The Works of Robert Burns; containing his life; by John Lockhart, Esq. The poetry and correspondence of Dr. Currie's edition; biographical sketches of the poet by himself, Gilbert Burns, Professor Stewart, and others; Essay on Scottish Poetry, including the poetry of Burns, by Dr. Currie ......

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t .,,,■/,■„ .sr„/h- J,lr,./fUt M®3BEIST lHJISW-50 THE WORKS OF ROBERT BURNS; CONTAINING HIS LIFE ; ITV JOHN LOCKHART, ESQ THE POETRY AND CORRESPONDENCE OP DR. CURRIE'S EDITION BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OP THE POET BY HIMSELF, GILBERT BHRNS, PROFESSOR STEWART, AND OTHERS ; ESSAY ON SCOTTISH POETRY, INCLUDING THE POETRY OF BURNS, BY DR. CURRIE ; Burns's Songs, from Johnson's "musical mdsedm," and "Thompson's select melodies;' SELECT SCOTTISH SONGS OF THE OTHER POETS, FROM the best collections, WITH BURNS'S REMARKS. FORMING, IN ONE WORK, THE TRUEST EXHIBITION OF THE MAN AND THE POET AND THE FULLEST EDITION OF HIS POETRY AND PROSE WRITINGS HITHERTO PUBLISHED. NE W-YORK PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM PEARSON, GO, CLIFF-STREET AND SOLD BY ALL THE PRINCIPAL BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED STATES. NOTICE TO THE PRESENT EDITION.

In the Dedication of the Life of Burns by Dr. Currie to his friend Cap tain Graham Moore, the learned Doctor thus expresses himself as to his Editorial office : — " The task was beset with considerable difficulties, and " men of established reputation naturally declined an undertaking, to the " performance of which it was scarcely to be hoped that general approba " tion could be obtained by any exertion of judgment or temper. To such " an office my place of residence, my accustomed studies, and my occu " pations, were certainly little suited. But the partiality of Mr. Syme " thought me, in other respects, not unqualified ; and hie solicitations, «' joined to those of our excellent friend and relation, Mrs. Dunlop, and of " other friends of the family of the poet, I have not been able, to resist."

These sentences contain singular avowals., They are somehow apt to suggest, what. we have all heard before, that s6me are born to honour, while others have honours thrust upon them. The Doctor's squeamishness in favour of persons of established reputation, who might be chary of a ticklish and impracticable, if not an odious task, is in ludicrous contrast with the facts as they have since fallen out. Have we not seen the master-spirits of the age, Scott, Byron, Campbell, honouring in Burns a kindred, if not a superior genius, and, like passionate devotees, doing him homage ? They have all voluntarily written of him ; and their recorded opinions evince no feelings of shyness, but the reverse : they not only honour, but write as if honoured by their theme. But let us leave the subject, by merely pointing attention to the Doctor's mode of treating it, as a decisive test of the evil days and evil tongues amidst which the poet had fallen, and of the exis tence of that deplorable party-spirit, during which the facts involving his character as a man, and his reputation as a poet, could neither be cor rectly stated, nor fairly estimated.

Chapter I

Contitxts The. Poet's Birth, \"is9—Citcumstar.ces and peculiar Character of hit Father and Jlfother — Hardships of his Early Years — Sources, such as they were, of hit Mental Improvement — Commenceth Love and Poetry at 16. " My father was a farmer upon the Carrick Border, And soberly lie brought me up in decency and order." Robert Burks was born on the 25th of January 1759, in a clay-built cottage, about two miles to the south of the town of Ayr, and in the im mediate vicinity of the Kirk of Alloway, and the " Auld Brig o' Doon." About a week afterwards, part of the frail dwelling, which his father had constructed with his own hands, gave way at midnight ; and the infant poet and his mother were carried through the storm, to the shelter of a neighbouring hovel. The father, William Burnes or Burness, (for so he spelt his name), was the son of a farmer in Kincardineshire, whence he removed .at 19 years of age, in consequence of domestic embarrassments.

