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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ff94ad4 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #69857 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69857) diff --git a/old/69857-0.txt b/old/69857-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 24045bc..0000000 --- a/old/69857-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,10002 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pride and Passion: Robert Burns, -1759-1796, by DeLancey Ferguson - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Pride and Passion: Robert Burns, 1759-1796 - -Author: DeLancey Ferguson - -Release Date: January 22, 2023 [eBook #69857] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Tim Lindell, Carla Foust and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was - produced from images made available by the HathiTrust - Digital Library.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIDE AND PASSION: ROBERT -BURNS, 1759-1796 *** - - - - - - PRIDE AND PASSION - ROBERT BURNS 1759-1796 - - - - - PRIDE AND PASSION - - _Robert Burns_ - - 1759-1796 - - BY - - DELANCEY FERGUSON - - ‘_My great constituent elements are Pride and Passion._’ - BURNS TO AGNES M’LEHOSE - DECEMBER 28, 1787 - - - NEW YORK - OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS - 1939 - - - - - Copyright, 1939, by Oxford University Press, New York, Inc. - First Edition - - - Printed in the United States of America - - - - -PREFACE - - -All witnesses agree that Robert Burns was a vivid and dynamic -personality. All readers of his poetry concur. Yet somehow the -personality which blazes in the poems and glows in the letters only -smoulders in the biographies. Why is it so hard to write a dull -life of, say, Byron, and so easy to write a dull one of Burns? For -one thing, there are too many biographies, all following the same -stereotyped outline of dividing the poet’s life according to the places -he lived in instead of according to the things he did and thought. Then -really graphic memorabilia are scarce, especially for the formative -years in Ayrshire. People keep saying that Burns was a brilliant -talker, but they seldom report his talk. Finally, too many biographers -have worked in the wrong mood, intent on moralizing or deprecating -rather than interpreting. - -This book is not a biography, if that word connotes a narrative written -in straight time-sequence. It is, instead, my answer to the question, -subordinated or ignored by most chronological biographers, What sort -of a man was Robert Burns? I have therefore discarded time-sequence -in favour of the relationships of everyday life in which Burns -most clearly revealed his personality. The plan has at least the -advantage of passing quickly over his almost undocumented youth, and -concentrating attention upon his fully recorded manhood. The formal -biography, whether it be Mrs. Carswell’s romantic approach or Professor -Snyder’s scholarly one, suffers from the necessity of devoting more -space to the scantily reported twenty-seven years in Ayrshire than -to the five richly documented years in Dumfries. I have assumed that -Burns’s character can best be determined from the completest records. -Perhaps to himself John Syme and Maria Riddell were not so important -as Robert Muir and Margaret Chalmers, but the later friendships can be -studied at full length; the earlier ones cannot. Hence I have given -most space to the relationships in which guess-work can be kept to a -minimum. - -So, too, I have deliberately limited myself to the best authenticated -sources--Burns’s own letters and poems, and the letters and other -records of his immediate contemporaries. Unsupported oral tradition -I have avoided as basic material. Though I use such anecdotes now -and again as secondary illustrations, it is always with a warning as -to their nature. I have likewise tried to make clear the distinction -between facts and the inferences I have drawn from them. - -In one respect at least my preparation for writing about Burns is -unique. Most editors and biographers have either been bred in the -rosy mists of the Burns legend or have worked their way back to the -original records through a mass of secondary printed matter. Up to a -dozen years ago my knowledge of Burns and his times included little -beyond such reading of major works and standard criticism as one -does in preparation for the doctorate. In 1925 I undertook to edit -a reprint of Burns’s chief poems. Discovering in the course of that -job how unsatisfactory were all editions of his correspondence, I -thereupon plunged into the work of tracing and collating the original -holographs. Not until after thorough immersion in these primary sources -did I extend my studies to the letters and other records of Burns’s -contemporaries and to the Burns tradition embalmed in the biographies -and standard editions. When I started I had therefore everything to -learn, but nothing to unlearn, and my basic impression of the poet and -his work was founded on intimate acquaintance with his own words, and -not on what other people had said about him. - -The large number of new documents which have turned up in recent years -replaces conjecture with certainty in many once disputed episodes in -Burns’s career. We need no longer depend on libellous Saunders Tait for -details of William Burnes’s troubles at Lochlie; the chronology of the -poet’s Edinburgh peccadillos is fairly clear; we know why Mrs. Dunlop -broke off her correspondence. The verification and completion of the -texts of more than three-fourths of Burns’s own letters is only a part -of the fresh material. Collateral documents ranging from Elizabeth -Paton’s discharge of her claim against Burns to the almost complete -correspondence of two of his most intimate friends are now available, -and I have used them freely. I have also drawn upon other sources -not fully utilized in the past. Most biographers, for instance, have -contemned the so-called ‘Train MS.’ in Edinburgh University library. -This collection of notes on Lockhart’s _Life of Burns_ consists mainly -of anecdotes deriving ultimately from the poet’s friend, John Richmond. -It has been repudiated _in toto_ for no better reason, seemingly, than -that Richmond told a story about one Mary Campbell which does not -tally with the romantic account of Highland Mary, and was mistaken -in the identity of a lady who once called at Burns’s lodgings in -Baxter’s Close. Against these two doubtful items I set the fact that -the author of the notes so accurately described unpublished letters and -verses which he had seen that every one of them since published can be -instantly identified. I base no major conclusions on this MS., but I -can see no justification for ignoring it. - -I need not enumerate the volumes of biography, history, and memoirs -which have contributed background materials. They are listed in all the -standard bibliographies. The one great addition to the older lists is -the _Journals_ of James Boswell, which have furnished graphic details -of Scottish life. I hasten to add, however, that Chapter I is not -intended as a complete survey of eighteenth-century Scotland. Even had -completeness been possible in the space at my disposal, it would have -been useless to attempt to repeat what Professor H. W. Thompson has -so superbly done in _A Scottish Man of Feeling_. Hence I have limited -myself to those aspects of national life which bore directly upon -Burns, as I have also done in considering the influence of contemporary -literature. The eighteenth century was not all ‘elegance’, but it was -the elegant authors, and not Swift, Fielding, and Johnson, who appealed -to Burns. - -Lest British readers charitably assume that I sin through ignorance, -I ought perhaps also to add that in writing of Burns’s world I have -not hesitated to equate some of its social and political aspects with -their twentieth-century American analogues. To describe a dead world in -dead terms seems a poor way of revivifying it. My omission of footnotes -is likewise deliberate. In a score of articles in various journals -during the past decade I have presented, and fully documented, the -evidence on many controversial points. The articles evoked an almost -passionate apathy; nevertheless they, and their footnotes, are there -if anyone cares to look them up. Furthermore, nearly all the source -documents I have used are now in print, despite the efforts of Burns’s -self-appointed literary executors to suppress certain of them. On two -points I recant some of my earlier statements: I know now that the -circumstances of Burns’s quarrel with the Riddells are not so clear as -I once thought them, and Mr. Stanley Cursiter of the Scottish National -Gallery has given me reason to doubt my identification of the miniature -portrait belonging to Mr. Oliver R. Barrett. - -Transcripts of most of the unpublished documents I have used are -included in Mr. Robert T. Fitzhugh’s Cornell University dissertation, -‘Robert Burns as Seen by his Contemporaries’ (1935). I am deeply -indebted to Mr. Fitzhugh for the use of this material and of other -documents he has discovered more recently, chief among them the -letter in which Robert Ainslie described to Agnes M’Lehose his visit -to Ellisland in October, 1790. In addition to the Train MS., above -mentioned, Mr. Fitzhugh’s thesis includes numerous letters by Burns’s -contemporaries, of which the most important are the forty-one which -passed between John Syme and Alexander Cunningham from 1789 to 1797. On -publication in the _Burns Chronicle_ these letters were considerably -expurgated, the deletions including details of the Caledonian Hunt’s -revelry in Dumfries and the most graphic description which has yet come -to light in connection with Burns of a wet evening over the punchbowl. - -Many other people have helped me in the work. My wife typed most of -it in its original form, clarified doubtful points by debating them, -and did her best to restrain the wilder excesses of Ph.D. diction. -My colleague, Winfield H. Rogers, read the manuscript, and made many -useful comments. A famous British firm gave me free permission to use -one of Burns’s bawdier letters, but after I published it they were -taken to task by one of the literary executors above mentioned. Since -they found it easier to repudiate a foreigner than to face the wrath -of a compatriot, I shall not embarrass them by repeating my thanks -here. I am indebted to Col. Sir John Murray, D.S.O., for use of the -original MS. of Burns’s journal of his Border tour. Mr. Davidson Cook, -Mr. George W. Shirley, and Mr. John M’Vie have all shared their Burns -discoveries with me, and Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach, Mr. Gabriel Wells, and -the late Mr. Charles Sessler renewed my obligations to them by allowing -me to collate MSS. which came into their hands after my edition of the -_Letters_ was published. And finally, I owe a still deeper renewal of -gratitude to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, to whose -grant-in-aid this present volume owes its appearance. - - DE L. F. - - _Western Reserve University - 20 August 1938_ - - - - -CHRONOLOGY OF BURNS’S LIFE - - -I. AYRSHIRE - - 1759. _Jan. 25._ Robert Burns born at Alloway; eldest son of William - Burnes (1721-1784) and his wife Agnes Broun (1732-1820). The - other children were Gilbert (1760-1827), Agnes (1762-1834), - Anabella (1764-1832), William (1767-1790), John (1769-1785), - and Isabella (1771-1858). - - 1765. Robert and Gilbert sent to school to John Murdoch. - - 1766. William Burnes rents Mt. Oliphant farm. - - 1768. Murdoch gives up Alloway school. The _Titus Andronicus_ - incident. - - 1772. Robert and Gilbert attend Dalrymple parish school, week about, - during summer quarter. - - 1773. Robert studies grammar and French with Murdoch for three weeks; - writes his first song, ‘Handsome Nell’, for Nellie Kilpatrick. - - 1774. Hard times begin at Mt. Oliphant. - - 1775. Burns attends Hugh Rodger’s school at Kirkoswald. - - 1777. At Whitsun William Burnes moves from Mt. Oliphant to Lochlie. - - 1779. Burns joins a dancing class ‘in absolute defiance’ of his - father’s commands. - - 1780. The Tarbolton Bachelors’ Club organized. - - 1781. Burns courts Alison Begbie. His father’s dispute with David - M’Lure, his landlord, begins. Burns joins the Freemasons, and - about midsummer goes to Irvine as a flax-dresser. - - 1782. _Jan. 1._ The Irvine shop burnt out; soon after, Burns returns - to Lochlie. - - _Sept. 24._ William Burnes’s dispute referred to arbiters. - - 1783. _Jan._ Burns wins a £3 prize for flax-seed. - - _April._ Burns begins his Commonplace Book. - - _May 17._ M’Lure gets a writ of sequestration against William - Burnes. - - _Aug. 18._ The ‘Oversman’ reports in Burnes’s favor. - - _Aug. 25._ Burnes makes first appeal to Court of Session. - - Autumn. Robert and Gilbert secretly arrange to rent Mossgiel. - - 1784. _Jan. 27._ The Court of Session upholds William Burnes. - - _Feb. 13._ Death of William Burnes. The family moves to - Mossgiel. - - 1785. _May 22._ Birth of Elizabeth, the poet’s daughter by Elizabeth - Paton. - - _Nov. 1._ Burial of John Burns, the poet’s youngest brother. - During this year Burns began to write his satires, composed - ‘The Jolly Beggars’, and in Oct. finished his first Commonplace - Book. He also met Jean Armour. - - 1786. _Jan._ (?). Burns plans migration to Jamaica. - - _April 3._ ‘Proposals’ for the Kilmarnock _Poems_ sent to press. - - _c. April 23._ James Armour repudiates Burns as a son-in-law. - - _May 12._ Supposed date of composing ‘The Court of Equity’. - - _May 14._ Supposed date of farewell to Highland Mary. - - _July 9._ Burns’s first penitential appearance in church. - - _July 22._ Burns transfers his share in Mossgiel to Gilbert. - - _July 30._ Burns in hiding from James Armour’s writ. - - _July 31._ The Kilmarnock _Poems_ published. - - _c. Sept. 1._ First postponement of Jamaica voyage. - - _Sept. 3._ Jean Armour bears twins, who are christened Robert - and Jean. - - _c. Sept. 27._ Second postponement of Jamaica voyage. - - _Oct. 23._ Burns dines at Catrine House. - - End of _Oct._ Abandonment of Jamaica plans. - - _Nov. 27._ Burns sets out for Edinburgh. - - _Dec. 1._ Elizabeth Paton accepts Burns’s settlement of her - claim. - - -II. EDINBURGH - - 1786. _Nov. 29._ Burns arrives in Edinburgh. - - _Dec. 9._ Henry Mackenzie praises the Kilmarnock _Poems in The - Lounger_. - - _Dec. 14._ William Creech issues subscription bills for the - Edinburgh edition of the _Poems_. - - 1787. _Jan. 13._ The Grand Lodge of Scotland toasts Burns as - ‘Caledonia’s Bard’. - - _April 21._ Edinburgh _Poems_ published. - - _April 23._ Burns sells his copyright for 100 guineas. - - _May 5-June 1._ Burns tours the Border. - - End of _May_. VOL. I of _Scots Musical Museum_ published. - - _June 2._ Burns receives Meg Cameron’s appeal. - - _June 8._ Burns’s ‘_éclatant_ return to Mauchline’. - - End of _June_. Burns tours West Highlands as far as Inverary. - - _July 29._ Jean Armour ‘in for it again’. - - _Aug. 2._ Burns completes his autobiographical letter to Dr. - John Moore. - - _Aug. 8._ Burns returns to Edinburgh. - - _Aug. 15._ Burns freed of Meg Cameron’s writ. - - _Aug. 25-Sept. 16._ Highland tour with William Nicol. - - _Oct. 4-20._ Tour in Stirlingshire. - - _Oct._ Death of poet’s daughter, Jean. - - _Nov._ Burns begins active work for the _Museum_. - - _Dec. 4._ Burns meets Agnes M’Lehose. - - _Dec. 7._ Burns dislocates his knee. - - _Dec. 8._ The Clarinda correspondence begins. - - 1788. _Jan. 4._ Burns’s first visit to Clarinda. - - _Feb. 13-14._ Peak of the Clarinda correspondence: four letters - in two days. - - _Feb. 18._ Burns leaves Edinburgh. - - _Feb. 23._ Burns returns to Mauchline; is ‘disgusted’ by Jean. - - _Feb. 27 (?)-Mar. 2._ Burns visits Ellisland with John Tennant. - - _Mar. 3._ Jean bears twin girls, of whom one dies on Mar. 10 and - the other on Mar. 22. - - _c._ _Mar. 13._ Burns returns to Edinburgh. - - _Mar. 18._ Burns signs lease of Ellisland. - - _Mar. 24._ Burns leaves Edinburgh. - - _Mar._ VOL. II of _Scots Musical Museum_ published. - - Late _April_. Burns acknowledges Jean Armour as his wife. - - _April-May._ Burns receives Excise instructions at Mauchline. - - -III. DUMFRIESSHIRE - - 1788. _June 11._ Burns settles at Ellisland. - - _July 14._ Burns’s Excise commission issued. - - _Nov. 5._ Centenary of the ‘Glorious Revolution’. - - _Nov._ Jenny Clow bears Burns a son. - - _Dec._ Jean joins Burns in borrowed quarters at the Isle. - - 1789. _Feb. 16._ Burns goes to Edinburgh to close accounts with Creech - and to settle Jenny Clow’s suit. - - _Feb. 28._ Burns returns to Ellisland. - - Summer. Burns meets Francis Grose. - - _Aug. 18._ Francis Wallace Burns born. - - _Sept. 1._ Burns begins duty as Excise officer. - - _Nov._ Burns ill with ‘malignant squinancy and low fever’. - - 1790. _Jan. 27._ Burns’s name placed on list of those eligible for - promotion as Examiners and Supervisors. - - _Feb._ VOL. III of _Scots Musical Museum_ published. - - _July._ Burns transferred to Dumfries 3d Division. - - _July 24._ Death of William Burns in London. - - _Dec. 1._ MS. of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ sent to Grose. - - 1791. _Mar. 31._ Anne Park bears Burns a daughter, Elizabeth. - - _April 9._ William Nicol Burns born. - - _April._ ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ published in Grose’s _Antiquities of - Scotland_ and in the March _Edinburgh Magazine_. - - _June 19-22._ Burns in Ayrshire to attend Gilbert’s wedding. - - _Aug. 25._ Auction of crops at Ellisland. - - _Sept. 10._ Formal renunciation of Ellisland lease signed. - - _Nov. 11._ Burns moves into Dumfries. - - _Nov. 29-Dec. 11._ Burns in Edinburgh. Farewell again to - Agnes M’Lehose. - - 1792. _Feb._ Burns promoted to Dumfries Port Division. - - _Feb. 29._ Capture of schooner _Rosamond_. - - _April 10._ Burns made honorary member of Royal Company of - Archers, Edinburgh. - - _April 19._ Sale of the _Rosamond’s_ carronades. - - _Aug._ VOL. IV of _Scots Musical Museum_ published. - - _Sept. 16._ Burns begins work for Thomson’s _Select Collection_. - - _Nov. 13._ Burns subscribes for Edinburgh _Gazetteer_. - - _Nov. 21._ Birth of Elizabeth Riddell Burns. - - Mid-_Dec._ Burns’s last visit to Dunlop House. - - _Dec. 31._ Inquiry into Burns’s loyalty. - - 1793. _Jan. 5._ Burns defends himself to Graham of Fintry. - - _Feb. 1._ France declares war against England. - - _Feb._ Second Edinburgh edition of _Poems_ published. - - _March._ Burns asks, and receives, burgess privileges in the - Dumfries schools. - - _May 19._ Burns moves to house in Mill Vennel. - - _June._ First number of Thomson’s _Select Collection_ published. - - _c._ _July 30-Aug. 2._ First Galloway tour with Syme. - - _Aug._ The Edinburgh sedition trials. - - _c._ _Aug. 30._ ‘Bannockburn’ sent to Thomson. - - _c._ _Dec. 31._ Beginning of the Riddell quarrel. - - 1794. _Jan. 12._ Final breach with Maria Riddell. - - _April 21._ Death of Robert Riddell. - - _c._ _May 1._ Burns declines a post on _Morning Chronicle_, - London. - - _c._ _June 25-28._ Second Galloway tour with Syme. - - _Aug. 12._ Birth of James Glencairn Burns. - - _c._ _Dec. 22._ Burns appointed Acting Supervisor at Dumfries. - - 1795. _Jan. 12._ Burns posts the letter which estranged Mrs. Dunlop. - - _Jan. 31._ Burns joins in organizing the Dumfries Volunteers. - - _Feb._ Reconciliation with Maria Riddell. - - _April._ The Reid miniature painted. Alexander Findlater resumes - his duties as Supervisor at Dumfries. - - _Sept._ Death of Elizabeth Riddell Burns. - - _Dec.-Jan._ Burns ill with rheumatic fever. - - 1796. _Mar. 12-14._ Food riots in Dumfries. - - _July 3-16._ Burns at the Brow Well. - - _July 18._ Burns writes his last letter. - - _July 21._ Death of Burns. - - _July 25._ Funeral of Burns, and birth of his son Maxwell. - - _Dec._ VOL. V of _Scots Musical Museum_ published. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PREFACE v - - CHRONOLOGY OF BURNS’S LIFE xiii - - I. SCOTLAND 3 - - II. EDUCATION 34 - - III. MEN 79 - - IV. WOMEN 135 - - V. LIVELIHOOD 188 - - VI. SONG 234 - - VII. THE SCOT 278 - - - - -PRIDE AND PASSION - -ROBERT BURNS 1759-1796 - - - - -PRIDE AND PASSION - - - - -I - -SCOTLAND - - -A Scot in the eighteenth century was a poor relation, subject to the -slights and scorns of more prosperous kinfolk, and reared amid poverty, -theology, and filth. When Robert Burns was born, on January 25, 1759, -his native land was almost at the nadir of its independent existence. -Proud and warlike and desperately poor, Scotland had been still an -essentially feudal nation when King James VI was called from amid the -bickerings of his jealous nobles and intransigent clergy to become -James I of England. The permanent removal of the court to London left -the country more than ever the prey of contention among its nobles and -fanaticism among its ecclesiastics; governed by a parliament without -authority; torn at intervals by rebellion and civil strife; denied -commercial parity with England, and cut off from the old-time free -intercourse with France. - -The Act of Union of 1707, by admitting Scotland to commercial -privileges formerly restricted to England, started the country -on the road to material prosperity, but promised to destroy the -last vestiges of national pride. It was ‘the end of an old song’. -Thenceforward the affairs of Scotland were entrusted to a handful of -representatives at Westminster, too small, in those days of patronage -and pocket-boroughs, to have enabled even a Scottish Parnell, had -there been one, to sway the balance of power. Scotland was no longer -Scotland; it was North Britain. And when the House of Hanover succeeded -to the English throne, the last vestige of Scottish influence in the -government seemed to have vanished. Ruled no longer by the Stuarts--her -own kings, even though absentee--but by ‘an insolent, beef-witted race -of foreigners’, Scotland turned more and more to the things of the -flesh. The last flicker of the ancient loyalties in the ’45 shed only -light enough to reveal their death. The Lowlands, though they could -not stomach the double treason of a man like Murray of Broughton, -acquiesced in the brutal destruction of the Highland clans. Most of the -comfortable merchants and landed gentry had viewed the uprising with -an apprehension even livelier than that felt by the German court four -hundred miles away; when the Highlands were crushed they rejoiced in -their own increased security, and showed their loyalty to the reigning -House by christening their daughters Charlotte and Wilhelmina, and -their new streets and squares Hanover and Brunswick and George. - -By the middle of the century Scottish affairs had settled into an order -which might alter in degree, but would not alter in kind, for two -generations at least. Politically, the country was little more than -a conquered province. Economically it was beginning to emerge from -age-old poverty, but the new prosperity of the lucky few was widening -the gap between them and the poor and still further depressing the -latter. Religiously it was awakening from the nightmare of Calvinism -which had paralysed free thought and free action for two centuries. -Intellectually its literary life was being overwhelmed by the fashions -and standards of England, and its educated citizens were suffering from -an inferiority complex of national scope. - -When Warren Hastings was impeached, Burns was angry because it was done -in the name of the Commons of England and not of Great Britain. Had -he expressed his opinion in public, instead of in a private letter, -it would have roused little sympathy among his more influential -countrymen. Most would have dismissed it as the rant of a fanatic; a -few would have held it downright treason. There was no money in being a -Scottish patriot. As in England, all things political went by favour. -The only difference was that in Scotland they went by favour of one -man--the Duke of Argyll, the Earl of Bute, or Henry Dundas, as the case -might be. All power concentrated at last in the hands of the national -boss. He ‘suggested’ the choice of the sixteen Scottish peers who -were to represent their country in the House of Lords; he controlled -the election of the forty-five members of the Commons; his word was -law as to all appointive offices. Fifteen members of the Commons were -chosen by the burgh councils--self-perpetuating groups which in ‘the -taciturn regularity of ancient affairs’ allowed no outsider to intrude -on their privileges and their graft. The other thirty were chosen -by the counties, and in all Scotland there were fewer than three -thousand qualified electors, every man of whom was ticketed as to party -allegiance and family connection. Most of them also had their prices -plainly marked on their tickets. Of course the price need be nothing so -crude as cash. Every job, from a cadetship with the East India Company -to the governorship of a province, was obtainable by influence, and -by influence only; hence there were plenty of ways of swaying a man’s -vote, especially if he had a rising family of hungry younger sons, -without soiling his fingers with gold. - -Everyone played the game, and took the rules for granted. Why wait -for merited promotion, if you could get it quicker by pulling wires? -The only man Sir Walter Scott ever deliberately cut was the one who -publicly criticized him for securing his brother’s appointment to a -post which he knew was soon to be abolished--with a pension for the -ousted incumbent. It was a comfortable system for those on the inside. -As for the others, they were expected to do their duty in that state of -life to which it had pleased God to call them. - -But it was not merely in political jobs that the influential classes -were doing well for themselves. The Act of Union had admitted Scottish -merchants to the privileges of the colonial trade formerly open only to -the English. Throughout the eighteenth century the south of Scotland -experienced a whole series of industrial and real estate booms. -Though by twentieth-century standards of bankruptcy the booms were -small and local, they had all the familiar characteristics. Glasgow -and its neighbourhood, for instance, when once it had recovered from -the losses of the crazy Darien Expedition--as wild a speculation as -the later Mississippi Bubble in France and the South Sea madness in -England--throve soberly on its steadily increasing commerce with the -West Indies and the American Colonies. The passerby today, between the -Trongate and the Broomielaw, may read in Union Street and George Square -how mercantile Scotland felt towards the loss of its parliament, and -find Jamaica and Virginia Streets underscoring the reason; further -west, St. Vincent Street, Nile Street, Pitt Street, and Wellington -Street show the direction of Glaswegian sympathies in the long struggle -with Napoleon. And since commerce is by definition two-sided the ships -which brought back American cotton and tobacco and sugar took out -Scottish linens and woolens and shoes from steadily growing centres of -manufacture. - -On the east coast, Edinburgh was not merely expanding; it was on the -way to transforming itself. Unable by its location to share directly in -the overseas trade, it throve on the legal business which grew out of -that trade, on the increasing demand for education which benefited both -the university and the printers and booksellers, and on the invested -profits of Scotsmen who had made money in the East or West Indies and -who settled in the capital when they retired. Until after the ’45 the -city was still packed along the ridge from Holyrood to the Castle, -its population crowded into the tall tenements which shut out the low -northern sun from the narrow wynds. Its first expansion was to the -south, in a development, near the present site of the University, on -which Burns’s father and uncle found work when they struck out for -themselves in 1750. To the north of the Old Town all was then open -country. At the foot of the Castle Rock, where the railway tracks now -run, the marshy Nor Loch still received whatever of the city’s garbage -did not remain in the streets. Burns was four years old when the -real growth of the modern city began with the building of the North -Bridge to connect the Old Town with the ridge which paralleled it to -northward. Each year thereafter saw new houses or new squares added, -but as late as 1800 the New Town still consisted only of Princes, -George, and Queen Streets from St. Andrew Square to Charlotte Square. - -Until after Burns’s death the whole area, despite the Georgian dignity -and charm of its houses, retained many of the features of a new and raw -development. In particular, the valley was half choked by the hideous -Mound formed of the earth excavated in grading the New Town. The laying -out of the Princes Street Gardens and the crowning of the Mound with -the Scottish National Gallery were still far in the future--there was -even talk of a row of buildings on the south side of Princes Street -which would have blinded one of the finest city vistas in the world, -and have made the Gardens forever impossible. By 1786, when Burns -first saw Edinburgh, wealth and fashion had already deserted the Old -Town, and middle-class respectability was beginning to follow, but -the business life of the city still centred in the shops and taverns -which lined the High Street, crammed the narrow Luckenbooths which -congested traffic beside disfigured St. Giles’s, and overflowed into -all the adjacent courts and closes. Professional men transacted their -business in taverns in preference to their crowded living-quarters; all -Edinburgh was accustomed to gather at midday in the neighbourhood of -the Cross to arrange business and social appointments. - -Sanitation did not exist. Water for cooking and such exiguous washing -as was done was carried by porters from the public wells to the -various flats in the tall ‘lands’; the day’s filth of the household -was collected in a tub on the landing of the stairs and at bedtime the -barefoot maid-servants emptied it out of the windows--theoretically to -be gathered up by the scavengers; actually, too often, to lie where it -fell until a rain washed it away. Even the hardy nostrils of Londoners -quailed before the marshalled stenches of Edinburgh, and travelling -Scotsmen gauged the smells of foreign cities like Lisbon by their nasal -memories of home. That children should die like flies was inevitable; -the marvel is that any survived. Deficiency diseases were as rife as -filth diseases. Rickets was taken for granted--a simile, humorous in -intent but ghastly in effect in one of Scott’s letters, gives a glimpse -of nurse-maids in Princes Street trying to compel unhappy rachitic -children to walk. Human life has always been Scotland’s cheapest -commodity. That a high degree of social and intellectual culture should -flourish amid this filth is merely another proof of human capacity for -ignoring what it is too indolent to correct. - -Outside the cities, as well as in them, Scottish life was beginning -to change. Primitive agriculture in the northern kingdom, like the -sanitation of Edinburgh, seemed almost to be an effort to demonstrate -just how badly a thing could be done. The poorest sorts of oats and -barley, the scrubbiest of cattle, were raised by the worst methods. The -unfenced fields were divided by a system of ridges and ditches which -managed to combine the maximum of soil wastage with the minimum of -drainage. The ‘infield’, as this dyked portion of the farm was called, -was cultivated with ploughs so crude and awkward that they required -four horses and two men to handle them. The ‘outfield’, or pasture, was -never cultivated or manured; overrun with moss and weeds it yielded -even in summer only a scanty and unwholesome pasturage, with little if -any surplus to carry the cattle through the winter. All excess stock -was slaughtered in the fall, and for six months of the year the people -who could afford meat at all had to subsist like seamen on salt beef -and smoked mutton hams. The wretched beasts which were kept through the -winter were fed mainly on straw, and frequently by spring were so weak -and emaciated that they had to be carried to the pasture. - -The owners of the cattle lived in a style which an Iroquois would have -thought primitive. Gilbert Burns resented the statement that his famous -brother was born in a hovel. The Alloway cottage, he declared, was -better than the houses then occupied by many substantial farmers. So it -was. It had a chimney, whereas in many a cottage and farmhouse, long -after Burns’s youth--Keats saw plenty of them in Ayrshire in 1818--such -of the smoke as did not enter the eyes and lungs of the tenants escaped -through the door. But even with a chimney the average farmhouse or -labourer’s cottage, with its walls of stone or rammed clay, its earthen -floor and thatched roof, and with the fire seldom built up except for -cooking, had a winter chill and dampness that bred tuberculosis in the -young and rheumatism in the old. As at Alloway, the stable was usually -under the same roof, and its reek mingled with the dampness and the -smell of unwashed humanity. An English proverb in the seventeenth -century asserted that the Scots had neither bellows, warming-pans, nor -houses of office; and that the proverb still held in the eighteenth is -proved alike by experiences of Johnson and Boswell in gentlemen’s homes -in the Highlands and by episodes in the chapbooks of Dugal Graham which -reveal the same use of the fireplace as Shakespeare records of the -inn at Rochester. Outside the door was the midden-dub or glaur-hole, -manure-heap of man and beast alike, often so surrounded with stagnant -water that the ‘rather pretty’ girl whom Keats saw standing at a -cow-house door in the Highlands, ‘fac’d all up to the ankles in -dirt’, would in the Lowlands a generation earlier have been a sight -too commonplace to excite remark. When the seepage from the midden-dub -reached the water-supply the cycle of filth and typhoid was complete. -Dead animals which could not be eaten were usually dumped into the -nearest stream, so that if the water-supply was not contaminated in one -way, it was pretty sure to be in another. But unless the animal were a -horse, it had to be very dead indeed not to be eaten. Sheep that had -died by accident or disease had a special name--‘braxies’--and were the -perquisite of the shepherds; the flesh of diseased cattle was sometimes -the only meat farm servants tasted; in Edinburgh young Henry Mackenzie -once observed two bakers of cheap ‘mutton pies’ suspiciously engaged -by night about the carcass of a horse on the bank at the back of the -Castle. - -Within doors all domestic equipment was on the same primitive scale -as the housing. At meal-times the pot containing the thick oatmeal -porridge which was the staple food was placed in the centre of -the table, and each member of the family--servants included--fell -to work with his own spoon. Barley for broth was prepared on the -knocking-stone, counterpart of the Mexican _metate_. Pewter dishes -were a luxury, and crockery ones almost unknown. Wooden trenchers were -frequently used even by the clergy, and were the regular thing in -farmhouses; the milk was kept in wooden vessels so permeated with dirt -and bacteria that it soured in a few hours. The entire family lived -and ate and slept in two rooms, with sometimes a windowless loft above -as additional sleeping-quarters for the servants or some of the older -children. Every cottage had at least one box-bed built into the wall. -When the occupants retired and closed the sliding wooden doors they -enjoyed a practically airless seclusion amid their own effluvia. The -rest of the family slept on rough cots, or even straw pallets on the -floor. The popular saying, ‘The clartier [dirtier] the cosier’, was not -satire; it was just a matter-of-fact summary of rural living conditions. - -In dwellings like these, where a large family was often augmented by -several servants, privacy was as impossible as in an army barrack. -Any conversation too intimate to be shouted above the uproar of -the children into the ears of a mixed audience had to be conducted -elsewhere than in the house--in the fields, if the weather permitted; -in the stable otherwise. Even so, of course, all the circumstances -leading up to the conversation were known to a large and intensely -interested group. Hence the young people, making a virtue of publicity, -took their cronies into their confidence and employed them to arrange -their trysts. Thus if James Smith beckoned Jean Armour or Betsy Miller -away from her giggling family it was fairly certain that he was making -an appointment for Rob Mossgiel and not for himself; if Burns waited -on Jenny Surgeoner it was in John Richmond’s interests and not in his -own. It was difficult to surprise, and impossible to shock by any of -the normal processes of nature, a people who lived in such conditions. -No one had to explain ‘the facts of life’ to the children of that -world; they witnessed them daily. It would almost seem that a belief in -original virtue, rather than original sin, was requisite to explain why -the moral status of the peasantry was often so much less squalid than -their physical surroundings. - -As the century advanced, however, closer intercourse with England -roused ambitious landlords to attempt improvements. Trees were planted -on the hillsides and about the naked houses; the ‘infields’ were -levelled and enclosed. Yet nine-tenths of the fences in Ayrshire were -not built until after 1766, and as late as 1800 two-thirds of Fife was -still fenceless. Rotation of crops, better cultivation, artificial -grasses, more productive types of grain, were all experimented with. -Potatoes and turnips, regarded as garden luxuries in the early part -of the century, began to be grown on a large scale for human food and -stock feed respectively. John Wesley in 1780 noted that vegetables had -become as plentiful in Scotland as in England, though on his first -visit, in 1762, he had found none at all, even on noblemen’s tables. -Carts were introduced for farm work, to take the place of the ‘creels’ -or panniers, in which manure had formerly been borne on horseback to -the fields, and of the rough sledges on which the sheaves had been -hauled from harvest field to stackyard. The wide use of carts, however, -had in many districts to await the improvement of the roads; in some -instances, when landlords first offered wheeled vehicles as gifts to -their tenants, they were refused because it seemed impossible to drag -them through the mud. - -Some few of the improving landlords were actuated by disinterested zeal -to better living-conditions; their stubborn and superstitious peasants -were helped against their will. Many more landlords were motivated by -simple greed to improve their rent-rolls. By breaking up small holdings -occupied on short-term leases, and throwing several together, they made -more profitable farms which were rented for long terms. The consequent -evictions, however, produced an over-supply of would-be tenants whose -desperate need for land resulted in competitive bidding from those -willing to take a gambling chance on getting from the soil more than it -really had to give. If they succeeded, it was too often at the expense -of the health and strength of themselves, their children, and their -servants. - -Nevertheless, so far as the improvements in methods increased the -productivity of the farms, the new developments were economically -sound. But the nation’s increasing foreign trade operated to inflate -land values. Merchants who had made money in the Indies wished to -retire, and the prestige of setting up as landed gentry combined with -the lack of sound corporate investments to bid up the value of land -in the more attractive parts of the kingdom to levels where a fair -return on the investment was possible only by rack-renting the tenants. -Burns himself, and his father before him, were victims of this -over-capitalization. They had to pay for marginal lands at rates which -would have been fair rentals for the best. And of course speculation -in land brought with it speculative banking. In Burns’s youth many of -the Ayrshire gentry were crippled or ruined outright by the failure of -the Douglas and Heron Bank, which, organized on a lavish scale, quickly -got into trouble through excessive loans on real estate. The ruined -gentry retired to the Continent, or to lodgings in Edinburgh, and their -estates were taken over by nabobs home from the Indies. - -All this drama of political corruption and of social and economic -change was played against the background of the old religious life -of Scotland. Though the intellectual life of the country had never -been squalid like its physical life, it had at the beginning of the -eighteenth century become torpid. From the time of John Knox until -after the Act of Union the real government of Scotland, like that of -colonial Massachusetts, was a theocracy. The King and the powers of the -state were far off from the life of the average peasant or tradesman, -but the Kirk watched all his goings out and comings in. Not only did -it administer matters which in other times and other nations have -been regarded as spiritual concerns, but it also largely took the -place of magistrates and police. Critics of puritanism who have chosen -colonial New England as their dire example have made a mistake. They -should have chosen Scotland. Whatever the theory of church government -in New England may have been, in practice the man at odds with the -establishment suffered few real hardships beyond the loss of his vote -and a moderate amount of discriminatory taxation--provided he had -the discretion to mind his business and keep his mouth shut. But in -seventeenth-century Scotland estrangement from the church might mean -exile from the kingdom, under penalty of practical starvation if the -rebel tried to stick it out at home. Except that it lacked the power -to relax its heretics to the secular arm for mutilation or death, the -Scottish hierarchy was own brother to the Spanish Inquisition. - -In every parish the Kirk Session was supposed to maintain a snooping -committee to investigate the conduct of the laity. The reckless -parishioner who desecrated the Sabbath by cooking a hot meal, by -puttering in his garden, or even by taking a walk, was haled before -the Session for discipline, and could be reinstated in the communion -only by confession of his sin and payment of a fine. For more serious -offences the penalties were proportionately heavier, unless one were -wealthy or powerful enough to cow the inquisitors. Burns had painfully -intimate knowledge of the cutty stool, or mourners’ bench, whereon -those guilty of fornication or other deadly sin had thrice to appear -before the congregation while the minister rebuked them at length and -with specific detail. Girls sometimes committed suicide or murdered -their children to escape the public shame, and the effect of the ordeal -on those who submitted was more likely to be hardening than chastening. -Many another youth besides Burns inwardly resolved thenceforth to live -up to the reputation thus fastened upon him. - -The Kirk frowned upon, and tried to suppress, such secular amusements -as music and dancing. In spite of the ban, the custom of ‘penny -weddings’, whereby impecunious young couples in the rural districts -sought, by giving what was in effect a subscription ball, to raise -money enough to set them up in housekeeping, still persisted; but even -these gatherings had a slightly furtive quality, and in the stricter -homes all such things were taboo. The moral results of the policy of -repression were almost wholly bad. The older men, in default of other -relaxation, devoted themselves to drink; the younger, to the pleasures -that give its point to Burns’s simile, ‘as busy as an Edinburgh bawd on -a Sunday evening’. - -Probably none but a native Scot can understand the finer points of -Scottish theology. Fortunately, however, such understanding is not -needed for a general grasp of church affairs in the eighteenth century. -Primitive Calvinism shares with Marxism the distinction of being the -most completely deterministic philosophy ever widely accepted in the -western world. All men were held to be equally sinful and equally -deserving of eternal damnation. ‘Adam as the federal representative of -the human race had determined its fate once and for all by violating -that unfortunate covenant which he and the Deity had contracted with -regard to the forbidden fruit. A vicarious sacrifice had indeed been -offered; but the power to avail themselves of this expiation was to -be communicated to only a few of the minority to whom it had been -made known; and these were to be saved to show that God was merciful, -as the rest were to be damned to show that He was just.’