most refined and convivial societies. For a while he reigned the fashion and idol of his native capital.

The profits of his new edition enabled him, in the succeeding year, 1787, to make a tour through a considerable extent both of the south and north of Scotland. The friend who accompanied him in this excursion gives a very interesting description of the impressions which he saw produced in Burns's mind from some of the romantic scenery which they visited. "When we came" (he says) "to a rustic "hut on the river Till, where the stream descends " in a noble waterfall, and is surrounded by a woody "precipice, that commands a most beautiful view of "its course, he threw himself on a heathy-seat, "and gave himself up to a tender, abstracted, and "voluptuous indulgence of imagination." It may be conceived with what enthusiasm he visited the grave of King Robert Bruce.

After he had been caressed and distinguished so much in Edinburgh, it was natural to anticipate that among the many individuals of public influence and respectability, who had countenanced his genius, some means might have been devised to secure to him a competent livelihood in a proper station of society. It was probably with this hope in his mind that he returned to Edinburgh after his summer excursion; and, unfortunately for his habits, spent the winter of 1788 in accepting a round of convivial invitations. The hospitality of the north was not then what it now is. Refinement had not yet banished to the tavern the custom of bumper-toasts, and of pressing the bottle; and the master of the house was not

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