The farm on which the family lived, formed part of the estate forfeited, in consequence of the rebellion of 1715, by the noble house of Keith Marischall ; and the poet took pleasure in saying, that his humble ances tors shared the principles and the fall of their chiefs. Indeed, after Wil liam Burnes settled in the west of Scotland, there prevailed a vague no tion that he himself had been out in the insurrection of 1745-6 ; but though Robert would tain have interpreted his father's silence in favour of a tale which flattered his imagination, his brother Gilbert always treated it as a mere fiction, and such it was. Gilbert found among his father's papers a certificate of the minister of his native parish, testifying that " the bearer, William Burnes, had no hand in the late wicked rebellion."

It is easy to suppose that when any obscure northern stranger fixed himself in those days in the Low Country, such rumours were likely enough to be circu lated concerning him, LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. William Burnes laboured for some years in the neighbourhood of Edin burgh as a gardener, and then found his way into Ayrshire. At the time when Robert was born, he was gardener and overseer to a gentleman of small estate, Mr. Ferguson of Doonholm ; but resided on a few acres of land, which he had on lease from another proprietor, and where he had originally intended to establish himself as a nurseryman. He married Agnes Brown in December 1757, and the poet was their first-born. Wil liam Burnes seems to have been, in his humble station, a man eminently entitled to respect. He had received the ordinary learning of a Scottish parish school, and profited largely both by that and by his own experience in the world.

" I have met with few," (said the poet, after he had him self seen a good deal of mankind), " who understood men, their manners, and their ways, equal to my father." He was a strictly religious man. There exists in his handwriting a little manual of theology, in the form of a dialogue, which he drew up for the use of his children, and from which it appears that he had adopted more of the Arminian than of the Calvinistic doctrine ; a circumstance not to be wondered at, when we con sider that he had been educated in a district which was never numbered among the strongholds of the Presbyterian church. The affectionate re verence with which his children ever regarded him, is attested by all who have described him as he appeared in his domestic circle ; but there needs no evidence beside that of the poet himself, who has painted, in colours that will never fade, " the saint, the father, and the husband," of The Cottar's Saturday Night.

Agnes Brown, the wife of this good man, is described as " a very sagaci ous woman, without any appearance of forwardness, or awkwardness of man ner;" and it seems that, in features, and, as he grew up, in general address, the poet resembled her more than his father. She had an inexhaustible store of ballads and traditionary tales, and appears to have nourished his infant imagination by this means, while her husband paid more attention to " the weightier matters of the law." These worthy people laboured hard for the support of an increasing family. William was occupied with Mr. Fer guson's service, and Agnes contrived to manage a small dairy as well as her children. But though their honesty and diligence merited better things, their condition continued to be very uncomfortable ; and our poet, (in his letter to Dr. Moore), accounts distinctly for his being born and bred " a very poor man's son," by the remark, that " stubborn ungainly integrity, and headlong ungovernable irascibility, are disqualifying circumstances."

These defects of temper did. not, however, obscure the sterling worth of William Burnes in the eyes of Mr. Ferguson ; who, when his gardener expressed a wish to try his for tuneon a farm of his, then vacant, and confessed at the same timehis inability to meet the charges of stocking it, at once advanced £100 towards the removal of the difficulty. Burnes accordingly removed to this farm (that of Mount Oliphant, in the parish of Ayr) at Whitsuntide 1766, when his eldest son was between six and seven years of age. But the soil proved to be of the most ungrateful descrip tion ; and Mr. Ferguson dying, and his affairs falling into the hands of a harsh factor, (who afterwards sat for his picture in the Twa Dogs), Burnes was glad to give up his bargain at the end of six years. He then removed about ten miles to a larger and better farm, that of Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton.

But here, after a short interval of prosperity, some unfor tunate misunderstanding took place as to the conditions of the lease ; the dispute was referred to arbitration ; and, after three years of suspense, the result involved Burnes in ruin. The worthy man lived to know of this de cision ; but death saved him from witnessing its necessary consequences. He died of consumption on the 13th February 1784. Severe labour, and hopes only renewed to be baffled, had at last exhausted a robust but irritable structure and temperament of body and of mind. In the midst of the harassing struggles which found this termination, William Burnes appears to have used his utmost exertions for promoting the mental improvement of his children — a duty rarely neglected by Scot tish parents, however humble their station, and scanty their means may be.

