Forest,' which was published in a collection (The Lark) possessed by Burns, it certainly may be ranked as one of his earliest efforts.'

I DREAMED I LAY.

I dreamed I lay where flowers were springing
Gaily in the sunny beam;
Listening to the wild birds singing,

By a falling, crystal stream:
Straight the sky grew black and daring;
Through the woods the whirlwinds rave;
Trees with aged arms were warring,

O'er the swelling drumlie wave.

Such was my life's deceitful morning,
Such the pleasure I enjoyed;

But lang or noon, loud tempests storming,
A' my flowery bliss destroyed.
Though fickle Fortune has deceived me,

She promised fair, and performed but ill;
Of mony a joy and hope bereaved me,

I bear a heart shall support me still.

ere

He himself tells us of a truly ambitious design which he had already formed: he had sketched, he says, the outlines of a tragedy, and was only prevented from going on by the bursting of a cloud of family misfortunes. At that time he wrote down nothing, so that nearly the whole escaped his memory. "The following,' he says, 'was an exclamation from a great character— great in occasional instances of generosity, and daring at times in villainies. He is supposed to meet with a child of misery, and exclaims to himself:

"All devil as I am, a damned wretch,

A hardened, stubborn, unrepenting villain,
Still my heart melts at human wretchedness;
And with sincere, though unavailing sighs,
I view the helpless children of distress.

Lang or noon loud tempests storming.-Burns.
Loud tempests storming before parting day.—Mrs C.

Swelling drumlie wave,-Burns.

Grow drumlie and dark.-Mrs C.

Though fickle Fortune has deceived me.-Burns.

O fickle Fortune, why this cruel sporting ?-Mrs C.

I bear a heart shall support me still.-Burns.

Thy frowns cannot fear me, thy smiles cannot cheer me.-Mrs C

With tears indignant I behold the oppressor
Rejoicing in the honest man's destruction,
Whose unsubmitting heart was all his crime.
Even you, ye helpless crew, I pity you;
Ye whom the seeming good think sin to pity;
Ye poor, despised, abandoned vagabonds,
Whom vice, as usual, has turned o'er to ruin.
-Oh, but for kind, though ill-requited friends,
I had been driven forth like you forlorn,

The most detested, worthless wretch among you!"

"The oppressor,' we cannot doubt, was the factor whose lot it was to put poor William Burness to the exigencies of the law for the arrears at Mount Oliphant.

To take up his own narrative at the point where it was formerly dropped, the conclusion of the visit to Carrick:-‘I returned home very considerably improved. My reading was enlarged with the very important addition of Thomson's and Shenstone's works. I had seen human nature in a new phasis; and I engaged several of my school-fellows to keep up a literary correspondence with me. This improved me in composition. I had met with a collection of letters by the wits of Queen Anne's reign, and I pored over them most devoutly: I kept copies of any of my own letters that pleased me; and a comparison between them and the composition of most of my correspondents flattered my vanity. I carried this whim so far, that though I had not three farthings' worth of business in the world, yet almost every post brought me as many letters as if I had been a broad plodding son of day-book and ledger.

'My life flowed on much in the same course till my twenty-third year. Vive l'amour, et vive la bagatelle, were my sole principles of action. The addition of two more authors to my library gave me great pleasure; Sterne and Mackenzie-Tristram Shandy and The Man of Feeling-were my bosom favourites. Poesy was

still a darling walk for my mind, but it was only indulged in according to the humour of the hour. I had usually half-a-dozen or more pieces on hand; I took up one or other, as it suited the momentary tone of the mind, and dismissed the work as it bordered on fatigue. My passions, when once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they got vent in rhyme; and then the conning over my verses, like a spell soothed all into quiet! None of the rhymes of those days are in print, except "Winter; a Dirge," the eldest of my printed pieces; "The Death of Poor

Mailie," "John Barleycorn," and songs first, second, and third.1 Song second was the ebullition of that passion which ended the forementioned school business.

'My twenty-third year was to me an important era. Partly through whim, and partly that I wished to set about doing something in life, I joined a flaxdresser in a neighbouring town (Irvine), to learn his trade. This was an unlucky affair. My ***; and, to finish the whole, as we were giving a welcome carousal to the New Year, the shop took fire and burnt to ashes, and I was left, like a true poet, not worth a sixpence.

'I was obliged to give up this scheme: the clouds of misfortune were gathering thick round my father's head; and, what was worst of all, he was visibly far gone in a consumption; and, to crown my distresses, a belle fille whom I adored, and who had pledged her soul to meet me in the field of matrimony, jilted me, with peculiar circumstances of mortification. The finishing evil that brought up the rear of this infernal file, was my constitutional melancholy being increased to such a degree, that for three months I was in a state of mind scarcely to be envied by the hopeless wretches who have got their mittimus-Depart from me, ye accursed!

