high hand with my geometry, till the sun entered Virgo, a month which is always a carnival in my bosom, when a charming fillette, who lived next door to the school, overset my trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from the sphere of my studies. I, however, struggled on with my sines and co-sines for a few days more; but stepping into the garden one charming noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met my angel, "Like Proserpine, gathering flowers, It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining week I stayed, I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her; and the two last nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless.' The scene of this adventure was Kirkoswald, in Carrick. If the poet be right in speaking of his nineteenth summer, the date must have been 1777. What seems to have suggested his going to Kirkoswald school, was the connection of his mother with that parish. She was the daughter of Gilbert Brown, farmer of Craigenton, in this parochial division of Carrick, in which she had many friends still living, particularly a brother, Samuel Brown, who resided, in the miscellaneous capacity of farm-labourer, fisherman, and dealer in wool, at the farmhouse of Ballochneil, above a mile from the village of Kirkoswald. Samuel, though not the farmer or guidman of the place, was a person held to be in creditable circumstances in a district where the distinction between master and servant was, and still is, by no means great. His wife was the sister of Niven, the tenant; and he lived in the chamber' or better portion of the farmhouse, but was now a widower. It was with Brown that Burns lived during his attendance at Kirkoswald School, walking every morning to the village where the little seminary of learning was situated, and returning at night. The district into which the young poet of Kyle was thus thrown has many features of a remarkable kind. Though situated on the shore of the Firth of Clyde, where steamers are every hour to be seen on their passage between enlightened and busy cities, it is to this day the seat of simple and patriarchal usages. Its land, composed of bleak green uplands, partly cultivated, and partly pastoral, was, at the time alluded to, occupied by a generation of primitive small farmers, many of whom, while preserving their native simplicity, had superadded to it some of the irregular habits arising from a concern in the trade of introducing contraband goods on the Carrick coast.1 Such dealings did not prevent superstition from flourishing amongst them in a degree of vigour of which no district of Lowland Scotland now presents any example. The parish has six miles of sea-coast; and the village, where the church and school are situated, is in a sheltered situation about a couple of miles inland. The parish schoolmaster, Hugh Rodger, enjoyed great local fame as a teacher of mensuration and geometry, and was much employed as a practical land-surveyor. On the day when Burns entered at the school, another youth, a little younger than himself, also entered. This was a native of the neighbouring town of Maybole, who, having there completed a course of classical study, was now sent by his father, a respectable shopkeeper, to acquire arithmetic and mensuration under the famed mathematician of Kirkoswald. It was then the custom, when pupils of their age entered at a school, to take the master to a tavern, and sweeten the engagement by treating him to some liquor. Burns and the Maybole youth, accordingly, united to regale Rodger with a potation of ale at a public-house in the village, kept by two gentlewomanly sort of persons named Kennedy-Jean and Anne Kennedy-the former of whom was destined to be afterwards married to immortal verse, under the appellation of Kirkton Jean, and whose house, in consideration of some pretensions to birth or style above the common, was always called 'The Ladies' House.' From that time, Burns and the Maybole youth became intimate friends; insomuch that, during this summer, neither had any companion with whom he was more frequently in company than with the other. Burns was only at the village during school-hours; but when his friend Willie returned to the paternal dome on Saturday nights, the poet would accompany him, and stay till it was time for both to come back to school on Monday morning. There was also an interval between the morning and afternoon meetings of the school, which the two youths used to spend together. Instead of amusing themselves with ball or any other sport, like the rest of the scholars, they would take a walk by themselves in the outskirts of the village, and converse on subjects calculated to This business was first carried on here from the Isle of Man, and afterwards to a considerable extent from France, Ostend, and Gottenburg. Persons engaged in it found it necessary to go abroad, and enter into business with foreign merchants; and by dealing in tea, spirits, and silks, brought home to their families and friends the means of luxury and finery at the cheapest rate.'-Statistical Account of Kirkoswald, 1794. improve their minds. By and by they fell upon a plan of holding disputations or arguments on speculative questions, one taking one side, and the other the other, without much regard to their respective opinions on the point, whatever it might be, the whole object being to sharpen their intellects. They asked several of their companions to come and take a side in these debates, but not one would do so; they only laughed at the young philosophers. The matter at length reached the ears of the master, who, however skilled in mathematics, possessed but a narrow understanding and little general knowledge. With all the bigotry of the old school, he conceived that this supererogatory employment of his pupils was a piece of absurdity, and he resolved to correct them in it. One day, therefore, when the school was fully met, and in the midst of its usual business, he went up to the desk where Burns and Willie were sitting opposite to each other, and began to advert in sarcastic terms to what he had heard of them. They had become great debaters, he understood, and conceived themselves fit to settle affairs of importance, which wiser heads usually let alone. He hoped their disputations would not ultimately become quarrels, and that they would never think of coming from words to blows; and so forth. The jokes of schoolmasters always succeed