Robert was sent, in his sixth year, to a small school at Alloway Miln, about a mile from the house in which he was born ; but Campbell, the teacher, being in the course of a few months removed to another situation, Burnes and four or five of his neighbours engaged Mr. John Murdoch to supply his place, lodging him by turns in their own houses, and ensuring to him a small payment of money quarterly. Robert Burns, and Gilbert his next brother, were the aptest and the favourite pupils of this worthy man, who survived till very lately, and who has, in a letter published at length by Currie, detailed, with honest pride, the part which he had in the early education of our poet. He became the frequent in mate and confidential friend of the family, and speaks with enthusiasm of. the virtues of William Burnes, and of the peaceful and happy life of his humble abode.

" He was (says Murdoch) a tender and affectionate father ; he took pleasure in leading his children in the path of virtue ; not in driving them, as some parents do, to the performance of duties to which they themselves are averse. He took care to find fault but very seldom ; and therefore, when he did rebuke, he was listened to with a kind of reverential awe. A look of disapprobation was felt ; a reproof was severely so : and a stripe with the tawz, even on the skirt of the coat, gave heart-felt pain, produced a loud lamentation, and brought forth a flood of tears. " He had the art of gaining the esteem and good-will of those that were labourers under him. 1 think I never saw him angry but twice : the one time it was with the foreman of the band, for not reaping the field as he was desired ; and the other time, it was with an old man, for using smutty inuendos and double entendres."

" In this mean cottage, of which I my self was at times an inhabitant, I really believe there dwelt a larger por tion of content than in any palace in Europe. The Cottar's Saturday Night will give some idea of the temper and manners that prevailed there." The boys, under the joint tuition of Murdoch and their father, made ra pid progress in reading, spelling, and writing ; they committed psalms and hymns to memory with extraordinary ease — the teacher taking care (as he tells us) that they should understand the exact meaning of each word in the sentence ere they tried to get it by heart. '•' As soon," says he, " as they were capable of it, I taught them to turn verse into its natural prose order ; sometimes to substitute synonymous expressions for poetical words ; and to supply all the ellipses.

Robert and Gilbert were generally at the upper end of the class, even when ranged with boys by far their seniors, The books most commonly used in the school were the Spelling Book. the New Testament, the Bible, Mason's Collection of Prose and Verse, and FisJter's English Grammar." — " Gilbert always appeard to me to possess a more lively imagination, and to be more of the wit, than Robert. I at- LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. tempted to teach them a little church-music. Here they were left far be hind by all the rest of the school. Robert's ear, in particular, was remark ably dull, and his voice untunable. It was long before I could get them to distinguish one tune from another. Robert's countenance was generally grave and expressive of a serious, contemplative, and thoughtful mind. Gilbert's face said, Mirth, with thee I meafi to live ; and certainly, if any person who knew the two boys, had been asked which of them was the most likely to court the Muses, he would never have guessed that Robert had a propensity of that kind."

" At those years," says the poet himself, in 1787, " I was by no means a favourite with anybody. 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 substan tives, 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, dead-lights, 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 ef fort of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors. The earliest composition that I recollect taking pleasure in, was The Vision ofMirza, and a hymn of Addison's, beginning, How are thy servants blest, O Lord ! I particularly remember one half-stanza, which was music to my boyish ear — " For though on dreadful whirls we hung High on the broken wave — " I met with these pieces in Masons 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 Han nibal, and The History of Sir William Wallace.

Hannibal 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 tide of Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest." Murdoch continued his instructions until the family had been about two years at Mount Oliphant — when he left for a time that part of the country. " There being no school near us," says Gilbert Burns, " and our little ser vices being already useful on the farm, my father undertook to teach us arithmetic in the winter evenings by candle light — and in this way my two elder •sisters received all the education they ever received." Gilbert tells an anecdote which must not be omitted here, since it furnishes an early instance of the liveliness of his brother's imagination.