'From this adventure I learned something of a town life; but the principal thing which gave my mind a turn, was a friendship I formed with a young fellow, a very noble character, but a hapless son of misfortune. He was the son of a simple mechanic; but a great man in the neighbourhood taking him under his patronage, gave him a genteel education, with a view of bettering his situation in life. The patron dying just as he was ready to launch out into the world, the poor fellow in despair went to sea, where, after a variety of good and ill fortune, a little before I was acquainted with him, he had been set on shore by an American privateer on the wild coast of Connaught, stripped of everything. I cannot quit this poor fellow's story without adding that he is at this time. master of a large West Indiaman belonging to the Thames.

'His mind was fraught with independence, magnanimity, and every manly virtue. I loved and admired him to a degree of enthusiasm, and of course strove to imitate him. In some measure I succeeded. I had pride before, but he taught it to flow in proper

1 Those respectively beginning-'It was upon a Lammas-night,' 'Now westlin winds and slaughtering guns,' and 'Behind yon hills where Stinsiar flows.'

2 From the original letter in the possession of Peter Cunningham, Esq., it appears that the blank here left by Dr Currie was occupied by a charge of a sweeping nature against tho probity of his partner.

VOL. I.

channels. His knowledge of the world was vastly superior to mine, and I was all attention to learn. He was the only man I ever saw who was a greater fool than myself where woman was the presiding star; but he spoke of illicit love with the levity of a sailor, which hitherto I had regarded with horror.' Here his friendship did me a mischief; and the consequence was, that soon after I resumed the plough, I wrote the "Poet's Welcome." My reading only increased, while in this town, by two stray volumes of Pamela, and one of Ferdinand Count Fathom, which gave me some idea of novels. Rhyme, except some religious pieces that are in print, I had given up; but meeting with Fergusson's Scottish Poems, I strung anew my wildly-sounding lyre with emulating vigour. When my father died, his all went among the hell-hounds that prowl in the kennel of Justice; but we made a shift to collect a little money in the family amongst us, with which, to keep us together, my brother and I took a neighbouring farm. My brother wanted my hairbrained imagination, as well as my social and amorous madness; but in good sense, and every sober qualification, he was far my superior.'

To this rapid sketch of the Lochlea section of his life may be fitly appended the recital of his brother Gilbert for the same period:

'The seven years we lived in Torbolton parish (extending from the seventeenth to the twenty-fourth of my brother's age') were not marked by much literary improvement; but during this time the foundation was laid of certain habits in my brother's character which afterwards became but too prominent, and which malice and envy have taken delight to enlarge on. Though, when young, he was bashful and awkward in his intercourse with women, yet when he approached manhood, his attachment to their society became very strong, and he was constantly the victim of some fair enslaver. The symptoms of his passion were often such as nearly to equal those of the celebrated Sappho. I never indeed knew that he fainted, sunk, and died away; but the agitations of his mind and body exceeded anything of the kind I ever knew in real life. He had always a particular jealousy of people who were richer than himself, or who had more consequence in life. His love, therefore, rarely settled on persons of this description. When he selected any one out of the sovereignty of his good pleasure, to whom he

The individual here alluded to was named Richard Brown. See afterwards, under date February 1788.

2 In reality, from the nineteenth to the twenty-sixth.

should pay his particular attention, she was instantly invested with a sufficient stock of charms out of the plentiful stores of his own imagination; and there was often a great disparity between his fair captivator and her attributes.' One generally reigned paramount in his affections; but as Yorick's affections flowed out toward Madame de L at the remise door, while the eternal vows of Eliza were upon him, so Robert was frequently encountering other attractions, which formed so many under-plots in the drama of his love. As these connections were governed by the strictest rules of virtue and modesty (from which he never deviated till he reached his twenty-third year), he became anxious to be in a situation to marry. This was not likely to be soon the case while he remained a farmer, as the stocking of a farm required a sum of money he had no probability of being master of for a great while. He began, therefore, to think of trying some other line of life. He and I had for several years taken land of my father for the purpose of raising flax on our own account. In the course of selling it, Robert began to think of turning flaxdresser, both as being suitable to his grand view of settling in life, and as subservient to the flax raising. He, accordingly, wrought at the business of a flaxdresser in Irvine for six months, but abandoned it at that period, as neither agreeing with his health nor inclination. In Irvine he had contracted some acquaintance of a freer manner of thinking and living than he had been used to, whose society prepared him for overleaping the bounds of rigid virtue which had hitherto restrained him. **** During this period also he became a freemason, which was his first introduction to the life of a booncompanion. Yet, notwithstanding these circumstances, and the praise he has bestowed on Scotch drink (which seems to have misled his historians), I do not recollect, during these seven years, nor till towards the end of his commencing author (when his growing celebrity occasioned his being often in company), to have ever seen him intoxicated; nor was he at all given to drinking.'

For the first three or four years at Lochlea we have no details of the poet's life. There are very few compositions which can be certainly traced to this period. It was a time of comparative comfort for the Burness family, although marked not less than any other by extreme application to labour. The family was a

This passage is restored from a letter of Gilbert Burns in possession of Joseph Mayer, Esq., Liverpool. The passage substituted by Dr Currie is a great dissimilitude between his fair captivator, as she appeared to others, and as she seemed when invested with the attributes he gave her.'