amongst the boys, who are too glad to find the awful man in anything like good-humour, to question either the moral aim or the point of his wit. They therefore, on this occasion, hailed the master's remarks with hearty peals of laughter. Nettled at this, Willie resolved he would speak up' to Rodger; but first he asked Burns in a whisper if he would support him, which Burns promised to do. He then said that he was sorry to find that Robert and he had given offence; it had not been intended. And indeed he had expected that the master would have been rather pleased to know of their endeavours to improve their minds. He could assure him that such improvement was the sole object they had in view. Rodger sneered at the idea of their improving their minds by nonsensical discussions, and contemptuously asked what it was they disputed about. Willie replied, that generally there was a new subject every day; that he could not recollect all that had come under their attention; but the question of to-day had been, 'Whether is a great general or a respectable merchant the most valuable member of society?' The dominie laughed outrageously at what he called the silliness of such a question, seeing there could be no doubt for a moment about it. Well,' said Burns, 'if you think so, I will be glad if you take any side you please, and allow me to take the other, and let us discuss it before the school.' Rodger most unwisely assented, and commenced the argument by a flourish in favour of the general. Burns answered by a pointed advocacy of the pretensions of the merchant, and soon had an evident superiority over his preceptor. The latter replied, but without success. His hand was observed to shake; then his voice trembled; and he dissolved the house in a state of vexation pitiable to behold. In this anecdote, who can fail to read a prognostication of future eminence to the two disputants? The one became the most illustrious poet of his country; and it is not unworthy of being mentioned in the same sentence, that the other advanced, through a career of successful industry in his native town, to the possession of a good estate in its neighbourhood, and some share of the honours usually reserved in this country for birth and aristocratic connection.1 The coast in the neighbourhood of Burns's residence at Ballochneil presented a range of rustic characters upon whom his genius was destined to confer an extraordinary interest. At the farm of Shanter, on a slope overlooking the shore, not far from Turnberry Castle, lived Douglas Graham, a stout hearty specimen of the Carrick farmer, a little addicted to smuggling, but withal a worthy and upright member of society, and a kind-natured man. He had a wife named Helen M'Taggart, who was unusually subject to superstitious beliefs and fears. The steading where this good couple lived is now no more, for the farm has been divided for the increase of two others in its neighbourhood; but genius has given them a perennial existence in the tale of Tam o' Shanter,' where their characters are exactly delineated under the respective appellations of Tam and Kate. At Ballochneil, Burns engaged heartily in the sports of leaping, dancing, wrestling, putting (throwing) the stone, and others of the like kind. His innate thirst for distinction and superiority was manifested in these as in more important affairs; but though he was possessed of great strength, as well as skill, he could never match his young bedfellow John Niven. Obliged at last to acknowledge himself beat by this person in bodily warfare, he had recourse for amends to a spiritual mode of contention, and would engage young Niven in an argument about some speculative question, when, of course, he invariably proved victor. His satisfaction on these occasions is said to have been extreme. 'Willie' was the late Mr Niven of Kilbride. He died in 1844. One day, as he was walking slowly along the street of the village in a manner customary to him, with his eyes bent on the ground, he was met by the Misses Biggar, the daughters of the parish pastor. He would have passed without noticing them, if one of the young ladies had not called him by name. She then rallied him on his inattention to the fair sex, in preferring to look towards the inanimate ground, instead of seizing the opportunity afforded him of indulging in the most invaluable privilege of man-that of beholding and conversing with the ladies. Madam,' said he, ‘it is a natural and right thing for man to contemplate the ground, from whence he was taken, and for woman to look upon and observe man, from whom she was taken.' This was a conceit, but it was the conceit of 'no vulgar boy.' Burns, according to his own account, concluded his residence at Kirkoswald in a blaze of passion for a fair fillette who lived next door to the school. At this time, owing to the destruction of the proper school of Kirkoswald, a chamber at the end of the old church, the business of parochial instruction was conducted in an apartment on the ground-floor of a house in the main street of the village, opposite the church-yard. From behind this house, as from behind each of its neighbours in the same row, a small stripe of kail-yard (Anglice, kitchen-garden) runs back about fifty yards, along a rapidly ascending slope. When Burns went into the particular patch behind the school to take the sun's altitude, he had only to look over a low enclosure to see the similar patch connected with the next house. Here, it seems, Peggy Thomson, the daughter of the rustic occupant of that house, was walking at the time, though more probably engaged in the business of cutting a cabbage for the family dinner, than imitating the flowergathering Proserpine, or her prototype Eve. The sight seems to have been as a stroke of the sun to him, proving fatal to all serious study. He tells us of his writing a song on this rustic maiden; but there is reason to believe that this was not done till some years afterwards, when his acquaintance with her was temporarily renewed. It is difficult to ascertain from his own statements, even with the aid of his brother's and sister's, the order of such early attempts at rhyme as have been preserved. In arranging them here, I cannot profess to have attained more than an approximation to accuracy. There is one little song, which he says he composed at seventeen; from its style, and from its resemblance both in ideas and expressions to Mrs Cockburn's 'Flowers of the |