and sensibility to which they gave birth. The song entitled Highland Mary is known to relate to one of these attachments. It was written,' says our bard, on one of the most interesting passages of my youthful days.' The object of this passion died early in life, and the impression left on the mind of Burns seems to have been deep and lasting. Several years afterward, when he was removed to Nithsdale, he gave vent to the sensibility of his recollections in the following impassioned lines ad dressed to Mary in Heaven!' Thou lingering star, with less'ning ray, Again thou usher'st in the day My Mary from my soul was torn. O Mary, dear departed shade! Where is thy place of blissful rest! Seest thou thy lover lowly laid! Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast' That sacred hour can I forget! Can I forget the hallow'd grove, Where by the winding Ayr we met, To live one day of parting love! Et ranty will not efface Those records dear of transports past; Thy image at our last embrace! Ah! little thought we 'twas our last! Ayr gurgling kiss'd his pebbled shore, O'erhung with wild woods, thickening green The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar, Twined amorous round the raptured scene. Till too, too soon, the glowing west Still o'er these scenes my memory wakes, My Mary, dear departed shade! Where is thy place of blissful rest? Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast? At this time Burns's prospects in life were so extremely gloomy, that he had decided upon going out to Jamaica, and had procured the situation of overseer on an estate belonging to Dr. Douglas; not, however, without lamenting, that want of patronage should force him to think of a project so repugnant to his feelings, when his ambition aimed at no higher object than the station of an exciseman or gauger in his own country. But the situ ation in which he was now placed cannot be better il lustrated than by introducing the letter which he wrote to Dr. Moore, giving an account of his life up to this period. As it was never intended to see the light, elegance, or perfect correctness of composition, will not be expected. These, however, will be compensated by the opportunity of seeing our poet, as he gives the incidents of his life, unfold the peculiarities of his character with all the careless vigour and open sincerity of his mind. Mauchline, 2d August, 1787. 'SIR, For some months past I have been rambling over the country; but I am now confined with some lingering complaints, originating, as I take it, in the stomach. To divert my spirits a little in this miserable fog of ennui, I have taken a whim to give you a history of myself. My name has made some little noise in this country; you have done me the honour to interest yourself very warmly in my behalf; and I think a faithful account of what character of a man I am, and how I came by that character, may perhaps amuse you in an idle moment. I will give you an honest narrative; though I know it will be often at my own expense ;-for I assure you, sir, I have, like Solomon, whese character, except in the trifling affair of wisdom, I sometimes think I resemble,— I have, I say, like him, "turned my eyes to behold madness and folly," and, like him, too frequently shaken hands with their intoxicating friendship. *** After you have perused these pages, should you think them trifling and impertinent, I only beg leave to tell you, that the poor author wrote them under some twitching qualms of conscience, arising from a suspicion that he was doing what he ought not to do-a predicament he has more than once been in before. I have not the most distant pretensions to assume that character, which the pye-coated guardians of escutcheons call a Gentleman. When at Edinburgh last winter, I got acquainted in the Herald's Office; and looking through that granary of honours, I there found almost every name in the kingdom; but for me, My ancient but ignoble blood Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood. Gules, Purpure, Argent, &c. quite disowned me. My father was of the north of Scotland, the son of a farmer, and was thrown by early misfortunes on the world at large; where, after many years' wanderings and sojournings, he picked up a pretty large quantity of observation and experience, to which I am indebted for most of my pretensions to wisdom.-I have met 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. For the first six or seven years of my life, my father was gardener to a worthy gentleman of small estate in the neighbourhood of Ayr. Had he continued in that station, I must have marched off to be one of the little underlings about a farm-house; but it was his dearest wish and prayer to have it in his power to keep his children under his own eye till they could discern between good and evil; so, with the assistance of his generous master, my father ventured on a small farm on his estate. At those years I was by no means a favourite with any body. I was a good deal noted for a retentive memory, a stubborn sturdy something in my disposition, and an enthusiastic idiot piety. I say idiot piety, because I was then but a child. Though it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made an excellent English scholar; and by the time I was ten or eleven years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. In my infant and boyish days, too, I owed much to an old woman who resided in the family, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, deadlights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out in suspicious places and though nobody can be more sceptical than I am in such matters, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors. The earliest composition that I recollect taking pleasure in was The Vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's, beginning, "How are thy servants bless'd, O Lord!" I particularly remember one half-stanza, which was music to my boyish ear For though on dreadful whirls we hung I met with these pieces in Mason's English Collection, one of my school-books. The two first books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read since, were, The Life of Hannibal, and The History of Sir William Wallace. Han nibal gave my young ideas such a turn, that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest. Polemical divinity about this time was putting the country half mad; and I, ambitious of shining in conversation parties on Sundays, between sermons, at funerals, &c. used a few years afterwards to puzzle Calvinism with so much heat and indiscretion, that I raised a hue and cry of heresy against me, which has not ceased to this hour. My vicinity to Ayr was of some advantage to me. My social disposition, when not checked by some modifications of spirited pride, was, like our catechism-definition of infinitude, without bounds or limits. I formed several connexions with other younkers who possessed superior advantages, the youngling actors, who were busy in the rehearsal of parts in which they were shortly to appear on the stage of life, where, alas! I was destined to drudge behind the scenes. It is not commonly at this green age that our young gentry have a just sense of the immense distance between them and their ragged play-fellows. It takes a few dashes into the world, to give the young great man that proper, decent, unnoticing disregard for the poor, insignificant, stupid devils, the mechanics and peasantry around him, who were perhaps born in the same village. My young superiors never insulted the clouterly appearance of my plough-boy carcass, the two extremes of which were often exposed to all the inclemencies of all the seasons. They would give me stray volumes of books: among them, even then, I could pick up some observations; and one, whose heart I am sure not even the Munny Begum scenes have tainted, helped me to a little French. Parting with these my young friends and benefactors, as they occasionally went off for the East or West Indies, was often to me a sore affliction; but I was soon called to mcre serious evils. My father's generous master died; the farm proved a ruinous bargain; and, to clench the misfortune, we fell into the hands of a factor, who sat for the picture I have drawn of one in my Tale of Twa Degs. My father was advanced in life when he married; I was the eldest of seven children; and he, worn out by early hardships, was unfit for labour. My father's spirit was soon irritated, but not easily broken. There was a freedom in his lease in two years more; and, to weather these two years, we retrenched our expenses. We lived very poorly: I was a dexterous ploughman for my age; and the next eldest to me was a brother (Gilbert), who could drive the plough very well, and help me to thrash the corn. A novel-writer might perhaps have viewed these scenes with some satisfaction; but so did not I; my indignation yet boils at the recollection of the s―― factor's insolent threatening letters, which used to set us all in tears. This kind of life-the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth year: a little before which period I first committed the sin of rhyme. 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 book-worm 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 at |