Murdoch, being on a visit to the family, read aloud one evening part of the tragedy of Titus Andro picus — the circle listened with the deepest interest until he came to Act 2, sc. 5, where LaYinia is introduced " with her hands cut off, and her V tongue cut out." At this the children entreated, with one voice, in an agony of distress, that their friend would read no more. " If ye will not hear the play out," said William Burnes, " it need not be left with you." — " If it be left," cries Robert, " I will burn it." His father was about to chide him for this return to Murdoch's kindness — but the good young man interfered, saying he liked to see so much sensibility, and left Tlie School for Love in place of his truculent tragedy. At this time Robert was nine years of age. " Nothing," continues Gilbert Burns, " could be more retired than our general manner of living at Mount Oliphant ; we rarely saw any body but the members of our own family.

There were no boys of our own age, or near it, in the neighbourhood. Indeed the greatest part of the land in the vicinity was at that time possessed by shopkeepers, and people of that stamp, who had retired from business, or who kept their farm in the country, at the same time that they followed business in town. My father was for some time almost the only companion we had. He con versed familiarly on all subjects with us, as if we had been men; and was at great pains, while we accompanied him in the labours of the farm, to lead the conversation to such subjects as might tend to increase our know ledge, or confirm us in virtuous habits. He borrowed Salmon's Geogra phical Grammar for us, and endeavoured to make us acquainted with the situation and history of the different countries in the world ; while, from a book-society in Ayr, he procured for us the reading of Derham's Physico and Astro- Theology, and Pay's Wisdom of God in the Creation, to give us some idea of astronomy and natural history.

Robert read all these books with an avidity and industry scarcely to be equalled. My father had been a subscriber to Stack house's History of tlie Bible. From this Robert collected a competent knowledge of ancient history ; for no book was so vo luminous as to slacken his industry, or so antiquated as to damp his researcltes." A collection of letters by eminent English authors, is mentioned as having fallen into Burns's hands much about the same time, and greatly delighted him. When Burns was about thirteen or fourteen years old, his father sent him and Gilbert " week about, during a summer quarter," to the parish school of Dalrymple, two or three miles distant from Mount Oliphant, for the improvement of their penmanship. The good man could not pay two fees ; or his two boys could not be spared at the same time from the la bour of the farm ! li We lived very poorly," says the poet.

" I was a dex terous 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 scoundrel factor's insolent letters, which used to set us all in tears." Gilbert Burns gives his brother's situation at this period in greater detail " To the buffetings of misfortune," says he, " we could only oppose hard labour and the most rigid economy. We lived very sparingly. For several years butcher's meat was a stranger in the house, while all the members of the family exerted themselves to tlie utmost of their strength and rather beyond it, in the labours of the farm. My brother, at the age of thirteen, assisted in thrashing the crop of corn, and at fifteen was the principal labourer on the farm, for we had no hired servant, male or female.

The anguish of mind we felt at our tender years, under these straits and difficulties, was very great. To think of our father growing old (for he was VI LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. now above fifty), broken down with the long-continued fatigues of his life, with a wife and five other children, and in a declining state of circumstances, these reflections produced in my brother's mind and mine sensations of the deepest distress. I doubt not but the hard labour and sorrow of this period of his life, was in a great measure the cause of that depression of spirits with which Robert was so often afflicted through his whole life afterwards. At this time he was almost constantly afflicted in the evenings with a dull headach, which, at a future period of his life, was exchanged for a palpita tion of the heart, and a threatening of fainting and suffocation in his bed, in the night-time."

The year after this, Burns was able to gain three weeks of respite, one before, and two after the harvest, from the labours which were thus strain ing his youthful strength. His tutor Murdoch was now established in the town of Ayr, and the boy spent one of these weeks in revising the English grammar with him ; the other two were given to French. He laboured enthusiastically in the new pursuit, and came home at the end of a fort night with a dictionary and a Tclcmaque, of which he made such use at his leisure hours, by himself, that in a short time (if we may believe Gilbert) he was able to understand any ordinary book of French prose. His pro gress, whatever it really amounted to, was looked on as something of a prodigy ; and a writing-master in Ayr, a friend of Murdoch, insisted that Robert Burns must next attempt tlie rudiments of the Latin tongue.

