No More Learning

To Mr. James Burness. Soliciting the sum of ten pounds

CCCXLIV. To James Gracie, Esq. His rheumatism, &c. &c. --his loss of
appetite


Remarks on Scottish Songs and Ballads


The Border Tour


The Highland Tour


Burns's Assignment of his Works


Glossary




LIFE

OF

ROBERT BURNS.


Robert Burns, the chief of the peasant poets of Scotland, was born in
a little mud-walled cottage on the banks of Doon, near "Alloway's auld
haunted kirk," in the shire of Ayr, on the 25th day of January, 1759.
As a natural mark of the event, a sudden storm at the same moment
swept the land: the gabel-wall of the frail dwelling gave way, and the
babe-bard was hurried through a tempest of wind and sleet to the
shelter of a securer hovel. He was the eldest born of three sons and
three daughters; his father, William, who in his native
Kincardineshire wrote his name Burness, was bred a gardener, and
sought for work in the West; but coming from the lands of the noble
family of the Keiths, a suspicion accompanied him that he had been
out--as rebellion was softly called--in the forty-five: a suspicion
fatal to his hopes of rest and bread, in so loyal a district; and it
was only when the clergyman of his native parish certified his loyalty
that he was permitted to toil. This suspicion of Jacobitism, revived
by Burns himself, when he rose into fame, seems not to have influenced
either the feelings, or the tastes of Agnes Brown, a young woman on
the Doon, whom he wooed and married in December, 1757, when he was
thirty-six years old. To support her, he leased a small piece of
ground, which he converted into a nursery and garden, and to shelter
her, he raised with his own hands that humble abode where she gave
birth to her eldest son.

The elder Burns was a well-informed, silent, austere man, who endured
no idle gaiety, nor indecorous language: while he relaxed somewhat the
hard, stern creed of the Covenanting times, he enforced all the
work-day, as well as sabbath-day observances, which the Calvinistic
kirk requires, and scrupled at promiscuous dancing, as the staid of
our own day scruple at the waltz. His wife was of a milder mood: she
was blest with a singular fortitude of temper; was as devout of heart,
as she was calm of mind; and loved, while busied in her household
concerns, to sweeten the bitterer moments of life, by chanting the
songs and ballads of her country, of which her store was great. The
garden and nursery prospered so much, that he was induced to widen his
views, and by the help of his kind landlord, the laird of Doonholm,
and the more questionable aid of borrowed money, he entered upon a
neighbouring farm, named Mount Oliphant, extending to an hundred
acres.
This was in 1765; but the land was hungry and sterile; the
seasons proved rainy and rough; the toil was certain, the reward
unsure; when to his sorrow, the laird of Doonholm--a generous
Ferguson,--died: the strict terms of the lease, as well as the rent,
were exacted by a harsh factor, and with his wife and children, he was
obliged, after a losing struggle of six years, to relinquish the farm,
and seek shelter on the grounds of Lochlea, some ten miles off, in the
parish of Tarbolton. When, in after-days, men's characters were in the
hands of his eldest son, the scoundrel factor sat for that lasting
portrait of insolence and wrong, in the "Twa Dogs. "

In this new farm William Burns seemed to strike root, and thrive. He
was strong of body and ardent of mind: every day brought increase of
vigour to his three sons, who, though very young, already put their
hands to the plough, the reap-hook, and the flail. But it seemed that
nothing which he undertook was decreed in the end to prosper: after
four seasons of prosperity a change ensued: the farm was far from
cheap; the gains under any lease were then so little, that the loss of
a few pounds was ruinous to a farmer: bad seed and wet seasons had
their usual influence: "The gloom of hermits and the moil of
galley-slaves," as the poet, alluding to those days, said, were
endured to no purpose; when, to crown all, a difference arose between
the landlord and the tenant, as to the terms of the lease; and the
early days of the poet, and the declining years of his father, were
harassed by disputes, in which sensitive minds are sure to suffer.

Amid these labours and disputes, the poet's father remembered the
worth of religious and moral instruction: he took part of this upon
himself. A week-day in Lochlea wore the sober looks of a Sunday: he
read the Bible and explained, as intelligent peasants are accustomed
to do, the sense, when dark or difficult; he loved to discuss the
spiritual meanings, and gaze on the mystical splendours of the
Revelations. He was aided in these labours, first, by the
schoolmaster of Alloway-mill, near the Doon; secondly, by John
Murdoch, student of divinity, who undertook to teach arithmetic,
grammar, French, and Latin, to the boys of Lochlea, and the sons of
five neighboring farmers. Murdoch, who was an enthusiast in learning,
much of a pedant, and such a judge of genius that he thought wit
should always be laughing, and poetry wear an eternal smile, performed
his task well: he found Robert to be quick in apprehension, and not
afraid to study when knowledge was the reward. He taught him to turn
verse into its natural prose order; to supply all the ellipses, and
not to desist till the sense was clear and plain: he also, in their
walks, told him the names of different objects both in Latin and
French; and though his knowledge of these languages never amounted to
much, he approached the grammar of the English tongue, through the
former, which was of material use to him, in his poetic compositions.
Burns was, even in those early days, a sort of enthusiast in all that
concerned the glory of Scotland; he used to fancy himself a soldier of
the days of the Wallace and the Bruce: loved to strut after the
bag-pipe and the drum, and read of the bloody struggles of his country
for freedom and existence, till "a Scottish prejudice," he says, "was
poured into my veins, which will boil there till the flood-gates of
life are shut in eternal rest. "

In this mood of mind Burns was unconsciously approaching the land of
poesie. In addition to the histories of the Wallace and the Bruce, he
found, on the shelves of his neighbours, not only whole bodies of
divinity, and sermons without limit, but the works of some of the best
English, as well as Scottish poets, together with songs and ballads
innumerable. On these he loved to pore whenever a moment of leisure
came; nor was verse his sole favourite; he desired to drink knowledge
at any fountain, and Guthrie's Grammar, Dickson on Agriculture,
Addison's Spectator, Locke on the Human Understanding, and Taylor's
Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, were as welcome to his heart as
Shakspeare, Milton, Pope, Thomson, and Young. There is a mystery in
the workings of genius: with these poets in his head and hand, we see
not that he has advanced one step in the way in which he was soon to
walk, "Highland Mary" and "Tam O' Shanter" sprang from other
inspirations.

Burns lifts up the veil himself, from the studies which made him a
poet.