No More Learning

At table he ate little or nothing: we had a long conversation about
his present state, and the approaching termination of all his earthly
prospects. He showed great concern about his literary fame, and
particularly the publication of his posthumous works; he said he was
well aware that his death would occasion some noise, and that every
scrap of his writing would be revived against him, to the injury of
his future reputation; that letters and verses, written with unguarded
freedom, would be handed about by vanity or malevolence when no dread
of his resentment would restrain them, or prevent malice or envy from
pouring forth their venom on his name. I had seldom seen his mind
greater, or more collected. There was frequently a considerable degree
of vivacity in his sallies; but the concern and dejection I could not
disguise, damped the spirit of pleasantry he seemed willing to
indulge. " This was on the evening of the 5th of July; another lady who
called to see him, found him seated at a window, gazing on the sun,
then setting brightly on the summits of the green hills of Nithsdale.
"Look how lovely the sun is," said the poet, "but he will soon have
done with shining for me. "

He now longed for home: his wife, whom he ever tenderly loved, was
about to be confined in child-bed: his papers were in sad confusion,
and required arrangement; and he felt that desire to die, at least,
among familiar things and friendly faces, so common to our nature. He
had not long before, though much reduced in pocket, refused with scorn
an offer of fifty pounds, which a speculating bookseller made, for
leave to publish his looser compositions; he had refused an offer of
the like sum yearly, from Perry of the Morning Chronicle, for poetic
contributions to his paper, lest it might embroil him with the ruling
powers, and he had resented the remittance of five pounds from
Thomson, on account of his lyric contributions, and desired him to do
so no more, unless he wished to quarrel with him; but his necessities
now, and they had at no time been so great, induced him to solicit
five pounds from Thomson, and ten pounds from his cousin, James
Burness, of Montrose, and to beg his friend Alexander Cunningham to
intercede with the Commissioners of Excise, to depart from their usual
practice, and grant him his full salary; "for without that," he added,
"if I die not of disease, I must perish with hunger. " Thomson sent the
five pounds, James Burness sent the ten, but the Commissioners of
Excise refused to be either merciful or generous. Stobie, a young
expectant in the customs, was both;--he performed the duties of the
dying poet, and refused to touch the salary. The mind of Burns was
haunted with the fears of want and the terrors of a jail; nor were
those fears without foundation; one Williamson, to whom he was
indebted for the cloth to make his volunteer regimentals, threatened
the one; and a feeling that he was without money for either his own
illness or the confinement of his wife, threatened the other.

Burns returned from the Brow-well, on the 18th of July: as he walked
from the little carriage which brought him up the Mill hole-brae to
his own door, he trembled much, and stooped with weakness and pain,
and kept his feet with difficulty: his looks were woe-worn and
ghastly, and no one who saw him, and there were several, expected to
see him again in life. It was soon circulated through Dumfries, that
Burns had returned worse from the Brow-well; that Maxwell thought ill
of him, and that, in truth, he was dying. The anxiety of all classes
was great; differences of opinion were forgotten, in sympathy for his
early fate: wherever two or three were met together their talk was of
Burns, of his rare wit, matchless humour, the vivacity of his
conversation, and the kindness of his heart. To the poet himself,
death, which he now knew was at hand, brought with it no fear; his
good-humour, which small matters alone ruffled, did not forsake him,
and his wit was ever ready.
He was poor--he gave his pistols, which he
had used against the smugglers on the Solway, to his physician, adding
with a smile, that he had tried them and found them an honour to their
maker, which was more than he could say of the bulk of mankind! He was
proud--he remembered the indifferent practice of the corps to which he
belonged, and turning to Gibson, one of his fellow-soldiers, who stood
at his bedside with wet eyes, "John," said he, and a gleam of humour
passed over his face, "pray don't let the awkward-squad fire over me. "
It was almost the last act of his life to copy into his Common-place
Book, the letters which contained the charge against him of the
Commissioners of Excise, and his own eloquent refutation, leaving
judgment to be pronounced by the candour of posterity.

It has been injuriously said of Burns, by Coleridge, that the man
sunk, but the poet was bright to the last: he did not sink in the
sense that these words imply: the man was manly to the latest draught
of breath. That he was a poet to the last, can be proved by facts, as
well as by the word of the author of Christabel. As he lay silently
growing weaker and weaker, he observed Jessie Lewars, a modest and
beautiful young creature, and sister to one of his brethren of the
Excise, watching over him with moist eyes, and tending him with the
care of a daughter; he rewarded her with one of those songs which are
an insurance against forgetfulness. The lyrics of the north have
nothing finer than this exquisite stanza:--

"Altho' thou maun never be mine,
Altho' even hope is denied,
'Tis sweeter for thee despairing,
Than aught in the world beside. "

His thoughts as he lay wandered to Charlotte Hamilton, and he
dedicated some beautiful stanzas to her beauty and her coldness,
beginning, "Fairest maid on Devon banks. "

It was a sad sight to see the poet gradually sinking; his wife in
hourly expectation of her sixth confinement, and his four helpless
children--a daughter, a sweet child, had died the year before--with no
one of their lineage to soothe them with kind words or minister to
their wants. Jessie Lewars, with equal prudence and attention, watched
over them all: she could not help seeing that the thoughts of the
desolation which his death would bring, pressed sorely on him, for he
loved his children, and hoped much from his boys. He wrote to his
father-in-law, James Armour, at Mauchline, that he was dying, his wife
nigh her confinement, and begged that his mother-in-law would hasten
to them and speak comfort. He wrote to Mrs. Dunlop, saying, "I have
written to you so often without receiving any answer that I would not
trouble you again, but for the circumstances in which I am. An illness
which has long hung about me in all probability will speedily send me
beyond that bourne whence no traveller returns. Your friendship, with
which for many years you honoured me, was a friendship dearest to my
soul: your conversation and your correspondence were at once highly
entertaining and instructive--with what pleasure did I use to break up
the seal! The remembrance yet adds one pulse more to my poor
palpitating heart.