He did so, but with little perseverance, we may be sure, since the results were of no sort of value. Burns's Latin consisted of a few scraps of hackneyed quotations, such as many that never looked into Ruddiman's Rudiments can apply, on occasion, quite as skilfully as he ever appears to have done. The matter is one of no importance ; we might perhaps safely dismiss it with parodying what Ben Jonson said of Shakspeare ; he had little French, and no Latin. He had read, however, and read well, ere his sixteenth year elapsed, no contemptible amount of the literature of his own country. In addition to the books which have already been mentioned, he tells us that, ere the family quitted Mount Oliphant, he had read " the Spectator, some plays of Shakspeare, l'ope, (the Homer included), Tull and Dickson on Agriculture, Locke on the Human Understanding, Jus tice's British Gardener's Directory, Boyle's Lectures, Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, A~ Select Collection of English Songs, Hervey's Meditations," (a book which has ever been very popular among the Scottish peasantry), " and the Works of Allan Ramsay ;" and Gilbert adds to this list Pamela, (the first novel either of the brothers read), two stray volumes of Peregrine Pickle, two of Count Fathom, and a single volume of " some English historian," containing the reigns of James I., and his son.

The " Collection of Songs," says Burns, was my vade mecum. I pored over them, driving my cart, or walking to labour, song by song,' verse by verse ; carefully noticing the true, tender, or sublime, from affectation or fustian ; and I am convinced I owe to this practice much of my critic-craft, such as it is." He derived, during this period, considerable advantages from the vicinity of Mount Oliphant to the town of Ayr — a place then, and still, distinguished by the residence of many respectable gentlemen's families, and a con sequent elegance of society and manners, not common in remote provincial situations. To his friend, Mr. Murdoch, he no doubt owed, in the first instance, whatever attentions he received there from people older as well *n as higher than himself: some such persons appear to have taken a pleasure in lending him books, and surely no kindness could have been more useful to him than this.

As for his coevals, he himself says, very justly, " It is not commonly at that green age that our yeung gentry have a just sense of the distance between them and their ragged playfellows. My young superiors," he proceeds, " 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 observation ; 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 of ten to me a sore affliction, — but I was soon called to more serious evils." — (Letter to Moore).

The condition of the family during the last two years of their residence at Mount Oliphant, when the struggle which ended in their removal was rapidly approaching its crisis, has been already describ ed ; nor need we dwell again on the untimely burden of sorrow, as well as toil, which fell to the share of the youthful poet, and which would have broken altogether any mind wherein feelings like his had existed, without strength like his to control them. The removal of the family to Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton, took place when Burns was in his sixteenth year. He had some time before this made his first attempt in verse, and the occasion is thus described by himself in his letter to Moore. " 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 commit ted 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 au tumn 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, street, sonsie lass. In short, she. altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse pru dence, and book-worm philosophy, 1 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 1 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 ratan, when I looked and fingered over her little hand, to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles.

Among her other love-inspiring qua lities, 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 com posed 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 moorlands, he had no more scholar-craft than myself. ■ Thus with me began love and poetry ; which at times have been my only, and till within the last twelve months, have been my highest enjoyment." LIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. The earliest of the poet's productions is the little ballad, " O once I loved a bonny lass.

Burns himself characterises it as " a very puerile and silly performance ;" yet it contains here and there lines of which he need hardly have been ashamed at any period of his life : — " She dresses aye sae clean and neat, Baith decent and genteel, And then there's something in her gait Gars ony dress look weel." " Silly and puerile as it is," said the poet, long afterwards, " I am al ways pleased with this song, as it recall to my mind those happy days when my heart was yet honest, and my tongue sincere. ..I composed it in a wild enthusiasm of passion, and to this hour I never recollect it but my heart melts, myjjlood sallies, at the remembrance." (MS. Memorandum book, August 1783.) In his first epistle to Lapraik (1785) he says — " Amaist as soon as I could spell, I to the crambo-jingle fell, Tho' rude and rough ; Yet crooning to a body's sell Does weel eneugh."