[1] This was -the creed of which Oliver Wendell Holmes said that any decent person -really holding it ought to go mad out of mere self-respect. And -like every other rigid system it had the effect of stultifying its -sincerest adherents. The most patriotic of historians are compelled -to recognize the general intellectual torpor of Scottish theological -and philosophical writing in the seventeenth and early eighteenth -centuries. The thinking of the clergy had been finished for them by -John Calvin and John Knox; all that remained for them to do was to -expound. No first-rate mind can subdue itself to the mere unquestioning -exposition of other men’s views without losing its edge, and few of -the parish clergy in Scotland had started with first-rate minds. -Their preaching was commonly a dreary reiteration of the doctrine of -the Four-Fold State of Man--first, Innocence or Primitive Integrity, -next Nature or Entire Depravation, then Grace or Begun Recovery, and -finally Consummate Happiness or Misery--brightened only by sadistic -imaginings of the details of eternal torment. As if these doctrinal -limitations were not sufficiently deadening, custom required that -one of the minister’s two discourses each Sunday should be preached -from his ‘ordinary’ text--which meant that he was expected to take -the same text week after week and torture it into new applications of -doctrine. If his invention failed under the strain, and he changed his -‘ordinary’ too often, zealous parishioners were likely to complain to -the Presbytery. Add to these handicaps the fact that few ministers had -money enough to buy books, even had they wished for books, and one -begins to realize why Scottish manses two hundred years ago contributed -no such leaders of national thought as were even then emerging from -English rectories. - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] W. L. Mathieson: _Scotland and the Union_ (Glasgow, 1905), p. 225. - -Nevertheless the tides of changing ideas stirred even the strongholds -of Calvinism. Before the seventeenth century ended Michael Wigglesworth -in Massachusetts had found himself compelled slightly to modify the -doctrine of infant damnation in the direction of human decency; in -Scotland the ‘common sense’ doctrines of the Deists penetrated during -the eighteenth century even among those who abhorred the name of Deism. -From 1729 until his death in 1746 Francis Hutcheson, as professor of -Moral Philosophy in Glasgow University, expounded to steadily growing -classes his theory of the ‘moral sense’--an allegedly innate human -capacity for distinguishing right from wrong. This concept of innate -virtue as opposed to the idea of original sin rapidly gained ground -among the laity and the younger clergy of the cities, despite bitter -hostility on the part of the conservatives. Preaching began to stress -conduct rather than the will of a cruel and capricious god as the way -of salvation. A healthier and more prosperous nation was in fact -rebelling against a harsh and depressing philosophy, and the clergy -were following the lead of their congregations. By the third quarter -of the century the liberal faction, the Moderates or New Lights, were -in almost undisputed control in the metropolitan districts, though -the fundamentalists, or Old Lights, still flourished in the smaller -towns and in the rural parishes. The more rigorous extremes of kirk -discipline began to relax. Though in 1757 John Home was compelled to -resign his pulpit to escape the consequence of having written _The -Tragedy of Douglas_--to witness the early performances of which a -few of his more daring clerical brethren disguised themselves in the -garments of the laity--the ban on the theatre gradually sank into -desuetude. Even while the Edinburgh playhouse was still unlicensed, -and dramas had to be advertised as concerts of music between the parts -of which the play of the evening would be presented gratis, it became -possible for ministers to attend the performances openly. - -But the warfare of New Lights versus Old was not conducted wholly in -the realm of ideas. The fact that the more influential laity were early -converts to the new doctrines brought into the struggle politics in -its most worldly form. In parishes where the local magnates exercised -the right of presenting the minister, New Light candidates had the -preference. Hence it was the New Lights’ interest to uphold the right -of patronage against the congregation’s democratic claim to elect its -own minister. The supporters of patronage triumphed in the election -of William Robertson as Moderator of the General Assembly in 1763; the -result made the church almost as much a part of the spoils system as -the government was, and gave its leadership into the hands of supple -ecclesiastical politicians. In consequence the spread of New Light -doctrine went hand in hand with a steady decline in the moral influence -of the clergy, while schisms and secessions sapped the organization. -Because the Kirk was morally as well as intellectually bankrupt the -laughter of Burns’s satires shook it to its foundations. To the -church of John Knox such ridicule would have meant no more than a -mosquito means to an elephant. Burns’s Edinburgh friends were right in -maintaining that the conduct and doctrines which he attacked would have -disappeared in another generation without his aid; what neither they -nor he could foresee was that in 1843 it would be the Old Light clergy -who would restore moral leadership to the ministry by daring to give up -their livings for conscience’ sake. - -Behind the New Light doctrines expounded by Hutcheson and his -followers lay of course the ideas of such English Deists as Locke -and Shaftesbury. Strong convictions on philosophical and theological -questions were going out of fashion; like Franklin in America the New -Light Scots had persuaded themselves that enlightened self-interest, -sweet reasonableness and common sense, were attainable goals for -mankind at large, and could be trusted to solve problems of morals and -economics alike. And this English influence in the field of theology -and philosophy was typical of the entire range of literary expression -in Scotland. The national inferiority complex showed itself most -plainly of all in the realm of words. - -Historically the Scottish language is to English what Provençal is -to French and Catalan to Spanish--an ancient and independent local -dialect which had developed its own literature at least as early as had -the more central region which afterwards took the lead. The speech of -Lowland Scotland was the direct descendant of that Northumbrian dialect -of Old English which Bede and Caedmon spoke. Throughout the Middle Ages -and the early Renaissance Scotland maintained amid her poverty as rich -a literary tradition as England did. In fact, from the death of Chaucer -until the beginning of the Elizabethan era the student of British -literature must look north of the Tweed to find, in the writings of -King James I, Robert Henryson, Gawain Douglas and William Dunbar, -anything worthy the name of poetry. The decay of Scots as a literary -language was started by the Reformation and finished by the Union. By -introducing the Geneva version of the English Bible the Reformation -made Southern English the language of the church, in idiom if not in -pronunciation. The accession of James VI to the English throne made -Southern English also the language of the court. King James himself -wrote in Scots; his subject, William Drummond of Hawthornden, wrote in -English. Drummond’s example was followed by all the prose writers and -most of the poets of Scotland from his day to ours. After the Union -even the poets who used Scots did so consciously and not because such -expression was wholly spontaneous. - -Of these poets, Allan Ramsay, whose productive period covers roughly -the three decades from 1711 to 1740, was the most popular. And Scots -poetry, as practised by Ramsay and by his friend and contemporary -William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, tended more and more to what -Samuel Johnson would have described as the easy and vulgar, and -therefore the disgusting. Their work exhibits humour, and something -of the conversational quality of the familiar essay, but dignity -and deep poetic emotion are notably absent. Moreover, the dialect -in which they wrote tended more and more to become a synthetic and -standardized language, embodying words and idioms common to a large -section of southern Scotland but without firm roots in any one region. -The Aberdeenshire dialect used by Alexander Ross in his _Helenore_ -is almost the last fresh transcription of the speech of a definite -section of the country. Written Scots was rapidly becoming what -nineteenth-century English and American authors made other dialects--a -semi-literary vernacular employed for humorous effect or for an -affectation of colloquial ease. Even Burns himself at times gave -artificial Scottish flavour to his verse by using English idioms in -Scottish spelling. Since the end of the eighteenth century no writer -of Scots verse has succeeded in introducing any new elements. At its -best, such writing sounds like imitations of Burns; at its worst, like -imitations of his imitators. - -But when Burns came before the public even this conventionalized -literary Scots seemed on the point of extinction. Though Ramsay’s -_Tea-Table Miscellany_--which included many purely English verses--was -still popular as a song-book, the rest of his work was neglected. -Hamilton of Gilbertfield’s recension of Blind Harry’s _History of -Sir William Wallace_ was no more than a story-book for children. The -unhappy Robert Fergusson, starved and neglected, had ended his life -in a madhouse, and fashionable Edinburgh, glancing askance at his -satirical verses, said it served him right. Ramsay was a crude homespun -figure of the generation in which Thomson by writing _The Seasons_ -had given his countrymen a poem which they could show to Englishmen -without blushing; ‘The Daft Days’ and the rest of Fergusson’s work was -little better than a national disgrace when set beside the beauties -of James Beattie’s _Minstrel_. Nevertheless there still underlay the -new fashions a literary tradition which most of the anglicizing gentry -scorned or ignored. An oral Scottish literature was still alive, -though it was soon to perish when its lovers smothered it by writing -it down. Percy’s _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, which first -gave highbrow sanction to the popular ballads of Scotland and northern -England, were not published until Burns was six years old, and even -Percy only scratched the surface of this rich deposit. Throughout the -century scores of ballads still circulated by oral tradition which had -never been recorded in writing, and in these the genuine spirit of the -Scottish language flourished without concession to fashionable English. - -Even more important than the ballads for the training of a poet like -Burns were the folk-songs. The Scots had always been a musical people, -and despite the opposition of the stricter clergy traditional songs -or airs for almost every human occasion were known to everyone, high -or low. The tradition, moreover, was still very much alive. Scottish -song gave the nation its revenge for the military humiliations of the -’45. The taunting lilt of ‘Hey, Johnie Cope, are ye waukin yet?’ could -be relied on to remind English garrisons of the inglorious conduct of -their fellow soldiers at Prestonpans, and all Scotland’s contempt for -the Hanoverian kings and their mistresses went into the ribaldry of -‘The Sow’s Tail to Geordie’. Even so, only a fraction of the popular -songs had any political bearing. More of them were convivial; many more -of them erotic. Every phase of sexual love from the crudest bawdry -to idyllic beauty found some expression in verse--the latter, it -must be confessed, more rarely and less effectively than the former. -Yet these crude songs, interesting mainly for the surprising variety -and ingenuity of their erotic symbolism, were the raw material--raw -in more than one sense--from which Burns wrought such lyrics as ‘My -Love is like a red red rose’, ‘John Anderson’, and ‘Coming thro’ the -rye’. While Burns was still a lad, David Herd, a retiring antiquary -in Edinburgh, began the systematic collection of this folk poetry on -so large a scale and with such a complete absence of prudery that it -was not until the twentieth century that the whole of his manuscript -collection was printed. He had himself published in 1776 two volumes of -what he considered the best work. At the same time musicians like James -Oswald and Neil Gow were collecting the airs of Highlands and Lowlands -alike. The singing of the old songs, with or without instrumental -accompaniment, was a favourite pastime in Scottish drawing rooms, and -even unliterary folk would frequently feel moved to compose new words -to some well-liked melody. - -Alongside this honest love of native things, whether expressed in a -girl’s singing at her harpsichord or in David Herd’s careful recording -of old words, another literature was growing up of imitation, forgery, -and ‘improvement’. It had become a literary convention for every -composer of an imitation ballad to offer it to the public as a copy -from an ancient manuscript. Though a few of these imitations, like the -‘Hardyknute’ of Lady Elizabeth Wardlaw, were close enough to the spirit -of folk literature to deceive even experts, the mass of them were so -mawkish and verbose as to bring the term ‘Scottish poetry’ to the verge -of contempt. Primacy in these qualities, as in popularity, belonged to -James Macpherson’s alleged translations of the poems of Ossian--a work -passionately defended by the Scots because it depicted their savage -ancestors as a trifle more chivalrous and vastly more sentimental than -Bayard or Sidney, admired on the Continent because it supported the -current delusion about the nobility of man in a state of nature, and -cherished by Napoleon Bonaparte as one of the simple pleasures which -appeal to the enterprising burglar in his hours of relaxation. - -But the harm done to traditional literature by imitations and forgeries -was trivial compared with that inflicted by some of those people who -professed to admire it. In the latter part of the eighteenth century -the teaching of music in Edinburgh had passed largely into the hands -of foreigners. Names like Domenico Corri, Pietro Urbani, and Theodor -Schetki are as prevalent on title-pages as their owners were on the -concert stage, and under this Italianate influence many traditional -melodies were ‘harmonized’ and ‘improved’ until all their native vigour -was lost in empty flourishes. And as with the music, so with the -words. ‘Correct’ and sentimentalized lyrics were substituted for the -sturdy old words, remained in use long enough to push the latter into -oblivion, and then, their novelty gone, themselves sank into disuse and -dragged the music with them. - -This effort to refine the national heritage of music was merely one -phase of the whole sense of provincial inferiority which afflicted -Scotland. Italian music and English literature, speech, and manners, -were the ideals towards which genteel Scots strained. National pride -in James Thomson and John Home exulted more in the fact that they -wrote English acceptable in England than in their use of Scottish -materials. Even the devastating scepticism of David Hume was forgiven -him because he had almost purified his language of Scotticisms. When -Johnson ridiculed Hume’s English Boswell writhed in agony, and was -correspondingly elated when the dictator praised Blair’s sermons and -was moved to tears by Beattie’s _Minstrel_. - -When Thomas Sheridan came to Edinburgh in 1761 to give a course of -lectures on elocution, ‘he was patronized by the professors in the -College, by several of the clergy, by the most eminent among the -gentlemen at the bar, by the judges of the Court of Session, and by all -who at that time were the leaders of public taste’. - -Thenceforward, ‘correct pronunciation and elegant reading’ were -reckoned ‘indispensable acquirements for people of fashion and for -public speakers’. In other words, these people of fashion, like Francis -Jeffrey on his return from Oxford, gave up the broad Scots in return -for the narrow English. In the very year of the Kilmarnock _Poems_, Sir -John Sinclair of Ulbster, one of the most public-spirited Scots of his -generation, brought out a two-hundred-page volume of _Observations on -the Scottish Dialect_. His purpose was not to preserve but to destroy -his native speech. His book is a comprehensive index expurgatorius -of all the words, phrases, and idioms a Scotsman must avoid--many -of them today a part of the standard speech of the United States, -and even of England. Thus, ‘best man’ is a Scotticism for ‘bride’s -man’; ‘hairdresser’ is to be preferred to ‘barber’; ‘sore eyes’ is -a vulgarism; ‘whisky’ should be called ‘usquebae’ or ‘aquavitae’. -‘Heather’ and ‘peat’ and ‘bracken’ are condemned along with ‘mittens’ -and ‘kindling’; it betrays provincial origin to ask if a friend is in, -or if he has gone out walking. ‘It is, indeed, astonishing,’ says Sir -John, ‘how uncouth, and often how unintelligible, Scotch words and -phrases are to an inhabitant of London, and how much it exposes such -as make use of them, to the derision of those with whom they happen to -have any communication or intercourse.’ However, he adds, a Scot should -choose carefully even from the speech of London. ‘Cockney phrases a -Scotchman is very apt to get into when he makes his first appearance -in London. And when he can easily and fluently bring out, _this here -thing_, and _that there thing_, for _this_ or _that thing_; _I knode_, -for _I knew_; _on it_, for _of it_, as, _I heard on it_; _grass_, for -_asparagus_; _your’n_ and _his’n_, for _yours_ and _his_, he fancies -himself a complete Englishman.’ - -The anglicizing mania extended even to people’s names. David Malloch, -when he crossed the Border, changed his name to Mallet; John Murray -the publisher was originally M’Murray, as his predecessor, Millan, -had been Macmillan; William Almack, the proprietor of the famous -assembly-rooms in London, had started life as M’Caul. One of Burns’s -own friends, James M’Candlish, dropped the prefix when he entered -Glasgow University, and became simply Candlish. Even today, in spite -of Burns, the anglicizing process continues: the visitor in Ayr, for -instance, will find the street-signs pointing him to the ‘New Bridge’ -and the ‘Old Bridge’. - -By 1780 Scotland could afford to smile at Johnson’s dictum that her -northern lights were only farthing candles. In literature at least -she could face English competition on equal terms. James Thomson had -become a classic; Adam Smith and Hume and Robertson had demonstrated -that the north could more than hold its own with the south in history -and philosophy; Mackenzie’s lachrymose _Man of Feeling_ disputed with -_The Vicar of Wakefield_ the claim to be the most popular short novel -of the century. In Edinburgh a _Scots Magazine_ was emulating the -methods and materials of the English _Gentleman’s Magazine_, though -when Mackenzie and his friends tried, first in _The Mirror_ and later -in _The Lounger_, to produce a Scottish _Spectator_ they found the -city not metropolitan enough to support such an enterprise. Many -people took anything sharp in the way of satire as a personal attack, -but namby-pamby was not read, and so between poverty of material and -poverty of support the journals’ straw-fire flickered and went out. - -But while the poor relations of England were thus looking forward -hopefully to the day when their speech and writing should no longer -betray their provincial origin, the social life of the country changed -more slowly. The gentry added silks and laces to their clothing, and -tea and other luxuries to their tables, but felt no special urgency for -greater cleanliness. George Dempster, fresh from a visit to Brussels -in 1756, was shocked to find that a baronet’s son of his acquaintance -had been calling on a lady of title ‘in a valet de chamber’s frock -and an unpowdered brown greezy head’. Even at the beginning of the -nineteenth century the inhabitants of a Highland mansion, though they -had got beyond the point where they were satisfied to give themselves -‘a “good wash” on Sundays, and make that do for the week’, found -their domestic routine upset by a guest who not only insisted on a -daily bath but refused to go to the river to take it. Servants in the -better houses were provided with shoes and stockings, but the general -standards of neatness were still so low as to make the cleanliness of -Holland a constant source of wonder to the visiting Scot. - -But the aping of English manners had not yet undermined the traditional -Scottish democracy of intercourse. Though the barriers which divided -gentleman from commoner were fully as strong in Scotland as they were -in England, they were not so visible. If many of the gentry lacked -wealth, they did not lack pedigree, and a plebeian could rarely hope -to cross the boundary that excluded him from social equality. Nobles -married with nobles, and lairds with lairds. Yet until the end of -the century the sons of nobles, lairds, and ploughmen commonly began -their education together in the village school, where boy-fashion they -took each other at face-value without regard to rank. The result was -an almost total absence among the lower classes of that servility -which was bred into their compeers in England. Only as more and more -of the sons of gentlemen were sent to English public schools did the -old system decay, and some of the gentry begin to compensate for the -inferiority they had been made to feel in the presence of the English -by assuming a haughty air with their humbler countrymen. - -In short, all that had distinguished Scotland as a nation was on the -way to oblivion. Literature, language, manners, and institutions -were being anglicized as fast as a people roused to uneasy -self-consciousness could manage it. In 1786 it seemed evident that -when the former things passed away it would be into the darkness in -which men and nations prefer to bury the ruder and more discreditable -features of their early days. That the memory of the discarded heritage -should be embalmed as a precious possession, and that the old world -should be forever surrounded by the romantic glory of a golden sunset -was due more to Robert Burns than to any other person. He made the -Scots conscious of the richness of their national tradition. He could -not restore it to life, but he taught his people to cherish its ruins. - - - - -II - -EDUCATION - - -Robert Burns was nearly nine years old before anything revealing -his personality impressed his family enough to make them remember -it. Unreliable tradition has it that he was a puny infant; slightly -better evidence shows him as a nervous and temperamental child, -alternating between wild high spirits and moody sullenness. Once, it -is said, Robert hid in a cupboard when he and his schoolmates were -frolicking. The master in restoring order struck the door a resounding -blow with his tawse, and the nervous shock threw the child into such -uncontrollable hysterical sobs that he had to be sent home. But the -most devout worshipper would have trouble in discerning a future poet -in so undifferentiated an episode. It is easier to do so in Gilbert -Burns’s story of what happened at Mount Oliphant one evening in 1768. - -John Murdoch the schoolmaster had got a better post, and was paying -a farewell visit to the parents of two of his promising pupils. As a -parting gift, he brought a copy of _Titus Andronicus_. Beginning to -read the play aloud, he soon came to the scene where her ravishers -taunt the mutilated Lavinia. The children, in an agony of tears, -implored him to read no more; whereupon their father dryly remarked -that in that case there was no use in Murdoch’s leaving the book. -Robert exclaimed fiercely that if it was left, he would burn it. -Murdoch warded off the father’s rebuke by commending the display of so -much sensibility, though he failed, then or later, to explain why he -considered _Titus Andronicus_ suitable reading for children. _The Man -of Feeling_ was not yet written, but ‘sensibility’ was already a word -of power, and Robert Burns was already displaying the stormy emotions -which were his to the grave. - -Murdoch’s farewell marked the end of Burns’s elementary schooling, but -the education of a boy reared as he was cannot be appraised in terms -of mere schooling. If it could, the whole story might be told in a few -paragraphs. Burns’s real education came from his family, from what the -world taught him, and from what he taught himself. His schooling was -incidental. - -The poet once had the curiosity to visit the Herald’s Office in -Edinburgh, only to discover that ‘Gules, Purpure, Argent, &c., quite -disowned’ him--no man of his name had ever borne coat armour. The -nearest he could come to it was ‘Burn’. Inquiry into his ancestry is -fruitless, because nothing in his ancestry explains Burns, any more -than the dull line of squires into which he was born can explain -Shelley, or a London livery-stable Keats. Burns’s family produced no -genius before him; it produced none after him. It is enough to record -that William Burnes, the poet’s father, came of peasant stock from the -eastern Lowlands of Scotland. The poet cherished the belief that some -of his forebears had been out in the ’Fifteen in the train of George -Keith, tenth Earl Marischal, but documentary proof is lacking. The -poet’s grandfather, Robert Burnes, farmed, apparently with indifferent -success, in Kincardineshire, first on the farm of Kinmonth, in -Glenbervie, and later at Clochnahill, Dunnottar. Robert Burnes’s second -farming venture having failed in 1747, his son William (born 1721) set -out in the following year with his younger brother, Robert, to seek -work. - -William Burnes had had some training as a gardener, and found his -first employment in Edinburgh. By 1750, however, he was in Ayrshire, -where, after brief service on two other estates, he finally entered -the service of Provost William Fergusson, laird of Doonholm in Alloway -parish. These frequent moves were not wholly the result of unsettled -labour conditions. Pride and self-assertiveness handicap the man doomed -to subordination, and these traits William Burnes possessed in full -measure. ‘Stubborn, ungainly Integrity’, said Burns of his father, ‘and -headlong, ungovernable Irascibility are disqualifying circumstances’. -William Burnes needed to be his own master, and in 1757 managed to -‘feu’ (lease in perpetuity) seven acres of land a few hundred yards -north of the ruined old Kirk of Alloway. - -Besides longing for a farm of his own, William Burnes wanted a wife -and a home. Seven acres of market-garden, supplemented by continued -part-time employment at Doonholm, made marriage possible. With his -own hands he raised the rammed-clay walls of a cottage on his land--a -cottage which his younger son declared, with more emphasis than the -timid Gilbert usually permitted himself, to be ‘such as no family of -the same rank, in the present improved style of living, would think -themselves ill lodged in’. From without, the whitewashed walls and -thatched roof of the ‘clay biggin’ were picturesque enough; within, it -was damp, dark, and narrow, and smelly withal, for the byre and stable -were under the same roof of rat-infested thatch. But such rural Scots -as lived to grow up in those days were inured to dampness, smells, and -vermin, and it was probably with unmixed pride that William Burnes and -his wife set up housekeeping in December, 1757. - -The bridegroom was ‘advanced in life’; he was in fact almost as old -when he married as his famous son was when he died. His red-haired -bride, twelve years his junior, was Agnes Broun of Kirkoswald. The -daughter of a small farmer, she had been accustomed from childhood -to the life of toil which marriage intensified. Her girlhood as -housekeeper for her widowed father and manager of his younger children -had given plenty of domestic training, but formal education was too -great a luxury for girls; the mother of Scotland’s greatest poet was -never able to write her own name. She had, however, a sort of literary -education more valuable for her son than savouring at first hand the -dullness of Boston’s _Fourfold State_ could have been. Blessed with -a sense of humour, a retentive memory, and a keen ear, the girl had -stored her mind with a wealth of ballads, folk-songs, and country -sayings which later became an integral part of her son’s thought and -art. The seeds of the poet’s imagination and wit were his mother’s; -William Burnes’s most conspicuous contribution to his son’s character -was his fierce and prickly pride. - -A little more than thirteen months after his parents’ marriage, on -January 25, 1759, Robert Burns was born. The Scottish winter was doing -its worst--‘a blast o’ Janwar’ win’ blew handsel in on Robin’. In other -words, a few days after the poet’s birth a wild Atlantic gale tore out -part of the clay gable of the cottage where it had settled unevenly -round the stone jambs of the chimney. Mother and baby had to be carried -through the storm to a neighbour’s house, where they sheltered until -the damage could be repaired. To Burns in later years the incident -seemed an augury of his own stormy life. The world had begun to -educate him to its harshness almost before he knew that he was in it. -Fortunately he had a father who was determined that his children should -also have an education in the more conventional sense. - -Though Scotland theoretically provided a free school in every parish, -the usual gap separated theory and practice. Sometimes there was no -school at all; often the school was an unsanitary hovel presided over -by a master who was expected to live on a salary of perhaps ten or -fifteen pounds a year, and who therefore was constantly driven to -desperate shifts to provide for himself and his family. John Wilson of -Tarbolton, for instance, the victim of ‘Death and Dr. Hornbook’, tried -to eke out his meagre earnings by starting a little grocery shop in his -cottage, and in 1790 was ready to undertake the drudgery of a legal -copyist in Edinburgh in order to better his condition. After the close -of the century, when every parish was ordered by Act of Parliament -to provide its schoolmaster with a house of at least two rooms, some -lairds objected to erecting ‘palaces for dominies’. And even when a -parish had a decent schoolhouse and a competent teacher, bad roads and -lack of conveyance often made it impossible for children from outlying -farms to reach it. - -When William Burnes built his cottage at Alloway the fact that there -was no school nearer than Ayr would scarcely have worried him. His own -book-learning was sketchy, his writing cramped and laborious, though -his speech was more precise and ‘better English’ than that of most -of his neighbours. But he was devoutly religious, and cherished the -sound Presbyterian conviction that first-hand acquaintance with the -Scriptures was essential to knowledge in this world and salvation in -the next. By the time his eldest son was six years old the father, -conscious of his own inadequacy as a teacher, arranged with half a -dozen neighbours to hire a master of their own. Their choice fell on -John Murdoch, a solemn and pedantic youth of eighteen, who in mentality -somewhat resembled Ichabod Crane. For wages of about sixpence a day -and his board--which meant a share of the oatmeal and kail and part of -a bed in each crowded cottage in turn--Murdoch undertook to instruct -his charges, not without tears, in the three R’s and also in such -elementary music as would enable them to sing the Psalms of David in -metre at family worship. - -In this latter accomplishment he found Robert Burns, who in manhood -was able to remember and distinguish in all their subtle variations -hundreds of folk melodies, an almost hopeless pupil with a harsh and -untuneable voice. At the task of beating into the future poet the -elements of spelling, grammar, and syntax he was more successful. -Instruction in reading was based largely on a volume of extracts -compiled by another Scottish schoolmaster named Arthur Masson--good -enough literature for the most part, but too declamatory to be really -within the grasp of a six- or seven-year-old intelligence. Robert’s -first conscious realization of poetic experience came from Addison’s -hymn, ‘How are Thy servants blest, O Lord’: he also memorized the ‘Fall -of Cardinal Wolsey’ and other set pieces so thoroughly that throughout -his life their phrases came unbidden from his pen. If Murdoch found -difficulty in making the children understand the poetic merits of -Hamlet’s soliloquies or of long passages from Home’s _Tragedy of -Douglas_, he at least convinced some of them that poetry had meaning. -One of his favourite exercises was making them paraphrase poetry -into straight-forward prose--a device which his most famous pupil -subsequently employed in exposing bad grammar in a female admirer’s -verses. - -Murdoch was not the man to set a poetic child’s imagination on fire, -and since he applied the usual schoolmasterly standard of judging -the pupils according to their docility, it is hardly surprising that -he found the timid and gentle Gilbert a more promising lad than his -brother. In any case, Murdoch’s service was too brief to have much -permanent influence on Burns’s mind. Before the master had completed -his tenure of about two years and a half at Alloway, William Burnes -had removed to Mount Oliphant farm, separated from the school by two -miles of sodden road which must have made regular attendance difficult, -and sometimes impossible. Yet the master retained a sort of puzzled -affection for the boy whom he was too prosaic to understand, and Burns -reciprocated the feeling with real respect and esteem. Murdoch, in the -schoolroom and in the long evenings in what he called the argillaceous -fabric or mud domicile at Alloway, had at least impressed the lesson -that books had meaning and that words should be used with precision. -That Burns in later life never had any difficulty in saying precisely -what he meant, he probably owed at root to Murdoch’s severe drill; that -his style of saying it was frequently much too formal he likewise owed -to the dominie and to the prose selections of Arthur Masson. - -The earliest stages of book education are seldom important in shaping -the maturity of the learner. They only furnish him with a few tools -which he may later apply in his own way to his own ends. But with -Burns the whole pressure of his formal education was all his life in -direct conflict with his instinctive preferences. For John Murdoch, -as for Arthur Masson, Scottish vernacular literature did not exist. -Scottish writers like James Thomson and John Home, who had made -reputations in England by writing in standard English, were admired -to the far side of idolatry, but for Scottish youths, as for English, -Pope was the model for poetry; the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ for prose. -Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden were the only writers earlier than 1700 -who were widely read and unreservedly admired, though the beginnings of -romanticism were evoking some lip-service to Spenser. If Chaucer was -read at all, it was in the modernizations and imitations of Dryden, -Pope, and Prior; the Elizabethan and Caroline lyrists were safe sources -for newspaper poets to steal from, as Sterne stole from Burton. By -modern standards, the amount of native literature needed in order to -appear well-read was limited, but its very limitation intensified its -pressure. Poverty kept Burns from the influence, for good or ill, of -the classics; nothing could preserve anyone, who read at all, from the -influence of the neo-classics. Outside the door the rich vernacular -literature of Scotland was still vigorously alive, but no schoolmaster -in Burns’s boyhood would have dreamed of letting it in. - -This literature, indeed, was being steadily thrust further out of the -cultivated world. Two years before the poet’s father was born, Lady -Elizabeth Wardlaw had written the ballad fragment of ‘Hardyknute’ with -genuine folk skill; in the next generation such interest as remained -was contaminated with literary sophistication. The gentlefolk of -William Burnes’s generation could no longer write true ballads, but -they could and did write true folk-songs, as witness Jean Elliot’s -‘Flowers of the Forest’, Alison Cockburn’s ‘I’ve seen the smiling -of Fortune beguiling’, and John Skinner’s ‘Tullochgorum’ and ‘John -o’ Badenyon’. The gentlefolk of Robert Burns’s generation had lost -this power too. Burns was six years old when Percy’s _Reliques_ -inaugurated the serious study of popular literature and let loose the -spate of forgery and imitation of which Macpherson’s _Ossian_ was the -most brilliant success. The national will to believe in Macpherson’s -fabrication was proof alike against the scorn of Dr. Johnson and the -learning of antiquaries. To many Scots besides Burns Ossian was the -‘prince of poets’, to be read and admired as a patriotic duty, even if -few of his vague and turgid phrases could be remembered long enough to -quote. And what Macpherson did on the grand scale ballad ‘editors’ like -John Pinkerton were doing on a small one, debasing even their genuine -material with sentimental trash which blinded many readers to the -merits of a really honest and accurate editor like David Herd. - -But all this activity, alike of forgery and of honest collecting, -never touched Burns in his formative years. In the boy’s world the -folk literature which David Herd was recording was still alive. It is -a favourite fallacy of the half-educated to identify book-learning -with education. The things which made the mind and the art of Burns -did not come from John Murdoch, but from people whom Murdoch no -doubt patronized in his most schoolmasterful style. Agnes Broun -was illiterate, but she was not ignorant. Like most intelligent -illiterates, she had cultivated her memory, storing it with the pithy -sayings which sum up generations of folk experience, and with the words -and music of scores of old songs and ballads. These simple rhythms, -sung as she went about her work, sank into her son’s mind without his -knowing it. Years afterwards some chance association would recall an -old line or stanza of his mother’s to supply the ‘starting note’ for -a song of his own. And her repertoire was powerfully supplemented by -old Betty Davidson’s, who ‘had the largest collection in the county 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’. To these tales, listened to with delighted shudders, he -ascribed the first awakening of his imagination, even though some -of them scared him so thoroughly that their effect stayed with him -into manhood. No doubt many a gentleman’s son heard similar stories -from nurses and servants, but formal classical education effectually -smothered any idea of putting them to literary use. Sir Walter -Scott was almost the first child of the upper ranks to realize his -folk-heritage, and probably he owed much of his freedom to do so to -the interruption of his scholastic training. Ill-health saved him from -formalism, as poverty saved Burns. - -Burns’s acquaintance with popular and traditional literature was not, -however, limited to what he heard at home. The eighteenth century -was the heyday of the chapbook and the broadside--forms of popular -literature resulting from the spread of literacy among the middle and -lower classes, which were finally swept away by the newspaper. In -Burns’s childhood every peddler’s pack contained an assortment ranging -from topical songs and reports of the death and dying words of the -latest criminal to abridgements of old histories and romances. Even the -poorest labourer could afford the penny or two these publications cost, -and they passed from hand to hand until they were worn out. William -Hamilton of Gilbertfield’s modernization of Blind Harry’s _History of -Sir William Wallace_, which so roused Burns’s boyish patriotism, may -have reached the lad in chapbook form; the Life of Hannibal which he -also mentions was almost certainly a chapbook; he was familiar from his -earliest years with such ephemera as ‘The Aberdeen Almanac’ and ‘Six -Excellent New Songs’. But he nowhere mentions another group of writings -which he assuredly read. - -Only a few years before Burns was born, Dugal Graham, the hunchbacked -bellman of Glasgow, began publishing a series of Scottish chapbooks. -Their popularity was enormous; total sales are alleged to have run -into the hundreds of thousands. The most pretentious of Graham’s -works was a metrical history of the ’45; the most characteristic were -the humorous prose tales such as ‘Jocky and Maggie’s Courtship’, ‘The -Adventures of John Cheap the Chapman’, and ‘The Comical Sayings of -Paddy from Cork’. These chaps were made up of traditional anecdotes of -a broadly comic sort, loosely strung together but supplied by Graham -with the local colour of Scottish peasant life. Much of Graham’s -material had a long history; coarse jests which go back at least as -far as Chaucer; folk-tales of unquenchable vitality, such as the one -on which Synge long afterwards based _The Shadow of the Glen_; quaint -figures of speech and wild exaggerations, some of which crossed the -Atlantic to become the progenitors of the American ‘tall story’. The -peasant world as Graham depicted it was tough and crude and unlovely, -but full of a coarse vitality which enlivened even the baldest passages -of Graham’s prose and which at its best expressed itself in pungent -phrases remembered and used by Burns, probably long after he had -forgotten their source. The most indecorous stanza in ‘Holy Willie’s -Prayer’ is based on a phrase from ‘Jocky and Maggie’s Courtship’, as is -a similar stanza in ‘Death and Doctor Hornbook’. - -But the peasant life of Scotland, however squalid its physical -circumstances as Dugal Graham portrayed them, had a variety of interest -unknown to the modern dweller in a city slum. When the technique of all -the varied crafts necessary to rural life had to be learned by example -and oral tradition, the whole process of living was an education. -Almost as soon as they were able to walk the children began to take -their part in the work of the farm. At the age of six or thereabouts -the boys would be helping to guide the four-horse team which dragged -the clumsy plough; not long afterwards they began to share in reaping, -threshing, and winnowing, besides doing the innumerable and endless -small chores of the farm. These tasks, with all their accompanying -observations of plants and animals, of weather and seasons, were -stronger influences on Burns than John Murdoch was. No poet has -revealed a closer or more accurate knowledge of nature; no poet, it -may be added, had less of romantic enthusiasm for pure scenery. Burns -knew nature as the peasant and the savage knows it, as something on -which his health and prosperity and his very life depend. Readers who -are surprised that Burns spent much of his youth in sight of the noble -peaks of Arran without ever mentioning them in his verse simply fail to -understand the realism of the peasant’s point of view. It was not the -dalesmen who won a hard living from valley farms or kept their sheep on -the bleak mountainsides who found the poetry in the Lake District. Had -Burns been reared on Loch Lomond or at Aberfoyle it would have made no -difference; he would have been too busy trying to wring a living from -the soil to note the scenery. That had to wait for Sir Walter Scott, -who had nothing to do but admire it. Even when he had won fame and had -consciously accepted his vocation as a national poet Burns paid only -lip-service to scenery as scenery. For him it was merely background -for human figures, preferably female. The spots which really stirred -his emotions were those with associations of history or song--Cawdor -Castle, the field of Bannockburn, Elibanks and Elibraes, the Bush aboon -Traquair. And the fact that so many of the folk-songs of Scotland -celebrate the streams whose valleys were the only fertile spots may -have fostered the love for running water repeatedly expressed in his -poetry, as it certainly roused him to do for the streams of Ayrshire -what his anonymous forerunners had done for the streams of the Border. - -Not all the boy’s education, however, was thus casual and informal. -When his removal from Alloway to Mount Oliphant made it impossible for -his sons to continue regular schooling William Burnes procured a few -textbooks such as Guthrie’s _Geographical Grammar_ and Stackhouse’s -_History of the Bible_ for their instruction. Despite the burden of -farm work the father managed at times to set regular lessons to be -conned at evening by the light of the kitchen fire or a tallow dip. -Robert and Gilbert helped to teach their younger brothers and sisters -to read and write; their own lessons included the use of a brief -religious catechism which their father had himself prepared with -Murdoch’s help, for William Burnes was a devout man. Even in boyhood -Burns, said Gilbert, was a reader when he could get books. He read -whatever he could get his hands on, however dull or ponderous it might -be, from theology to poetry. His own lists in his autobiography, highly -selective though they are, are proof enough. His first knowledge of -classical mythology, for instance, came from Andrew Tooke’s _Pantheon_, -an appallingly dull and didactic outline of Greek and Roman religion. -He never had Keats’s good fortune in discovering the Elizabethans: -his Homer was Pope’s and not Chapman’s. But he reached manhood with a -working knowledge of history and geography, a keen interest in current -affairs, and an acquaintance with literature which, though spotty, was -the more detailed because of its relatively narrow limits. - -William Burnes’s effort to educate his children at home was part of -a family struggle which became one of the strongest influences in -forming his son’s character. The usual destiny of the children in a -peasant family was to be hired out at the age of ten or twelve as farm -servants. This fate, with its breaking of ties, cessation of schooling, -and frequent moral danger, William Burnes was determined to avoid -if possible. He was a stern father, but an affectionate one. John -Murdoch remembered his wrath at a labourer’s ‘smutty innuendoes’, and -his children knew that carelessness in word or deed would be sharply -rebuked. But they likewise remembered many acts of wordless affection, -as when during a thunderstorm the father came to sit with his daughter -Agnes because he knew she would be frightened. - -When it became evident that the few acres at Alloway could not continue -to support his growing family, William Burnes rented from his old -employer, Provost Fergusson, the larger farm of Mount Oliphant. Gilbert -Burns, who seldom used superlatives, declared that Mount Oliphant was -almost the poorest land he had ever seen in cultivation. Yet for its -seventy bleak and stony acres William Burnes undertook to pay £40 a -year for the first six years of his lease, and £45 for the next six. -It may not be too uncharitable to assume that the Provost saw in the -tenancy of the stubbornly independent Burnes a chance to get a poor -farm raised to a better level of cultivation. At any rate he showed -his confidence in his tenant by advancing a hundred pounds towards -stocking the place. Without this help the venture would probably have -been impossible; nevertheless it saddled the family with an additional -load of debt. The weight of the burden can be realized from the fact -that in the 1770’s in nearby Clydesdale twopence a dozen was a fair -price for eggs, and chickens sold for sixpence a pair. Despite all -handicaps, however, things went fairly well for the first half of the -lease. In 1771 the family failed to take advantage of their privilege -of relinquishing the farm, and accordingly were committed to another -six years at an increased rental. Then began the series of disasters -which ultimately killed William Burnes and permanently undermined the -health of his eldest son. - -Just at the onset of these dark days William Burnes, vexed at his -children’s bad handwriting, managed to send Robert and Gilbert, turn -about, to Dalrymple parish school for instruction in penmanship and -grammar, that they might be better qualified to teach their brothers -and sisters. By the following summer (1773), John Murdoch had returned -to Ayr and Robert was spared from the farm for three weeks’ additional -tutoring. The lad clutched at the opportunity like a famished man at -food. He was with Murdoch ‘day and night, in school, at all meals, and -in all [his] walks’. At the end of the first week, Murdoch says, ‘I -told him, that as he was now pretty much master of the parts of speech, -&c., I should like to teach him something of French pronunciation; -... and immediately we attacked the French with great courage. Now, -there was little else to be heard but the declension of nouns, the -conjugation of verbs, &c. When walking together, and even at meals, I -was constantly telling him the names of different objects, ... so that -he was hourly laying in a stock of words, and sometimes little phrases. -In short, he took such pleasure in learning, and I in teaching, that it -was difficult to say which of the two was most zealous in the business; -and about the end of the second week of our study of the French, we -began to read a little of the _Adventures of Telemachus_ in Fénelon’s -own words.’ How much French Murdoch really knew is doubtful, though -he later undertook to teach it in London, and apparently secured -some pupils until the Revolution filled the city with refugees who -captured the market. Burns ultimately acquired a reading knowledge of -the language, but if his riming ‘_respectueuse_’ with ‘Susie’ is a -specimen of the pronunciation Murdoch taught he would scarcely have -made himself understood in Paris. - -Murdoch was this time most favourably impressed by Robert’s ability, -and, in his own inimitable language, regretted that at the approach of -harvest ‘Robert was summoned to relinquish the pleasing scenes that -surrounded the grotto of Calypso, and, armed with a sickle, to seek -glory by signalising himself in the fields of Ceres; and so he did, for -although but about fifteen, I was told that he performed the work of a -man.’ Murdoch had seen no signs of the qualities which Burns afterwards -declared made him as a child by no means a favourite with anybody; -in his eagerness for learning he displayed only the retentive memory -and the enthusiastic ardour which would have most endeared him to the -pedantic master. The ‘stubborn ungainly something’ which later ripened -into pride was filling him with smothered rebellion against his lot in -life; the weeks with Murdoch opened for a moment a door through which -it seemed that he might escape. He was becoming class-conscious, and -was developing a hatred of stupid wealth and power which never left -him. His earliest associations with the sons of the gentry had not been -unpleasant, for these lads had not yet acquired ‘a just sense of the -immense distance between them and their ragged Playfellows’. ‘My young -superiours’, he said, ‘never insulted the clouterly appearance of my -ploughboy carcass, the two extremes of which were often exposed to all -the inclemencies of all the seasons.’ They gave him stray volumes of -books; one lad even helped him with his French. Nevertheless, he could -remember in manhood how as a mere child he almost choked with rage in -church one Sunday at the sight of a pretty servant-lass being compelled -to leave her pew to make room for the stupid son of her employer. - -About the time of his last association with Murdoch he began to have -occasions for rage without going to church for them. Provost Fergusson -died in 1771, and the administration of his property fell into the -hands of a steward or factor. Fergusson had probably been lenient if -his tenant could not make payment in full on each quarter-day, but -it was the factor’s business to get in the rents, and if they were -not paid he wrote threatening letters to demand them. It is always -difficult for a debtor to see things from the creditor’s point of -view; for Robert Burns it was impossible. For him the factor was a -scoundrel, and his dunning letters were deliberate efforts to humiliate -the unfortunates in his power. Not but what the Burnes family had -reason for feeling resentful. They were doing everything that was -humanly possible, and more than was wise, to meet the factor’s demands. -They lived very poorly, even by Scottish peasant standards; meat was -almost unknown on their table; they gave up all hired help. At the -age of fourteen, as Murdoch noted, Burns was doing a man’s work, -guiding the clumsy plough, flailing out grain by hand, and performing -all the other tasks at which brute strength had to serve not merely -instead of machinery but instead of well-made tools. His gait became -the clumsy tread of the ploughman; his young shoulders developed a -permanent stoop from handling the awkward plough-stilts. But the worst -physical effect was invisible. The adolescent boy doing a man’s work -on insufficient food was incurably injuring his heart. When the lesion -began to manifest itself in dizziness and faintness Robert was not -sent to a doctor. Probably it would have made no difference if he had -been, for the trouble could scarcely have been diagnosed without a -stethoscope. Instead he used heroic measures which must have aggravated -the ailment. At one time he kept a tub of water beside his bed, and -when faintness came on him in the night he would take a cold plunge. -All his life he was plagued with fits of depression which he described -by the fashionable term, hypochondria. His heart lesion intensified the -nervous instability he had shown as a child, and thereby contributed to -the perennially reckless conduct of his manhood. In all his life, as in -his death, he continued to pay the heaviest share of the price of his -father’s struggle to hold on at Mount Oliphant. - -A boy seldom realizes that he is overstraining himself. What -irked Burns at the time, far more than ‘the unceasing moil of a -galley-slave’, was the fact that he was almost wholly cut off from -social intercourse. Burns may not have been wholly an extrovert, but -he needed society as an outlet for his high spirits and as a refuge -from his low ones. In his earlier boyhood he had found friends both -among schoolfellows of his own rank and among the sons of neighbouring -gentlemen. At Mount Oliphant he was cut off. Murdoch would come out -on his half-holidays, ‘with one or two persons more intelligent than -[himself], that good William Burnes might enjoy a mental feast’. -This conversation of ‘solid reason, sensible remark, and a moderate -seasoning of jocularity’ was not what the boy needed. Robert and -Gilbert ‘began to talk and reason like men, much sooner than their -neighbours’, but this precocious maturity only made the lad more -acutely conscious of his own lack of advantages. He envied the greater -ease and assurance of his more fortunate fellows, and out of this envy -and self-consciousness grew the aggressive manner upon which some of -the gentry later remarked with disfavour. - -As William Burnes’s tenure at Mount Oliphant neared its end the clouds -opened a little. The father had never wholly abandoned his hope of -providing his eldest son with some sort of education, and in the -summer of 1775 managed to send him for a few weeks to learn ‘dialling -and mensuration’ at Kirkoswald. Superficially the venture seemed as -fruitless as the earlier effort to learn French in three weeks. The -master, Hugh Rodger, was as pedantic as Murdoch, but inclined to be -harsh and sarcastic where Murdoch was earnest and encouraging. Though -Burns acquired some practical mathematics which later proved useful in -his Excise work, he found the more vivid part of his education outside -the classroom. With William Niven, a classmate of his own age, he -indulged in spirited impromptu debates on such adolescent topics as -‘Whether is a great general or a respectable merchant the most valuable -member of society?’ With a girl named Peggy Thomson he fell in love -briefly, but so violently as to disorganize his work during his last -days at school. Above all, he got glimpses of a sort of life very -different from the seclusion of Mount Oliphant. - -In the later eighteenth century smuggling rated as one of the major -British industries. An excise tax of twenty shillings a gallon on -spirits set an even higher premium on illicit dealing than prohibition -did in the United States in the 1920’s. Few of the ‘best people’ had -any more scruples about dealing with smugglers than Americans had about -dealing with bootleggers. Nor was smuggling confined to liquors. Tea, -French silks and laces, and other goods on which the tariff was high -were also run in in quantity. The coast near Kirkoswald was a centre -for landing goods intended for the Ayrshire and Glasgow markets because -it was almost the last point smuggling vessels could approach without -grave risk of being trapped by the revenue cutters in the narrow waters -of the Firth of Clyde. Samuel Brown, the uncle with whom Burns stayed -at Kirkoswald, probably had a quiet share in the business; at any -rate his nephew saw plenty of smugglers. In the taverns where these -men spent the profits of their successful ventures Burns witnessed -roistering of a wilder sort than market nights at Ayr exhibited. His -extremely limited means, however, make it improbable that he often -looked unconcernedly on a large tavern bill, though ten years later -he thought he had. More likely the awkward youth was a spectator, -as the poet was at Poosie Nansie’s in 1785. A Shakespearian delight -in the salty flavour of raw humanity was one of Burns’s life-long -characteristics which first found expression at Kirkoswald. In 1783 he -wrote to John Murdoch, ‘I seem to be one sent into the world, to see, -and observe; and I very easily compound with the knave who tricks me of -my money, if there be anything original about him which shews me human -nature in a different light from anything I have seen before.’ His -respectable friends often deplored what seemed to them a depraved taste -for low company, but, as his best friend in Dumfries explained, it was -not the lowness of the company that attracted him; his companions were -of ‘low ranks, but men of talent and humour’. It was the colour of such -company, its shrewdness, its reckless wit, and its unashamed gusto -for life that made Burns prefer it to the drab respectability of the -church-going bourgeoisie. - -Crude humanity, however, was not the only thing Burns studied at -Kirkoswald. He encountered some new books as well. Thomson’s _Seasons_ -introduced him to the chief Scottish poet of the century who had made -his reputation by writing in standard English; Shenstone’s ‘Elegies’ -and ‘The Schoolmistress’ initiated him into the poetry of sentiment, -and the Spenserian stanza of the latter gave him the verse-form for -‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’. In reading these poets, however, he was -merely extending an acquaintance already made through the specimens in -Arthur Masson. His prose reading opened a different world. Novels were -not to be found in the stricter Presbyterian homes, so _Pamela_, an odd -volume of _Ferdinand Count Fathom_, and above all Mackenzie’s _The Man -of Feeling_, were a vivid experience. Nothing in his previous training -had inoculated him against the virus of sentimentality; exposed to its -most extreme form, he was infected for life. This, the lad no doubt -said to himself, was the way persons of superior sensitivity looked -upon life; very well, he could prove that his sensibility was equal -to theirs. At the first opportunity he bought a copy of _The Man of -Feeling_ and carried it with him everywhere until he wore it out. - -Had Burns known more of literature and of the world he would have been -able to take Mackenzie’s sentiment at the proper discount. Then the -book’s influence might have been good. It might gently have corrected -the harshness of his peasant background, as the literature of sentiment -in general ameliorated the brutality of the eighteenth-century world. -As it was, the book set up a preposterous ideal which divided Burns’s -energies and sometimes vitiated his work. The crudities of peasant -life needed softening and elevating, but sentimentalism made many of -his efforts in this direction mawkish instead of humane. The poet who -portrayed an old farmer’s affection for a faithful mare was revealing -sentiment in the best sense of that much-abused word; the poet who -moralized over a ploughed-under weed was pumping up emotions such as -no real farmer ever felt. Hence it is no exaggeration to say that the -foundations for the weakest elements in his work, as well as for the -magnificent zest of ‘The Jolly Beggars’ and ‘Tam o’ Shanter’, were laid -at Kirkoswald. - -Burns was probably right in saying that he came home considerably -improved. But he was also discontented. Mount Oliphant seemed narrower -and drabber than ever after the colour of the smuggling village, and -he had become acutely conscious--thanks equally to Peggy Thomson and -to his tavern companions--of his own awkwardness. This consciousness -led him to his first overt act of rebellion. In ‘absolute defiance’ of -his father’s commands, he attended a country dancing school, to improve -his manners. William Burnes’s ‘Manual of Religious Belief’ indicates -a willingness to mitigate some of the sterner points of Presbyterian -theology, but he was in full agreement with the Kirk’s condemnation of -worldly amusements. Gilbert Burns, as well as some of his brother’s -biographers, tried to explain away the remark about defiance, and the -father may not have pressed the point too far when he saw that Robert’s -mind was made up. Undoubtedly, however, Burns was correctly describing -his own feelings at the time, and though the father sensibly accepted -the accomplished fact and later allowed his other children to learn -dancing he thenceforth regarded his eldest son’s conduct with suspicion -and concern. - -On leaving Kirkoswald Burns had undertaken to carry on a literary -correspondence with some of his schoolfellows. He was bent on improving -his powers of expression and acquiring a literary style. But the -medium he selected was prose. Probably in retrospect he exaggerated -the actual extent of this correspondence--it is hard to believe that -‘every post’ brought him as many letters as if he had been a merchant, -or that he could have paid the postage if it had. The few surviving -specimens are quite enough. The poet’s uncle had once set out to buy -one of the manuals of letter-writing which supply models for most of -the imaginable contingencies of human life; he brought home instead -‘a collection of letters by the Wits of Queen Ann’s reign’. The exact -volume has never been identified, though Burns’s subsequent quotations -show that it included letters of Pope, Bolingbroke, and Swift. But the -eighteenth century, until Boswell taught it better, did not publish -really familiar letters. Such collections as Pope helped to bring out -were really composed of brief essays. Personal opinion was subdued; -personal news was deleted. The ‘unbridled effusions’ which make the -charm of familiar letters were suppressed. On such unfortunate models, -almost as stiff as Elizabeth Rowe’s ‘Letters Moral and Entertaining’ -which he had found in his Masson, Burns set to work. The result was -the same as when he encountered _The Man of Feeling_. A youth bred -among literate people would have realized intuitively that these models -showed only one side of letter-writing. Burns, with no other standards -to measure them by, took them as the whole of the law and prophets, -and shaped his epistolary style accordingly. His ear, attuned to the -subtlest modulations of poetry, remained always deaf to the quieter -graces of prose: when Dugald Stewart commended the simplicity of -Franklin’s writing, Burns could see nothing in it, ‘when compared with -the point, and antithesis, and quaintness of _Junius_.’ - -Those who have judged Burns adversely as a letter-writer would have -still more grounds for their criticism had more letters survived like -the few to William Niven and Thomas Orr. These country youths admired -Burns’s solemn analyses of Pride and Courage and his exhortations to -be content with poverty; so, unfortunately, did the better-educated -friends of his later life. The letters which he transcribed for Lady -Harriet Don in 1787 and for Robert Riddell in 1791-93 belonged to -the same school of prose as his earliest epistles to Niven. Burns -would never have thought of making, nor his friends of asking for, -transcripts of the admirable discussions of Scottish song which he sent -to George Thomson, nor of his easier letters to John Ballantine and -Mrs. Dunlop. No epistolary Robert Fergusson ever came into his hands to -show him the way to a conversational style. When he wrote easy prose it -was in spite of his models and because he had something to say which -really demanded saying. - -When the family at last escaped from Mount Oliphant in 1777 Burns was -eighteen, the age at which Chatterton, seven years before, had taken -his own life. But Burns’s self-education was a much slower process than -Chatterton’s. At eighteen he was still an awkward rustic, with all -his intellectual and artistic powers still to find. The most positive -result of the long ordeal at Mount Oliphant--apart from its injuries -to his health--had been the building up of a strong sense of family -loyalty. William Burnes had made every sacrifice to keep his family -together, and the feeling that this was a primary obligation had been -deeply impressed on his son. For the moment their prospects seemed -hopeful. The father had managed to lease the larger farm of Lochlie -near Tarbolton, and had again obtained from his landlord a cash advance -for stock and improvements. But again Burnes was paying the penalty of -his desperately independent character. For Lochlie’s hundred and thirty -acres of sour clay--so sour that the lease provided for two separate -applications of lime at the rate of 400 bushels to an acre--its -putative owner, David M’Lure, set a rental of £130. It was a ruinous -bargain which broke William Burnes’s spirit, helped to kill him, and -gave his children some first-hand acquaintance with the chicanery of -the law. - -On Burns the first effect of the removal to Lochlie was social. The -farm was within easy reach of Tarbolton village, where he found the -companionship his nature craved. Of his friends at Mount Oliphant -James Candlish’s is the only name that has not perished; those of the -Tarbolton cronies are enshrined in both verse and prose. For the first -couple of years the records are almost blank. By his own testimony, -and Gilbert’s, he was constantly falling tempestuously in love, -usually with girls of his own rank, or below it, for ‘he had always -a particular jealousy of people who were richer than himself, or who -had more consequence in life’. His imagination could always endow any -girl to whom he was attracted with a plentiful stock of charms which -bystanders often failed to perceive. His ready pen, moreover, was -constantly at the service of his less fluent friends who sought his aid -in composing their love-letters, and he ‘felt as much pleasure at being -in the secret of half the amours in the parish, as ever did Premier -at knowing the intrigues of half the courts of Europe.’ But Gilbert’s -testimony corroborates his own statement that none of these early -affairs passed the bounds of decorum. The fervours which he had first -experienced when reaping with Nellie Kilpatrick at the age of fifteen -were growing stronger and more clearly defined, but they were still -adolescent. - -This adolescent Burns figures also in the proceedings of the Tarbolton -Bachelors’ Club, a social and debating society which he and a few -friends organized in the autumn of 1780. Its fragmentary records show -the youths arguing such windy topics as Burns had discussed with Niven -five years before, but with a more direct application to his own -walk of life. E. g., ‘Whether is the savage man or the peasant of a -civilized country, in the most happy situation?’ ‘Whether is a young -man of the lower ranks of life likeliest to be happy who has got a good -education, and his mind well informed, or he who has just the education -and information of those around him?’ ‘Whether between friends, who -have no reason to doubt each other’s friendship, there should be any -reserve?’ Such topics point to Burns as their propounder, as do some of -the Club’s rules. The one which barred religious topics was doubtless -in the interest of peace, but Burns’s hand is evident in the tenth and -last: - - ‘Every man proper for a member of this society must have a frank, - honest, open heart; above anything dirty or mean; and must be a - professed lover of one or more of the female sex. No haughty, - self-conceited person, who looks upon himself as superior to the rest - of the club, and especially no mean-spirited, worldly mortal, whose - only will is to heap up money, shall on any pretence whatever be - admitted....’ - -Indecorum of language was likewise barred, and clerical biographers -in discussing these rules have left the impression that the Club was -a kind of Y.M.C.A. From what we know of peasant life in Scotland and -of the adolescent male everywhere, it is possible that the biographers -were mistaken. Whatever his conduct in 1780, Burns was soon applying -the tenth rule in no platonic or idealistic sense. - -Nevertheless the Club played an important part in developing his -powers. Besides giving him an audience for his ideas it showed him -that he could dominate his audience. Thenceforward Burns took the lead -in any social group where he was intimate; his companions, re-echoing -his wit, believed that they shared it and even convinced him that they -did. The roster of his friends includes many wholly commonplace people -like John Richmond and Robert Ainslie who shone only by reflected -light, but whose satellite nature Burns was quite unaware of at the -time. Moreover, the Club gave him almost his first experience of the -wine of applause, and he found it a heady vintage. - -Among the Tarbolton Bachelors was David Sillar--not a charter member of -the Club, but admitted to it early in 1781. A year younger than Burns, -Sillar, under his friend’s inspiration, produced a few commonplace -poems which gave Burns the excuse for hailing him as brother poet. -Sillar had a certain gift for characterization in prose; he described -Tarbolton townsfolk as ‘uncontaminated by reading, conversation, -or reflection’, and left the most vivid extant picture of Burns on -the threshold of manhood. Burns was beginning to reveal the playboy -elements in his nature--that desire above all things to be conspicuous -which he shared with such very different geniuses as Sir Walter Scott, -Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Bernard Shaw. In a day when strict -Presbyterians still cropped their hair, after the fashion which in the -previous century had earned them the name of Roundheads, Burns let his -grow long and wore it in a queue--‘the only tied hair in the parish’. -When everyone else was wearing plaids of ordinary shepherd’s gray, -Burns sported one of dead-leaf colour. And since the uncontaminated -parishioners of Tarbolton were orthodox Old Lights Burns acquired easy -notoriety by setting up as a heretic. - -Throughout his life Burns managed always to acquire a maximum of -ill-repute with a minimum of actual transgression. It was not so much -that he was conspicuously sinful as that he sinned conspicuously. -Sometimes the conspicuousness was mere ill-luck. A fair portion, for -instance, of the Edinburgh gossip which clung to his name may well have -originated in the fact that both the servant girls with whom he had -relations in the city brought legal action against him--a consequence -he could scarcely have foreseen. On the other hand, his desire to -startle the parish frequently bore fruit in suspicions and enmities -impossible to live down. G. K. Chesterton once advised the village -genius who wants to conquer something fundamentally and symbolically -hostile and also very strong, not to come up to London but to stay at -home and have a row with the rector. This was precisely what Burns did. -The New Light doctrines which soft-pedalled such Calvinistic dogmas as -predestination had already conquered Edinburgh and Glasgow and were -beginning to invade the provinces. In any case Burns’s saturation -in the sentimentalism of Mackenzie and Sterne would have made him -receptive to the New Light emphasis on Benevolence and the Moral Sense. -But when the congeniality of the new doctrines was joined with an -opportunity to startle his neighbours the combination was irresistible. -He began, he says, to debate theology with such heat and indiscretion -as to raise a cry of heresy which persisted in Tarbolton and Mauchline -as long as he remained there. An anecdote, perhaps apocryphal, pictures -him in the kirkyard between services, expounding heretical doctrines -with such vigour as to elicit hisses and cries of ‘Shame!’ from his -auditors. At least the story is true in spirit. Burns was determined to -be conspicuous, even if it meant hisses instead of applause. - -Masonic affiliations, which after his return from Irvine supplanted -the Bachelors’ Club, gave him still another chance to indulge both -his social instincts and his sympathies with liberal thought. A rural -lodge like St. James’s at Tarbolton was, to be sure, no such centre of -political liberalism as were the Masonic lodges of the Continent during -the later eighteenth century. The chief activity, in fact, of most of -the Scottish lodges seems to have been convivial, with the additional -feature, lacking in the ordinary social club, that the members were -pledged to help their fellows in sickness or distress. Nevertheless the -knowledge that brother Masons in England and abroad were disseminating -ideas which challenged absolutism in government and religion must have -reached even village youths in Tarbolton. In Scotland, moreover, the -ritual which dignified the childish thrill of membership in a secret -organization gave Freemasonry an emotional appeal which the drab -services of the Kirk and the narrow routine of every day lacked. From -the time when he joined St. James’s Lodge, about 1782, until after his -sojourn in Edinburgh, Burns took his Masonic duties with the utmost -seriousness. He helped to put the struggling and almost bankrupt lodge -on its feet; from 1784 to 1787 he was its Depute Master. In Edinburgh -he continued his affiliations, and perhaps the highest moment of all -his early triumphal progress in the capital came at the meeting of the -Grand Lodge of Scotland on January 13, 1787, when the Grand Master gave -the toast, ‘Caledonia, and Caledonia’s Bard, brother Burns!’ It is -idle to conjecture if the coolness which followed his first acclaim in -Edinburgh reached into Masonic circles; certainly the poet’s interest -in the craft waned in his later years. His letters from Ellisland -and Dumfries scarcely mention it, except when he was in trouble and -wanted Robert Graham to help him as a Mason as well as a friend. He -duly affiliated himself with the Dumfries lodge, and became its Senior -Warden, but if silence means anything the zest was gone. - -The Masonic fellowship of course was male, but Burns was not -forgetting his obligations as a member of the Bachelors’ Club. His -own statements and Gilbert’s, already quoted, show a succession -of passing infatuations with various girls whose names, even, are -doubtful, and of whose personalities the most ardent legend-mongers -can scarcely summon up a wraith. By comparison with such shadows as -Anne Rankine and Mary Morison, even Nellie Kilpatrick who stirred the -poet’s blood for a single harvest, and Peggy Thomson, who overset his -trigonometry at Kirkoswald, are three-dimensional. The one figure who -half emerges from the shadows is Alison (or Ellison) Begbie. Burns met -her in 1780 or 1781, but understanding of the matter is not clarified -by the possibility that some of the five letters supposed to have -been addressed to her may really be drafts of the love-letters he -frequently wrote for his friends. Assuming them all to be Alison’s, -they prove mainly that Burns had not yet learned much about women. If -ever farm-lass was wooed in such stilted and temperate phrases it is -pretty certain that she was not in this humour won. Burns’s intentions -were serious; he wanted to marry Alison. Unfortunately the intentions -made him serious too. He seemed afraid to commit himself in writing. -A bystander is not surprised that Alison refused the man who told her -that her company never gave him those giddy raptures so much talked of -among lovers, and who announced that in his opinion married life was -only friendship in a more exalted degree. It did surprise Burns. Indeed -the shock of it led him subsequently to charge her with having jilted -him, a difficult feat when his own letters prove she had never accepted -him. No doubt she had merely employed the ancient technique of mild and -noncommittal encouragement while she was making up her mind. Burns had -prided himself on his skill in letter-writing and on his address with -women. To be flatly rejected the first time he made a serious proposal -upset him for several months. It also completed his sentimental -education. Thereafter, until he met Clarinda, he knew better than to do -his courting by post. - -But friendships with men and women, though they helped him momentarily -to escape his blue devils, could not obscure the problem of his own -and his family’s future. He still lacked an aim. Conscious of more -than average powers in himself, he had no purpose to which to direct -them. Moreover, the years at Lochlie were bringing him for the first -time to a realization of the workings of the larger economic laws. -The American War was ruining the West of Scotland. Half its market -for manufactured goods was closed; its exports to the West Indies -were being raided by American privateers. Just before the war an -over-expanded bank had failed, dragging down with it half the gentlemen -in Ayrshire and leaving a trail of wreckage which was not wholly -obliterated for a couple of decades. Even the wartime demand for farm -produce was no help when multitudes of jobless artisans could not -pay the high prices which at best would scarcely have yielded a fair -return on the over-capitalized land. M’Lure, the landlord of Lochlie, -was heavily mortgaged to the defunct bank. Hard pressed for cash, he -tried to extort from his tenants more than was his due. William Burnes -resisted, and became involved in litigation which followed him to the -grave. In similar circumstances at Mount Oliphant Burns had seen merely -a personal situation in which a villainous factor was demanding more -rent than the family could pay. Now he began to realize that a man may -be frugal and diligent in his business, and yet be destroyed by forces -which he did not start and was powerless to control. - -As early as 1780 Burns had experimented at growing flax of his own on -a few acres of land subleased from his father; later he won a prize -for his seed. His success led him in 1781 to go to Irvine to learn -the trade of flax-dressing. Some consequences of that venture belong -in the next chapter; educationally the results, like those of so many -youthful experiences, were mainly negative. His distaste for the work, -and its ill effect on his health, left him more aimless than before. He -concluded that he was unfit for the world of business, and where he had -formerly yearned for some chance of advancement he now decided that he -was destined to be only a looker-on at life. All that restrained him -from complete shiftlessness was his sense of responsibility for his -family. - -Intellectually, that sense was keener and more insistent than ever, -but now for the first time it was in direct conflict with a storm of -emotions. Burns had come home empty-handed as the prodigal, to find -his father visibly sinking under the united effects of worry and -tuberculosis. It was plain that even if his contest with his landlord -should be decided in his favour he would never be fit to undertake -another farm. By the beginning of 1783 the whole family, including -William Burnes, realized that death was at best a matter of months. -M’Lure the landlord realized it too, and such scenes as had accompanied -the reading of the factor’s letters at Mount Oliphant were re-enacted -at Lochlie with triple poignance. The children were old enough this -time to understand the whole meaning of the affair; their father was a -broken man, and where the factor had merely threatened legal action, -M’Lure was taking it. The outcome of the case and the practical means -whereby Gavin Hamilton helped the family through the crisis will be -told later; its emotional impact on Burns himself, coming as it did on -the heels of his own failure at business, could hardly be overstated. -He saw his father’s lifetime of struggle for independence ending in -defeat and despair. Recollection of Mount Oliphant and Lochlie never -ceased to haunt his own ventures as a farmer, and helped to damn them. -Fear and hatred of one’s economic position are seldom the heralds of -success. - -Burns’s whole nature, in fact, was beginning to cry out against the -life he was expected to lead. Not even the loyally accepted burden -laid upon him from his father’s weakening hands could hold him steady. -He had come back from Irvine, as before from Kirkoswald, incapable of -fitting again into the narrow pattern of the life he had lived before -his departure. He had outgrown his mould. The dying father noted with -concern that his son was spending longer hours with wilder companions, -and displaying a new aggressiveness and assurance in his manner of -speaking with women. Nevertheless the shadow of the old man’s authority -was still enough, when reinforced by the desperate need of securing -the future of the family, to inhibit the full expression of the new -tendencies. Gilbert’s testimony is explicit. At Lochlie he and Robert -were both allowed the usual labourer’s wage of £7 a year, against which -was charged the value of every piece of clothing manufactured at home. -Neither there nor at Mossgiel did Robert’s expenditures exceed this -frugal sum. It was extravagance of emotion, of speech and conduct, not -of expense, that beset the poet. - -On his deathbed, on February 13, 1784, William Burnes muttered that -there was one member of his family for whose future conduct he feared, -and Robert, in tears, took the admonition to himself. Hardly was the -family settled at Mossgiel, after some strictly legal dodging which -must have increased the poet’s inward distaste for the whole business, -when the traits his father had dreaded began their full play. Though -he entered on his responsibilities as head of the family with the -best of resolutions, his heart was not in the undertaking. He read -farming books, calculated crops, and attended markets, but his mind -was elsewhere. According to his own account, he lost interest in the -work because of two successive crop-failures, the first owing to bad -seed and the second to a wet harvest. But this was an excuse, not -an explanation. The real reasons lay within himself. They were his -passions and his art. - -His father’s death had removed the last check upon social indulgence. -Always shunning the solitude which produced brooding melancholy, he -had found in Mauchline a new and gayer set of cronies whose company -was more congenial than that of his family in the crowded cottage -at Mossgiel. More and more of his time was spent in the village -taverns--not for drunkenness, but for the pleasure of sharing the -hilarity of careless youths and the uninhibited wit of older ‘men -of talent and humour’ like his neighbour John Rankine. The rigidly -righteous began to frown on the young farmer whose reckless sallies -were sure to provoke the wildest outbursts of laughter. And even at -Mossgiel there were distractions from a sober and godly life. The -household included a young servant-lass named Betty Paton, whose -charms, like those of most of Burns’s sweethearts, were mainly -physical. Within a few months of his father’s death Betty became -Burns’s mistress, and in May, 1785, bore his first child amid all the -accompaniments of a public scandal in the parish. - -Unpropitious though such beginnings were for a career as a tenant -farmer, they were relatively unimportant compared with the inner -compulsions arising from his discovery of his poetic vocation. Many -another young farmer had sowed his wild oats and then settled down to -rear a legitimate family and become an elder in the Kirk. For Burns -such a future had really ceased to be possible even before he left -Lochlie. In April, 1783, under the melancholy influence of his own -ill-health and his father’s dark prospects, he had begun to keep a -commonplace book with the avowed intention of some day showing the -world that a young ploughman, little indebted to scholastic education, -was nevertheless capable of rime and reason. When he started the book -his literary models were Shenstone, Mackenzie, and the folk-songs of -his country. At some time during the next year, however, the poems of -Robert Fergusson came into his hands. They roused him as Chapman’s -Homer roused Keats. For the first time he realized that the Scottish -dialect might be something more than a dying relic of the past. He -had been long acquainted with Allan Ramsay, but Ramsay belonged to -the primitive age before Scottish letters had been ennobled by such -geniuses as Henry Mackenzie, James Beattie, and John Home. Now he found -that Fergusson, only ten years older than himself, had returned to the -speech and the verse-forms of Ramsay. And Fergusson was no country -boy but an educated lawyer’s clerk bred in the Athens of the North. -Reading these poems Burns realized their vivid descriptions and their -wit--realized also that what Fergusson had done he could do as well, or -better. Mauchline parish offered as many themes for homely satire as -Edinburgh did. - -The theme ready to hand was ecclesiastical controversy. The -neighbourhood was ululating with disputes between Old Lights and New -Lights, and the leaders on both sides were behaving with the lack of -charity peculiar to Christians on the war-path. Moreover, Burns’s -landlord and friend, Gavin Hamilton, was in the thick of it, standing -trial before the Kirk Session on a charge of Sabbath-breaking. Two -neighbouring Old Light ministers--John Russell of Kilmarnock and -Alexander Moodie of Riccarton--chose this time for a quarrel over -parish boundaries, and conducted their holy row with the heat and -personal invective of a heresy-hunt. Burns improved the occasion by -composing ‘The Twa Herds’. Copying the poem in a disguised hand he -showed it to Hamilton, remarking with studied gravity that he had no -idea who the author was, but that he thought it pretty clever. Hamilton -thought so too. Copies were passed from hand to hand; the New Lights, -clergy as well as laity, received it with roars of applause; the Old -Lights were correspondingly furious. - -When Burns followed up ‘The Twa Herds’ with ‘The Holy Fair’, ‘The -Ordination’, and ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’, the applause redoubled, and so -did the enmity of the Old Lights. The man who challenges established -institutions to their face needs to be sure of his own position. -Burns’s indiscretion with Betty Paton not only left him wide open -to counter-attack but assured him of far more unpleasant notoriety -than ordinarily accompanied such lapses in peasant Scotland. It was -impossible to remain in the parish without submitting to the discipline -of the Kirk. Even at its mildest the ordeal of three successive -penitential appearances before Mauchline congregation would have been -intensely humiliating to a man as sensitively proud as Burns. But -a young bachelor’s slips from grace were not usually treated very -seriously except by the clergy and the Holy Willies. Had Burns been -otherwise in good standing in the community he would have been able to -go on much as before, but when the evidence of his breach of sexual -morality was augmented by his ill-fame as a derider of the church he -became, among all the more conservative members of the parish, little -better than an outcast. - -He may not have realized the full bitterness of the feeling against -him until his repudiation by the Armours in the spring of 1786, but he -realized enough. His reaction was as inevitable as the community’s had -been. If he was to be an outcast he would live up to his reputation. -Many of his biographers since, as well as many of his neighbours at -the time, have taken at face value the blatant pride in his ill-repute -which marks such poems as the ‘Epistle to John Rankine’. But this -was not part of his real nature; he was simply brazening out his -humiliation. The unco guid had decided that he was a dog with a bad -name. He would show them that they had underestimated his capacity to -shock them. That in the process he would make the parish too hot to -hold him was a consideration not likely to occur to him in the full -tide of his resentment. - -But if his conflict with the Kirk had brought him humiliation it had -also brought him the sense of power and the intoxication of applause. -He had long known that his conversational wit and fire could dominate -a knot of cronies. Now he had learned that he could write things which -stirred both the laughter and the deeper emotions of educated men as -well as of his social equals. The hostility of the Holy Willies was -even more inebriating than the applause of Gavin Hamilton and his -friends. Men do not hate unless they fear; the measure of his success -and power was the measure of the antagonism he had aroused. The youth -whose weakness it had always been to lack an aim had found one now. -His education was complete. Intimate observation and experience of a -small community had acquainted him with human nature, and had at last -roused him to realization of his own capacities and his true vocation. -His estimate of himself and his work, he later told John Moore, was -pretty nearly as high in 1785 as it was two years later, after all the -adulation of Edinburgh. All that he needed now was the opportunity to -display his talents on a larger stage. - - - - -III - -MEN - - -Burns entered on his manhood at Irvine in 1781. Before his ill-starred -venture as a flax-dresser he was an aimless and inarticulately -rebellious youth; after it, though he was still aimless for a time, -his rebellion against the narrow world of his origin was overt and -vocal. Yet even under the stimulus of Irvine he was long in finding his -proper speech. When he wrote the earliest of his extant letters, Burns, -already a man in years, was still a boy in mind. His self-conscious -disquisitions on such high-resounding themes as Pride and Courage mark -him as less mature at twenty-one than Chatterton was at sixteen; he -had passed the age at which Keats died before he began to say anything -worth heeding. At twenty-two, his vague aspirations momentarily -focussed on the idea of establishing himself in business as a necessary -prelude to matrimony, he made his sole attempt at living according to -the standards of a working-day world. Materially, the attempt was an -abject failure; spiritually, it set him on the direct road to realizing -himself. - -Knowledge of the material side of the Irvine partnership is limited -to what Burns himself told in his autobiographic letter, which is -not wholly reliable evidence. Not that Burns intentionally coloured -the facts. The safest rule in reading his letters is to take it for -granted that if he said a thing about himself it was true; if he -said a thing about someone else, he believed it to be true. But to -his passionate temperament and ‘skinless sensibility’ (the phrase is -his own) anyone through whom he suffered loss or humiliation became -almost automatically a villain of the blackest. Hence his charges that -Peacock, his Irvine partner, ‘was a scoundrel of the first water, who -made money by the mystery of thieving’, need not be taken literally. -Burns, a complete greenhorn at business, may possibly have been taken -in by an unscrupulous rascal, but it is equally possible that Burns -in retrospect blamed Peacock for a failure in which they were both -at fault. In any case, the business side of these months influenced -Burns’s future only as it convinced him of his unfitness for ‘the -little chicaning art of bargain-making’. What really mattered were the -new friends, and the new ideas of himself and his place in the world -inspired by these friends and by the introspection resulting from -ill-health. - -Chief of the new friends was the sailor, Richard Brown, whom Burns -looked up to as a junior schoolboy looks to the athletic senior. Brown -was about the poet’s age, but had all the worldly experience Burns -lacked. He was better educated than most seamen of his day, though -perhaps his story of having been patronized by a wealthy man who -promised to set him up in life was only another sailor’s yarn. He had -at any rate abilities of a sort. An incompetent man could not have -become the master of a West Indiaman while still in his twenties. But -in 1781 that promotion was still to win. Brown just then was down on -his luck. His ship had recently been captured by an American privateer, -and he had been put ashore on the coast of Connaught with nothing but -his life and the clothes he wore. Nevertheless the friendship with -Burns probably began with something of patronage on Brown’s part. -The experienced, far-travelled, and distinctly hard-boiled sailor -was interested in the awkward, stoop-shouldered country lad who in -company alternated between sullen silence and--if he felt himself at -ease--unusually vivid and copious speech. Obviously Brown realized -that there was something in him; obviously also he took pleasure in -enlightening him as to the ways of the world. Burns saw in Brown ‘every -noble, manly virtue’ and strove to imitate him. Burns was already -proud; Brown taught his pride to flow in proper channels--whatever -that may mean. But Brown also was the only man the poet ever met who -was a bigger fool than himself where women were concerned. The various -goddesses by whom Burns’s tinder heart was continually lighted up still -roused a hobbledehoy calf-love, as adolescent as his hero-worship -of the sailor. Brown taught him that direct action might usually be -counted on to bring results, and here, as Burns later admitted, the -friendship did him a mischief. - -Yet Brown was something more than a hard-boiled sailor initiating a -green youngster. One Sunday afternoon the pair took a walking trip to -Eglinton Wood, where under the inspiring influence of a spot associated -with the memory of Sir William Wallace Burns confided to his mentor -that he occasionally tried to write poetry. He was already poet enough -to have a copy in his pocket. Brown listened, and declared that verses -of such merit ought to be sent to a magazine. It was actually this, -Burns recorded long afterwards, that first gave him the idea that he -might amount to something as a poet. It was one thing to have one’s -verses praised by a rural maiden like Nellie Kilpatrick or by one’s own -admiring family; it was quite another to have them endorsed by a man of -the world. Unfortunately Burns failed to name the poem Brown commended. -At a guess it may well have been the two somewhat bawdy stanzas -beginning ‘I murder hate by field or flood’, Andrew Dunlop’s manuscript -of which was headed, ‘On the great Recruiting in the year 17-- during -the American war’. Burns had no motive for mystifying Dunlop; hence -the date of these stanzas can scarcely be later than 1781, and Brown -would have been more likely to applaud such lines than the conventional -religious pieces more or less contemporary with them. - -The good as well as the ill of Brown’s friendship belongs to the six or -eight months at Irvine. If the friends met during the next four or five -years, no references to their intercourse survive. When the Kilmarnock -_Poems_ were published, Brown received the only inscribed presentation -copy on record, and in December, 1787, the two began a correspondence -which lasted for a couple of years in the intervals of Brown’s voyages. -Their only recorded meeting, however, was in Glasgow in February, 1788, -when the poet told Brown all about Jean Armour. Burns’s last letter, -in November, 1789, in reply to a complaint about his silence, is as -cordial as ever, yet the friendship ended. According to tradition, -Burns’s charge about Brown’s moral influence had reached the sailor, -now a married man with a steadily improving position to maintain and -far from eager to be reminded that he had heard the chimes at midnight. -After Brown’s death, the presentation copy was found hidden away in -the back of an old sideboard. The sailor was not the only friend who -in later years wanted to live down his associations with the poet. -The descendants of John Wilson concealed for more than a century the -fact that instead of resenting ‘Death and Dr. Hornbook’ he appealed to -Burns for help when his position as schoolmaster at Tarbolton became -intolerable. On the other hand, James Humphry of Mauchline continued -till his dying day to boast that he was ‘Burns’s bletherin’ bitch’. - -During the same months in which Brown was stirring Burns to a new -self-confidence his health was producing opposite effects. Throughout -his life his diseased heart reacted unfavourably to nervous stress; the -Irvine experience was the first of many. Realization of his bad bargain -with Peacock combined with the unaccustomed strain of dusty indoor -labour to bring on a period of ‘hypochondria’--in other words, nervous -depression resulting from defective heart-action. Its tangible results -were such lachrymose verses as the ‘Prayer in the Prospect of Death’ -and the letter to his father in which he announces that he is ‘quite -transported at the thought that ere long, perhaps very soon, I shall -bid an eternal adiew to all the pains, and uneasiness, and disquietudes -of this weary life; for I assure you I am heartily tired of it.’ The -letter is not merely morbid, it is adolescent; and Mrs. Carswell has -noted that the solemn announcement that ‘I am not formed for the bustle -of the busy nor the flutter of the Gay’ is cribbed verbatim from _The -Man of Feeling_. William Burnes, however, probably regarded it as -admirable proof that his son was beginning to take serious views of -religion and life. In any case it represents only a passing mood of -ill-health. The important fact about the Irvine days is that Burns was -considering seriously his own abilities and his future position. - -The partnership had at least the merit of a dramatic and even -spectacular finish. A New Year’s Eve celebration, whatever it may have -done for Burns, brought his partner and his wife to such a state of -drunkenness that they knocked over a lamp and set fire to the shop. -The place was completely burned out, and after a month or two Burns -returned to Lochlie poorer than he went, but with a rich store of -experiences, a new outlook on life, and a mature confidence in himself -which he had never before possessed. But he still lacked an aim. For -another four years the pride which Brown had taught to flow in proper -channels was still to display itself mainly in obscure rebellion -against his lot in life, and in anything but obscure defiance of the -unco guid. - -The situation confronting him at home would in any event have matured -him, but without Irvine it might have been in a different way. Firmly -convinced as always of his own justice and rectitude--a conviction -which he imparted with equal vigour to his eldest son--William Burnes -was closing his long series of misfortunes in a violent contest with -his landlord, David M’Lure. The dispute had begun in a difference -over their respective shares of the expenses of liming and fencing -the farm and erecting new buildings. Pending arbitration of the case, -William Burnes had held up payment of his rent. In September, 1782, the -matter was submitted to James Grieve of Boghead and Charles Norval of -Coilsfield--chosen respectively by M’Lure and Burnes--for adjudication. -When they were unable to agree, John Hamilton of Sundrum was chosen as -‘Oversman’ or referee. Not until August, 1783, did Hamilton complete -his analysis of the accounts and hand down his decision, which was that -of £775 claimed by M’Lure, £543 was offset by credits for improvements -made by Burnes, part payments on rent, and other items. But before this -decision was rendered M’Lure, whose estates were heavily mortgaged to -the defunct Douglas and Heron Bank, and who desperately needed cash, -had tried to force payment by entering a sequestration on the stock -and crops of Lochlie. By the time John Hamilton reported, M’Lure was so -deep in debt that it was uncertain whether the rent belonged to him or -to his creditors. Thereupon indomitable William Burnes carried the case -to the Court of Session at Edinburgh. His first petition being thrown -out on a technicality, he renewed it, and at last, on January 27, 1784, -less than three weeks before his death, won his case. He had had the -cash on hand to deposit with the court, when he made his appeal, the -whole amount due; the decision absolved him of further responsibility -in the matter, and summoned the various claimants to bring in their -claims for adjudication. William Burnes had vindicated himself; his -view of his obligations had been upheld by the highest court in the -land. All that it had cost him was the last of his money and the last -of his strength. He was not an old man, but the long struggle for -livelihood, culminating in the protracted lawsuit, made him the easier -prey to tuberculosis. His conviction of his own rightness, like his -irascibility, grew stronger as his body weakened, and mingled with his -wrath at M’Lure was anxiety, bluntly expressed, over Robert’s growing -defiance of Presbyterian decorum. - -In calmer circumstances, his father’s displeasure would have weighed -heavily on the poet’s mind, but now he was looking beyond it. Watching -their father’s sinking health, the children were consulting with -each other about their future. The end of Lochlie could not be long -delayed: death would evict them, because after the litigation none -of the claimants to the property was likely to give them a renewal of -the lease. Though Robert subsequently gave Gilbert the credit of being -a full partner in the next undertaking, he probably was not. It is -difficult to imagine the timid and subservient Gilbert taking the lead -in anything. Not long after returning from Irvine Burns had made the -acquaintance of a prosperous Mauchline lawyer named Gavin Hamilton, who -may have been attracted to the young farmer by reports of his outspoken -ridicule of the Old Lights in the Kirk. Hamilton being also a Mason, -they doubtless met first in the fellowship of square and compass. The -lawyer, already in hot water with his more orthodox neighbours, may -also have realized the potential value of Burns’s wit in the impending -contests, but whatever his motives it was Hamilton who suggested to -William Burnes’s children a practical and legal way out of their -trouble. - -Several years before, Hamilton had rented Mossgiel farm, about three -miles from Mauchline, and had rebuilt the cottage as a country retreat. -The plan of being gentleman farmer as well as lawyer had palled, and -Hamilton now offered to sublet Mossgiel to Robert and Gilbert at a -lower rental--£90 a year for 118 acres--than they were paying at -Lochlie. The lease was quietly signed at Martinmas, 1783, it being -apparent by that time that William Burnes had not many weeks to live. -Secrecy was necessary; the Court of Session had not yet rendered its -decision, and their action, if it became known, might be unfavourably -construed. Whatever small savings had not gone for legal expenses were -invested in the new enterprise, and Hamilton pointed out a loop-hole -through which the children might salvage something after their father’s -death. Robert and Gilbert were already credited with the regular wages -of labourers. Let the other children also get themselves ranked as -employees on the farm. Then they could enter claims for unpaid wages -against their father’s estate, thereby becoming preferred creditors -who must be paid in full before M’Lure or his mortgagors got anything. -The scheme worked. Enough was saved from the wreck to enable the -family, shaken and desperately poor--when the youngest boy, John, died -in November, 1785, they could not raise the few shillings to pay for -the best mortcloth at his funeral--to re-establish their household at -Mossgiel, intact except for its head. - -The new head was Robert, and in the months that followed his father’s -death the full results of his Irvine lessons showed for the first -time. In the two intervening years he had been too much oppressed with -labour and anxiety to have time or inclination to show the new spirit -in all its fullness, though he had shown enough to disturb his father. -Now he was free, and the fruits of his freedom were varied and not -always edifying. The earnest young debater of the Tarbolton Bachelors’ -Club and the self-conscious author of essay-letters gave place to Rab -Mossgiel. Burns became the focus for a group of reckless youngsters, -most of them younger than himself, who looked up to him much as he had -looked up to Richard Brown three years before. Foremost in the group -were John Richmond and James Smith, both of them full of the animal -high spirits which so often disguise the basic commonplaceness of -young minds. Along with Burns they set out to scandalize the orthodox, -and succeeded. By the end of 1785 Richmond and Smith, like Burns, had -mounted the cutty-stool for fornication, and Richmond had fled from the -turmoil to the comparative sanctuary of an Edinburgh lawyer’s office. - -These cronies are chiefly noteworthy as evidence of Burns’s still -uncritical mind. As with Bob Ainslie later, there was really nothing -to them except youthful exuberance. Their laughter was the ready -chorus for Burns’s wit; his sparkle made them shine with a reflected -light to which they actually contributed little. By comparison the -poor poetaster, Davie Sillar of the Tarbolton Bachelors, was almost -a genius. In his characterization of Tarbolton townsfolk Sillar -left behind him at least one quotable phrase, which is more than -any of the Mauchline group did. They cannot be charged with leading -Burns astray--if any leading was needed Burns supplied it--and their -biographical importance is negligible except as they gave him an -outlet for confidences which might not otherwise have been recorded. -When Burns went to Edinburgh he lodged with Richmond during his first -winter; during the second winter Richmond was in Mauchline a good part -of the time. Burns’s last extant letters to him reveal some details -about Jean Armour and her children, but lack the enthusiasm of the ones -written in 1786. Smith left Mauchline to engage in calico-printing -at Linlithgow. Failing there, he fled to the West Indies and died -obscurely, as Burns came so near doing. Both friendships were spent -and empty before the correspondence closed. The contrast between the -mediocre abilities of the two men and the quality of the poetry they -evoked from Burns is even more remarkable than the disparity between -the illiterate farm-lasses of Tarbolton and Mauchline and the lyrics -Burns addressed to them. - -By the time he was twenty-six Burns’s status among people of his -own rank was firmly established. He was the unquestioned leader of -the reckless young; the welcome companion of ribald and unorthodox -elders. The attitude toward him of the staid and sober ranged from sad -head-shaking to violent denunciation. With people of rank above his -own, however, he was still uneasy. Hamilton was probably the first man -of the professional class with whom he formed a genuine friendship. -John Mackenzie, the Mauchline surgeon who attended William Burnes in -his last illness, remembered that on first visiting Lochlie he found -Gilbert frank, modest, well-informed, and communicative, the father -revealing the remains of an able mind beneath the cloud of illness -and distress, and the mother quiet, sagacious, and self-possessed. -But Burns sat glowering in a dark corner, ‘distant, suspicious, and -without any wish to interest or please’; scrutinizing Mackenzie and -obviously prepared to resent any display of superiority or patronage. -As the doctor showed himself affable Burns gradually thawed. Though -the written records of the friendship are meagre, Burns plainly liked -and trusted Mackenzie, and Mackenzie reciprocated. From the time of -their first meeting, the doctor declared, ‘I took a lively interest in -Robert Burns, and, before I was acquainted with his poetical power, I -perceived that he possessed very great mental abilities, an uncommon, -fertile and lively imagination, a thorough acquaintance with many -of our Scottish poets, and an enthusiastic admiration of Ramsay and -Fergusson. I have always thought that no person could have a just idea -of the extent of Burns’s talents who had not an opportunity to hear him -converse. His discrimination of character was great beyond that of any -person I ever knew....’ The surgeon introduced Burns as a poet to his -own friend and patron, Sir John Whitefoord, who had previously known -of the young farmer only as an earnest member of St. James’s Lodge; -he also gave an introduction to Captain Andrew Erskine of Edinburgh, -Boswell’s friend, and claimed to have been the first to bring the -Kilmarnock _Poems_ to the attention of Hugh Blair. It was to Mackenzie -and not to Gavin Hamilton that Burns turned for very practical help in -the stormy weeks preceding his final acknowledgement of his marriage -to Jean Armour, and when Mackenzie provided Jean and her lover with -quarters in his own house he must have faced a weight of criticism -from the embattled saints and gossips of the village that would have -daunted many a man with a professional status to maintain. - -The pride which Richard Brown had taught to flow in proper channels -was becoming all the more touchy as Burns’s confidence in himself -increased. Sure of himself now among his equals, he was still -resentfully helpless when superiors rubbed in their superiority. He had -come as far as he could in his merely social capacity; what carried -him the rest of the way was his poetry. Here Gavin Hamilton more or -less unwittingly took the lead in introducing Burns to a new world. -The Kirk Session of Mauchline, seeking to re-establish the old-time -rigours of the Scottish Sabbath, had decided for once to make an -example of a prominent citizen instead of an obscure one. Accordingly -in the summer of 1784 Hamilton was summoned to stand trial for various -ecclesiastical crimes such as absenting himself from church, habitually -neglecting family worship, and causing a servant to dig new potatoes on -a Sunday. On being convicted, Hamilton promptly appealed his case to -the Presbytery of Ayr, and ultimately won it. How Burns intervened with -‘The Twa Herds’ has already been told. His authorship of that poem and -its successors was soon avowed as the manuscripts passed from hand to -New Light hand amid roars of Homeric laughter. People and institutions -accustomed to taking themselves and being taken by others with the most -intense seriousness are helpless in the face of mirth. Burns had found -the one weapon which the orthodox could not withstand, though they -could, and did, revenge themselves on the author of their humiliation. -The fury generated by his satires did as much as, or more than, the -odium of his personal sins to make Mauchline so unbearable that by 1786 -Burns was ready to flee to Jamaica. - -But if his satires made the village too hot for him they were also the -direct means of enabling him to escape both from the village and from -the ranks of the peasantry. One of the first friends to whom Hamilton -showed ‘The Twa Herds’ was another lawyer, Robert Aiken of Ayr, who -conducted and won Hamilton’s case before the Presbytery. Hamilton, -apart from the conviviality almost inseparable from a man of his -profession in eighteenth-century Scotland, was cool and businesslike. -Aiken was emotional and enthusiastic, a good forensic reader and -speaker, and an easy prey to sentiment. Pathos, in life or in a poem, -suffused his eyes with tears and set the buttons popping on his tight -waistcoat. But, like the more famous Man of Feeling, Henry Mackenzie, -Aiken seldom in daily life permitted sentiment to overcloud common -sense. Along with his fellow townsman, John Ballantine the banker, the -lawyer soon became the poet’s confidant and chief literary adviser. -‘Orator Bob’ lost no opportunity of reading his young friend’s verses -aloud, with such expression that Burns later declared he had never -fully appreciated his own work until he heard Aiken read it. As the -poet’s troubles thickened in the early months of 1786 it was with Aiken -and Ballantine that he discussed both his plans for emigration and -his arrangements for publishing his poems, their decision as to what -ought to be included in the Kilmarnock volume apparently being final. -Though Aiken’s action, as James Armour’s legal adviser, in cancelling -whatever ‘lines’ Burns had given Jean, caused a momentary chill, the -lawyer soon proved that his professional conduct did not interfere -with his private friendships. He obtained 145 subscriptions for the -Kilmarnock _Poems_--nearly one-fourth of the entire edition. Even amid -the excitement of his first dazzling fame in Edinburgh Burns recalled -with a glow of affection the kindly patronage of Aiken and Ballantine, -and long after he had quitted Ayrshire forever he continued from time -to time to send them new poems which he thought they might like. As -late as 1791 he was still gratefully remembering Ballantine’s part -in handing him ‘up to the “Court of the Gentiles” in the temple of -Fame’--a figure of speech which combined neatness and literal accuracy. -It was only to the outer court--that of the bourgeoisie and minor -gentry--that Aiken and Ballantine were able to conduct him. - -The association with Hamilton fared worse. Poetry, except in the form -of humour and satire, did not, it would seem, appeal to Hamilton as it -did to Aiken, and between him and Burns was always the barrier of their -business relation as landlord and tenant. Ultimately, indeed, a matter -of business estranged them. In the spring of 1788, nearly two years -after Gilbert Burns had become the sole lessee of Mossgiel, Hamilton -apparently asked Burns to become his brother’s surety. The poet, who -was lending Gilbert nearly half the proceeds of the Edinburgh _Poems_, -declined to commit himself any further: - - ‘The language of refusal is to me the most difficult language on - earth, and you are the man of the world, excepting One of R^t - Hon^{ble} designation [i. e., Lord Glencairn], to whom it gives me the - greatest pain to hold such language.... I never wrote a letter which - gave me so much pain in my life, as I know the unhappy consequences: I - shall incur the displeasure of a Gentleman for whom I have the highest - respect, and to whom I am deeply oblidged.’ - -The foreboding was justified. After that reluctant refusal, Burns’s -relations with his former landlord never regained their old cordiality. - -In his contacts with Aiken, Ballantine, Hamilton, and certain of the -New Light clergy Burns had, by the spring of 1786, taken a further -step in the realization of his own capacities. He found himself quite -at ease, at least in male company, among members of the professional -class to whom as a lad he had looked up with awe. He was discovering, -moreover, that he was not their inferior in native ability. Though he -did not know it then, he had in fact reached as high a level as he was -ever to maintain in Scottish society. These lesser gentry not only -received him, but treated him as an equal. The higher gentry--people -of estates and pedigrees--the higher professional classes, and the -nobility, might receive him for a time, but always with a latent -condescension. Sooner or later, even with Mrs. Dunlop, even with -Robert Riddell, some incident would reveal that their feeling toward -him was after all _de haut en bas_. The friends whom he kept among men -of social and professional standing, from Aiken and Ballantine at the -beginning of his career to Alexander Findlater and John Syme at its -close, were gentlemen, were men of education, but they were not, in -Burns’s favourite capitalized phrase, Great People. - -But in the summer and autumn of 1786 it seemed there might be no limit -to Burns’s social advancement. As he went about the country during -August and September, collecting the subscriptions for his poems, the -parish outcast of a few months earlier found himself everywhere courted -and applauded. New acquaintances and old united to draw him out, and -the bolder his remarks the better they liked them. But he was still -capable of awe. In October came an invitation to dine on the 23rd at -Catrine House, country home of Dugald Stewart, Professor of Moral -Philosophy in Edinburgh University. The company included Basil William, -Lord Daer, the flighty and consumptive but liberal-minded son and heir -of the Earl of Selkirk. In an amusing set of verses Burns described -how, at the prospect of meeting a peer for the first time, his knees -shook as he sidled into the Professor’s drawing-room, and he reverted -to his old trick of watching from a corner until he had taken the -measure of the company. The incident is worth mentioning because it was -probably the last time Burns was ever unsure of himself in society. -In later months and years he was often irritated and uncomfortable -when members of the upper classes emphasized their elevation, but -such feelings were the reverse of awe. Two months after the dinner at -Catrine he was meeting professors and peers by the dozen instead of -the brace, and was maintaining not merely self-possession but critical -appraisal. - -Burns’s standards of social intercourse, as of so many other things, -were firmly established before the surviving records become full -enough for detailed study. They were as honest and straight-forward -as the rest of his dealings. Except for the brief embarrassment of a -first meeting, rank as such meant nothing to him. What he demanded, -and all he demanded, of any man was, in his own phrase, that he have -something to him. That something must be native; a matter of mind and -personality, not of social place. A Souter Johnie was better company -than a Hugh Blair, because the cobbler’s wit and wisdom were the -product of native shrewdness dealing with first-hand experience; the -professor’s attainments were ‘meerly an astonishing proof what industry -and application can do’. To his cultured friends, Burns seemed to have -a perverse taste for low company, whereas his real quest was genuine -company. His own unbridled wit and tempestuous emotions naturally made -him gravitate towards other similarly endowed people, who too often -were not pillars of society, but this was not his reason for choosing -them. When a pillar of society bore himself ‘to all the Actors, high -and low, in the drama of Life, simply as they merited in playing their -parts’, and excelled in telling a story--in other words, when the -pillar was Dugald Stewart--Burns enjoyed his company as much as John -Rankine’s or Willie Nicol’s. Nor was wit or waggishness necessarily -demanded. Grave wisdom Burns could relish as well as gay, though not -in every mood; what he could never endure was dullness, pomposity, or -conceit. - -As the autumn of 1786 wore on, new friends and old agreed that the -success of the Kilmarnock _Poems_ should make Burns abandon his flight -to Jamaica. He ought to publish a second edition in Edinburgh and then -settle down, either on a farm of his own, or--as Aiken suggested--in -the Excise service. The poet would find plenty of friends to help -him win a hearing, and publishing in the capital would give him a -national instead of a local audience. Burns must have made up his mind -immediately after his dinner with Dugald Stewart. Among his new friends -was Alexander Dalziel, steward of the Renfrewshire estates of the Earl -of Glencairn. On November 1 Dalziel wrote to congratulate Burns on -abandoning the West Indian venture and to tell him that he had showed -the _Poems_ to the Earl himself. The Earl bought a copy, which he -had richly bound, and expressed warm interest in the poems and their -author. - -Thus began Burns’s most successful acquaintance with a peer--the only -association of the sort which did not sooner or later end in apathy -on one side and humiliation on the other. Though the circumstances of -Burns’s earliest introduction to Edinburgh society are obscure, the -obscurity is lightened if we take at face value the poet’s repeated -statements that he owed everything to Glencairn--that the Earl, as he -put it, took him by the hand and led him up to fame. Burns afterwards -said that he went to the city without letters of introduction, but -that can have been true only in the narrowest sense. Dalziel certainly -apprised Glencairn of Burns’s plans, as Dr. Mackenzie apprised Sir John -Whitefoord and Andrew Erskine, and as the Rev. George Lawrie of Loudoun -apprised the blind poet, Thomas Blacklock. Dugald Stewart also must -have known of the decision. Within a week of his arrival, Burns was the -lion of the Edinburgh season. Many new friends must have contributed to -such immediate success, but the poet’s emphasis on Glencairn’s kindness -marks the Earl as the man who secured the patronage of the fashionable -Caledonian Hunt, and probably also as his sponsor in Masonic society. - -All this the Earl succeeded in doing without offending the touchy poet -by condescension, though Burns’s pride sometimes suffered because of -Glencairn’s deference to people of superior rank. Once, indeed, Burns -was ‘within half a point’ of throwing down his ‘gage of contemptuous -defiance’ because the Earl was giving too much attention to a wealthy -dunderpate, but even then he was quickly reassured as to Glencairn’s -sincere good wishes. Touchiness aside, Burns’s position in Edinburgh -recalls Benjamin Franklin’s at Versailles a decade before. In each -place the fashionable world thought it had discovered a child of -nature; in each place the newcomer had really a shrewder mind and a -quicker penetration of character and motive than most of the _élite_ -who patronized him. The contrast between Burns’s attitude toward -Glencairn and toward his fellow peer, the Earl of Buchan, shows how -thoroughly the poet had learned to take men’s measure regardless of -rank. Buchan also had professed great interest in Burns and was lavish -with advice, but Burns recognized the man as an egotistical windbag -and received his advice with an elaborate irony of compliment which -would have betrayed itself to anyone less conceited than the busybody -who once, when Sir Walter Scott lay ill, volunteered to arrange his -funeral, and who, when he himself had written some amazingly bad -verses, accepted as a tribute John Taylor’s publication of them in a -part of _The Scots Magazine_ ‘distinct from the mass of vulgar poetry’. - -Nevertheless, Burns’s deference to Glencairn had unfortunate results. -In securing William Creech, his brother’s former tutor, as Burns’s -publisher, Glencairn thought he was doing the best possible good turn. -Yet the outcome was months of vexation and delay for the poet, and the -loss of all profits from later editions of his poems. Moreover, the -poet had soberly decided that his best hope for a livelihood lay in -securing an Excise post which would support him while he banked his -profits as a reserve fund for his children. But Glencairn, like Mrs. -Dunlop and other gentry whose knowledge of the lives of tenant farmers -was limited to the quarterly receipt of their rents, was all for the -poet’s investing his capital in a farm of his own. Disapproving of -the Excise scheme, Glencairn would do nothing to forward it, though -a word from him in the right place--that is, in the ears of Henry -Dundas--would have procured Burns the appointment he sought. As it -was, all hints fell dead, while meantime Patrick Miller dangled the -bait of Ellisland. When at last Burns interested a man willing to -help the Excise plan, the mischief was already done; he was committed -to the undertaking which swallowed all his little capital. The best -intentions of his would-be patrons kept turning to evil for Burns; -even Glencairn’s gift of a diamond-pointed pencil made trouble by -supplying the poet with the means of inscribing blazing indiscretions -on window-panes. - -Burns observed the rest of the Edinburgh gentry and literati as closely -as he did Glencairn and Buchan. He was measuring himself and his -native ability against them, and was not inclined to award himself -second place. But he was not comfortable with most of them. Even if -they did not offend him by overt condescension he was fully aware that -they received him only because he was the fad of the moment. When the -novelty staled he could not hope to continue many friendships in -exalted quarters. The tide of popularity had swept him higher than he -could expect to remain; its ebb might leave him stranded far lower than -he deserved. It was not long, indeed, before his hosts began to find -things to criticize. Burns not only said what he thought, he said it -with an emphasis they found unbecoming in a man of peasant birth. The -great Doctor Johnson could be as gruff as he pleased with his Scottish -hosts because he was Johnson; Lord Braxfield could roar and Lord Kames -rave, both bawdy, in a gentleman’s home because they were Lords of -Session; for Burns to express emphatic opinions argued a lack of the -humility which beseemed a ploughman entertained by his betters. - -The fact was that Burns lacked both the finesse which would have -enabled him neatly and inoffensively to deal with snubs, and the -insensitive egotism which could have ignored them. No one could snub -the Ettrick Shepherd, because his magnificent self-esteem made it -impossible for him to see any remark in anything but a complimentary -light. One did not safely snub Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, because -that wasp could sting. Burns’s pride, unfortunately, not only made -him sensitive; it made him aggressive and heavy-handed. When he -flaunted the blue-and-buff of the Whigs he was going out of his way -to assert his independence among people who were mostly Tories; when -he told a lady, who had not waited an introduction before inviting -him to her party, that he would come if she would also invite the -learned pig from the Grassmarket, he was making a show of himself in -one way in the very act of resenting being made a show in another. -The consciousness that he was acting a part--whether behaving like a -country bumpkin in Smellie’s printing-house, or posing as the Bard of -Nature in drawing-rooms--no doubt partly explains some of his more -violent outbursts. Thus when he demolished a clergyman, whose niggling -criticisms of Gray had goaded him beyond endurance, with the Johnsonian -thunderbolt, ‘Sir, I now perceive a man may be an excellent judge of -poetry by square and rule, and after all be a damned blockhead!’ the -victim was probably drawing all the electric tension which had been -accumulating in the poet’s nerves through a long series of irritations -and repressions. But such things did him no good in Edinburgh society. - -It was not that his manners were worse than gentlemen’s. In some -respects they were probably better. ‘Swearing,’ Henry Cockburn dryly -records, ‘was thought the right, and the mark, of a gentleman. And, -tried by this test, nobody, who had not seen them, could now be made -to believe how many gentlemen there were.’ Boswell’s long-suffering -wife, Margaret Montgomerie, took her husband to task for his loud and -abusive manner of asserting himself in argument, and Boswell admitted -to his journal that she was right. Benjamin Franklin remarked that -Edinburgh was the only place he knew where violent disputatiousness was -not confined to lawyers and university men. But when a mere peasant -exhibited, in however mild a form, the traits of the gentry, he was -forgetting his place, and should be put back in it. - -Moreover, Burns quickly realized that these gentry scorned the national -tradition which was his life-blood. If they did not all, like Dr. John -Moore, urge him henceforth to write in standard English, they at least -made it plain that a Scots poet could not aspire to literary equality -with Dr. Beattie and Dr. Blair. Robert Fergusson was a regrettable -scamp whom Edinburgh preferred to forget; Burns erected, at his own -expense, a monument to Fergusson, and insisted, in speech and writing, -on praising the dead poet and heaping scorn on the gentry who had let -him starve. The place where Burns, after the first few weeks, really -enjoyed himself in Edinburgh and where he made most of his intimate -and lasting friendships, was among the Crochallan Fencibles. This -was one of the numerous clubs in which lawyers and merchants carried -on the old convivial traditions of their city. Edinburgh clubs were -ancient institutions which arrayed bibulous functions in ceremonials -ranging from the harmless High Jinks described by Scott in _Guy -Mannering_ to almost psychopathic debauchery in such an organization -as the Wig Club. They were, in fact, along with the Freemasons, the -ancestors both of the American fraternal orders and of the Rotary and -Kiwanis Clubs. In the more elaborately organized groups each officer, -and sometimes every member, had a special title. Thus each member in -Allan Ramsay’s Easy Club took the name of an old Scottish writer; in -the Cape Club, to which Robert Fergusson belonged, each member was a -Knight Companion of the Cape, with tides like Sir Cape, Sir Brimstone, -Sir Precenter (Fergusson himself), Sir Nun and Abbess, and Sir Pope. -The Fencibles went in for military designations. William Smellie, the -gruff, slovenly, and erudite printer who was handling the Edinburgh -edition of the _Poems_, as Adjutant of the corps introduced the poet. -Burns’s publisher, Creech, proved a social disappointment as well as -a financial disaster; his printer was a man after his own heart, an -‘old Veteran in Genius, Wit and Bawdry’. Smellie, like Burns, concealed -an inward diffidence and sensitivity beneath an aggressive manner; -like Burns, too, he was self-educated. The poet was not far wrong in -describing him as ‘a man positively of the first abilities and greatest -strength of mind, as well as one of the best hearts and keenest wits -that I have met with.’ He had displayed his intellectual power in his -_Philosophy of Natural History_, long regarded as a standard work, and -in writing large sections of the original _Encyclopædia Britannica_; -his wit he reserved for conversation, where, like Burns’s, it allowed -no considerations of reverence or prudery to stand in its way. Despite -his rough exterior, he was able to captivate an intelligent woman -of the world like Maria Riddell, as well as the ebullient poet. But -the records of this friendship were too much for Smellie’s squeamish -executors; his biographer piously relates that ‘many letters of Burns -to Mr. Smellie which remained, being totally unfit for publication, -and several of them containing severe reflections on many respectable -people still in life, have been burnt.’ - -The records of another friendship which had its start among the -Edinburgh bookmen fared better. Peter Hill, five years the poet’s -senior, was in 1787 a clerk in Creech’s shop, but was soon to set up -in business for himself and prove a kindly and indulgent master to -an apprentice named Archibald Constable. Hill’s was one of the few -friendships Burns made in Edinburgh which suffered no abatement with -time. From the summer of 1787, when Hill was handling some of the -innumerable details of business relating to the Edinburgh _Poems_, -until the beginning of 1796, when Burns sent his ‘annual’ gift of a -kippered salmon from the Nith, their association was unclouded. Hill -supplied the poet with books, sent presents to his family, and took -care of miscellaneous business errands in the city. Burns secured -for Hill the book-orders, first of the Monkland Friendly Society and -later of the Dumfries Public Library, and interspersed his business -communications with hearty blasts of execration, broad humour, and -messages to all their common friends. Though the phraseology of the -letters often seems stilted, behind its stiffness glows a genuine -affection and esteem. - -But the backbone of the Fencibles was the lawyers. Their Colonel, -William Dunbar, was a jolly little bachelor some years older than the -poet; their Major and Muster-Master General was Charles Hay, friend of -Boswell in the days when the latter was striving for distinction at the -Scottish bar, whose port-inflamed countenance blinks above his judicial -robes as Lord Newton in Raeburn’s superb portrait in the Scottish -National Gallery. More notable for ‘law, paunch, whist, claret, and -worth’ than for literary interests, Hay’s one poetic suggestion to -Burns had humiliating results. He was among those who urged the poet to -compose the unfortunate elegy ‘On the Death of Lord President Dundas’, -the complete ignoring of which by Dundas’s son inflicted on Burns’s -pride a wound which never healed. - -Among the lawyer Fencibles the most congenial to Burns was Alexander -Cunningham, a distant and impoverished relative of Lord Glencairn. -Though Burns described him to his face as dissipated but not -debauched--a subtle distinction of which the exact import is probably -forever lost--Cunningham was diffident and retiring. Perhaps for this -reason, perhaps also because of his kinship to Glencairn, Burns never -sent him on such ticklish errands as he entrusted to Bob Ainslie, but -their literary and intellectual fellowship was sincere. Unlike Hay and -Ainslie, Cunningham had real fondness for the higher types of poetry, -though to offset this he had the anglicized Scotsman’s inability to -see anything but the ludicrous and the low in folk literature. Burns -felt that in offering ‘My Love is like a red red rose’ to Cunningham -he had to apologize for its simplicity; Popean imitations would have -been more in his line. The young lawyer, in short, belonged to the -generation which was trying to live down the national characteristics -that meant most to Burns. In Edinburgh the legal profession was the -last stronghold of the rich old gusto of Scottish life, the last group -of men unashamed of being ‘characters’. But even there such traits -belonged mainly to the generation passing or past which included -men like Braxfield, Monboddo, and Kames, or to the already mature -generation of Charles Hay and Henry Erskine. Cunningham belonged more -nearly to the generation of Henry Cockburn, without Cockburn’s relish -for the memories of traits which he did not share. - -Within the limits imposed by his diffidence and his tastes, Cunningham -had no reason to complain of lack of sympathy or confidence from Burns. -When his first sweetheart jilted him with humiliating publicity, -Cunningham told his sorrow to Burns, who had previously supplied him -with a poor song in furtherance of his suit, and who now condoled in -terms which bore hard on the young lady. The poet’s letters ranged -from gay impromptu verses to the confession that as a result of the -fiasco of the elegy, ‘I never see the name, Dundas, in the column of a -newspaper, but my heart seems straitened for room in my bosom; & if I -am obliged to read aloud a paragraph relating to one of them, I feel -my forehead flush, & my nether lip quivers.’ On his part, Cunningham -obtained for Burns the last national honour which Edinburgh conferred -in his lifetime--election to membership in the socially exclusive Royal -Company of Archers. And at the end Cunningham received one of the -poet’s desperate appeals for help--not for money, but for intercession -with the Commissioners of Excise not to put him on half-pay during -his illness. Cunningham, moreover, shared with John Syme the credit -for setting on foot the subscription for Jean and the children after -Burns’s death, though his diffidence made him a poor collector of -funds. Through diffidence, also, he permitted George Thomson to prepare -for the newspapers the obituary he should have written himself, and by -this neglect did injury to his friend’s memory. - -But the names of three other friends are associated with much more -damage to Burns’s reputation during his life and after his death. Only -one of the three was a Fencible--Robert Cleghorn, a jolly gentleman -farmer from Corstorphine. Cleghorn had what Cunningham lacked, a -strong relish for vernacular literature, publishable or unpublishable. -Thus he became the recipient of many choice bits of verse, sometimes -traditional and sometimes original, for his own and his friends’ -edification. The correspondence harmed Burns’s reputation not through -its publication but through its long suppression. That remarkable -moralist, Lord Byron, read the Cleghorn letters in manuscript and -set down in his journal a highly-coloured summary of them as ‘full -of oaths and obscene songs’ which stimulated the imaginations of -several generations of readers. Now that the surviving letters can -be read in full, they produce no such revulsion as do some of the -things Burns wrote about Jean Armour and Maria Riddell. For readers -who do not relish broad humour they may be distasteful, but beneath -their coarseness is the record of a genuine friendship with an honest, -hearty, and generous man. One suspects that had Cunningham, for -instance, visited Burns at Ellisland or Dumfries, he would have felt -the same disillusionment at sight of the poet’s narrow and primitive -domestic life which the pettier Robert Ainslie recorded. Cleghorn made -such a visit in 1795, when Burns’s health and spirits were already -declining, and left behind him a warm glow of renewed and strengthened -friendship. - -It is regrettable that Cleghorn’s name should be, for most readers of -Burns, associated with the poet’s collection of ‘cloaciniad’ verse. In -fact, Cleghorn received no more of such work than did a dozen other -friends, but John Allen, his stepson and heir, had ideas about the -treatment of a great poet’s manuscripts which differed from those of -William Smellie’s executors. Allen did not feel free, by mutilating -some of his most characteristic letters, to ‘protect the memory’ of -a poet who had never tried to disguise any side of his own nature. -And Cleghorn’s tastes were as catholic as David Herd’s, or as Burns’s -own. He measured the merit of a song by its singing quality, and not -by its suitability for use in a young ladies’ seminary. Burns sent -him the charming ‘O wat ye wha that lo’es me’ with the certainty -that it would please him as much as the broadest ribaldry. The male -who in male company does not occasionally relish crude humour is a -scarce creature in any age or nation; was perhaps unusually scarce in -eighteenth-century Scotland. The songs which went to Cleghorn went also -to Graham of Fintry and Provost Maxwell, to Collector Mitchell and John -M’Murdo and John Syme--in other words, to some of the best and most -loyal characters in Burns’s circle. Boswell’s journals are crammed with -proof that similar tastes prevailed in still higher ranks of society. - -To avoid misunderstanding both Burns and his friends, a brief -digression is necessary regarding the book entitled _The Merry Muses of -Caledonia_. Burns was well aware that his own work, like the folk-songs -he collected, was divided into the publishable and the unpublishable. -But he did not draw the line where his later editors did. To him, ‘The -Jolly Beggars’, ‘A Poet’s Welcome’, and ‘Holy Willie’ were no fitter -for general circulation than were ‘When Princes and Prelates’ and -‘The Court of Equity’. They were _jeux d’esprit_ intended for private -circulation among a few intimates. His riotous imagination respected -no boundaries when it began to play; what distinguishes most of his -bawdry from the common sort is its wit. And this wit as frequently -saw how an improper folk-song could be made more brilliantly improper -as it saw how a halting one could be made lyric. Much of his folk -collection, together with ‘a very few’ of his own composition, was -written into a manuscript volume which he sometimes lent about, with -strict injunctions as to secrecy. According to tradition, that volume -fell after his death into unscrupulous hands and formed the basis of -the earliest of the various collections called _The Merry Muses_. The -tradition is almost certainly wrong. The ultimate source may have been -Burns, but not the immediate one. In all the editions the authentic -Burns verses are too garbled to have been printed from his own copies. -They bear every sign of oral transmission or hasty transcription at -several removes from the original. The real manuscript was probably -destroyed after Burns’s death; certainly it was never printed. It would -have been better for his reputation if it had, for he now stands father -or godfather to a garbled mass of Scottish, English, and Irish filth, -little of which he wrote, and some of which he never even saw. - -Neither Robert Ainslie nor William Nicol needed the chance association -of their names with fescennine verse to bring discredit on Burns. Their -own conduct sufficed. Ainslie, like Cunningham, was a young lawyer, -but the two moved in different orbits, and were never brought together -even by their friendship for Burns. They appealed to different facets -of the poet’s nature, Ainslie’s relation to him being that of Smith -and Richmond in the days of the Fornicators’ Court. The son of a good -family in the Border village of Dunse, Ainslie was celebrating his -recent emancipation from parental government by sowing a plentiful crop -of wild oats. Full of the high spirits of twenty-one, he furnished the -same ready chorus of laughter the Mauchline cronies had provided, and -was rapidly qualifying himself to discuss with Burns the pleasing topic -of comparative bastardy. The most enjoyable part of the poet’s Border -tour in May, 1787, was his visit to Dunse; after Ainslie left him he -complained that he never had a mouthful of really hearty laughter on -the trip. - -Even the mutilated letters which survive show that Burns freely -confided his past and present peccadillos to Ainslie; the sequel proves -the confidence to have been ill bestowed. At the end of the Border -tour, for instance, Burns found awaiting him in Dumfries post-office -a letter from Meg Cameron, an Edinburgh servant girl who was to -bear a child which she claimed was his. Ainslie was commissioned to -‘send for the wench and give her ten or twelve shillings’ against -the poet’s return to the city. In reply, Ainslie broke the news that -he had himself just become the father of an illegitimate son, and -received from his friend a roaring welcome to ‘the venerable Society -of Fathers’. Again in the following year Burns favored Ainslie with a -highly-coloured account of his final reconciliation with Jean Armour, -and early in 1789 instructed his young friend to locate Jenny Clow so -that Burns, on his arrival in Edinburgh, could settle the suit Jenny -had brought against him. More creditable matters also occupied the -correspondence. Some of Burns’s earliest doubts about Ellisland, some -of his deepest gloom about his own and his family’s future, were told -to Ainslie. But the friendship died before Burns did, and through -Ainslie’s fault. - -On Friday, October 15, 1790, Ainslie came to Ellisland for the -week-end. On Monday he reported the visit to Agnes M’Lehose, with whom -he was by this time on confidential, and even flirtatious, terms. The -warmth of Burns’s welcome was gratifying, but the house, he noted, -was ‘ill contrived--and pretty Dirty, and _Hugry Mugry_’, and its -other inmates pleased him little. Jean was ‘Vulgar & Common-place in a -considerable degree--and pretty round & fat’, but ‘a kind Body in her -Own way, and the husband Tolerably Attentive to her’. Also present were -Burns’s sister and sister-in-law--‘common looking girls’--and ‘3 Male -and female cousins’ who had been helping with the harvest. - -Burns rejoiced that his friend had arrived ‘upon his _Kirn_ night, when -he Expected some of his friends to help make merry’, but sight of the -guests deepened Ainslie’s depression, for they were ‘a Vulgar looking -Tavern keeper from Dumfries; and his Wife more Vulgar--Mr. Miller of -Dalswinton’s Gardener and his Wife--and said Wife’s sister--and a -little fellow from Dumfries, who had been a Clerk’. Burns and the rest -had a good time, ‘Dancing, and Kissing the Lasses at the End of every -dance’, while Ainslie shuddered to the depths of his paltry little -soul. Burns the peasant was enjoying himself in the world of his birth, -and the young snob from Edinburgh couldn’t understand him at all: - - ‘... Our Friend himself is as ingenious as ever, and Seems very happy - with the Situation I have described--His Mind however now appears to - me to be a great Mixture of the poet and the Excise Man--One day he - sits down and Writes a Beautiful poem--and the Next he Seizes a cargo - of Tobacco from some unfortunate Smuggler--or Roups out some poor - Wretch for Selling liquors without a License. From his conversation he - Seems to be frequently among the Great--but No Attention is paid by - people of any rank to his wife....’ - -After such a letter--withheld from complete publication until 1938--it -is plain enough why the friendship went into a swift decline. For -another year or two Burns continued to write, gaily or confidentially, -but got small response. Ainslie’s last letter, early in 1794, ‘was so -dry, so distant, so like a card to one of his clients’, that the poet -‘could scarce bear to read it’, and never answered it. The lawyer was -already on his way, via the fashionable _Werther_ melancholy, back to -the orthodox piety which led him, early in the nineteenth century, to -compose a couple of devotional pamphlets. But neither piety nor loyalty -sufficed to make him protect the memory of the friend whose name has -kept his alive. Preserving the reckless letters Burns had written him, -he allowed them to pass into circulation, once at least accompanied -by a formal docket certifying that Burns was the author of a letter -signed with a humorous pen-name. The mutilations which so many of the -manuscripts have suffered were the work of later owners. - -Ainslie’s chief injury to Burns’s fame was inflicted after the poet’s -death; William Nicol, Latin master in Edinburgh High School, harmed -him in life. A coarse, egotistical, drunken man of violent temper, -Nicol was also one of the foremost Latin scholars of his day. In his -bawdy violence of language Burns saw wit; his emphatic dislike of his -superiors Burns interpreted as proof of an independent spirit. No great -harm might have come of the friendship had it been confined to drinking -bouts in Edinburgh and to correspondence thereafter. Unfortunately -Burns took Nicol as his travelling companion on the tour of the -Highlands in September, 1787. This tour was Burns’s chance to meet -influential folk in their homes and to show himself at his best. Thanks -to Nicol he came near to showing himself at his worst. Among the people -from whom he had invitations were the Duke and Duchess of Athole. -Their reception of him at Blair Athole was all the touchy poet could -desire. The Duke and Duchess were cordiality itself; among the guests -was Robert Graham of Fintry, Commissioner of Excise, whose friendship -and influence could be of the utmost importance to Burns; a still -more influential person, Henry Dundas, dispenser of patronage for all -Scotland, was expected next day on one of his periodical inspections -of his political fences. Everything seemed to be going well for Burns -when Nicol, the ‘most unprincipled savage’, intervened. The boorish -schoolmaster, finding himself neglected in favour of his companion, -decided to move on at once, and insisted on Burns’s going with him. -The poet’s pride made him guilty of outrageous bad manners. In reply -to Nicol’s insistence, Burns should have bidden him go to the devil -his own gait. But that might have been interpreted as subservience to -the Great. Through what can only be described as inverted snobbery, -Burns allowed Nicol to drag him away. The scene was repeated at Castle -Gordon, where the merry Duchess, who had declared in Edinburgh that -Burns swept her off her feet, pleaded in vain against Nicol’s urgings. -Though he afterwards wrote complimentary and apologetic letters, and -cursed the ‘obstinate son of Latin Prose’, Burns could not efface the -impression he had made. He never saw the Atholes or the Gordons again. - -Throughout the trip Nicol’s conduct was the same; he even snatched -Burns away before breakfast from the home of his cousin, James Burness -of Montrose. The Highland tour, though he did not then realize it, was -Burns’s last opportunity to enlist the active friendship of people -whose influence might have changed his life. His failure was largely -Nicol’s fault. Reports of his abrupt and ungracious conduct undoubtedly -came back to Edinburgh and contributed to the comparative neglect he -suffered during his second winter in the city. Edinburgh was too small -a place for misconduct to hide in; every lawyer in the old Parliament -House would have heard that a servant girl had brought suit against the -Ayrshire Bard; the stories from the Highlands, losing nothing in the -telling, would add to the swelling tide of hostile gossip. The talk, -indeed, reached so far, and was believed so implicitly, that not even -death could alter Edinburgh opinion. Cunningham’s efforts to interest -prominent citizens in the subscription for Burns’s widow and children -met repeated snubs and refusals; to this day, despite the monument -on the Calton Hill, the city pays only a half-hearted tribute to his -memory. - -Of course all blame for the hostile talk cannot be shifted to Nicol, -or even to Meg Cameron and Jenny Clow. Burns was indiscreet enough to -start plenty of tales without help. But his too long stay unfortunately -predisposed many people to believe the worst not only of his conduct -in the city but afterwards. Henry Mackenzie and Dugald Stewart, for -instance, both accepted at face value the second-hand reports of -Burns’s alleged misdoings in Dumfries, and wrote him off their books. -For years anecdotes showing Burns in an absurd or discreditable light -circulated in Edinburgh. Some may have been true; others were malicious -distortions which point the direction taken by city opinion. Thus -Lockhart told how Hugh Blair had suggested, when a party of gentlemen -were discussing possible changes in the Kilmarnock _Poems_, that -‘tidings of salvation’ might advantageously be emended to ‘tidings of -damnation’. Thereupon the poet, according to Lockhart, embarrassed -the professor by asking permission to acknowledge his improvement in -a footnote. The basis of the story is truth; its details are not. -Blair did suggest the change; Burns did, in conversation with other -people, acknowledge his help. But Blair’s suggestion came in writing, -as a carefully veiled hint amid other criticisms of the poems. The -episode as Lockhart told it is city gossip intended to display Blair -as the urbane professor and patron and Burns as a clumsy rustic. Of -no importance in itself, the story is symptomatic of the attitude of -cultured Edinburgh after the first enthusiasm over Burns had waned. - -But no realization of the trouble Nicol was helping to make, no -recognition of the schoolmaster’s real character, affected Burns. He -continued, after he left the city, to correspond with Nicol; when the -obstinate son of Latin Prose got into the row which finally led to his -resignation from the High School, Burns championed him against his -amiable principal, Dr. Alexander Adam. By christening one of his sons -William Nicol, Burns proclaimed his friendship to the world at large, -and during the years at Ellisland performed such services as getting -appraisals of a farm Nicol was buying, and maintaining a broken-down -mare which a horse-coper had passed off on the schoolmaster. The -friendship lasted until February, 1793, when Burns was suffering from -the rage and humiliation which followed the official inquiry into his -revolutionary sympathies. Some report of the matter having reached -Nicol, he undertook to rebuke Burns in a would-be facetious vein. -The poet was in no mood for rebuke or good advice, facetious or not, -and with his heavily satirical reply to Nicol their correspondence -ended--too late. - -In any case Edinburgh friendships, good or bad, however much he might -try to maintain them by correspondence, could not supply companionship -when Burns moved to Ellisland. Though on his first visit to Dumfries -he had professed himself enchanted with the company he met, he was -lonely enough when he actually settled there. He made acquaintances, no -doubt ‘men of talent and humour’, among the tradesfolk and professional -men of the town, but people like Dr. James Mundell, Walter Auld the -saddler, Henry Clint of the King’s Arms, William Hyslop of the Globe -Inn, and Thomas Boyd, the contractor who built Ellisland, are names and -little more. Apart from his landlord, Patrick Miller, with whom his -relations were soon strained, the most congenial friend he had during -the three years on the farm was Robert Riddell of Glenriddell, whose -estate of Friars Carse marched with Ellisland. - -Riddell was a country gentleman turned amateur antiquarian. He had -embellished his grounds with a ‘Druid Circle’ and a ‘Hermitage’; he -dabbled in numismatics and church architecture. These would scarcely -have interested Burns--though he remained in the hermitage long enough -to inscribe some verses on the window with Glencairn’s diamond-pointed -pencil--but Riddell was also a musician in a small way. Besides -composing a few commonplace airs of his own he professed great -interest in the traditional music of his country. Here Burns shared -his enthusiasm and far excelled his knowledge. The laird, perhaps at -Burns’s suggestion, subscribed for Johnson’s _Museum_ and had his set -bound with blank interleaves for notes on the songs, their authors, -and their history. The number of his annotations gives the measure -of his knowledge. Out of four hundred songs, one hundred and seventy -have notes. Of these, one hundred and fifty-two were written by Burns, -who must have spent many evenings at the task in his friend’s library; -eighteen were by Riddell himself or an amanuensis. Sir Walter Scott -summed up the laird’s prose writings as ‘truly the most extravagant -compositions that ever a poor Man abandoned by providence to the -imaginations of his own heart had the misfortune to devise.’ - -The company which sometimes came to Carse, including as it did men like -Joseph Farington the painter--who noted that ‘Mr. Burns the Scottish -Poet’ was ‘a middle-sized man, ... black complexioned, and his general -appearance that of a tradesman or mechanick’, had ‘a strong expressive -manner of delivering himself in conversation’, and knew no Latin--and -Francis Grose, the antiquary whose inspiring enthusiasm was the real -source of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’, was more important than Riddell himself. -The laird’s real tastes and aptitudes were convivial. A man of powerful -physique and a rather overwhelming robustiousness of manner--William -Smellie spoke of ‘his immense fist and stentorian voice’--he succeeded, -like so many gentlemen of his day, in wrecking his health at an early -age. The notorious ‘Whistle’ contest, in which Riddell and his kinsmen -Sir Robert Laurie and Alexander Fergusson of Craigdarroch undertook -to drink each other under the table for the possession of a family -heirloom, was probably more typical of the laird’s true aptitudes -than the annotations were. Even at that, though, he was outdone by -Craigdarroch, who won the whistle by drinking ‘upds. of 5 Bottles of -Claret’. Burns, like most of the friends of the contestants, found the -incident vastly amusing; Burns’s biographers have argued the question -of his real presence at Friars Carse with an almost theological -fervour; nevertheless its only interest or value for posterity lies -in the light it sheds on Robert Riddell’s character. According to -biographical tradition, Robert Riddell was the staid member of the -family and his brother Walter the wild one; actually such distinction -between them seems as baseless as the kindred legend that Gilbert Burns -was a better farmer than his brother. But whether Glenriddell led or -followed in the events which for a time estranged the poet from the -whole Riddell family, the circumstances of the breach resemble with -painful clarity many other episodes in Burns’s contacts with the gentry. - -The full story of the ‘Rape of the Sabines’ is Maria Riddell’s more -than her brother-in-law’s, but Robert Riddell had a share in the -trouble. During 1792 and 1793, when Walter Riddell and his wife -Maria were occupying the estate of Goldielea or Woodley Park, family -relations were not always harmonious. At a guess, Walter wanted to -borrow from his elder brother the funds to complete payment for Woodley -Park; at a guess, the wives failed to charm each other. Whatever the -causes, by the autumn of 1792 Burns had to assure Maria that he -would listen to no stories about her from Glenriddell--and presumably -also from Glenriddell’s wife. Yet for another year or more the poet -managed to stay on good terms with both families. The year 1793 was, -poetically and flirtatiously, the highest point of Burns’s friendship -with Maria; the same year produced asseverations of friendship as -‘ardent & grateful’ on Burns’s part as Robert Riddell’s was ‘kind and -generous’. In leisure moments the poet was transcribing a collection -of his letters as a companion volume to the collection of unpublished -verse he had given the laird in 1791. On Christmas day he was still -transcribing. On January 12, 1794, his quarrel with Maria had reached -its climax. Somewhere between those two dates had occurred the -mysterious brawl in which Robert Riddell’s part is still a matter of -controversy. - -If Robert Riddell was the host, who, by compelling Burns to drink more -than he wished to, reduced the poet to a state in which he insulted -his hostess, the laird’s conduct admits of small excuse; if, as -report has it, the scene occurred at Woodley Park and Robert Riddell -subsequently took up the quarrel, he is even less excusable. Whichever -version one accepts, Riddell was displaying innate snobbishness towards -a man he considered, after all, a social inferior. If he was the -host, realization of his own share in the matter should have made him -charitable; if his brother was the host, Glenriddell was indulging in -violent and uncalled-for partisanship. He held, it would seem, the same -theory of a gentleman’s privileges as was enunciated a few years later -by Sir John Graham Dalyell: ‘I am a gentleman, and I will be treated -as such; and if any person presumes to pervert my meaning in any way -whatever, if his rank is not equal to mine I will kick him; and if it -is equal I will shoot him.’ Burns, as a plebeian, was kicked. There is -a little satisfaction in knowing that the poet held to his resolution -not to apologize to his host. The ‘Remorseful Apology’ supposed to -have been addressed to a Riddell was really sent, early in 1796, to a -Mr. S. Mackenzie. Four months after the quarrel Glenriddell was dead, -still unreconciled to the poet who had done more for him than he could -ever have done for the poet. A loud blustering squire, a hollow and -unsubstantial mind; that was Robert Riddell. - -For the last five years of his life Burns’s social world centred in -Dumfries. About it cluster dark stories and darker hints, in the -effort to refute which the poet’s defenders have sometimes been led -to dangerous extremities of special pleading. The truth is that Burns -in Dumfries was neither better nor worse than Burns in Tarbolton and -Mauchline. Such a report as James Gray’s of finding Burns reading -poetry with his children and hearing the older boys recite their -lessons does not refute the tales of boisterous revelry in taverns; -both are true. The sole difference is that Burns in Tarbolton was an -unimportant young man amid a group of other youths; in Edinburgh he was -partly lost in the crowds; in Dumfries he was a prominent figure whose -every action was noted. He did not degenerate in Dumfries, but neither -did he become a chocolate seraph. - -Fortunately it is no longer necessary to rely on conjecture and -second-hand reports in studying Burns’s last years. The letters which -passed between two of his most intimate friends, John Syme of Dumfries -and Alexander Cunningham of Edinburgh, are now available to replace -guess-work with facts. Of all the friends of Burns’s last years, Syme -is now the one who emerges most clearly, and with most credit to -himself. A man of good education, a college friend of Dr. James Currie, -the poet’s first biographer, Syme regarded Dumfries as a place of exile -in which Burns’s society was almost the only redeeming feature. Having -lost his small paternal estate of Barncailzie near Kirkcudbright, -he had managed to recoup his fortunes by getting appointed to the -sinecure post of Collector of Stamps at Dumfries. He first met Burns -in 1788, but not until two years later did they become intimate. Syme -was a man of sentiment in the best tradition of Henry Mackenzie and -_The Sorrows of Werther_. He went into raptures over thunderstorms -and desolate scenery; he read Zimmermann’s _Treatise on Solitude_; he -thought Clarinda’s the finest love-letters ever written. Rhapsodic and -absent-minded, he was the sort who could set off on a long-planned -hunting-trip and find on arriving at his destination that he had -forgotten his dogs. Maria Riddell paid warm tribute to his good head -and excellent heart, but added that in matters of business he wanted -method: ‘He is always in a labyrinth of papers and accounts, and, -somewhat like the cuttlefish, he obscures himself altogether in a mist -of his own creating.’ - -Burns admired Syme’s education and literary taste; Syme thought the -poet ‘a noble fellow’, admired his wit and brilliant conversation, but -could not admire his wife. ‘Methinks he has exhibited his poetical -genius when he celebrated her’, he said to Cunningham after his first -sight of Jean. Before long Burns was submitting his new poems to Syme -and expressing implicit confidence in his judgement, though Syme avowed -that he scarcely dared to touch a line of them. Sometimes the two would -meet in a boisterous crowd at a tavern; again they would spend a quiet -evening over a single bottle of wine in the little croft of Ryedale -which Syme regarded as his refuge ‘from the frivolous and dissipated -society’ of Dumfries. Without Burns, said Syme, his life in the town -would be ‘a dreary blank’. Syme had set himself up as a clearing-house -for humorous and satirical verses written or collected by his friends, -and Burns quickly became the chief contributor to the hoard. Some of -the verses compelled caution in sharing them. Of the epigram on the -Loyal Natives Club, for instance, Syme told Cunningham that, though he -and Burns were ‘far from differing from them on sentiments of loyalty, -we differ on _sentiment_, abstractly considered. They scarcely know -the meaning of the word Sentiment, & their Society consists in roaring -& drinking.’ ‘Don’t,’ he added after quoting the epigram, ‘let any -Dumfries person see this, for one of the Savages, if he heard it, -might cut Robin’s pipe.’ - -Syme’s letters abundantly illustrate what he meant by ‘frivolous and -dissipated society’. When the Caledonian Hunt met at Dumfries in -November, 1794, ‘Baker, one of the knowing english Squires on the Turf, -made an elegant appearance by insulting in the grossest manner Squire -Walter Riddel of this place, who pursued him to Durham and made him -ask pardon, which is published in our papers of last week.’ On the -same occasion the Honourable Ramsay Maule of Panmure showed that for -once at least Burns was justified in the tone of a satirical epigram, -for Panmure and some drunken companions smeared a helpless underling’s -hair with mustard and stuck it full of toothpick quills, ‘by way of -hedgehogging him’. That Burns gnashed his teeth and passed by on the -other side when he encountered such members of the organization to -which he had dedicated his Edinburgh _Poems_, is no ground for wonder. -He had larded the Caledonian Hunt with flattery, and they were behaving -like cads and bullies. - -But though Burns shrank from the Caledonian Hunt he did not always -avoid similar company. There were meetings at which he and Syme drank -bumpers out with wild Irishmen--such meetings as led Thomas Telford the -engineer jovially to warn Burns that if he went on ‘in his old way, -not even a _she Devil_ will be able to meet with a Milt in him.’ There -was a drunken brawl with one Captain Dods, who took hot exception to -the poet’s toast, ‘May our success in the present war be equal to the -justice of our cause.’ That Burns escaped a duel only because he was -not the Captain’s social equal did not lessen his humiliation. Most -biographers have held that such a toast in the presence of gentlemen -holding the King’s commission was a huge breach of the proprieties, -and so it was--if Burns was not goaded into giving it. Nothing in the -record as it stands forbids belief that Dods, or some other officer -who knew that Burns was suspected of sympathy with the French, may -have called for a round of loyal toasts with the deliberate intention -of embarrassing the poet. In that case, nothing could have been neater -than Burns’s evasion, and since nothing came of the episode it is to -be presumed that Samuel Clarke succeeded in making the sobered Dods -realize what his objection to the sentiment implied. - -But there were other similar episodes which cannot be so favourably -explained, and which multiply proof that Burns had never acquired -finesse, whether in toasting, flattering, or sinning. Whatever he did -was done so forthrightly that it attracted attention. And the moment he -attracted attention his companions recollected that after all he was a -peasant received on sufferance into gentle company. The outcome might -be expulsion from the house for conduct which a gentleman born need -not even have apologized for, it might be a verbal attack like Captain -Dods’s, or it might be merely a tacit resolve to drop him forthwith. -The Edinburgh experience repeated itself in Dumfries. Burns’s -ill-repute in certain quarters during his life and after his death was -not owing to his being a sinner above the other Caledonians, but simply -to his lack of the social standing which enabled Kames and Braxfield -and Boswell to misbehave without penalty, and which would have tempered -the sting of his satirical outbursts. - -Occasional public drunken squabbles are not the only evidence that -during these last years Burns’s nerves were often exacerbated. The -loyal Syme once undertook to rebuke him for some of his wild doings -and sayings. His language was too strong--telling the story afterwards -he admitted, ‘I may have spoken daggers, but I meant none.’ The poet, -his face black with anger, fumbled with his sword-cane. Syme, half -laughing, half serious, exclaimed, ‘What! and in my own house, too!’ -The conscience-stricken Burns flung away the cane, burst into tears, -and positively grovelled in contrition on the flagstone floor. It is -not a pleasant scene, and though the vividness with which it stayed in -Syme’s memory is indication enough that it was exceptional, it cannot -be ignored. No man, drunk or sober, whose nerves were normal could have -behaved so. - -Fortunately the vividness of Syme’s memory is not the only proof that -such conduct was exceptional. Others besides Syme who were nearest to -Burns in his last years concur in their loyalty and affection. At the -end of 1790 Alexander Findlater reported to his official superior, -Supervisor Corbet, that Burns was ‘an active, faithful & zealous -officer’, gave ‘the most unremitting attention to the duties of his -office (which, by the bye is more than I at first looked for from -so eccentric a Genius)’, and might ‘be considered a credit to the -profession’. And the judgment which Findlater thus expressed at the -beginning of the poet’s Excise career he reaffirmed after his death. -Others testified to their regard in deeds as well as words. Though -Burns continued to display his life-long preference for the company -of extravagant and _outré_ sorts of people the best men in the Excise -were the ones who esteemed him most. John Lewars, for example, brother -of the Jessie of the songs, was a man of some education, and above -the level of the common riding-officer. His father had been Collector -at Dumfries, and thus a man of standing in the community. Burns -called Lewars ‘a young fellow of uncommon merit--indeed, by far the -cleverest fellow I have met with in this part of the world’, and Lewars -reciprocated the poet’s affection by service to him and his family -during his illness and after his death. And that Burns’s long absence -from duty did not bear more heavily on him was due to the kindness -of Adam Stobbie, a young expectant who throughout the spring of 1796 -performed Burns’s rounds without pay, that the poet might continue to -draw his full salary. - -Fortunately, too, Syme records bright passages as well as dark in the -last years. There were evenings at Ryedale when they consumed more -cups of tea than bottles of wine, and when ‘Robin’s confounding wit’ -played as sharply as it ever did over a punchbowl. In 1793 and 1794 -there were brief excursions with Burns into Kirkcudbright on which -the mercurial poet displayed every facet of his nature, bursting into -furious rage over a spoiled pair of boots, fulminating brilliantly -satirical epigrams against the Earl of Galloway, announcing that -he would dine nowhere where he could not ‘eat like a Turk, drink -like a fish and swear like the Devil’, and anon proving a decorous -and fascinating houseguest at St. Mary’s Isle, seat of the Earl of -Selkirk, whose son Lord Daer had given Burns his first glimpse of -the peerage. Burns still shrank from the ordeal of encountering such -exalted folk--‘I am indeed ill at ease whenever I approach your -Honorables & Right Honorables’--though now for a different reason. In -1786 the consciousness of his own rusticity had been uppermost; in -1794 he did not wish to be laid open either to a fresh snub or renewed -condescension. But his last recorded intercourse with the peerage was -as pleasant--and as dangerous--as his first. The Earl of Selkirk was -one of the few Scottish peers who were Whigs at a time when all power -belonged to the Tories; thus meeting Burns on congenial grounds he -helped to draw him into the last of his ill-advised meddlings with -politics by interesting him in the parliamentary campaign of Patrick -Heron of Heron. So to the last the peerage influenced Burns against -his own best interests. Nevertheless this visit to St. Mary’s Isle is -refutation enough of the charge that in his last years Burns had sunk -so low that gentlefolk shunned him. The man who so charmed the Earl’s -young daughter, Lady Mary Douglas, that she lent him a volume of music -and entered into correspondence about his task of fitting Scottish airs -with words, can scarcely have been the social outcast some biographers -have portrayed. In fact, he strikingly resembles the man who in 1787 -swept the Duchess of Gordon off her feet, and won the esteem of Lady -Harriet Don and the Dowager Countess of Glencairn. - -Despite their intimacy, it would be false to claim that Syme shared all -Burns’s interests. No one man could do that. The very topic on which -Burns and Lady Mary found common ground was outside Syme’s range. He -never could understand what Burns saw in the crude and half-literate -James Johnson, because he never understood the bond of fellowship -established by mutual devotion to Scottish folk-song. Nevertheless, -Syme was probably the closest to Burns of all his Dumfries friends, and -knew--as certain impassioned defenders like Anna Dorothea Benson could -not--the worst as well as the best in his later conduct. The man who -noted that ‘Robin’s temper is not cold and frugal’, and who did not -hesitate to record the sword-cane story and certain other episodes, -cannot be charged with allowing affection to obscure the full truth -about his friend. Hence Syme’s deeds and words at the time of Burns’s -death give as reliable a verdict on the poet’s last years as can now be -reached. - -As Burns’s health failed in 1796 Syme watched him with increasing -anxiety. As long as he could he hoped for recovery, but when the poet -returned from the Brow Well his ‘cadaverous aspect and shaken frame’ -told the truth which the doctors confirmed. On July 17 Syme wrote to -warn Cunningham and to urge him to press their friend’s petition to the -Commissioners of Excise that they continue his full salary. Two days -later, when Syme called at the little house in Mill Street, he saw the -hand of Death visibly fixed on Burns: - - ‘I cannot dwell on the scene. It overpowers me--yet gracious God were - it thy will to recover him! He had life enough to acknowledge me, and - Mrs. Burns said he had been calling on you and me continually. He - made a wonderful exertion when I took him by the hand. With a strong - voice he said, “I am much better today--I shall soon be well again, - for I command my spirits & my mind. But yesterday I resigned myself to - death.” Alas it will not do.’ - -Syme was already consulting with Patrick Miller, John M’Murdo, Dr. -Maxwell, and other Dumfries friends to set measures afoot for the -welfare of Jean and the children; when he wrote again on the 21st, -shaken by the ‘variety of distressful emotions’ stirred by Burns’s -death, he gave further details of their plans, and urged Cunningham to -launch a similar plan in Edinburgh and to see that a proper obituary -was prepared. Here Cunningham blundered. He entrusted the obituary to -George Thomson, and the latter’s remark that Burns’s ‘extraordinary -endowments were accompanied with frailties which rendered them useless -to himself and his family’ roused the Dumfries friends to indignation. -‘We were much hurt at this,’ said Syme, ‘& reckoned it indelicate, if -not unfeelingly superfluous on that occasion.’ - -These feelings were intensified by the appearance in the London -_Chronicle_ of a longer article, also by Thomson, which included -assertions that Burns’s ‘talents were often obscured and finally -impaired by excess,’ that ‘his conduct and his fate afford[ed] but too -melancholy proofs’ of his possessing the failings as well as the powers -of genius, and that, ‘like his predecessor Fergus[s]on, though he died -at an early age, his mind was previously exhausted.’ Thomson had never -been in Dumfries, and had never met Burns. The friends in Dumfries who -read his article did not concur. Syme’s comment was brief and pointed. -These statements were ‘d----d illiberal lies’. On that comment, by -the man who knew him best in his last years, the case for the defence -of Burns against the stories of his deterioration in Dumfries may be -allowed to rest. - - - - -IV - -WOMEN - - -Burns was twenty-six before he ever entered the home of a woman -sufficiently well-to-do to have carpets on her floors. Though the last -ten years of his life included many friendships with ladies, his basic -ideas of the other sex were the fruit of the peasant environment he -was reared in. His sentiment and chivalry were literary by-products; -underneath them was always the crude realism of the Ayrshire -countryfolk. In moments of stress it was only too apt to come to the -surface. - -The only subtlety the peasant women of Burns’s youth could claim was -that native to every daughter of Eve. Schooling was too expensive to -waste on girls. The majority, like Agnes Broun, could not write their -own names; many could not even spell out the Scriptures or the Psalms -of David in metre. Their fathers, their husbands, or the minister -could read the Bible to them, and thus they could obtain the light of -salvation at second hand. But this is not to say that they knew no -literature. In fact it was only among an illiterate population that the -songs and ballads of popular tradition were living realities. James -Hogg’s mother spoke for her whole class when she told Sir Walter Scott -that he had killed her ballads by writing them down. Learning to read -destroyed both the sense of reality in the traditional literature and -the retentiveness of memory which made its transmission possible. Had -Betty Davidson, Agnes Broun, and Jean Armour been literate women they -would not have furnished Burns with the mass of traditional literature -he owed to them. - -A girl’s real education in rural Scotland was obtained in the kitchen, -the dairy, and the fields. Almost as soon as they could walk boys and -girls alike helped with the sheep and cattle and in all the work of -seedtime and harvest. As they grew older the girls were trained more -and more for the indoor duties of which cooking was the smallest part. -Most of the clothing was made at home, from the carding and spinning -of the wool and flax to the sewing of the finished webs into garments. -Itinerant tailors made the Sunday clothes of the men; all the rest was -the work of the women of the household. Add to these activities the -manifold duties of kitchen and dairy and poultry yard and no peasant -woman could have reason to complain of lack of occupation. At harvest -time men and women alike turned out into the fields, the men to mow -with scythe and sickle, the women and boys to bind and stack the -sheaves and to glean after the reapers. - -It was from these barefooted illiterate lasses that Burns got his first -experiences in love and his whole simple theory of the relations of the -sexes. Woman as the peasant knows her, sharing his daily toil, is not -a superior being set apart for adoration. There is no mystery about -her except the endless mystery of sex. There may be companionship and -a more intimate sharing of the man’s interests than women of higher -rank attain. But the peasant woman cannot expect and does not get the -graces of deference. Burns’s attitude towards the girls of his class -differed in one respect only from that of any other possessive young -male. He was a poet, and from the very beginning poetry and sex were -inextricably mingled. When as a fifteen-year-old boy he helped Nellie -Kilpatrick to bind sheaves in the harvest field, and experienced the -primitive coquetry which sought his help in extracting nettle and -thistle stings from her fingers, his first impulses were those of any -adolescent just becoming conscious of desire. But the second impulse -was different. Unable to possess Nellie, he made a song about her. - -As we have seen, courtship among the peasantry was no private matter. -Not only did everyone know who was courting whom, but the aid of -interested friends was habitually enlisted in arranging trysts. -While still in his teens Burns displayed a command of the written -word--insufferably turgid though the few surviving specimens of his -early love-letters seem to us--which made him the chosen secretary -for his less fluent cronies. He himself fell into love and out again -with ease and frequency. But his early sweethearts are, like Nellie -Kilpatrick, names and nothing more. Burns’s statement that his -relations with women were entirely innocent until after he met Richard -Brown in 1781 is countered by Brown’s charge that he was already fully -initiated. As Henley says, it is one man’s word against another’s; -since Burns was not in the habit of lying about his own conduct we may -believe him. Where, when, or with whom his initiation took place is -both uncertain and unimportant. His own assertion that he ‘commenced -a fornicator’ with Betty Paton is subject to the discount always to -be charged against poetical versions of prose facts. The certainty -is that the years following his return from Irvine were loaded with -emotional tension by three women--Elizabeth Paton, Mary Campbell, and -Jean Armour. Of the three the one who has received the most attention -probably deserves the least. - -No glamour of romance shields Betty Paton. A servant of his mother’s at -Lochlie and Mossgiel, she succumbed willingly enough to the advances -of the young farmer whom his father’s death had just released from -tutelage, and in due course bore him a daughter in the spring of -1785. According to Gilbert Burns, Robert wanted to marry her, but was -dissuaded by his family, who feared that her coarseness would soon -disgust him. Perhaps so, but the only contemporary letter does not -include matrimonial desire among the feelings it hints at. After the -first embarrassment wore off and he and Betty had duly stood thrice -before the congregation of Mauchline Kirk to be admonished for their -sin, Burns brazened it out to the scandal of his stricter neighbours, -and Betty accepted it resignedly, knowing that such accidents would -happen and that they need not necessarily impair her future career. -Part of her resignation, however, may have been conviction that Robert -Burns had insufficient prospects to make marriage worth fighting for. -In the fall of 1786, when the Kilmarnock _Poems_ had supplied her -erstwhile lover with a little ready cash, Betty promptly demanded -maintenance for herself and her child. In settling the claim Burns -apparently had to pay over rather more than half his profits, besides -legally binding himself for the complete support and education of his -daughter. When on December 1, 1786, she signed with her mark the legal -discharge of her claim, Betty Paton disappeared from Burns’s life. -She was a merry lass; her lover had paid for his fun; the account -was closed--except for the black-eyed little girl being reared by a -long-suffering grandmother at Mossgiel. - -Jean Armour’s case was different, though it commenced, like Betty’s, -in purely physical attraction. To begin with, the status of the girls -was different, even though both were red-knuckled, barefooted country -lasses. Betty was merely a farm servant whose family ties, whatever -they were, were already broken. Jean was the eighteen-year-old daughter -of James Armour, a well-to-do master-mason and contractor in Mauchline. -She was educated to the extent of being able to read the Bible and -write her own name. The story of her first meeting with Burns is -probably legend, yet in spirit the anecdote is at least partly true. -Burns at a village dance, embarrassed by a too-faithful collie which -followed him about the floor, remarked as he expelled the animal -that he wished he could find a lass to love him as well as his dog -did. Whether or not Jean actually asked him a few days later, when he -found her bleaching linen on the green, if he had yet found such a -lass, the fact was that he had. From that moment until his death Jean -lavished upon him a docile and much-enduring devotion which leaves -nothing derogatory in the comparison. She was playing with fire and -must have known it. The scandal of Betty Paton was still fresh; Burns -was a notorious man, glorying in the reputation of village Lothario -and writing verses to warn the Mauchline belles how devastating he -was. Experience had convinced him that all women are sisters under the -skin--a dangerous half-truth which made trouble for him when he met -women of another social level. They may all be sisters under the skin, -but not on it or outside it. The fascination exerted so successfully -over girls of his own class was in fact disastrous training for -subsequent encounters with ladies. A lady may yield to a lover like any -peasant lass, but she expects some finesse in his approach. But in the -summer and autumn of 1785 Burns seemed as likely to enter Edinburgh -drawing-rooms as to enter Parliament. He was merely an unsuccessful -tenant-farmer with a dangerous talent for writing satirical verse and a -dangerous light in his eye when an attractive young woman was in sight. - -Between the tradition of his first meeting with Jean in 1785 and the -beginning of surviving references to the affair in February, 1786, its -history is a blank. On the surface Jean’s experience merely repeated -Betty Paton’s. She surrendered to Burns and in due course endured the -consequences. Yet on Burns’s side the cases were not alike. However -brazenly he may have begun his courtship he soon found that Jean roused -deeper emotions than Betty ever had. His first extant reference to the -affair, apart from verses in praise of Jean’s charms, was on February -17th, 1786, when he told John Richmond--who after a similar scrape -had fled to Edinburgh--that he had important news ‘not of the most -agreable’ with respect to himself. In other words, Jean had told him -she was pregnant. Entirely on his own initiative Burns undertook to do -the right thing he had successfully avoided, or been dissuaded from, -doing for Betty Paton. Sometime in March he gave Jean, if not marriage -lines, at least some written acknowledgement that she was or would be -his wife. That he acted in a certain glow of self-righteousness is -a fair deduction from the violence of his subsequent reaction. Rab -Mossgiel, the village Lothario, had behaved like a man of honour and -expected due recognition of his conduct. - -The recognition he got was humiliating in the extreme. The details can -be reconstructed only by inference from the result. Apparently Jean’s -parents, suspecting her condition, began to question her. She produced -Burns’s written pledge. A domestic storm burst, not so much because -Jean was to bear Burns’s child as because he expected Jean to bear -his name. To James Armour an illegitimate grandchild was preferable to -such a son-in-law as Robert Burns. Jean meekly surrendered her lines to -her father--throughout her life she was usually passive in the hands -of male authority--and Armour carried the document to Burns’s patron -and friend, Robert Aiken, whom he persuaded to cut out the names. Not -the least extraordinary element in the affair is the apparent belief -of a successful lawyer that a contract could be voided merely by -mutilating the written evidence. Armour’s desire publicly to humiliate -Burns was greater than his desire to protect his daughter. He succeeded -admirably. In the same letter in which the poet told Gavin Hamilton -that the document was mutilated he declared he ‘had not a hope or -even a wish to make her mine after her damnable conduct’, yet amid -his execrations he paused to invoke a blessing on his ‘poor once-dear -misguided girl’. The letter was the first of a series of denunciations -and repudiations of Jean much too loud and too shrill to be convincing. -They suggest that Burns had to talk at the top of his voice to maintain -the degree of indifference which he felt self-respect called for. - -Perhaps nothing in Burns’s whole life more completely demonstrates the -impossibility of judging him and the society in which he was reared -by the standards of nineteenth-century middle-class respectability. -When James Armour learned that the subscription for the Kilmarnock -_Poems_ was a success he showed that, though unwilling that his -daughter should bear Burns’s name, he was quite willing she should -share Burns’s money. Accordingly he sued out a writ _in meditatione -fugae_ to require Burns to guarantee the support of Jean’s expected -child. The news reached Burns, probably from Jean herself, and he acted -promptly. By formal deed of assignment he conveyed to Gilbert not only -his share in Mossgiel, but also the entire proceeds of his forthcoming -poems in consideration of Gilbert’s undertaking to provide for Betty -Paton’s child. Burns had checkmated James Armour, and so doing had -almost evened the honours for ungenerous conduct. By nineteenth-century -standards his conduct was caddish, but by the same standards Armour -could have done only one of two things--either expel his daughter from -his home, or protect her technical good name by insisting upon marriage -however distasteful the prospective son-in-law was. But even by his own -standards Burns was acting ignobly. The man who had written - - ‘But devil take the lousy loon - Denies the bairn he got - Or leaves the merry lass he lov’d - To wear a ragged coat,’ - -and who less than six weeks after the deed of assignment eloquently -reproached John Richmond for neglecting his late mistress and future -wife and her baby daughter, was allowing spite to degrade him below the -standards of the class to which he belonged by birth, and much further -below the standards he had consciously set for himself. This was not -acting according to the example of Harley the Man of Feeling. If the -episode stood by itself it might be easier to condone. Unfortunately -it is merely the first conspicuous incident in a series which includes -his remarks about Jean to Clarinda and Bob Ainslie, his neglect of -Jenny Clow, his attack upon dead Mrs. Oswald of Auchencruive, and his -lampoons of Maria Riddell, and which justifies Henley’s phrase that -such things ‘roused the cad’ in Burns. Where women were concerned, it -was always too easy for him to drop the thin cloak of acquired culture -and revert to his peasanthood. - -Alongside the Armour quarrel runs the mystery of Mary Campbell. Burns -himself began the mystery by his curiously veiled allusions to the -affair, but the real work of obfuscation was done by biographers who -erected upon exiguous foundations of fact an ornate superstructure of -legend. - -The exact date at which Burns composed the ‘Jolly Beggars’ is -uncertain--if it was really written after a slumming frolic with John -Richmond it must have been in 1785--but the closing episode is either -autobiography or prophecy. The Bard, whose sentiments in the closing -chorus are definitely Burns’s own, is depicted with a doxy upon either -arm. After the stormy spring and summer of 1786 Burns confessed -to Robert Aiken that he had plunged into all sorts of riot, Mason -meetings, and dissipation, to distract his mind from the humiliation -of the Armour affair. What form his dissipation took may reasonably -be guessed not only from Burns’s own temperament but from human nature -in general. Yet nothing about his relation with Mary Campbell is -free of doubt. All that can definitely be proved is that there was a -servant-lass of that name to whom Burns apparently addressed certain -lyrics and to whom he certainly gave a pair of Bibles bearing peculiar -inscriptions. It is useless to rehearse the endless controversy between -the romantics to whom Mary Campbell was a Lily Maid of Astolat and the -realists to whom she was just another girl who couldn’t say no. But -a few facts must be underscored. The critical analysis of the legend -made with caustic humour by Henley in 1896 and subsequently elaborated -by Professor Snyder has never been rebutted nor even answered. The -scripture texts Burns wrote on the fly-leaves of that Bible are such -as would have been chosen by a man to whom a frightened girl was -appealing for protection and who was impulsively promising it on his -word of honour as a man and a Mason. That he also sang Mary’s praises -as ‘Highland Lassie’ and in another lyric asked--for poetic effect -at least--if she would go to the Indies with him means little, if -anything. The enthusiasts prefer to forget that during the same summer -Burns said farewell to Eliza Miller in a lyric quite as fervid as any -of those addressed to Mary. - -Out of the mass of legend and conjecture the only solid facts which -emerge are that during this spring of 1786 Burns was having some -sort of a love affair with Mary; that she left Ayrshire in May, and -that she died in the early autumn. Burns may have turned to her for -consolation after the breach with Jean; the affairs may have been -simultaneous. Most biographers incline to the sequel theory on the -naïve assumption that love affairs, unlike electric batteries, are -always mounted in series and never in parallel. In view of the social -attitude of the Ayrshire peasantry the question of whether or not Mary -was technically chaste is both metaphysical and irrelevant. Burns’s -attitude toward the other sex was direct; perhaps the strongest -argument for Mary’s chastity would be the complete lack of reference -to her in his contemporary letters, were it not for his subsequent -description of her as ‘as charming a girl as ever blessed a man with -generous love’. Burns ordinarily meant such expressions in the most -literal sense. Despite the evidence in the Bibles that he had tried -again to do the right thing it is hard to believe that in retrospect -Mary would have touched him any more deeply than Jenny Clow or Anne -Park later did had it not been for her untimely death. She certainly -meant little in May and June of 1786. In the same month in which he -gave her the Bible he composed the long and bawdy ‘Court of Equity’; -throughout the summer his letters to his intimates mingle execration, -devotion, and regret for Jean Armour in precisely the same tones he -had used in April. A man who had really found an adequate new love -might be supposed to speak of the old one as Burns had spoken of Peggy -Thomson in 1784. Resentment of the Armours’ conduct might explain -the execration, but hardly the regret and certainly not the devotion. -If Burns really intended to make a new start in Jamaica with Mary -Campbell, it is strange indeed that he never hinted of it to his -friends--unless we accept the tradition, reported at second hand from -John Richmond, that Mary was a light-skirts whose character Richmond -and some other friends exposed to the poet. In that case, he would have -had good reason for silence. - -When in October he summed up his situation in a long letter to Robert -Aiken it was still Jean who was the cause of his secret wretchedness -and who was the source of ‘the pang of disappointment, the sting of -pride, with some wandering stabs of remorse’. The sole passage in -the letter which Snyder thought might apply to Mary--‘I have seen -something of the storm of mischief thickening over my folly-devoted -head’--may now be interpreted as referring instead to the disconcerting -reappearance of Betty Paton as a claimant for support. The sole -evidence surviving from 1786, apart from Burns’s lyrics, is his -sister’s story, told many years after his death, that one day in -October he received a letter which he read with a look of agony and -then crushed into his pocket as he silently left the house. Connecting -this story with Burns’s later statement that ‘a malignant fever hurried -my dear girl to her grave before I could even hear of her illness’, -biographers have assumed that the painful letter bore the news of -Mary’s death. But this, even granting perfect reliability to Isabella -Begg’s memory, is pure assumption. Burns’s sole references to her -were written from three to five years after the supposed event. With -one exception they were intended for the mystification rather than the -enlightenment of Robert Riddell and George Thomson. That exception is -the composition of ‘Thou Lingering Star’ and the letter to Mrs. Dunlop -which accompanied it--both of them written in a neurotic state close to -complete nervous breakdown. The Highland Mary we know is the creation -of biographers, and should be suffered to abide in the Never-Never Land -of romance. The truth about the Burns of flesh and blood had better be -sought in his relations with flesh and blood women. - -In these relations there were three main degrees. The foremost group -consists of women who profoundly stirred him, and on whom for a time -at least he concentrated his intellect and his affections as well as -his desires. In this group belong Jean Armour, Margaret Chalmers, -Clarinda, and probably Maria Riddell. Next come the women who engaged -his passing fancy, and for whom he felt some tenderness, but who did -not influence him deeply or long. Among these are Betty Paton, Anne -Park, Jean Lorimer, and Jessie Lewars. A woman who appealed to Burns on -either of these bases need not have been his mistress; in fact, only -three of those named ever yielded to him. But below these was a third -group, represented by Meg Cameron and Jenny Clow, who were mistresses -and nothing more--the mere conveniences of the moment. These last -never roused even a momentary spark of poetry in their lover. Judged -purely on the basis of literary by-product, Mary Campbell belongs in -the second group, but not in the first. Even her most ardent champion -might hesitate to assert that any lyric addressed to her is the equal -of ‘Ae fond kiss’ or ‘Of a’ the airts’. Jessie Lewars and Jean Lorimer -both inspired better songs than Mary ever did. - -But Burns’s tenderness, even for the women who meant most to him, was -often of a peculiar sort. Though he told Deborah Davies that ‘Woman -is the blood-royal of life; let there be slight degrees of precedency -among them, but let them all be sacred’, his practice was more -accurately summarized in what he said about love in confiding to George -Thomson his admiration for Jean Lorimer: - - ‘... I am a very Poet in my enthusiasm of the Passion.--The welfare - & happiness of the beloved Object, is the _first & inviolate_ - sentiment that pervades my soul; & whatever pleasures I might wish - for, or whatever might be the raptures they would give me, yet, if - they interfere & clash with that _first_ principle, it is having - these pleasures at a dishonest price; & Justice forbids, & Generosity - disdains the purchase!--As to the herd of the Sex, who are good for - little or nothing else, I have made no such agreement with myself; but - where the Parties are capable of, & the Passion is, the true Divinity - of love--the man who can act otherwise than as I have laid down, is a - Villain!--’ - -One fears that Burns remained on these chivalrous heights only when -the woman was unattainable; should she yield to him, she would too -readily take her place among ‘the herd of the Sex’. Certainly he -freely discussed his loves not only among his male friends but with a -patroness like Mrs. Dunlop. When, for instance, after his conquering -hero’s return to Mauchline in June, 1787, the Armours bade him welcome -and Jean succumbed once more, he lost no time in reporting the victory -to Smith and Ainslie. To put it briefly, beneath the veneer of -sentiment, beneath even the poetic response, Burns’s attitude towards -women of his own age was the elemental possessiveness which regards sex -primarily as a ribald jest. His sincerest tenderness belonged to no -woman as deeply as it did to his children, however or wherever begotten. - -Burns never revealed more truly his own feelings than in the ‘Poet’s -Welcome to his Bastart Wean’ which hailed the birth of his eldest -child, Betty Paton’s daughter. Its mixture of bawdry with affection, of -rollicking defiance of the unco guid with exultant pride in paternity, -may distress the tender-minded who prefer not to admit the existence -in parental relations of even a sublimated carnality, but it is the -very essence of Burns himself. His plainest expressions of his love -for his children occur not in letters to women but in letters to his -most intimate male friends, and often amid flagrant ribaldry. It was -not to Mrs. Dunlop that he wrote that Jean’s first twins ‘awakened a -thousand feelings that thrill, some with tender pleasure and some with -foreboding anguish, thro’ my soul’; it was to Robert Muir, companion -of his revels and recipient of broad jests. Robert Aiken was told that -the feelings of a father outweighed in Burns all the sound reasoning -and all the bitter memories that joined in urging him to carry through -the Jamaica project. ‘God bless them, poor little dears!’ he exclaimed -to John Richmond on reporting the birth of the twins. Such remarks to -men before whom he had no motive for acting a part, are more convincing -proof of real feelings than are the dissertations, garnished with -quotations from James Thomson’s dramas, on parental anxieties in his -letters to Mrs. Dunlop. - -Especially notable is the letter he wrote to Bob Ainslie on August -1, 1787, in response to the latter’s announcement of the birth of an -illegitimate son. Beginning, ‘Give you joy, give you joy, my dear -brother!’ he goes on to say that he has ‘double health and spirits -at the news’, and to welcome Ainslie to ‘the society, the venerable -Society of Fathers’. There follow eight lines of the metrical version -of Psalm 127, obviously quoted with as much sincerity as when he later -used it, in quite different context, in writing to John M’Auley. -He continues, ‘My ailing child is got better, and the Mother is -certainly in for it again, and Peggy [Meg Cameron] will bring me a half -Highlandman’, and announces his intention of getting a farm, bringing -them all up in fear of the Lord and of a good oak stick, and of being -the happiest man alive. Then the letter shifts to snatches of bawdy -song, some quoted, others apparently impromptu. This primitive joy -in paternity, this exultation over the mere fact of birth, whether -the child was his own or another’s, was part of his heritage from the -Scottish soil. The same spirit shows three years later in his reply to -Mrs. Dunlop’s news that her widowed daughter Mrs. Henri had borne a -posthumous son: - - ‘... I literally, _jumped for joy_--how could such a mercurial - creature as a Poet, lumpishly keep his seat on the receipt of the best - news from his best Friend--I seized my gilt-headed Wangee rod, an - instrument indispensably necessary in my left hand in the moment of - Inspiration & Rapture--and stride--stride--quick & quicker--out skipt - I among the broomy banks of Nith to muse over my joy by retail.’ - -Nor did his paternal emotions dissipate themselves in rejoicings over -birth. Testimony abounds of his devotion to his children, his concern -over their proper education, his anxiety for their futures. James Gray -on evening visits in Dumfries found him explaining poetry to the eldest -boy and hearing him recite his lessons; Maria Riddell was impressed -by his constant devotion to the children’s welfare. But towards their -mothers, once the fancy had passed, he was indifferent. ‘I am very -sorry for it, but what is done is done’, he said of Meg Cameron, and -though Clarinda’s rebuke stung him into something like remorse for -his treatment of Jenny Clow, even there his last thought was for his -son: ‘I would have taken my boy from her long ago, but she would never -consent.’ The one possible exception to his generalization was Jean -Armour, but Jean’s later history belongs elsewhere, beside Clarinda’s. - -In brief, Burns’s experience among women up to his departure for -Edinburgh had made him the ‘magerfu’’ man Sentimental Tommy had -longed to be. His love-making might involve him in tangles which he -was neither astute nor callous enough to avoid, but he had found his -attraction enhanced by his reputation as a dangerous man. He had -learned the value of aggressiveness; he had not learned finesse. When -he met ladies his lack sooner or later became painfully evident. - -Among women of the upper classes he was at his best in association with -those whose interest was motherly rather than actually or potentially -amorous. Before going to Edinburgh he had charmed middle-aged Mrs. -Stewart of Stair as well as mature Mrs. Lawrie, wife of the minister of -Loudoun, and had begun with Mrs. Dunlop a correspondence which ended -only on his deathbed. In its progress this friendship reveals much of -what was best in his relations with women; in the estrangement which -interrupted it it reveals also his shortcomings. Since, moreover, -it is the only one of his friendships in which both sides of the -correspondence have been preserved, no guess-work is required in -tracing its rise and decline. - -Frances Anna Wallace Dunlop belonged by both birth and marriage to the -old landed gentry of Scotland, and claimed collateral descent from -Sir William Wallace. In the autumn of 1786 her mind was ‘in a state -which, had it long continued my only refuge would inevitably have been -a mad-house or a grave; nothing interested or amused me; all around -me served to probe a wound whose recent stab was mortal to my peace, -and had already ruined my health and benumbed my senses.’ Grief at -her husband’s recent death had something to do with it, but the chief -wound was her eldest son’s extravagance and marital scandals. About -the beginning of November a copy of the Kilmarnock _Poems_ reached her -and her reading of them--significantly enough it was ‘The Cotter’s -Saturday Night’ and other poems based on the genteel tradition of -eighteenth-century poetry that won her admiration--roused her to fresh -interest in life. ‘The poignancy of your expression’, as she put -it, ‘soothed my soul.’ To one reading her letters without reference -to her age she often sounds like a decrepit and almost dying woman. -Actually when she began writing to Burns she was only fifty-six, and -she outlived him by nineteen years. She opened the correspondence -with an order for six copies of the poems; the flattered poet could -scrape together only five, which he dispatched with a complimentary -letter that included the news that he was planning a second edition in -Edinburgh. Mrs. Dunlop immediately elected herself one of his chief -advisers, and among other things suggested that in revising his poems -he should avoid describing her great ancestor as ‘unhappy Wallace’ and -should make the Twa Dogs sit down more decorously. Later she offered -the two most inept of all the recorded plans for the poet’s future. -In February, 1787, she proposed that he should use the proceeds of -his Edinburgh subscription to buy a commission in the army. The man -who wrote ‘I murder hate by field or flood’ and whose dislike for -‘the lobster-coated puppies’ of the army more than once got him into -hot water would have cut a strange figure in any officers’ mess. On -April 1, 1789, she suggested his applying for the newly established -Professorship of Agriculture at Edinburgh University. The self-taught -peasant would have cut a still stranger figure as the colleague of -Robertson, Cullen, and Blair. - -The history of the first few months of his friendship with Mrs. Dunlop -reveals how far Burns was from understanding the finer points of -etiquette. To begin with he ignored her suggestions for altering his -poems. True, he could do nothing else. Her advice was merely typical of -what genteel Scotland thought about his work. To accept all emendations -would have reduced his poems to namby-pamby; to accept some and reject -others would have doubly offended those whose criticism he ignored. -But he should have explained this to Mrs. Dunlop, and did not. Her -vexation at the discovery was intensified by an innocent blunder he -made in arranging for the delivery of copies she had ordered for her -stepmother, the dowager Lady Wallace of Craigie. The copies went -instead to the estranged wife of her eldest son, also a Lady Wallace -but regarded by her mother-in-law as the worst blemish the family tree -had ever suffered. - -Their relations were first put on a really cordial basis when Burns -visited her at Dunlop House in July, 1787. Annoyance at his social -blunders evaporated before the charm of his personality, and thereafter -the correspondence on both sides took a new tone of affection and -esteem. Her interest in Burns was generous and motherly. She plied him -with good advice, which he generally ignored, and frequently added -substantial help with both money and influence. Towards her Burns seems -to have felt as many a man does towards his mother--she bored him but -he loved her. She often accused him, no doubt justly, of not reading -her letters. They were long, tedious, and wholly unpunctuated; he -probably glanced over them when they arrived and then laid them aside -for more careful reading at a leisure hour which never came. But though -he seldom answered her questions he took her unreservedly into his -confidence--or almost unreservedly. He never did more than hint about -Clarinda, but he told her everything about Jean. In fact he must have -told almost too much; it is hard otherwise to explain his embarrassment -over breaking the news that he had finally married the girl who had -borne him ‘twice twins in seventeen months’. - -By the beginning of 1788 the friendship was so firmly established -as to survive a most humiliating incident. When he visited Dunlop -House on his way back from Edinburgh in February his reception was -warm and flattering. Mrs. Dunlop’s unmarried daughters were agog with -admiration. Miss Rachel was hard at work on a painting of his muse, -Coila, as to whose appearance she sought the poet’s expert advice. Miss -Keith discussed poetry with him and revealed the somewhat surprising -fact that she had never read Gray. Before he left he had promised to -lend the ladies his copy of Spenser, a recent gift from William Dunbar -of Edinburgh. When a few days later he fulfilled his promise he added -to the parcel a copy of Gray as a present for Miss Keith, only to learn -that a plebeian poet must not presume too far. Mrs. Dunlop replied that -she did not allow her daughter to receive presents from men who were -not members of her own family, and proposed either to return the whole -book or at most to permit Miss Keith to tear out the pages containing -the poems she liked best. That Burns continued in friendship with Mrs. -Dunlop after this rebuff is eloquent proof of the esteem in which he -held her; he had lampooned others of the gentry for less. - -Not that this was the only time when Mrs. Dunlop made him conscious -of the difference in their ranks. Her occasional gift of a five-pound -note, though usually tactfully designated as for some special purpose -or occasion, always hurt his pride--the more so because he could not -deny that he needed the money. He silently drew the line, however, -when she proposed, in one of those fits of economy which sometimes -afflict the well-to-do, that he help to sell some decorative fringe -which she had been manufacturing. Over this as over others of his sins -of omission she displayed an irritability more like a schoolgirl’s -than a grandmother’s; most schoolgirlish in its evanescence. A thorough -scolding which sounded like a total breach of relations would be -countered by some new poems or new compliments from Burns, and her next -letter would contain a five-pound note for the latest baby. - -Though as Burns became more heavily burdened with labour and -responsibility his letters grew shorter and fewer than at the peak -of the correspondence during the summer of 1788, no serious rift -appeared until December, 1792. When it came it was the result of -Burns’s pride working in combination with his want of tact. Among -the servants on Mrs. Dunlop’s estate was a milkmaid named Jenny -Little, whom Burns’s success had inspired to burst into rime. Burns -had already endured a good deal of her output, both from manuscripts -sent to him by Mrs. Dunlop and from a pilgrimage of adoration which -Jenny had made to Ellisland in 1790--an unsuccessful pilgrimage, for -she had found the poet laid up with a broken arm and in no mood for -entertaining an aspiring poetess. When Burns reached Dunlop in 1792 he -found his patroness’s interest in her protégée still unshaken. With -her assistance Jenny had recently printed her poems, and Mrs. Dunlop -produced the volume with the request that Burns give his opinion of -certain of the verses which she pointed out. He said, ‘Do I have to -read all those?’ in a tone which she afterwards described as the -equivalent of a slap in the face. - -It was supreme tactlessness. Burns was bored and showed it. A more -politic man would have waded through the verses however much his jaw -might ache with suppressed yawns. But boredom was not the worst aspect -of the incident from Burns’s point of view: his pride was wounded. Of -all his patrons in the upper ranks of society Mrs. Dunlop alone had -kept up her interest in him and had appeared to treat him as an equal. -Now she unconsciously revealed that she saw no _essential_ difference -between his writing and Jenny Little’s. To her he was after all merely -a peasant poet with the accent on the adjective; the difference between -him and Jenny Little was a difference in degree and not in kind. Both -wrote in dialect; she failed to see that one wrote Scots poetry and the -other Scots twaddle. - -The incident illustrates once more what Maria Riddell meant when she -described Burns as devoid in great measure of refinement and social -graces. The abrupt and masterful manner, successful with the girls of -his own original class, sooner or later annoyed other ladies besides -the Duchess of Gordon. Mrs. Dunlop, however, did not allow her vexation -to cause an immediate coolness; she contented herself with a lengthy -silence followed by an explanation of her reasons for being offended. -Yet when the real break came two years later Burns’s unbridled tongue -and pen were again at fault. Mrs. Dunlop heartily disapproved of his -sympathy with the French Revolution, and had warned him more than once -to drop the subject in his letters. Inasmuch as four of her sons and -one grandson were or had been in the army and two of her daughters -were married to French royalist refugees, Burns should have known that -her sympathies would be Tory. Yet in face of her warnings he wrote -in January, 1794, the most outspoken of all his political remarks, -describing Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as a perjured blockhead -and an unprincipled prostitute who had met their deserved fate at -the hangman’s hands, and adding a guarded hope that revolutionary -principles might have more scope in England. This time Mrs. Dunlop -broke off the correspondence. Though Burns made two attempts during -the next year to reopen it, she maintained dogged silence until his -pathetic letter of farewell, written on his deathbed, at last broke -down her reserve. Her letter of reconciliation was almost the last -message which reached him before his death. For a century charitable -biographers conjectured that the estrangement must have been due to the -lady’s hearing reports that Burns was living an evil life in Dumfries. -The recovery of the complete text of his letter of January, 1794, -revealed the simple truth that the breach resulted from nothing more -serious than a failure in tact. There, as always, his trouble came -because he had not taken heed to his ways, that he offend not with his -tongue. - -The same trouble underlay his relations with other women of a rank -above his own--Margaret Chalmers, Agnes M’Lehose, and Maria Riddell, -though in different ways and different degrees. With Margaret Chalmers, -indeed, he maintained for a couple of years the nearest approach he -ever made to a non-flirtatious friendship with a woman of his own -age, but of the three just named this clever daughter of a gentleman -farmer in Ayrshire was the least removed in station from himself. -Unfortunately, only Burns’s side of the correspondence survives, and -that in fragments. Apparently it began, as usual, with love-making, but -when Margaret gently put a stop to that--probably by telling Burns that -she was already engaged to Lewis Hay, whom she married in 1788--their -relation ripened into a genuine friendship which produced what Cromek -rightly called some of the best letters Burns ever wrote. The poet took -her unreservedly into his confidence about his troubles with Creech -and his anxiety over his future, so that his three or four letters to -her during the height of his correspondence with Clarinda come like -a breath of bleak but pure air in that hothouse atmosphere. But the -friendship ended, apparently through Burns’s neglect. Two years after -her marriage he sent regards to her through another friend, and called -himself a wretch for not writing her, but seemingly he could not write -when he felt that his confidences might be shared with her husband. An -estranged husband would not have mattered, as his flirtation with Agnes -M’Lehose proved. - -The Clarinda episode has more prominence in most accounts of Burns than -it deserves. In its beginning and growth it was in fact quite untypical -of the man--his one intensive effort to act a part not natural to -him. Its development in this way was mainly the result of the accident -which threw him back on letter-writing instead of speech in conducting -his suit. Agnes M’Lehose when Burns met her was a plump young matron -about his own age. Born Agnes Craig of Glasgow and a relative of one of -the Lords of Session, she had married in romantic haste at the age of -seventeen a young lawyer named James M’Lehose, and when Burns met her -had already had eleven years of leisure to repent. Her husband, after -abusing and neglecting her and getting into debt and disgrace, had -at last been exiled by indignant relatives to Jamaica--that tropical -refuge for Britons who had made their native climate too hot for -them. His wife, trying to rear three sickly children on a microscopic -annuity, had turned for consolation to literature and religion. In -the latter she had espoused under the dynamic preaching of the Rev. -John Kemp the strictest tenets of Calvinism; in the former she had -familiarized herself with the most elegant authors of the day and -had taken to versifying occasionally with the fluency and inaccuracy -prevalent among women poets prior to Christina Rossetti and Emily -Brontë. Like most of Edinburgh in 1787 she had been eager to meet -Burns. When at last she did so at a tea-party given by her friend, Miss -Erskine Nimmo, she and Burns became so visibly absorbed in each other -as to rouse the amusement of the other guests. The poet’s experiences -hitherto with young women of the upper classes had been disappointing. -They were polite and attentive, but reserved. Here at last was an -indubitable lady, and a young and attractive one at that, who displayed -something like the enthusiastic attention he had been accustomed to -receive from the belles of Mauchline. Before the tea was over Burns had -accepted Mrs. M’Lehose’s invitation to a party of her own. If ever a -woman threw herself at a man’s head Agnes M’Lehose did, and Burns was -not the man to refuse such a challenge. A letter to Richard Brown in -the early days of his infatuation leaves no doubt that he thought he -had made a conquest; but he had reckoned without Clarinda’s Calvinism -and her social traditions. - -The affair might have spent itself in a passing flirtation had not -chance, in the form of a drunken driver who overturned a coach and -dislocated the poet’s knee, confined him to his room for several -weeks. His note explaining and deploring his inability to attend the -tea-party was answered by one offering sympathy and regret. Burns and -Mrs. M’Lehose both wielded free-flowing pens; their correspondence -rapidly gained momentum and fervour. By the third exchange of letters -she felt it her duty to remind him that she was a married woman. The -result may or may not have been what she intended. Assuring her that -his intentions were strictly honourable Burns seized the opportunity -to express far more ardent chivalry and devotion than he would -probably have ventured on had she been free. In reply she suggested -their writing under Arcadian pseudonyms--no doubt as evidence of -the strictly Platonic nature of their sentiments; displayed her -acquaintance with _The Spectator_ by calling herself Clarinda; and -suggested Sylvander for Burns. Having thus safely wrapped their -correspondence in asbestos they relaxed in a vapour-bath of emotion. - -Less than three weeks after Burns’s accident he was assuring Clarinda -that she was a gloriously amiable fine woman and was promising -life-long devotion. But he was not admitting her as yet into his -inner doubts and perplexities. Margaret Chalmers was the only woman -who shared those. In fact both Sylvander and Clarinda seemed to have -reserved their more intimate communications for personal speech. -Apparently not until their long-deferred second meeting in January did -Burns tell her about Jean and his children and Clarinda give him the -whole tale of her unhappy marriage. She also sought in both speech and -writing to convert him to Mr. Kemp’s particular brand of Calvinism. But -here even at the height of his infatuation she failed. The most she got -was a partial recantation of his liking for the heroic qualities of -Milton’s Satan. - -So long as communication was limited to pen and ink the affair for -Burns was little more than a literary exercise. After they began to -meet it became different and, in its effects on him, worse. Physical -nearness could not fail to stir a man of his temperament. Soon their -conversation was supplemented by caresses which Clarinda, however, -managed to keep within bounds. As a result, Burns left these interviews -with his blood at fever heat. A servant-girl named Jenny Clow, -successor to the Meg Cameron of the previous winter, provided the -consummation which Clarinda denied, and in due course added yet another -to his growing list of paternal, legal, and emotional perplexities. - -Clarinda was of course unaware of Jenny’s existence, but she soon had -other reasons for being uncomfortable. Edinburgh was not a city in -which a gentlewoman could be indiscreet and get away with it. More -than a dozen years later Euphemia Boswell told Joseph Farington that -Edinburgh’s chief drawback was that everybody knew all his neighbours’ -affairs. The poet’s visits to the Potterrow were freely discussed. Lord -Craig heard of them and was annoyed by his kinswoman’s indiscretion; -the Rev. Mr. Kemp heard of them and felt it his duty to admonish his -parishioner. When Clarinda confided these troubles to Burns they of -course roused him to new fervours of knight-errantry. Moreover, other -agitations were intensifying the emotional stress of the love affair. -A great lady named Mrs. Stewart who was expected to help his Excise -project chose to lecture him on the error of his ways; rumours were -afloat that William Creech was insolvent; above all there was bad -news from Mauchline. Jean’s parents had this time chosen the heavy -melodramatic role and had bidden their erring daughter not to darken -their doors again. She was being sheltered by friendly Mrs. Muir of -Tarbolton Mill, but her future was black. In these circumstances it is -unjust in the extreme to judge Burns’s conduct by the cool standards -of sobriety and sanity. The man was in such a state of frenzy that he -cannot be held accountable for his words nor even for all his actions. - -What had begun as a flirtation and had continued, in part at least, -as a piece of play-acting had by the middle of February become an -imbroglio. Burns and Clarinda, both of them sentimentalists whose -roused emotions were stronger than their reason, had gone so far that -they could no longer regard their relations as simple friendship. By -the time Burns set out on the 18th for Mauchline by way of Glasgow he -had indulged in a perfect delirium of sentiment and rash vows. If he -had not actually pledged himself to wait until James M’Lehose should be -considerate enough to die and leave Clarinda free to marry Sylvander it -at least appears that she expected him to wait. Meanwhile they were to -write to each other every day. - -The artificial and hothouse nature of the affair is fully demonstrated -by the change which came over Burns’s letters as soon as removal from -Edinburgh plunged him into the chilly air of everyday. The promise of -a daily letter was the first to fail. Burns reached Glasgow on the -evening of the 18th to find Richard Brown awaiting him at the Black -Bull Inn in the company of young William Burns, who had ridden up from -Mauchline with his brother’s horse. Before settling to a convivial -evening Burns managed to dispatch a hurried note to Clarinda, but it -was four days before he found time to write again. His next letter -shows how effectively those four days had brought him back from a -sentimental dream-world to crude reality. Doubtless William had brought -the latest bulletins about Jean, but no hint of them was passed on to -Clarinda. A feverish day of entertainment among the prosperous weavers -of Paisley was followed by two days of more decorous pleasure at -Dunlop House and then by another wild bout at Kilmarnock. The letter -from Kilmarnock is devoted mainly to a broadly humorous account of -his Paisley host’s troubles with a daughter who had been to boarding -school, a son who wanted a latchkey, and himself who thought it better -to re-marry than to burn. Not a word about Jean, scarcely a word about -worthy Mrs. Dunlop and none about artistic Miss Rachel and poetic Miss -Keith--in short, just such a letter as Burns might have written to -Bob Ainslie or Alexander Cunningham, and in comparison with all the -previous Clarinda correspondence as inappropriate as Falstaff in love. - -But this letter jars on the reader only because it is wrong in its -context. Two which he wrote after his arrival at Mauchline on the -23rd jar for a different reason. Only one of these, however, was to -Clarinda. She had given him a couple of little shirts for Baby Robert, -who was being cared for at Mossgiel. As soon as he had delivered these -and seen his family, Burns set off to interview ‘a certain woman’ at -Tarbolton Mill. ‘I am disgusted with her; I cannot endure her! I, -while my heart smote me for the prophanity, tried to compare her with -my Clarinda: ’twas setting the expiring glimmer of a farthing taper -beside the cloudless glory of the meridian sun. Here was tasteless -insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and mercenary fawning; there, polished -good sense, heaven-born genius, and the most generous, the most -delicate, the most tender Passion. I have done with her and she with -me.’ - -Of the many things in Burns’s life which might better have been left -unsaid or undone this letter might claim first place were it not for -the one he wrote to Bob Ainslie ten days later. Here he describes his -reconciliation with Jean. What makes this letter revolting is not so -much its biological detail as the realization that the alleged events -which Burns describes occurred less than a fortnight before Jean’s -confinement. On March 3 she again bore her lover twins, who did not -live even long enough to be baptized. Still worse, if it is true, is -his assertion that he had sworn Jean ‘privately and solemnly never -to attempt any claim on me as a husband, even though anybody should -persuade her she had such a claim, which she has not, neither during my -life nor after my death. She did all this like a good girl....’ Here, -however, it is more than possible that he was talking brazenly for -Ainslie’s edification; Henley’s doubt that Mrs. Armour could have been -reconciled to her daughter without a promise of marriage seems well -founded. Moreover the statement proves that by this time, whatever he -may have thought in 1786, Burns realized that the destruction of the -original marriage lines had not necessarily voided the contract. - -Whatever he said or did at his first interview with Jean he must, -before he returned to Edinburgh in March, have made up his mind that -sooner or later he would acknowledge Jean as his wife. The letters to -Clarinda during the remaining two weeks of his absence were noticeably -lacking in fervour. They contained, however, more news about his -personal affairs, especially the doubts and uncertainties that still -kept him hesitating between farming and the Excise, than any of the -earlier ones did. An unsolved mystery in his life is the nature of his -relations with Clarinda during the fortnight he spent in Edinburgh -in March. To the modern reader with full knowledge of the facts the -fervour of his latest letters seems still more forced and artificial -than before, but it may be questioned if this truth was equally obvious -to Clarinda. Indeed their final meeting, at which Burns presented her -with a pair of drinking-glasses, a poem, and an inscribed copy of -Young’s ‘Night Thoughts’, clearly had enough romantic intensity to -satisfy even Clarinda. Herein lies the mystery. The later developments -prove that Burns had told her nothing of his reconciliation with Jean, -yet Burns was not a man who could ordinarily act a part convincingly. -This time he must have tried. The results, combined with anxiety over -livelihood, are displayed in a letter of March 20, in which he told -Richard Brown that worry over his lease, ‘racking shop accounts’ with -Creech, ‘together with watching, fatigue, and a load of care almost too -heavy for my shoulders, have in some degree actually fever’d me.... -These eight days, I have been positively crazed.’ - -He returned to Mauchline on the 22d to receive his six weeks of -Excise instructions, publicly to acknowledge Jean as his wife, and -incidentally to compose a formula whereby to explain his action to his -friends and patrons: - - ‘I had a long and much-loved fellow creature’s happiness or misery - in my determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a - deposite.’ - -This statement with only slight variations he used to half-a-dozen -different correspondents. Whether he used it to Clarinda or not is -uncertain; he may have entrusted Ainslie with the delicate task of -breaking the news. However the news reached her, it quite naturally -angered her. If Burns wrote it to her she destroyed the letter, and we -know that he destroyed her reply calling him a Villain and accusing him -of perfidious treachery. When he visited Edinburgh again in February, -1789, she refused to see him and told Ainslie that she intended to keep -away from her windows while he was in town lest she catch a glimpse of -him in the street. - -In the fall of 1791, however, she had a chance to reopen the -correspondence. Jenny Clow in June, 1788, had undertaken some sort of -legal action against Burns and one purpose of his return to Edinburgh -in the following February had been to settle with her. Whatever the -nature of the settlement it had not helped much. When in 1791 Jenny -somehow communicated with Clarinda, the latter found the girl ill, -destitute, and friendless, in a miserable lodging. Clarinda’s discovery -of the means whereby Sylvander had managed to keep his courtship on -so lofty a plane must have been humiliating and disillusioning, but -she was woman enough to turn her discovery to account. Her letter to -Burns described Jenny’s condition briefly and effectively and suggested -that there was a striking contrast between his practice and the high -principles of generosity and humanity which he professed. She meant -her letter to sting, and it did. Burns begged her to relieve Jenny’s -immediate needs and promised personal action at the first opportunity. -At this point Jenny vanishes from the record. What Burns did, whether -Jenny lived or died, whether her son lived or died, if he lived what -became of him--all these are questions without answers. - -Meanwhile Clarinda had been attempting to re-establish her own life. -Her husband had sought a reconciliation, and she was planning to -join him in Jamaica. When Burns made his last visit to Edinburgh in -November, 1791, her departure was already arranged. She was fully -reconciled to Sylvander now, and for the first time their relationship -revealed simple and genuine emotion. The Arcadian names vanished in -the correspondence; she became ‘my dearest Nancy’ instead of Clarinda, -and when Burns returned to Dumfries, fully convinced that he had said -farewell forever, he produced the one really first-rate lyric Clarinda -ever inspired--‘Ae Fond Kiss, and Then We Sever’. - -The sequel was the last of the anti-climaxes which marked the affair. -Clarinda reached Jamaica to find James M’Lehose’s disposition not -sweetened by time, and a brood of mulatto children proved that he had -not suffered by her absence. She returned to Scotland on the same -ship which took her out. For some time after her return she did not -communicate with Burns. When she did so it was in terms of cautious -esteem which inspired him to so bombastic a reply that he shortly -afterwards tried to disguise its date by describing a transcript of -it as ‘the fustian rant of enthusiastic youth’. The first part of the -description is accurate. For Burns the episode was closed, and closed, -as it had opened, in posturing affectation of emotion. But Clarinda -lived on it for the rest of her long life, exhibiting his letters to -her friends after his death until some of them were worn to tatters. -Her caution, however, equalled her vanity. After some of the letters -had been surreptitiously transcribed and published in 1802 she went -over the manuscripts, destroying the addresses, scoring out or clipping -away proper names and erasing some of the more ardent love-making, and -being reduced at last in senile old-age to selling some of them for a -few shillings each. Sylvander’s was the happier fate after all. - -Meanwhile, whatever bombast or adoration her husband was addressing to -Clarinda, the ‘certain woman’ was lavishing on Burns the devotion he -had wished for at his first meeting. Various stories are told of how -and when he acknowledged Jean as his wife. The probability is that he -never did so, in the sense of going through a formal marriage service. -On April 28th he confided to James Smith that ‘Mrs. Burns’ was Jean’s -‘private designation’; a month later, in a letter to Ainslie, he avowed -the title ‘to the World’. By Scots law, avowal in the presence of -witnesses constituted a legal, though irregular, marriage; a peculiar -letter to Smith at the end of June suggests that Burns even evaded this -legal requirement: - - ‘I have waited on Mr. Auld about my Marriage affair, & stated that - I was legally fined for an irregular marriage by a Justice of - the Peace.--He says if I bring an attestation of this by the two - witnesses, there shall be no more litigation about it.--As soon as - this comes to hand, please write me in the way of familiar Epistle - that, “Such things are.”’ - -In other words, he was asking Smith--who had not lived in Mauchline for -two years--to testify, but not on oath, that Burns had acknowledged the -marriage in his presence. Armed with Smith’s letter, and another, he -then presented himself again before the minister, who overlooked the -doubtful legality of the evidence as two years before he had allowed -Burns’s doubtful status as a bachelor. On August 5th Burns and Jean -made their formal appearance before the Kirk Session, avowed their -marriage as of 1786, and were readmitted to the communion after ‘Mr. -Burns gave a Guinea note for the behoof of the Poor.’ - -All this time Burns was alternating between Mauchline and Ellisland, -to the detriment of his interests in each place. A man absent from his -farm every other fortnight could scarcely expect work to go forward -quickly, but there were no living accommodations for Jean and young -Robert until in October a neighbour, moving into Dumfries for the -winter, offered Burns the use of his house. But the periods of absence -roused Burns once more to lyric fervour for Jean, and the man who six -months earlier had pledged undying devotion to Clarinda composed ‘Of a’ -the airts’ in tribute to his wife. - -But it was the last song that can with complete certainty be connected -with Jean. She sank before long to the status of a hard-working, -child-bearing domestic fixture, losing her good looks--at first sight -of her in 1790 John Syme concluded that Burns’s lyrics in her praise -were poetic licence--but keeping her equable temper and her devotion -to her husband. Of all the women who had loved Burns more or less, and -whom he, more or less, had loved, she alone had to live with him. And -yet she continued to love him, not weighing his merits, but pardoning -his offences. She had things to pardon, though when he married her -Burns thought he had shaken himself ‘loose of a very bad failing.’ -Eighteen months after this announcement of reformation, Jean went home -to Ayrshire for a visit, and her husband strayed into the arms of Anne -Park at the Globe Inn. When the blonde barmaid in due course bore him -a child, and died in doing it, Jean took in the little girl and reared -her with ‘no distinction shown between that and the rest of their -children.’ Maria Riddell, whose words are just quoted, added that Burns -told her the story ‘with much sensibility’. - -Burns could not take Jean into the society to which he was himself -admitted, so she remained unnoticed at home, tending the children and -keeping the house in slatternly Scots fashion, but with a sober Scots -thrift which probably accounted for her husband’s living within his -income and at last dying with little more than the debts incurred -during his final illness. Burns seldom spoke of her in his last years, -but when he did so it was ‘with a high tribute of respect and esteem’. -Maria Riddell--perhaps a prejudiced witness--states that ‘he did -not love her, but he was far from insensible to the indulgence and -patience, “the meekness with which she bore her faculties” on many -occasions very trying to the tempers of most individuals of our sex.’ -One suspects, sometimes, that Burns would never have continued to love -any woman after he had won her; that no matter who she was, he might -still have summed up his marriage as he did to John Beugo: - - ‘Depend upon it, if you do not make some damned foolish choice, - [marriage] will be a very great improvement on the Dish of Life.--I - can speak from Experience, tho’ God knows my choice was random as - Blind-man’s buff. I like the idea of an honest country Rake of my - acquaintance, who, like myself, married lately.--Speaking to me of - his late step, “L--d, man,” says he, “a body’s baith cheaper and - better sair’t!”’-- - -Maria Riddell may have been one reason for Burns’s abrupt closure of -the correspondence with Clarinda in 1793. After Clarinda had refused -to continue it as an emotional communion he no longer needed it as an -intellectual one. He had found a woman friend who surpassed Clarinda as -much in intellect as she did in social position, and the only occasion -on which he reopened communications with Agnes M’Lehose was during his -subsequent estrangement from Mrs. Riddell--when he used the opportunity -to send Clarinda copies of the crude lampoons he had composed upon -Maria. - -Walter Riddell, younger brother of Burns’s friend at Friars Carse, -had compressed a good deal of experience into the first twenty-eight -years of his life. After a short period in the army he had married -an heiress who within a year made him a widower and the owner of an -estate in Antigua. In 1790 he met at St. Kitts Maria Banks Woodley, -youngest daughter of the governor of the Leeward Islands, and after a -brief courtship married her when she still lacked two months of being -eighteen. Though Maria’s mother was a native of St. Kitts, the girl had -been born and educated in England and soon after their marriage the -young couple returned there. - -According to one interpretation of a letter from Francis Grose to Burns -in January, 1791, they must have proceeded at once to an autumn visit -at Friars Carse, where Grose was also a guest. Grose told Burns that -‘after the Scene between Mrs. Riddell Jun^r and your humble Servant, -to which you was witness, it is impossible I can ever come under -her Roof again.’ The letter also refers to the Governor--‘a spoilt -Child with a Number of good Qualities’--whom its editor identifies as -Walter Riddell, Mrs. Riddell Junior being Maria. But there was also an -extremely senior Mrs. Riddell at Friars Carse, for Robert’s grandmother -lived with him. Hence the Junior may equally well have been Mrs. Robert -Riddell, and inasmuch as Maria had no roof of her own in Scotland until -1792, it is hard to see how any misconduct of hers could have shut -Friars Carse to Grose. - -If this was really Maria’s first meeting with Burns it was an -inauspicious start. But the early stages of the friendship are obscure. -The extant correspondence does not begin until February, 1792, and by -that time Maria’s life was so truly invaluable to Burns that to lose -her would leave a vacuum in his enjoyments that nothing could fill up. -By this time, too, she was the mother of a daughter, born in England -in August, 1791. Her husband was again in Dumfries, negotiating for -an estate, and Maria had gone to Edinburgh with the double purpose of -seeking expert medical advice and finding a printer for her narrative -of her voyage to the West Indies. To this latter end Burns introduced -her to his old friend Smellie in a letter which paid the highest -compliments to her intellectual and literary accomplishments--if -it can be called a high compliment to say that her verses ‘always -correct, and often elegant’, were ‘very much beyond the common run of -Lady Poetesses of the day’. The introduction resulted in a friendship -between Smellie and Maria of which the written records, being more -decorous than Burns’s own letters to the printer, were published by the -latter’s biographer. Maria liked to collect curios, and her interest -in Smellie might perhaps be thus explained. But the gruff and erudite -printer’s continued interest in Maria is further evidence that she had -brains as well as charm, though her letters are evidence enough. - -In the spring of 1792 Walter Riddell purchased the estate of Goldielea -near Dumfries, renamed it Woodley Park in Maria’s honour, and set up -as a country gentleman. More accurately, he paid a small deposit on -the purchase price without knowing how he would raise the main sum. -Burns visited frequently at Woodley Park, though its master bored -him. Walter Riddell apparently shared his brother’s convivial habits -without his brother’s modicum of literary and intellectual interests, -and the poet’s attitude towards him is more clearly shown by the almost -total absence of Walter’s name from his letters to Walter’s wife than -even by the crude epitaph which described the man as empty-headed and -poisonous-hearted. - -In letter-writing at least the friendship with Maria reached perihelion -in the autumn of 1793. Walter was then in the West Indies, trying to -raise money on his estate there, and Maria was living alone at Woodley -Park with her books, her music, and two baby daughters. By this time -Burns was ponderously flirtatious. Maria was the first and fairest -of critics, the most amiable and most accomplished of her sex, and -it was the final proof of his unhappy lot that when he was in love -‘Impossibility presents an impervious barrier to the proudest daring -of Presumption, & poor I dare much sooner peep into the focus of Hell, -than meet the eye of the goddess of my soul!’ At least one impassioned -lyric which originally began ‘The last time I cam o’er the moor And -passed Maria’s dwelling’ had been composed and submitted to the lady’s -criticism accompanied by a postscript which transparently disclaimed -personal application. In Walter’s absence, many of their meetings -during this autumn were at the homes of mutual friends or at the little -receptions which Maria held between the acts in her box at the theatre. -These latter, however, were sometimes subject to interruptions. On -at least one occasion Burns found an army officer--‘a lobster-coated -puppy’--already in possession, and withdrew without even announcing -himself. Maria chided him for his failure to appear and invited him -formally to share her box at the next performance; he kept her supplied -with all his latest lyrics, including those addressed to Clarinda. - -It would be a mistake to take Burns’s impassioned avowals too -seriously. Maria was a young and fascinating woman of the type which -pleases men better than it does members of her own sex, and Burns -thoroughly enjoyed her conversation. To the pleasures of intellectual -intercourse her company added a subdued erotic stimulation which he -expressed in the only language he knew. The very frankness of his -remarks and Maria’s calm acceptance of them is proof that they were -neither meant nor taken literally. - -And then came the breach seemingly inevitable in Burns’s relations with -every woman of higher station. Its details are still obscure. Even its -exact date cannot be determined, though it must have been in Christmas -week of 1793. The traditional story is that Burns was dining at Woodley -Park and that the men’s talk over their wine somehow got round to the -Rape of the Sabines. It was drunkenly agreed that on returning to the -drawing-room the men should stage a burlesque of the episode. They did, -and Burns, singling out his hostess as his prey, put too much ardour -into the game. Mrs. Carswell interprets the thing as a deliberate rag -on the part of the other men to get Burns to make a fool of himself. -Such at any rate was the result. After a stormy scene during which some -of the other ladies present tried to intercede for the poet he was -ignominiously expelled. The next day he grovelled in contrition before -the offended lady in the painfully humiliating ‘letter from Hell’. She -refused to be placated and after two more abortive efforts on Burns’s -part the breach between them was complete. - -This accepted story leaves unexplained several important details. -Foremost among them is the fact that in his apology Burns blames his -host for constraining him to drink more than he wished to. Maria -had told Smellie in November that Walter Riddell was in the West -Indies and was not expected back until spring. On January 12th, when -the breach with Burns had already occurred, she again mentioned her -husband’s absence. If these letters were correctly printed by Smellie’s -biographer, Walter Riddell could not have been the host; therefore -the scene could not have occurred at Woodley Park. The alternative -explanation is that it really happened at Friars Carse, with Robert and -Elizabeth Riddell in the roles usually assigned to Walter and Maria. In -this case Maria, hearing of Burns’s conduct, must have undertaken to -discipline him. - -Whatever the circumstances, Burns’s subsequent conduct was inexcusable. -During the early spring of 1794 he wrote several epigrams on Maria -which are utterly caddish, lacking alike in wit and decent feeling. One -of them he even offered to a London newspaper, the editor of which had -sense enough to reject it. He also wrote the long, dull, and vulgar -parody of Pope which bears the title ‘Esopus to Maria’ and which -attacks everything about Mrs. Riddell from her hair to her morals. -This last was meant for the ‘quite private’ delectation of John Syme -and one or two other intimates, but even if Burns had published it his -conduct could not have appeared in much worse light. The epigrams and -the ‘Monody on a Lady Famed for Her Caprice’ are enough in themselves -to put it beyond condoning. - -While Burns was thus exhibiting the worst side of his nature, his -victims’ circumstances were changing. Walter Riddell had returned from -the Indies without the money he had gone to raise, and in the course -of the spring Woodley Park was repossessed by its former owner, Walter -forfeiting his £1000 deposit on the purchase price as well as all that -he had laid out in improvements. On April 21st Robert Riddell died, -and Friars Carse was put on the market, the relations between the -two families being so uncordial that Elizabeth Riddell refused any -settlement which would leave her brother-in-law in possession of the -estate. Walter and Maria attempted the usual expedient of impoverished -gentry--a prolonged stay on the Continent--but found their way barred -by the armies of the French Revolution. Accordingly after a few -months in England they returned to the neighbourhood of Dumfries to -resume life on a much reduced scale. They settled at Tinwald House, a -tumble-down estate near Lochmaben, or rather Maria settled, for her -husband was absent most of the time. In May, 1795, they moved again, -this time to Halleaths, between Lochmaben and Lockerbie, where they -remained until they left Scotland forever in 1797. How much Maria had -heard of Burns’s conduct towards her no one but herself knew, and she -never told. When Currie published some of the letters referring to the -quarrel she affected complete ignorance of their relation to herself, -though it is hard to believe that some kind friend had not shown them -to her. - -If Burns showed the worst side of his nature in the quarrel, Maria -showed the best of hers in the reconciliation. Early in 1795 she made -the first move by sending him a book she had heard he wished to read. -He replied in a formal note in the third person which nevertheless -welcomed the overture and opened the way for further intercourse. By -the beginning of May he was writing in his old vein of flirtatious -gaiety and even confiding to Maria about the mysterious Reid miniature -of himself--mysterious because no one knows for whom he had it painted, -nor why. The woman who quarrelled with Burns in 1794 may have been -capricious, and have pushed her rigour further than was wise in dealing -with a man of Burns’s temperament. After all, twenty-one is not -infallible even when feminine and married. But the woman who reinstated -Burns in her good graces in 1795, after his caddish attacks upon her, -was certainly not petty. - -The renewed friendship had not long to live. Shadows of another sort -soon began to fall across it, for Burns’s health was breaking. A note -written at the end of May to accompany the loan of the Reid miniature -mentioned that he was so ill as scarcely to be able to hold pen to -paper; a month later he feared that his health was gone forever. The -autumn brought further affliction in the death of his little daughter, -and it was to Maria that he uttered the only existing record of his -grief: ‘That you, my friend, may never experience such a loss as mine, -sincerely prays R B.’ - -And so, through bereavement, illness, and despair, the passionate, -irritable poet and the vivacious young woman of the world drew towards -their last meeting. The bleak little watering-place, the Brow Well -on the Solway, was the scene. Maria’s health also was bad, and she -evidently, like Burns, lacked the funds to take her to a better resort. -On the 5th of July, 1796, she sent her carriage for Burns: not until -she saw him did she realize how serious his condition was. - -He was dying, and knew it. His overdriven heart, which had never wholly -recovered from the strain of doing a man’s work on insufficient food -at the age of fourteen, was giving out, and he was hastening his end -according to the best medical advice in Dumfries. A doctor who thought -that angina was ‘flying gout’ had ordered sea bathing, and the dying -poet was plunging himself daily in the chilly waters of the Solway, as -he had earlier in life sought to cure fainting-fits in a tub of cold -water at his bedside. Maria was startled by the visible stamp of death -on the features of the emaciated man who tottered from her carriage, -and her concern was increased by his almost total inability to eat. But -the presence of a young and attractive woman could still, as always, -rouse Burns to his best efforts, and his talk might even have been -gay--after his preliminary, ‘Well, Madam, have you any messages for the -other world?’--had Maria been able to forget his haggard countenance -long enough to reply in kind. - -As it was, they had ‘a long and serious conversation about his -present situation, and the approaching termination of all his earthly -prospects.’ The man who had never lied about himself, to himself or -others, now frankly faced the fact that he was dying. And the presence -of a sympathetic and intelligent listener urged him on to speech about -the matters nearest his heart. Two things perturbed him on the brink -of the grave--anxiety for his family, and anxiety for his fame. His -eldest son was not yet ten; there were three younger, and Jean was -hourly expecting a fifth; at least two others needed a father’s help to -lighten the stigma of illegitimacy. And as for his literary reputation-- - - ‘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 and improper freedom, and which he earnestly wished - to have buried in oblivion, would be handed about by idle vanity - or malevolence when no dread of his resentment would restrain them - or prevent the censures of shrill-tongued malice or the insidious - sarcasms of envy from pouring forth all their venom to blast his - fame.’ - -Could Burns have looked into the future, the prospect would have -deepened the pain in his harassed soul. His anxiety for his family -would have been allayed, to be sure, but not even in his darkest hour -could he have visualized the future of his personal and literary -fame. He foresaw attacks of his enemies; he did not foresee the -cowardice or treachery of his friends. He need not have worried about -his trivial or unguarded writings, for time automatically washes away -the sand and leaves the gold, if gold there be, and the publication -of trifling letters cannot harm their writer if the pattern of his -soul itself is not trifling. That spiritual descendants of Holy Willie -should deplore his best and strongest work and shake their heads over -passions of which their impotent pulses were incapable, that enemies -eager for revenge and underlings eager for drink should lie about their -relations with him--these things were to be expected. But that Bob -Ainslie, turned pious, should exemplify his own piety by preserving and -circulating Burns’s worst letters, that George Thomson should not only -ignore his dying wishes but even, before his corpse was in the grave, -rush into print with a distorted and melodramatic version of his last -years which would set the tone of biographies for a century to come, -that Gilbert should lack the courage to deny stories which he knew to -be false--all this, and much more, was mercifully hidden from him. But -it would have warmed his heart to know that the one intimate friend who -would come before the world with a truthful account of his character, -extenuating nothing, and setting nothing down in malice, was Maria -Riddell, on whom he had made unforgivable attacks, and who nevertheless -had forgiven him. The woman with whom the dying poet talked that day -until the distant bulk of Criffel turned dark against the sunset, and -the chill tide in which he had been ordered to bathe ebbed away from -the dismal flats of the Solway, was to prove herself the most devoted -friend of her sex he had ever had, Jean Armour always excepted. - - - - -V - -LIVELIHOOD - - -To Burns in the vigour of his early manhood the question of livelihood -seemed easily answered. He was a good enough ploughman to be assured -of the porridge and the few shillings a week which a skilled labourer -could earn on a Scottish farm. There was no degradation in such -service. The labourers, like the hired help on New England farms, ate -with the family and took whatever share in the conversation they were -capable of. Moreover, anyone, whatever his rank, who was capable of ‘a -sensible crack’ was sure of welcome in households which had either to -provide their own entertainment or go without. Not even the prospect of -dependent old age held any terrors. The tradition of the blue-gowns, or -licensed beggars, still persisted in rural Scotland. An old man past -work who could talk interestingly could count on a meal and a place -by the fire at almost any farmer’s ingle. Burns seriously thought of -this as a possible end of his own life. The expression of the idea in -several poems might be dismissed as rhetoric had he not repeated it -in the sober prose of his letters. He actually pictured himself as -spending his manhood in labour, love-making, and poetry and his old age -as a sort of Edie Ochiltree. - -Such a vision of course was adolescent. To fulfil it a man must have -no dependents. Burns seems to have imagined at first that if he could -help to keep the home together until his brothers and sisters were able -to establish themselves his responsibilities would end. The liberation -of his poetic talent entailed among other things a shrinking from the -burdens of marriage on narrow means. His rejected proposal to Alison -Begbie had come before his realization of his poetic calling; his -rejected offer to Jean Armour in 1786 was the result of sympathy for -her condition and not of a desire to settle down. But he soon learned -that he could not so simply escape responsibility. His children must be -provided for somehow even if he did not marry their mothers. Despite -the casualness with which he incurred paternity his parental feelings -were strong. ‘_Vive l’amour et vive la bagatelle_’ sounded well as -a motto until it was confronted by the actual problem of helpless -lives which owed their existence to him. As a Man of Feeling he could -not, even had he wished to, turn his back on them with Don Juan-like -callousness. Besides, the law might have something to say in the -matter--as Burns learned in the course of four suits or threatened -suits by four different women within two years. Unless he chose to flee -the country and repudiate his obligations he had to provide himself -with settled livelihood. - -For a man of his rank and education the possible choices open in -1786 were limited. He could continue as a farmer; he could attempt -to support himself by writing, or he could seek a salaried position -at home or in the colonies. Each alternative had its drawbacks. By -the beginning of 1786 his reputation in the community was such that -he could scarcely continue the partnership at Mossgiel, but he lacked -the capital necessary for setting up independently elsewhere. The hope -of any large financial returns from his poetry seemed too fantastic -for consideration; he lacked the training for journalism or hackwork -when Grub Street was crowded with penniless university men. There -remained the chance of some salaried position. Yet even if he had been -temperamentally fitted for a commercial job he was by this time too -old. Merchants’ clerks began their apprenticeship as boys in their -teens. Burns was twenty-seven. A post in the Excise Service might be -feasible but was not easy to get. All government jobs went by favour, -and despite the unpopularity of the service among the people at large -the number of aspirants so far exceeded the available places that -the endorsement of some influential person was almost essential. The -same thing was true of India, where the East India Company’s monopoly -gave patronage as large a part as it had in the government services. -The United States, not yet united, were in economic chaos; Canada was -undeveloped. There remained the West Indies, then at the height of -a prosperity built on slave labour, where independent planters with -Scottish connexions were numerous enough to make it possible for a -Scotsman with the necessary introductions to secure some sort of work. -The story of Burns’s struggle for livelihood is the story of his -efforts in each of the four possibilities open to him. - -The West Indian venture was the only one which never came to actual -trial. The documents are lost which would settle the date at which -Burns began seriously to consider emigration, but his mind was made -up at the very beginning of 1786. Through friends in Ayrshire he -obtained the offer of a position at thirty pounds a year as clerk and -overseer on a Jamaica plantation. The story is still repeated that he -published the Kilmarnock _Poems_ to pay his passage-money, but his own -contemporary account of the matter is sufficient refutation. He had -already arranged to go to Jamaica, his employer to pay his fare and -deduct the sum from his first year’s salary, before he decided to print -the poems. For Burns emigration was not only flight but almost a death -sentence. He had some justification for his feeling. The West Indian -climate helped to insure the financial success of a small minority of -white immigrants by killing off most of their rivals. He published his -poems because he wished, before saying farewell forever to Scotland, -to leave behind some tangible memorial. When the publication proved so -unexpectedly successful it immediately cancelled his flight. - -Burns’s first extant reference to Jamaica is in a letter to John -Arnot of Dalquhatswood, which was written in April, 1786, when the -subscription for the _Poems_ was well under way. Negotiations were then -almost complete: by June 12th Burns was able to announce that the -ship was on her way home that was to take him out; on August 14th he -explained that he was entering the employ of Charles Douglas of Port -Antonio and all that remained to settle was the route by which he was -to travel. In view of the time required for exchange of letters between -Scotland and the West Indies it is certain that the correspondence with -Douglas must have begun in the winter, before the Kilmarnock volume was -planned and while a considerable part of it was still unwritten. As the -troubles with the Armours thickened during the summer so did Burns’s -references to his impending emigration. During July and the first part -of August he was announcing that he had booked passage from Greenock -to Savannah-la-Mar in the _Nancy_, sailing about September 1. Then -returned Jamaicans advised him that the route was too roundabout, and -when the captain of the _Nancy_ notified him that the ship was about to -sail, Burns decided that the notice was too abrupt. The _Nancy_ sailed -without him, and he transferred his booking to the _Bell_, which was to -sail direct to Port Antonio at the end of September. - -The truth was that he was already wavering. The enthusiastic reception -of his poems, the interest which influential gentlemen began to take in -his welfare, were changing his opinion of himself and his prospects in -Scotland. Moreover, the Armours were calming down; friends had promised -to help him should Jean’s father renew the effort to execute his -warrant. Nevertheless he did not immediately abandon the Jamaica plan. -Though the _Bell_ in her turn sailed without him, he still watched the -shipping news as he collected his subscriptions and set his affairs -in order. Jean’s twins, born on September 3rd, increased the need for -settled livelihood, but increased also his reluctance to leave Scotland. - -Most of his letters of the autumn of 1786 have perished. As late -as October he was still talking of emigration, though he had again -postponed it after actually packing his trunk and starting for Greenock -at the end of September. He still feared, he told Robert Aiken, that -‘the consequences of his follies’ might banish him; in other words, -Betty Paton was threatening to sue him. The Armour affair had already -been compromised by dividing the responsibility for the care of the -twins between the two families. When the extant correspondence resumes -a month later, Jamaica had been discarded. By November 1st the poet had -decided to try his luck in Edinburgh. For this reversal the Kilmarnock -volume was directly responsible. - -When Burns had begun in April to solicit subscriptions for a volume -of his poems he had had no idea of making it a commercial success. -The book was intended as a memento of himself--a souvenir for his -friends and a final and unanswerable fling at his enemies. He probably -hoped for no more material return than would cover the expenses of -publication. Its success therefore was all the more intoxicating. -Six hundred and twelve copies were printed, of which about half were -subscribed for in advance, thanks mainly to Robert Aiken. When the -book came out at the beginning of August it furnished the first -literary sensation Ayrshire had ever known. The subscribers’ copies -were passed from reader to reader, creating such a demand that the -entire edition was sold within three months. When Mrs. Dunlop ordered -six copies in mid-November only five were left. At the end of July -Burns had been a fugitive with a warrant out against him, to escape -which he was shifting from one friend’s house to another. Two weeks -later he was a celebrity. His journeys through the country as he -collected his subscriptions became a sort of royal progress. The fact -that he was making a profit out of the book meant far less to him than -the applause of all sorts and conditions of men. People of influence -assured him that something could be done for him at home, though they -were vague as to precisely what. After the printer’s bills were paid -the volume showed a profit of more than £50, though forfeited deposits -on passage money and a substantial payment to Betty Paton reduced his -net gain to about twenty. But Burns still had no wish to write poetry -for money. He considered that ‘downright Sodomy of Soul’. Poetry was -his calling, but he refused to think of it as his livelihood. - -Another man for other reasons doubted the commercial prospects of -poetry. In spite of the handsome balance-sheet of the first edition, -John Wilson, the Kilmarnock printer, declined to undertake a second -without advance payment for all labour and materials. He felt that -the first had glutted the market. His timidity helped to transform -Burns from a local celebrity into a national figure. When friends in -Mauchline and Ayr suggested republishing the poems in Edinburgh Burns -thought it an attractive but impractical dream. But when copies of -the book reached people of influence in the capital and they repeated -the suggestion it wore a different look. By October the hope of a -favourable reception in the city had come to Burns from at least three -different sources. His friend, the Rev. George Lawrie of Loudoun, had -sent a copy of the book to Thomas Blacklock, the blind poet; Blacklock -had commended it warmly and had even promised--not so warmly--to bring -it to the attention of Hugh Blair. The famous professor of rhetoric, -Blacklock thought, was too refined in his taste to relish it. Another -eminent professor was not so finicky. Dugald Stewart, whose country -home was at Catrine a few miles from Mauchline, read and enjoyed the -poems, invited the poet to dinner, and added his personal encouragement -to the Edinburgh venture. Finally the book reached even the peerage. - -On November 1st Alexander Dalziel, steward of the Earl of Glencairn’s -estates, wrote that he had showed the poems to the Earl and that the -Earl had expressed his pleasure in them and his desire to befriend -their author. This approbation was heartening as Blacklock’s and -even Dugald Stewart’s could not be. The Earl had a reputation for -generosity and for keeping his word; he was one of the most popular -and influential peers in Scotland and his endorsement would have -weight with the people of wealth and fashion on whom the success of a -subscription would have to depend. But the Earl had nothing to do with -the abandonment of Jamaica. The same letter which brought the news of -the Earl’s interest also brought Dalziel’s congratulations on Burns’s -giving up his plans for leaving the country. What Glencairn really did -was to confirm the poet in his determination to offer his poems to a -larger audience. - -Undoubtedly Burns realized before he went to Edinburgh that he was -setting out on the old and painful quest of patronage--a quest which -had broken the hearts of more poets than it had ever freed from -penury. But it was still fame more than money that he looked for from -his poems. He continued to hope for some means of modest livelihood -independent of his writing; if his subscription brought a little -capital to help him on his way, so much the better. When he reached -Edinburgh he made no effort to appear more than he was; he even sought -deliberately to appear less. He dressed as a plain young farmer, and -finding that the metropolitan critics were praising his work as that -of an unlettered ploughman who wrote from pure inspiration he did his -best to act the part. When Robert Anderson pointed out in private -conversation some evidence of extensive knowledge of other poets Burns -readily admitted his indebtedness, but in public he would not permit -his claims to pure inspiration to be challenged. If an unlettered bard -was what his patrons wanted he would do his best to be one. Many -times, however, his role was trying, especially when stupider people -than himself condescended, and gave him good advice. - -Undoubtedly there were matters in which he needed good advice, but he -did not get it even from the patrons who did not condescend. Among -all his new friends there was no one to take his part as Sir Walter -Scott later took Southey’s in seeing that he got a fair contract with -his publisher. Glencairn had been as good as his word in securing -fashionable subscriptions. The Countess of Eglinton made the Earl -subscribe ten guineas; the entire membership of the aristocratic -Caledonian Hunt put down their names, but altered the first proposal -that they give two guineas each to a mere subscription at the regular -price. But Glencairn knew nothing about the business end of publishing. -In introducing Burns to William Creech, his brother’s former tutor and -the best-known publisher in the city, Glencairn no doubt felt that -he had done his best. He had, up to that point, but at that point a -good contract lawyer was needed. Unfortunately Henry Mackenzie and the -other men of letters in the city still adhered to the convention of the -writing gentleman who was supposed to disdain pecuniary rewards. A few -years earlier, when David Hume was alive, Burns might have been secured -better terms; a few years later under the leadership of Scott he would -certainly have secured them. Burns’s perverse pride would not allow him -to haggle over a contract which in any case offered more ready money -than he had handled in all his previous life. What he needed and did -not have was a hard-boiled business friend to do his haggling for him. - -As it was, Creech made an agreement which left Burns to bear all the -immediate risks and perhaps to receive a modest immediate profit, but -which reserved the long-term earnings for the publisher alone. As was -often the case with books published by subscription, the man whose -name appeared on the title-page was not the publisher in the modern -sense, but merely the author’s agent. He provided the facilities for -collecting the subscriptions and distributing the books, but took none -of the financial responsibility. The author received the entire payment -for the subscribers’ copies, but out of these receipts had to pay the -printer, the bookbinder, and also, presumably, the transportation -charges on copies delivered out-of-town. Furthermore, the agents who -distributed the books naturally expected to be paid. Hence Burns, -wherever possible, enlisted his friends for this service--Alexander -Pattison at Paisley, for instance, and Robert Muir at Kilmarnock--and -when that was not feasible still sought to avoid the regular -booksellers because they took ‘no less than the unconscionable, Jewish -tax of 25 p^r Cent. by way of agency’. - -The price to subscribers was set at the modest sum of five shillings, -and close to three thousand subscriptions were obtained. Burns objected -to printing the names of the subscribers--quite naturally, for the -thirty-eight pages meant money out of his pocket merely to gratify the -vanity of people yearning to see their names in print as patrons of -literature--but was overborne by some friends whom he did not ‘chuse -to thwart’. Professor Snyder calculates Burns’s utmost possible gross -receipts from the subscription at £750. But after all charges were paid -the net profit cannot have been more than half that sum. He told Mrs. -Dunlop that he cleared about £540, but there, as in a similar statement -to John Moore, he was reckoning in Creech’s payment of 100 guineas for -the copyright. - -That was the sum agreed on when, just as his book was ready for -delivery, Burns decided, ‘by advice of friends’ to dispose of his -copyright. Once more he had sought the advice of others, and once -more they told him the wrong thing. In this instance, the person -most at fault was Henry Mackenzie, to whom Burns and Creech referred -the question. Mackenzie was a lawyer, and ought to have warned Burns -against the absolute sale of his rights in a potentially valuable -piece of property. Instead Mackenzie contented himself with naming -one hundred guineas as his idea of a fair price. That was on April -17. Creech delayed his acceptance until the 23rd, on the pretence of -waiting to hear if Cadell and Davies would buy a share for their London -trade, but finally consented to ‘take the whole matter upon himself, -that Mr. Burns might be at no uncertainty in the matter.’ Thereupon -Creech left town, without either paying the money or giving his note -for it. A few days later Burns himself started on his Border tour, -still without any legal contract with Creech, but with his hands full -for the time being with the task of arranging deliveries, collecting -subscriptions, and paying the printer and the binder. Had not Peter -Hill, then Creech’s chief clerk, taken a good part of the burden on -himself, Burns would have been swamped under the worry of larger -transactions than he had known in all his life before. - -In August Burns returned to Edinburgh, but Creech was either again -absent or again coy. Not until October 23 did the publisher at last -set his hand to a note promising to pay the sum ‘on demand’. How soon -Burns began to ask for payment is uncertain, but by January Creech -had delayed and evaded so often that Burns ‘broke measures with -[him], and ... wrote him a frosty keen letter. He replied in forms of -chastisement’, promised payment on a set date--and broke his promise. -To add to the poet’s anxiety, rumours were afloat. It was hinted -that Creech was on the verge of bankruptcy; it was also hinted that -he had cheated Burns by secretly printing additional copies of the -_Poems_, which he sold for his own profit. Burns bewailed his own fate -as a ‘poor, d-mned, incautious, duped, unfortunate fool’; two months -later ‘that arch-rascal Creech’ was still making promises, and still -reneguing. Not until May 30, more than seven months after he had agreed -to pay ‘on demand’, did Creech at last part with his hundred guineas. -And even then Burns’s troubles were not over. Still another visit to -Edinburgh, at the end of February, 1789, was necessary before Creech -paid over the final sums due the poet for subscription copies, so that -at last he could report to Jean: ‘I have settled matters greatly to -my satisfaction with Mr. Creech.--He is certainly not what he should -be nor has he given me what I should have, but I am better than I -expected.’ - -The estimate of Creech was temperate enough; indeed, it erred, like -Burns’s statement to John Moore that Creech had ‘been amicable -and fair’ with him, on the side of charity. It is easy to condone -Mackenzie’s blunder and Creech’s sharp bargain on the ground that -neither of them could guess the future value of the copyright, but it -is impossible to excuse Creech’s postponements of the day of reckoning. -Prompt settlement of accounts after the book was published would have -sent Burns back to the country with his pockets comfortably lined and -with some of the glowing enthusiasm of his first season in Edinburgh -still undimmed. By his paltry delays Creech kept the poet in the city -until the interest of his fashionable ‘patrons’ had waned, until all -the pleasure of publication and fame had evaporated in bitterness -and disgust, and until the mere necessities of living must have made -considerable inroads on his irreplaceable capital. - -Indeed one of the extraordinary facts about Burns’s life in Edinburgh -is that he emerged from it without greater depletion of his capital. -Contemporary report calls him dissipated. Yet somehow Burns managed -to spend nearly a year and a half either in residence in Edinburgh or -in journeying to and fro, and still came out with about four hundred -and fifty pounds. So far as is known he had no income from July, 1786, -when he assigned his rights in Mossgiel to Gilbert, until he reaped -his harvest, such as it was, at Ellisland in the autumn of 1788. Even -then he netted little, for the outgoing tenant exacted a price of £72 -for the standing crops. However great his experience in the distracting -‘task of the superlatively Damn’d--making one guinea do the business of -three’--his twenty pounds from the Kilmarnock volume cannot have lasted -long, and if there were any gifts except the Earl of Eglinton’s ten -guineas and the same sum from Patrick Miller he nowhere mentions them. -If Burns dissipated heavily he managed somehow to do it without heavy -expenditure, an art few people have ever learned. - -The possibility that he received funds from Gilbert even after the deed -of assignment must be ruled out. The flow of funds in fact was the -other way. The supposedly careful and efficient Gilbert was in constant -difficulties at Mossgiel. Robert sent him ten pounds from Edinburgh -in the spring of 1787; during the following winter he authorized John -Ballantine to pay over to Gilbert about thirty pounds of subscription -money then in Ballantine’s hands. And this was only the beginning. The -letter to Gavin Hamilton already quoted indicates that Gilbert was so -far in arrears with his rent in March, 1788, that Hamilton wanted Burns -to sign some sort of a note for him. This Burns refused to do, because -he had already lent Gilbert £200--nearly half his receipts from the -Edinburgh edition. Whether the previous payments were counted as part -of this loan or not is uncertain; probably they were not, for after -the poet’s death John Syme declared that Gilbert owed £300, though the -legal accounting sets the figure at £200. It seems likely therefore -that Gilbert regarded the earlier payments as gifts, and that the sum -which Gilbert at last repaid to his brother’s family represented the -final loan in 1788. As part of the interest on the loan Burns arranged -that Gilbert should pay his mother an annuity of £5 a year and should -continue to care for Betty Paton’s daughter. The result was that -Gilbert made no cash payment during Burns’s life, and never was able -to pay off the principal until he undertook to re-edit the _Poems_ in -1820. Burns had given most substantial proof of his loyalty to his -family and in doing so had destroyed his only hope of success in his -own venture at Ellisland. - -Gilbert and his mother and sisters were not the whole of Burns’s -responsibilities. His younger brother William was approaching manhood -and turned naturally for support to the celebrity of the family. He -appears to have been an amiable but ineffective youth. He had served -at least part of an apprenticeship as a saddler, and in the autumn of -1787 Burns made some fruitless efforts to find him a job in Edinburgh. -A year or so later William set out to look for employment and held jobs -briefly in Longtown, in Newcastle, and finally in London, where he -died of typhus and where his funeral was arranged by John Murdoch and -paid for by Burns. Burns’s letters to this brother during his year of -wandering consist in about equal proportion of exhortations to brace -up and be a man and of enumerations of gifts--shoes and shirts and -waistcoats and above all money. Burns’s position as family capitalist -was no sinecure. - -While he was struggling with Creech and trying to keep Mossgiel afloat, -Burns was constantly harried by the problem of his own future. The only -two possibilities he could see were a farm of his own or a post in the -Excise, and for a long time there seemed little chance of achieving -either. He had no intention of trying again for public aid through his -writing. One subscription might be regarded as a public tribute; a -repetition would look like begging. Besides, his common sense told him -that a second subscription would have little hope of success unless it -came at a long interval after the first and for work of a different -character. He had not exhausted his talents, but he had exhausted his -novelty. For the rest of his life he steadfastly refused to accept -payment for anything he wrote and actually gave away poems which make -up two-thirds of the bulk of his collected works. His sole payment for -‘Tam o’ Shanter’ was a dozen copies of the proof-sheets; his payment -for Creech’s second edition in 1793--which included ‘Tam’ and a score -of other new poems--was twenty presentation copies grudgingly allowed -him. His fondness for making gestures of gallant but unwise generosity -can hardly be better illustrated than by his dealings with Creech over -this edition. The publisher wrote to him in 1791, proposing a reissue -of the work and asking Burns to contribute some new poems to it, but -without suggesting payment for them. Burns told Cunningham that he had -taken a damned revenge of Creech by ignoring his letter. Yet a few -months later he relented, and after reminding Creech that the new poems -were his own absolute property, turned them over to him without asking -any payment except the twenty gift copies. Such a gesture might have -shamed some publishers, but Creech merely accepted it as his right. In -the same spirit Burns hotly resented George Thomson’s payment of £5 for -his contributions to the first number of the _Select Scotish Airs_, -and Thomson, like Creech, felt no compunction at accepting the poet’s -quixotic generosity. - -On at least two occasions, moreover, Burns was offered pay for -journalistic writing in party newspapers. The origin, extent, and -duration of his relations with Peter Stuart of the London _Star_ are -all obscure, but it is plain that Stuart as a zealous Whig tried to -get Burns as a regular contributor. The poet refused. When he struck -off a satirical skit he was willing to give it to Stuart, but the -only pay he accepted was a free subscription to the paper. Thus he -managed to acquire the reputation, injurious to his hopes in government -employ, of being a partisan writer without any reward except notoriety. -Again in 1794 Patrick Miller, Jr., his landlord’s son who had been -put into Parliament at the age of twenty-one, persuaded James Perry -of the London _Chronicle_ to offer Burns what for those days was a -fair salary if he would come to London and devote his talents to the -press. Again Burns refused. He realized well enough that the prosperity -of a newspaper was often short-lived and he feared to jeopardize his -children’s future by exchanging an assured though meagre income for -the chances of the journalistic profession. Besides, the writer in a -partisan paper in 1794 was risking jail as well as economic insecurity, -as the sedition trials then in progress had proclaimed to all the -kingdom. - -But if he was not to support himself by writing how was he to support -himself? That question hammered in his mind from the time he abandoned -the Jamaica project until the early spring of 1788. Even before he went -to Edinburgh he had thought of the Excise. But he found his Edinburgh -patrons cold to all hints. These gentlemen reasoned simply. Burns -was the ploughman poet: ergo, he should continue to plough. The only -definite gesture made towards getting him government work was Mrs. -Dunlop’s. She offered an introduction to Adam Smith in the hope that -Smith might help him to a job in the customs, but the philosopher had -left for London the day before Burns presented his letter. Moreover -Smith no longer took an interest in much except his own health, and if -Burns sought later to renew his application nothing came of it. His -most favourable opportunity to cultivate the acquaintance of high -officials was lost when he allowed William Nicol to drag him away from -Blair Athole, where Robert Graham of Fintry, Commissioner of Excise, -was one of the guests, and where Henry Dundas was shortly to appear. - -Meanwhile an offer of another sort was being pressed upon him. He had -been in Edinburgh only a few weeks when the prosperous and enthusiastic -Patrick Miller sought his acquaintance. Miller, after a varied career, -at sea and as a banker, had retired from business with a comfortable -fortune and was devoting himself to miscellaneous experiments. He -was the sort of capitalist who is a godsend to struggling inventors, -for his enthusiastic imagination enabled him both to visualize the -inventor’s aims and to overlook all the practical details and delays -which intervene between a project and its fulfilment. His strongest -enthusiasm at the moment was the improvement of navigation, but his -interests also included agriculture. Not long before Burns came to -Edinburgh Miller had bought the run-down estate of Dalswinton near -Dumfries, and it was Ellisland, one of the farms on this estate, which -he urged upon Burns. - -The poet was afraid of it from the start, and for good reason. -Miller, he said, was no judge of land, and what Miller thought was an -advantageous offer might ruin his tenant. Had Burns been gifted with -second-sight he could not have prophesied more accurately. Yet the -difficulty he always found in saying ‘No’ to people whose intentions -were friendly combined with his own inclinations to keep him from -refusing Miller’s offer outright. Farming was the business he knew -best, and a farmer’s life he held was the best of lives--if one could -live by it--but Mount Oliphant, Lochlie, and Mossgiel had been a triple -lesson on the fate of the tenant who undertook a lease without capital -enough to stock a farm profitably. Even if the Dalswinton farm were all -that Miller thought it, Burns doubted if his literary profits would -suffice to give him a start. However, he agreed to look at Ellisland -when he reached Dumfries at the end of his Border tour. When he did -so he could scarcely have been in the mood for a really critical -examination. The savage hospitality he had experienced for the past -three weeks had left him jaded and depressed, and the annoyance of -being greeted at Dumfries by Meg Cameron’s letter would not sharpen his -critical faculties. Even so he could see at a glance that the soil was -exhausted and would require long and careful nursing. In fact the only -thing to be said for Miller’s offer was that, recognizing the run-down -condition of the property, he was offering it at a low rental for the -first three years. Fifty pounds per annum for a farm of more than a -hundred acres contrasted favourably with the prices in East Lothian, -where landlords were asking as much as thirty shillings an acre. Burns -went home to Mossgiel without having made up his mind; if discussion -with the cautious Gilbert contributed to any decision it was a negative -one. Ellisland was too big a risk. He returned to Edinburgh in the -fall with his mind made up. He would renew his efforts to secure an -Excise commission and would bank the profits of his poems as a reserve -fund for the education and security of his children. - -But Miller was not easily discouraged. He had evidently decided that -the poet as a tenant would be an asset to Dalswinton. Accordingly he -urged Burns to go down again and have a more critical look at the -place. A severe cold which confined him to the house enabled Burns -again to evade committing himself and not long afterwards came the -injury to his knee which laid him up for weeks and involved him in the -Clarinda affair. But meanwhile his endeavours for an Excise commission -were not prospering. Glencairn disapproved; Mrs. Dunlop disapproved; -apparently everyone who might have exerted the necessary influence -disapproved. In January Miss Nimmo sent him to a Mrs. Stewart who was -supposed to have influence with the commissioners. The interview was -not a success. Burns came away from it boiling with helpless rage. He -had been questioned like a child about his most private affairs and -Mrs. Stewart had further improved the occasion by rebuking him for -the Jacobite sentiments he had scratched on the window of the inn at -Stirling. If the quest for an Excise job was to expose him to this sort -of thing Burns was ready to throw up the whole project. - -Just when the matter appeared most hopeless his chance came from an -unexpected quarter. The surgeon who had treated his injured knee was -Alexander Wood, better known to his fellow-citizens as Lang Sandy -Wood, who after a wild youth had become one of the most respectable -characters, in both senses of that word, in Edinburgh. Wood learned of -his patient’s desire and offered to do what Glencairn and the others -had refused or evaded--to bring Burns’s case directly and personally -before the Board. The result was that before he left Edinburgh Burns -found himself, ‘without any mortifying solicitation’ on his own part, -equipped with the official order for the six-weeks’ course of special -instructions which would entitle him to an Excise commission. It came -none too soon. One of the rules of the service was that no man could -enter it who was in debt, who was more than thirty years old, or who -had more than three children. Burns’s time for meeting these two latter -qualifications was getting very short indeed. - -But now that he saw an open road into the Excise Burns’s mind veered -round. Farming after all was a more poetical occupation than ‘searching -auld wives’ barrels’. Miller was still urging Ellisland upon him, and -the possibility of failure there did not look so black when he knew -that if he did fail he had the Excise to turn to. He agreed to revisit -the farm. No doubt he told himself, as he told Clarinda, that he did -so only out of courtesy to Miller, knowing that the Excise must be -his lot. His judgement warned him that the farm would not do; his -emotions swayed him in its favour. In an effort to strengthen his -judgement he invited his old friend, John Tennant of Glenconner, to -join the tour of inspection. Glenconner’s mind would not be biased by -any poetic considerations. It did not occur to Burns that even the most -experienced of farmers, looking at soil different from that he was -accustomed to, could scarcely gauge its productivity rightly at the -end of February. The rule-of-thumb farming which Glenconner and most -of his contemporaries practised required the sight of growing crops -for correct judgement. Tennant looked the place over and told Burns it -was a bargain at Miller’s price. The opinion astonished the poet, but -he failed to realize that it was merely a guess less accurate than the -opinion he himself had formed on seeing the place the previous June. -Burns frequently made mistakes, but his worst ones were made when he -relied on other people’s judgement. In March he signed Miller’s lease -and committed himself to three years of struggle and discouragement -which swallowed all the capital which had not already been poured into -the bottomless morass of Mossgiel. - -Legend has it that Burns was offered his choice of two farms on the -Dalswinton estate and selected Ellisland because of its more attractive -location--‘a poet’s choice and not a farmer’s’. In fact Miller offered -no choice, and in drawing up the lease employed all the usual legal -technicalities with one or two additions of his own. The rent was to be -£50 a year for the first three years and £70 thereafter, and Miller’s -zeal for improvements was to have scope even while the tenant was in -possession. The landlord reserved the right to take over the riverbank, -a twenty-yard-wide belt along the Friars Carse boundary, and two -acres of other land at his own choice to plant with trees. He agreed, -however, to put money of his own into the place. It had not even a -farmhouse when Burns signed the lease, and Miller undertook to provide -adequate buildings. The contractor’s delay in constructing these caused -further needless anxiety and actual loss to Burns. - -After the die was cast all Burns’s earlier doubts about Ellisland and -his own ability to handle it returned with redoubled force. His first -move was to make sure of his Excise appointment by taking the necessary -six weeks of special instructions from the officer at Mauchline, even -though this delayed his settlement until mid-June. Inasmuch as these -six weeks included also the emotional stress of the ending of the -Clarinda romance and his acknowledgement of Jean as his wife, his -nerves were overwrought when he finally reached his farm. The prospect -there might have discouraged a more phlegmatic man. The farmhouse was -not even started, and his only shelter was a leaky and chimneyless -labourer’s hovel. The sparse growth of the crops planted by his -predecessor confirmed the exhaustion of the soil, and he was confronted -as never before with the need for executive skill. That aspect of his -nature which led him to remark that somehow he could make himself -pretty generally beloved yet never could get the art of commanding -respect told heavily against him when he had both to keep his own -labourers at work and to bully or cajole the contractor into finishing -the farmhouse at the time agreed upon. When he was not present the -farmhands lay down on the job; when he was present they found it -altogether too easy to engage him in talk while the work suffered. The -friendship he formed with Thomas Boyd, the contractor, led among other -things to an acquaintance with Thomas Telford, the great engineer, -but it did not lead to the speedy completion of his house. As late as -March, 1789, he was still pleading with Boyd to get at least the shell -of it finished. Moreover he was too sympathetic with his workmen. The -margin of profit on such a farm was too small to permit indulgence -in humanitarian sentiments, but Burns knew too much of the lives of -the lower classes to have the necessary hardness. Two letters to -the owner of the neighbouring farm with whom Burns had cooperated -in digging a drain do credit to his feelings if not to his business -capacity. The labourer who undertook the job at seventeen pence a rood -had underestimated the time. In order to give him a fair wage for his -labour Burns added three-pence a rood to the contract price for his -share and asked the neighbour to do the same--with what result is not -recorded. - -But there was a still deeper psychological hindrance to success at -Ellisland. Even had the soil been productive, even had he secured a -foreman who could have kept his hands at work, the Burns who undertook -Ellisland was not the Burns of Lochlie or even of Mossgiel. Though by -no means setting up as a gentleman farmer, he had become conscious of -having a position to maintain. Gilbert, he thought, might be able to -take over Ellisland and succeed with it; ‘as he can with propriety -do things that I _now_ cannot do.’ Physical debility was also to be -reckoned with, for he must have got out of training during almost two -years of exemption from regular labour, and his weakened heart would -prevent his easily recovering his lost tone. But in fact his mind was -filled with other matters and metres. That during his first summer -he spent alternate fortnights with Jean in Mauchline was a temporary -circumstance without relation to the success of the farm thereafter, -but that his work for Johnson’s _Museum_ was filling his mind was a -fact less easily discounted. In the middle of his first summer he had -a fiddler with him for at least two days playing over a collection of -Highland music in quest of lyric tunes for Johnson. It was a prelude to -his greatest period of lyric creativeness, but it was not an augury of -success in managing a poor farm on limited capital. - -The first season’s harvest offered little encouragement. Wet weather -and scanty labour made it difficult to salvage whatever thin crop the -fields had produced. Before his lease was six months old Burns was -confiding to his friends that he was uncertain of his farm’s doing -well, but, as he told Ainslie, he had his Excise commission in his -pocket and did not care three skips of a cur dog for the gambols of -Fortune. The chance of obtaining the commission had made him willing -to undertake the farm; possession added still another psychological -handicap to its successful conduct. Embittered youthful memories of the -humiliations of a tenant farmer had been reinforced by the development -of his poetic vocation to clog whole-hearted effort. Now the existence -of his commission held always open a door of escape from any threatened -renewal of the old humiliation and thereby unconsciously slowed still -further the endeavours which were his only safeguard. He was defeated -at Ellisland before he began. - -By the following spring he had begun to realize his defeat. The farm -and his family, including William, were swallowing the remains of his -capital so rapidly that it was doubtful if he could hold on without -more income than the farm was likely to yield. It occurred to him that -he might use his commission while he still held the farm. He had not -thought of this at first. The usual procedure for a beginner was to -be assigned to some district where a place was vacant, there to serve -several months’ apprenticeship without pay. When pay commenced, it had -until recently been at the rate of £35 a year, but about the time Burns -obtained his commission the initial stipend was raised to £50. Looking -about his own neighbourhood, Burns learned that the officer in charge -of the rural parishes to the north of Dumfries was a certain Leonard -Smith, who had recently inherited money and was not distinguishing -himself by activity in the service. Burns decided to play politics. - -His commission had been obtained through Robert Graham of Fintry, one -of the chief Commissioners for Scotland. Fintry had expressed personal -interest in the poet’s welfare in terms which must have soothed his -bristling pride, for Burns had already addressed to him both a prose -letter of thanks and a poetic epistle in imitation of Pope. Though -Fintry never quite supplanted Lord Glencairn in Burns’s esteem, he -in fact became the poet’s second patron and in the long run did more -for him than even the Earl had done. Graham’s first favour had been -the commission itself; his second was the appointment to active duty. -Before his first harvest was over Burns coolly suggested that Smith -might be relieved from duty without serious loss to himself and perhaps -with a gain to the Service. On his visit to Edinburgh in February, -1789, Burns pressed the matter further. Graham promised to do what he -could, but pointed out that it was clean against regulations to start -a new man at full pay without a probationary period. Nevertheless he -undertook to investigate Smith’s conduct and by midsummer had found -cause for removing him, had given Burns the place, and had circumvented -the rule against starting a new man at full duty and on full pay. For -one who had always boasted his independence and had spoken scornfully -of the political quest for favours, Burns had done a neat and -successful job of wire-pulling. - -Having once got his appointment, however, Burns had no intention of -treating it as a sinecure. His district covered twelve sparsely-settled -parishes and his tours of inspection required, to fulfil the letter of -the law, that he ride two hundred miles a week in all weathers and all -states of the uniformly bad roads. This meant that he could give little -of his time and less of his strength to Ellisland. To provide for the -farm he endeavoured to increase his dairy stock, which Jean could -supervise in the intervals of having babies and managing her household. -The cattle, too, might help in the slow task of rebuilding the worn-out -acres. - -But the strain of his new duties soon took physical toll. In the late -fall of 1789, after less than two months of service, ‘a malignant -squinancy and low fever’ laid him up for six weeks. His handwriting -indicates that the illness was really serious; the letters written -during convalescence are in a hand almost as weak and straggling -as that of June and July, 1796. Nevertheless he had proved his -qualifications for the job. An official report on various subordinate -officers in the Excise bears after Burns’s name the notation ‘a -poet--never tried--turns out well.’ He had moreover established -friendly relations with his immediate superiors, Alexander Findlater, -the Supervisor, and John Mitchell, the Collector, of the Dumfries -district. With the latter, indeed, he was already on terms approaching -intimacy, sending him gifts of new-laid eggs from Ellisland and -accompanying them at least once with a poetic epistle so broadly -humorous that no editor has ever printed it all. Both men testified to -Burns’s fidelity by defending his character after his death and--what -is far more significant--by reporting favourably on him during his life. - -He was giving reason for favourable reports. His predecessor had -been so slack that Burns was able to appear, at the first session of -court after he began duty, with an impressive array of cases of tax -evasion. In handling these he again displayed political astuteness. -The minor offenders, mostly poor men who could ill afford a fine, he -begged off with warnings or suspended sentences. This almost compelled -the magistrates to fine the larger offenders for whom he refused -to intercede, and inasmuch as Excise officers then, like American -customs inspectors today, received a percentage of these penalties, -Burns found his procedure remunerative in cash as well as in official -credit. He soon discovered, though, that zeal had its drawbacks. -Gentlemen of position, including some of the magistrates themselves, -had their favourite smugglers or home-brewers, and when Burns caught -one of these he started all the machinery of influence and political -pressure so familiar to Americans during the prohibition era. Once -he told Collector Mitchell, after a hard day’s riding in rounding up -witnesses in a case, that he expected for his pains to be clapped in -jail for annoying the friends of half the gentlemen in the county. -The grosser temptations of bribery, however, did not touch him. The -various legends, deriving from highly unreliable oral tradition, of -his leniency with small offenders mean no more, even if literally -true, than that Burns had learned the common sense of his profession. -A customs inspector knows that his job is not to penalize every -tourist who has failed to declare a dozen handkerchiefs but to catch -the large-scale smuggler. The same was true of the laws Burns had to -enforce, which imposed taxes on everything from whisky to candles. Not -but what he made ordinary human distinctions between his public and his -private capacities. William Lorimer, father of ‘Chloris’, was one of -the poet’s intimate friends. He was also a bootlegger whose ways were, -‘like the grace of G--, past all comprehension’. Seemingly Lorimer -maintained a moderate legal stock for inspection purposes, but once -when he was absent and his wife drunk something slipped in the working -of the gentlemen’s agreement, and Burns had to explain to Supervisor -Findlater. Another time he helped, as revenue officer, in a series of -raids on Dumfries haberdashers who had been selling smuggled French -gloves. A few days later, as private citizen, he supplied Maria Riddell -with similar gloves from a still unraided dealer’s stock. The problems -and conditions of law enforcement are among the few immutables in human -history. - -After two years’ experience Burns reaffirmed that the Excise was -after all the business for him. He added, ‘I find no difficulty in -being an honest man in it; the work of itself, is easy; and it is a -devilish different affair, managing money matters where I care not a -damn whether the money is paid or not; from the long faces made to a -haughty Laird or still more haughty Factor, when rents are demanded, -and money, alas, not to be had!’ His position as tenant farmer was no -longer an irritation; it was an obsession. Ellisland, he told Gilbert, -had undone his enjoyment of himself. He looked forward with the same -desperate hope as his father’s at Mount Oliphant to the ‘freedom in his -lease’. The three-year period of the £50 rental ended in 1791. After -that, if he chose to stay, Ellisland would cost £70 a year. Naturally, -his discouragement and defeat on the farm had affected his relations -with his landlord. Miller’s kindness, he said, had been just such -another thing as Creech’s, and the fact that Mrs. Miller had failed to -appreciate one of his poorer contributions to Johnson’s _Museum_ did -not heighten his esteem for the family. He wanted no more to do with -landlords or anything that belonged to them. - -His only good luck at Ellisland came at the end. The surrender of the -lease did not annoy Miller as Burns had expected, for a purchaser was -in the market, and Miller was glad enough to dispose of the farm which -the Nith separated from the rest of his estate. After sending Jean and -the children to Mauchline, Burns held an auction of his standing crops -and provided the lavish drinks expected by auction-goers. One result -was that the exhilarated bidders ran up the prices nearly a guinea an -acre beyond the market rates; another was that house and stable-yard -were strewn with helplessly drunk and retching neighbours. The sale -brought ready cash for the first time in two years, and Burns used -some of it to clear up a variety of small debts, including the four -pounds he owed his namesake, Robert Burn of Edinburgh, for erecting -Fergusson’s tombstone. He also celebrated his manumission by a brief -visit to Edinburgh to say farewell to Clarinda and to try to do -something for sick and penniless Jenny Clow. - -While things had been going so badly on the farm his position in -the Excise had been improving. After less than a year and a half in -his laborious rural division he had wangled a transfer to a vacant -‘footwalk’, the ‘3d, or Tobacco, Division’, in Dumfries. This meant -lighter work, and enabled him to dispense with his horse--not too soon, -for his poor worn-out mare had given him several nasty falls on the -bad roads, bruising him severely and once breaking his arm. In town, -though, he had small opportunity for increasing his income through -fines and penalties as he had done in the rural division. When at -the end of 1791 he moved his family into Dumfries the best quarters -he could afford were a crowded and uncomfortable half-of-a-house in -the Stinking Vennel, near the river. He was still receiving only the -minimum salary of £50 a year, and though Jean said long afterwards that -they did not come empty-handed into Dumfries not much cash can have -remained after he had discharged his debts. As early as March, 1790, -he had estimated that he would be lucky if he did not lose more than -£100 out of an investment of little more than £200. Such anticipatory -estimates are oftener under the mark than over it; one suspects that if -Burns recovered as much as £50 of the money he had put into Ellisland, -he was lucky. - -By comparison, his prospects in the Excise were roseate. The Port -Division in Dumfries, best paid of the subordinate posts, was vacant, -and Burns lobbied for it with William Corbet, general supervisor of -Excise, as he had done with Graham of Fintry for his first appointment. -Corbet was an old friend of Mrs. Dunlop’s, and her intercession was -effectively supplemented by a warm recommendation from Findlater, the -local supervisor. Burns got the job early in 1792. The salary was -£70 a year with various perquisites worth another £20. It scarcely -represented luxurious living, but it was a better income than most -Scottish schoolmasters or even ministers received in the eighteenth -century, and though ‘Robin’s temper was not cold and frugal’ he managed -to be fairly comfortable. After a year in the Stinking Vennel he moved -to a better house in what was then called Mill Street and is now Burns -Street--the last of his numerous abodes. - -Even before he left Ellisland Burns’s name had been placed on the list -of those eligible for promotion to the rank of Supervisor. This was the -most laborious of the Excise posts, for the supervisors did most of the -real work of collection and administration. They received salaries -of from £200 to £400 a year, but their duties filled most of their -waking hours. So long as he was merely Port Officer Burns had time and -energy for reading and song-writing. He knew, however, that when in the -course of seniority he became a supervisor most of this would cease. -But he was already looking beyond. The next rank above Supervisor was -Collector, and the collectors held well-paid sinecures. In theory -at least supervisors were appointed by merit, but collectorships -admittedly went by favour, and Burns began to cultivate political -friendships which might in the future secure him the necessary -influence. - -Not that he had any intention of soldiering on his job and trusting to -influence to lift him to a better one. He was taking an intelligent -interest in his work and sought the attention of his superiors by his -understanding of their business. Thus he had not been long in his Port -Division before he wrote to Provost Staig of Dumfries pointing out that -the town was losing revenue through failure to assess a tax on imported -ale, and backed his statement with an estimate of the sums involved -and some shrewd advice as to the best method of getting his chiefs to -enforce their collection. A year or so later he pointed out to Robert -Graham that one of the Dumfries divisions could be abolished and its -duties distributed among the other officers without overburdening them. -There cannot be many instances on record of a government employee’s -informing his superiors that he was underworked. On this occasion at -least Burns took an unusual way of drawing attention to himself. He was -also once more suggesting his own advancement at the expense of another -man, but admitted the fact and coupled his recommendation with a plea -that if the change were made the present incumbent, burdened with an -expensive family, be provided for elsewhere. - -He would have been the last to claim that these suggestions were -free of any ulterior motive beside the general one of making himself -known as a thoughtful and efficient officer. He had other and more -immediate purposes. Not long after showing Provost Staig the revenue -possibilities of the ‘twa pennies’ tax on ale he had a petition to -make to the Burgh Council. When he first visited Dumfries in 1787 -he had been made an honorary burgess; he now wanted that nominal -citizenship converted into a real one so far at least as concerned the -local schools. The sons of burgesses were entitled to free tuition at -Dumfries Academy, and the chance of getting his boys into a first-rate -school was not to be neglected. His petition set forth in detail -the help he had given to the local revenues. This may not have been -the reason why the Council at once granted his application, but it -certainly did not hamper it. Similarly his letters to Graham were -frankly motivated by a desire to get a post as acting supervisor at -the earliest possible moment and thereby to secure not only some small -immediate increase in income but the experience and reputation which -would count in his favour when a permanent position opened. - -These were reasonable and legitimate efforts to gain prestige. He -indulged in others more ticklish and, in the perspective of history, -more futile. Burns lacked the right temperament for cultivating -politicians, but he could not help trying. He was once introduced, for -instance, to that very shady character, the Duke of Queensberry, whom -previously he had rated with some justice as a complete scoundrel. -At their meeting the Duke proved affable, and hearing that Burns had -written a song about the notorious ‘Whistle’ drinking bout mentioned -that he would like a copy. Burns sent it to him with a flattering -letter, no doubt hoping that at some future date the Duke’s influence -might be useful. There was nothing particularly dangerous in this, -for the Duke’s rank made him a public character irrespective of what -party was in power. But when Burns undertook to meddle in parliamentary -contests he was playing with fire. He had of course no vote himself, -but he wrote ballads in support of Whig candidates and continued to -do so until a few months before his death. From the viewpoint of 1792 -something might have been said for this as good strategy, regardless of -the poet’s actual sympathies. Except for the brief Rockingham ministry -at the end of the American War the Tories had been in power for nearly -a generation and a reversal was overdue. When and if the Whigs came -in a man who had supported them in their time of adversity would be -entitled to special favours. Neither Burns nor anyone else in Britain -could foresee Napoleon and realize that Pitt’s ministry, which had -already been on the verge of disaster over the Regency Bill, would, -thanks to the Frenchman, remain in office until after Burns and most of -his parliamentary friends were in their graves. As things turned out, -silence would have been the better part for Burns, but he had no gift -for silence. - -In the same year moreover in which Burns secured his Port Division -the effects of the upheaval in France were stirring both Burns and -Scotland. The cries of Liberty and Equality and Fraternity were -echoed in the North and enlisted as in England a motley collection of -supporters who ranged from poetic idealists, like Burns and Wordsworth, -through professional agitators like Thomas Paine and Horne Tooke to -unprincipled rabble. Burns’s first public gesture of sympathy with the -French Revolution came as a by-product of the most exciting episode -in his career as an Excise officer. In the early spring of 1792 a -smuggling schooner named the _Rosamond_ was caught in the Solway. -The ship was heavily armed and thanks to the active co-operation of -the coastwise folks, who staved in all their rowboats to keep the -Excise officers from using them, she landed her cargo. The _Rosamond_, -however, remained aground on the tidal flats and when an armed force -of dragoons and Excise officers--Burns among them--waded out to attack -her the crew fled after scuttling the ship. Salvaged and towed into -the Nith the _Rosamond_ with all her gear was confiscated and sold at -auction. Her armament included four carronades which Burns bought for -£4 and dispatched as a gift to the French Convention. Such at least -is the traditional story, and every detail of it, except the actual -dispatch of the carronades, is corroborated by documents found among -the Abbotsford papers. The tradition continues that the guns never -reached France, being seized by the customs officials at Dover; but -here again confirmation is lacking. Legally there was nothing wrong -in Burns’s action. France and England were still officially at peace, -though their relations were steadily growing tenser. Nevertheless, -from the practical viewpoint of a government employee with a dependent -family it was a gesture of almost criminal recklessness. The government -has never yet existed which looked benevolently upon manifestations of -revolutionary sympathies among its servants, and before many months had -passed Burns had good reason to be frightened. - -The autumn of 1792 saw England ready to join the coalition against -revolutionary France, though war was not declared until February -1, 1793. To the privileged classes in England the war had all -the characteristics of a crusade except the obligation to take a -personal share. The Revolution threatened the very foundations of the -aristocratic social system, and the depth of the government’s fear is -measured by the violence alike of official denunciations of France and -of the suppression of dissenting opinion at home. Charges of sedition -were pressed not only against avowed revolutionary sympathizers but -against almost anyone who had advocated the slightest modification of -the existing order. It was not surprising that Burns, always unguarded -in speech and action, should face investigation of his conduct. The -details of the charges and their outcome belong in another chapter. For -a time Burns thought that all his hopes of advancement were blasted, -but the storm soon blew over, and even before he advertised his -loyalty by enlisting in the Dumfries Volunteers he had good reason to -anticipate that promotion would come in due course. - -But though he escaped the storm of persecution he did not escape the -economic consequences of the war. It had the usual and inevitable -results of tight money and rising prices; a wave of bankruptcies swept -over Scotland; the monthly lists of failures in the _Scots Magazine_ -increased from an average of half-a-dozen a month to forty-six in -July, 1793, and among the victims was Burns’s friend, Walter Auld -the saddler. The poet himself was not exempt. The war cut off the -greater part of the import trade and with it much of the income and -perquisites of Dumfries Port Division. Burns had just begun to extend -his expenditures in keeping with his increased income. The carronades -and his better house were only part of the expansion. He had backed -a friend’s note and had to pay it when the friend defaulted; he had -lent considerable sums to another friend, the schoolmaster at Moffat, -who was engaged in a long-drawn-out wrangle with the Earl of Hopetoun, -patron of the school; there were other smaller loans as well. Caught -thus with ready cash exhausted, income reduced, and prices rising, -Burns found himself once again in the grimly familiar position of -being unable to pay his landlord. That the landlord was a gentleman -and a personal friend who did not dun for his money made the situation -more painful. In January, 1795, Burns had actually to borrow three -guineas from his friend, William Stewart, in order to pay part of his -rent. Nevertheless even in these hard times he managed occasional -expenditures that came in the class of luxuries--a week’s tour in -Galloway with John Syme, the restoration of a Jacobite relic in form -of Lord Balmerino’s dirk, even a miniature portrait of himself. He and -his family never lacked for the necessaries of life, and though he was -somewhat in debt the accounting of his executors is proof that the -amount never passed reasonable bounds. - -As soon as the excitement over the sedition charges subsided his -prospects in the Excise brightened steadily. Friends in Edinburgh were -secretly trying to get him transferred to a more lucrative position, -but even in Dumfries things looked hopeful. At the end of December, -1794, Supervisor Findlater fell ill, and Burns took over his duties. -The work lasted three months or more, and though it is uncertain if -Burns received any extra pay for his labour he at least gained valuable -experience and competently handled his complex duties. The only adverse -criticism of his conduct related to a technical irregularity in his -final report, and this was the fault not of Burns himself but of one -of his subordinates. The passage of each year brought him higher on the -list of candidates for supervisor’s posts. Had he lived another year or -two he would automatically have been appointed even if his Edinburgh -friends had failed in their efforts to hasten the process. - -The prospect of promotion was becoming very real--so real that during -the very months when he was acting as supervisor Burns devoted some of -his scanty leisure to composing a group of political ballads. Patrick -Heron of Heron--the same Heron whose bank failure had once ruined half -Ayrshire--was the Whig candidate in a by-election at Kirkcudbright. -In return for the support of Burns’s pen Heron asked if he could do -anything for the poet. Burns’s reply showed his mind at its coldest -level of realism. Nothing could be done, he said, for two or three -years, until he reached the head of the supervisors’ list. Then a -political friend could be of service in getting him appointed in some -agreeable part of the kingdom and of still more service in hastening -his next step in rank. Collectorships went by favour, and the time he -must spend in the drudgery of a supervisorship would therefore depend -on the amount of influence his friends could exert. The letter is -graphic proof of Burns’s open-eyed acceptance of the system in which he -worked; it is also proof of his irrepressible lack of discretion. From -the viewpoint of mere self-interest he would have done better to hold -aloof from all political contests and, when the time came, to base his -appeal for influence upon his standing as a poet instead of identifying -himself with any party. But such calm calculation was not in his nature. - -In any case his hopes were vain. His disease was gaining on him; he -experienced sharp twinges of pain which he and his doctors called -rheumatism, but which were probably angina pectoris. In June and -again in December, 1795, he had serious illnesses which left him weak -and shaken. In the face of his increasing weakness he had taken on -additional labour by enlisting in a volunteer company organized in -Dumfries in the early spring. The manual of arms and frequent drills -were dangerous medicine for a diseased heart, and to this physical -labour Burns added active participation in all the business affairs of -the corps. His final breakdown could not in any circumstances have been -long delayed, but the Dumfries Volunteers undoubtedly hastened it. - -The winter of 1795-6 was a time of famine. Crops had been bad; trade -was dislocated by the war. Nearly one-fourth of the inhabitants of -Edinburgh were being fed by charity, and flour was so scarce that even -those who could afford it were asked to ration themselves to one loaf -of bread per capita a week. Conditions in the smaller towns were as -bad or worse; there were serious food riots in Dumfries in February -and March. With his health steadily declining Burns was exposed to -constant worry for the welfare of his family. Excise officers who were -unable over long periods to perform their duties because of illness -were reduced to half-pay, and as matters stood in the spring of 1796 -half-pay would have meant almost starvation for his children. That -things did not come to this pass for Burns was due to the generosity -of Adam Stobbie, who handled his work for him and refused compensation -for the service. This relieved some of his immediate anxiety, but did -little to answer the main question of what would become of Jean and the -children if he died. - -The problem of livelihood, never long absent from his mind, occupied -it during his last weeks almost to the exclusion of other thoughts. -The only prescriptions the doctors could offer in his illness involved -expenditures he could not afford, and his enlistment in the Volunteers -now returned to plague him. The tailor who had made his uniform began -to dun for payment, and to the poet’s fevered imagination it seemed -that his life was going to close as his father’s had, under the shadow -of a debtors’ prison. He spent some of his last days of consciousness -in writing frantic letters begging the friends to whom he had lent -money to repay their loans and asking others like George Thomson and -James Burness to advance him money. Thomson was the only one who gave -grudgingly. The others willingly and promptly sent what he asked, but -too late to lift the cloud from his dying mind. His last articulate -words were an imprecation against the tailor who had threatened him, -and he died without the comfort of knowing that his death would awaken -the generosity he had never experienced in his life, and that the -admirers of his poetry would make it possible for Jean to keep her home -together and for his children to be decently educated and launched on -respectable careers. - - - - -VI - -SONG - - -Burns never wrote a ‘Prelude, or Growth of a Poet’s Mind’, and left -only a few fragments of his projected satire on ‘The Poet’s Progress’. -Yet his letters and journals, as well as the poems themselves, so -definitely describe his moods and methods of composition that his -poetic psychology can be studied almost as fully as Wordsworth’s own. - -Conscious pleasure in poetry read or heard first came to him in boyhood -through one of Addison’s hymns; mingled with martial and patriotic -sentiment he found it also in ‘The History of Sir William Wallace’ and -the Life of Hannibal. This latter, he said, ‘gave my young ideas such -a turn that I used to strut in raptures up & down after the recruiting -drum and bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier, while -the story of Wallace poured a Scotish prejudice in my veins which will -boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest.’ -But this, like the similar thrills from all the odds and ends of -English poetry and Scottish song which came his way, was commonplace -boyish emotion. The need and desire to write poetry of his own did -not awaken until his adolescent blood was warmed, in his ‘fifteenth -autumn’, by the first consciousness of sexual attraction in the company -of Nelly Kilpatrick. - - ‘I never expressly told her that I loved her.--Indeed I did not well - know myself, why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when - returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of her voice - made my heartstrings thrill like an Eolian harp; and particularly, - why my pulse beat such a furious ratann when I looked and fingered - over her hand, to pick out the nettle-stings and thistles.--Among - her other love-inspiring qualifications, she sung sweetly, and ’twas - her favorite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in - rhyme.--I was not so presumtive 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 composed 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 ... he - had no more Scholarcraft than I had.’ - -‘Thus’, Burns summed up, with a juxtaposition of ideas never far -separated in his mind, ‘with me began Love and Poesy.’ In all respects -save one the episode was the commonest experience of calf-love. But -that one difference was decisive. When a girl roused him to lyric -fervour, Burns did not sit down and merely string his emotions together -in rime. Another element went to make the song; an element that -ultimately would mean more, poetically, to Burns than any girl--namely, -a tune. His mind did not work from emotion directly to words; it worked -from emotion to music, and the music brought the words which expressed -its mood. Herein Burns was almost unique among modern poets. Fully -to appreciate his lyrics one must hear them sung to the airs which -evoked them. To read many of them in bare print is like reading the -libretto of an opera. Even in his satires and epistles the process of -composition was usually the same, though another man’s poem, instead -of music, fired the train. Acquaintance with his models is almost as -illuminating as acquaintance with his tunes. - -His first effort at song-writing led to a conscious study of the poet’s -craft. The elaborate criticism appended to ‘Handsome Nell’ when Burns -copied the poem into his Commonplace Book is too obviously a bravura -piece to merit consideration; more noteworthy is his account of how he -studied his collection of English songs: ‘I pored over them, verse by -verse; carefully noting the true tender or sublime from affectation and -fustian.--I am convinced I owe much to this for my critic-craft such as -it is.’ But these were _English_ songs, and their effect on his early -work shows mainly in such things as ‘My father was a farmer’ and ‘Man -was made to mourn’, which latter in the Commonplace Book is entitled, -‘A Song: Tune, Peggy Bawn’. Even his most doleful lines came to him in -music. - -But lugubrious notes were not the only ones. It was as inevitable -that a young Scot should try his hand at metrical paraphrases of the -Psalms as that a young Etonian of the same century should paraphrase -Horace. The results in both cases are equally negligible. Youth has -to repeat the stale patterns of its predecessors before it can find -its own. It was much more important that ‘I murder hate by field or -flood’ was written in the same way. This is an epigrammatic song in the -Restoration manner, and as English in language as in style. But it was -written to a Scottish air, ‘Gillicrankie’. The innate Scottish culture -of the poet was beginning, as early as 1781, to assimilate and adapt -the alien materials of Restoration England. - -Though Burns failed to act on Richard Brown’s suggestion that he send -some of his early verses to a magazine, the idea stuck. The yeasty -stirrings of a still immature mind which had led him in 1780 to plague -his friends with pompous discourses on Pride and Courage were slowly -giving place to more personal thinking on topics which he better -understood. His customary chronological vagueness in referring to his -early manhood makes it uncertain whether he began his Commonplace -Book before he discovered the poems of Robert Fergusson, or after. -The internal evidence indicates the former. So does the elaborate -title-page: - - ‘Observations, Hints, Songs, Scraps of Poetry, &c., by Robt. Burness; - a man who had little art in making money, and still less in keeping - it; but was, however, a man of some sense, a great deal of honesty, - and unbounded good-will to every creature--rational or irrational. - As he was but little indebted to scholastic education, and bred at - a plough-tail, his performances must be strongly tinctured with his - unpolished, rustic way of life; but, as I believe they are really - _his own_, it may be some entertainment to a curious observer of - human-nature to see how a ploughman thinks and feels under the - pressure of Love, Ambition, Anxiety, Grief, with the like cares and - passions, which, however diversified by the modes and manners of life, - operate pretty much alike, I believe, in all the Species. - - “There are numbers in the world who do not want sense to make a - figure, so much as an opinion of their own abilities, to put them - upon recording their observations, and allowing them the same - importance which they do to those which appear in print.”--Shenstone. - - “Pleasing when youth is long expir’d to trace, - The forms our pencil, or our pen design’d. - Such was our youthful air, and shape, and face! - Such the soft image of our youthful mind.” - - Ibidem.’ - -Burns was already conscious of something more in himself than there was -in the average young peasant; as an escape from worries over his own -health and the family’s future he was undertaking to leave a record of -himself to edify some hypothetical future reader. Whatever tinge of -humility there might be on his title-page was, like the pretence at -third-person reporting, assumed. He meant to prove that a peasant youth -shared the feelings of his betters and could rime and moralize to as -good effect as they. But the title-page, the quotations from Shenstone, -and the opening paragraph about Love all announce a programme he soon -abandoned. When he began the book he was still thinking in the terms -of his first letters about Pride and Courage; before he ended it he was -thinking in poetry. - -Though he might continue to assert that he rimed for fun, the fact was -that from the day in April, 1783, when he commenced the Commonplace -Book he was composing for publication, though not necessarily for -print. His earliest verses were either the expression of a personal -emotion, social _jeux d’esprit_, or conventional exercises in -versification, with no purpose beyond the momentary and personal one; -the ‘Observations, Scraps of Song, &c.’, were to be his legacy to the -world. Not by chance did the Commonplace Book and its successor survive -the general destruction of his private papers when he supposed himself -on the eve of flight to Jamaica. Even though by that time the best of -his verse had escaped the hazard of manuscript and was safely enshrined -in the good black print of the Kilmarnock volume, he could not bring -himself to destroy these records. It was well that he saved them. The -Commonplace Book remains the sole record of what Burns was doing, -intellectually and poetically, between April, 1783, and October, 1785. -Commencing with self-conscious commentaries on life and on his own -first efforts at writing, it reveals before its close his steady growth -in artistic competence. - -Not that it resembles the notebooks of Keats and Shelley, with their -evidence of how poems grow in the poet’s mind. Burns’s poems stayed -in his mind until they were mature. His poverty and his method of -composing to music combined to prevent his committing half-formed ideas -to paper. Paper was scarce and expensive; often in his early days he -failed to write down his poems even when they were complete. Sometimes -he forgot them entirely; sometimes he managed to reconstruct them long -afterwards, as he did when he recalled ‘The Mauchline Wedding’ for -Mrs. Dunlop’s amusement. One of the few poems composed on paper is the -disastrous ‘Elegy on the Death of Sir James Hunter Blair’, which Burns -drafted in his Border journal. Here he was working with an English -verse-form for which no melody existed. It took him three different -sittings painfully to wring out the first seven stanzas. Again in -1791 he reported that he had ‘these several months been hammering at -an Elegy’ on Miss Burnet of Monboddo, but found elegy ‘so exhausted a -subject that any new idea on the business is not to be expected’; the -original manuscript of the ‘Lament for James Earl of Glencairn’ reveals -similar struggles. When no tune sang itself in his head, composition -was labour and the results were wooden. The ‘Lament’, with a more lyric -stanza and with stronger personal feeling at its root, came nearer -than the others to success, but even it cannot be ranked among the -great elegies. Declining Cunningham’s suggestion of a theme, he once -said, ‘I have two or three times in my life composed from the wish, -rather than from the impulse, but I never succeeded to any purpose.’ In -commemorating Lord Glencairn, wish and impulse combined, yet even here -he did not wholly succeed because the tune was lacking. - -Poetic expression with Burns was not, as with Wordsworth, the fruit -of emotion recollected in tranquillity; it was the fruit of emotion -expressing itself to music. Though as he grew older the emotion no -longer needed to be so strongly personal as when he wrote his earliest -songs, the dependence on music became correspondingly greater. How he -composed in his later years he told George Thomson in the autumn of -1793: - - ‘Until I am compleat master of a tune, in my own singing (such as - it is) I never can compose for it.--My way is: I consider the - poetic Sentiment, correspondent to my idea of the musical - expression; then chuse my theme; begin one stanza; when that is - composed, which is generally the most difficult part of the - business, I walk out, sit down now & then, look out for objects in - Nature around me that are in unison or harmony with the cogitations - of my fancy & workings of my bosom; humming every now & then the air - with the verses I have framed: when I feel my Muse beginning to jade, - I retire to the solitary fireside of my study, & there commit my - effusions to paper; swinging, at intervals, on the hind-legs of my - elbow-chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures, as - my pen goes on.-- - - Seriously, this, at home, is almost invariably my way.--What damn’d - Egotism!’ - -Though it would probably be impossible to overstress Robert Fergusson’s -influence on Burns’s development, the elder poet’s primary service was -to clarify and confirm ideas already present but as yet inarticulate -in Burns’s mind. He knew what he liked, and what his own poetic -impulses were; the discovery of Fergusson enabled him to define -both his method and his objective. To realize how much he matured -intellectually between the beginning of the Commonplace Book in 1783 -and its conclusion in 1785, one need merely read the strutting, -self-conscious, and essentially empty criticism of ‘expletive phrases’ -of ‘too serious sentiment’, and ‘flimsy strain’ which he appended to -‘Handsome Nell’, or the pseudo-devotional passage about the grand end -of human life being ‘to cultivate an intercourse with that Being to -whom we owe life’. These things of 1783 are juvenilia. The following, -written in September, 1785, is adult: - - ‘There is a certain irregularity in the Old Scotch Songs, a - redundancy of syllables with respect to that exactness of accent - and measure that the English Poetry requires, but which glides in, - most melodiously with the respective tunes to which they are set. For - instance, the fine old song of “The Mill Mill O,” to give it a plain - prosaic reading, it halts prodigiously out of measure; on the other - hand, the song set to the same tune in Bremner’s collection of Scotch - Songs which begins “To Fanny fair could I impart,” &c., it is most - exact measure, and yet, let them both be sung before a real critic, - one above the biasses of prejudice, but a thorough Judge of Nature, - how flat and spiritless will the last appear, how trite, and lamely - methodical, compared with the wild-warbling cadence, the heart-moving - melody of the first. This particularly is the case with all those - airs which end with a hypermetrical syllable. There is a degree of - wild irregularity in many of the compositions and fragments which - are daily sung to them by my compeers, the common people--a certain - happy arrangement of Old Scotch syllables, and yet, very frequently, - nothing, not even _like_ rhyme, or sameness of jingle at the ends of - the lines. This has made me sometimes imagine that perhaps, it might - be possible for a Scotch Poet, with a nice, judicious ear, to set - compositions to many of our most favorite airs ... independent of - rhyme altogether....’ - -With nothing except mother-wit and a sure ear to guide him, Burns -had reached conclusions regarding poetic rhythm at complete variance -with the critical theories of his century and beyond the practice -of even nineteenth-century orthodoxy. He had recognized that the -real charm of folk-poetry lies in the fact that it is musical rather -than regular. In an age when the essence of poetry was thought to -abide in the accurately counted syllables of the heroic couplet such -an opinion would have seemed not merely heresy but sheer insanity. -Compared with it, Coleridge’s supposed innovation of hypermetrical -syllables in _Christabel_ is timid conventionality. Blake alone among -Burns’s contemporaries had bolder theories of rhythm, and his work, -which the Scotsman never saw, had to wait more than half a century -for recognition. Burns later expended much time and ink in trying to -persuade George Thomson that a song could be poetry even if all its -lines did not count up the same number of syllables, but he was never -optimistic enough to offer that silly body a lyric which dispensed with -rime. - -So, too, in regard to the physiology and psychology of composition, -Burns, before he ever published a line, had reached closer to -fundamentals than an academician like Hugh Blair could ever go. Like -Milton he had recognized from his own experience that there is in many -poets a seasonal rhythm of creativeness. In himself it usually began -in August, and continued for several months. That month, he said in -his autobiography, was always a carnival in his bosom; in 1793 he told -Thomson, ‘Autumn is my propitious season. I make more verses in it, -than all the year else,’ and at the beginning of the next summer he -repeated the assertion: ‘Now, & for six or seven months _I shall be -quite in song_.’ In other words, it took all the scanty sunshine of the -Scottish summer to bring him physically to that level of well-being at -which creation was possible. - -The psychology of composition, moreover, which he explained in prose -in 1793 he had defined in poetry in the epistle to William Simpson -of Ochiltree, composed in May, 1785, and published in the Kilmarnock -volume. It is surprisingly like A. E. Housman’s, who recorded that some -of his best poems came to him spontaneously while walking on Hampstead -Heath and thinking of nothing in particular, after drinking a pint of -beer at luncheon. Burns’s formula is precisely similar: - - The Muse, nae Poet ever fand her, - Till by himself he learn’d to wander - Adown some trottin burn’s meander, - An’ no think lang. - -In these circumstances, when his emotional pressure was high enough, -lines and stanzas would come unsought to his mind, and it was to -this experience he referred when he repeatedly called himself ‘a -Bard of Nature’s making’. Burns knew as well as Housman did that -this spontaneous birth was only the beginning and not the end of -composition. Gilbert reported the process without realizing its -significance: - - ‘Robert often composed without any regular plan. When anything made - a strong impression on his mind, so as to rouse it to any poetic - exertion, he would give way to the impulse, and embody the thought - in rhyme. If he hit on two or three stanzas to please him, he would - then think of proper introductory, connecting, and concluding - stanzas; hence the middle of a poem was often first produced.’ - -It suited with the role of inspired ploughman which Burns assumed among -the Edinburgh gentry to give the impression that the finished poem -also was spontaneous, but he knew better. His poetry was often born -under the open sky, with the physical rhythm of his farm-work supplying -the muscular accompaniment he later sought in strolls on the banks -of Nith, but it was matured and revised by concentrated study of the -implications of his theme. As the piper has to walk his measure, so -Burns’s body moved to the rhythm of the tune which was in his mind, -and the rhythm brought the words which expressed his mood. - -It was only Scots music that saved Burns in the end from complete -subjection to the false elegance of his century. Though he was better -read than most of his ‘patrons’ ever realized, he had the self-educated -man’s diffidence in the face of established reputations. His ear, so -quick to distinguish ‘the true tender or sublime’ from ‘affectation -or fustian’ in a lyric, failed him in the reading of more pretentious -works. ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ is shot full of verbal echoes -of English poets; what is worse, it echoes their sentiments, in such -a passage as Stanza X, to an extent which divorces the thought from -all the realities of peasant life. He never acquired the degree of -sophistication which would have enabled him to use the current English -conventions freely and originally, yet he was too sophisticated to -use old folk conventions when they were not reinforced by music. Thus -he never--with the possible exception of ‘John Barleycorn’--wrote a -serious ballad. His political verses, and above all such an uproarious -parody as ‘The Ballad of Grizzel Grimme’, show that he had all the -ballad conventions at his tongue’s end; he had collected numerous old -ballad texts, of which Dr. Currie named more than a dozen to Sir Walter -Scott, though without thinking it worth while to preserve them; yet he -could employ the ballad only in satire or burlesque. Thanks to music, -he was able in all seriousness to sing a song in the old folk style, -but he could not tell a story. - -Even his Scottish vocabulary was more literary and derivative than -his contemporaries realized. It was not so much a direct transcript -of Ayrshire speech as it was a generalized vernacular pieced together -from Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, and the anonymous folk lyrists -and ballad writers. He was genuinely interested in the variations of -dialect--on his Border tour, for instance, he jotted down definitions -of local words which were new to him--but his poetic use of it -was chiefly due to its pithiness, its humour, and, above all, its -flexibility. This was what he had in mind when he admitted to Robert -Anderson ‘the advantages he enjoyed ... from the _copia verborum_, the -command of phraseology, which the knowledge and use of the English -and Scottish dialects afforded him’. He habitually alternated between -Scottish and English spellings of the same word, as the exigencies of -rime and measure required, thereby achieving a more flexible expression -than was possible in either dialect by itself. His vernacular -writing, in short, was nearer to Lowell’s New England speech or -Kipling’s Cockney than it was to Gawain Douglas’s or William Dunbar’s -single-minded expression in his native tongue. Even Robert Fergusson’s -dialect, with its strong infusion of Fifeshire elements, is closer than -Burns’s to being a direct transcript from life. - -In one sense the poems in the Kilmarnock volume which were written -under Robert Fergusson’s influence are a divergence from Burns’s -deepest impulses, even though his method of composing them was -fundamentally the same as in his song-writing. Instead of a tune to -which he could set his own words Fergusson supplied a pattern or a -theme to be adapted to his own experience. The parallels between ‘The -Plane-stanes and the Causey’ and ‘The Brigs of Ayr’, between ‘The Daft -Days’ and ‘Hallowe’en’ or ‘The Holy Fair’, between ‘Caller Oysters’ -and ‘Scotch Drink’ or ‘To a Haggis’ are too obvious and have been too -often mentioned to need reiteration. Burns borrowed, but he did not -copy; even borrowed phraseology he made his own. His imitations almost -invariably surpassed their originals both in poetic fire and in the -epigrammatic quality essential for quotability. Yet in these forms of -verse he showed no inventiveness. His own phrase that Fergusson had -roused him to _emulating_ vigour is literally true. That Fergusson’s -impetus failed to sweep Burns on to discover similar themes of his -own reveals him as after all on foreign ground. Nevertheless, by -demonstrating that poetry could still be written in the vernacular, -Fergusson had done inestimable service. Beyond that his influence -brought Burns to a dead end. The unhappy young lawyer’s clerk had no -music in his soul. - -Allan Ramsay rather than Fergusson showed the way to the sort of poetry -without musical setting in which Burns found his genuine freedom and -inspiration. The imitations of Fergusson end with the lines ‘To a -Haggis’, written in December, 1786; Ramsay supplied the models for the -vernacular epistles which Burns never wholly ceased to write until a -few months before his death. And between the poetic epistle as Burns -wrote it and the dramatic monologue in which he also excelled there -is little basic difference. The writer of a poetic epistle is usually -dramatizing himself. Like the professional humorist, he assumes a -role which is a projection or exaggeration of one phase of his own -temperament, but which is not really himself as the working-day world -knows him. For Burns to pass from such self-dramatization as marks the -epistles to Lapraik, Simpson, Rankine, and Smith to the pure drama of -‘The Auld Farmer’ or even ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’ involved merely an -extension of imaginative scope and not a different technique. - -To put it another way, Burns could either talk or he could sing. -When he was not writing to music he was at his best only when he was -speaking, either for himself as personified bard or humorous spectator, -or as he identified his own personality with another’s. Nothing in the -poems composed in 1786 more clearly shows his maturing artistic powers -than does the dramatic character of ‘The Auld Farmer’ and ‘Holy Willie’ -when contrasted with the lyrics of ‘The Jolly Beggars’, composed the -year before. In these last, magnificent as they are, the reader can -seldom forget that it is Burns who is speaking through the mouths of -the vagabonds. The lyrics are only half dramatic, and perhaps it was -realization of this that made the poet in 1793 tell George Thomson that -none of the songs pleased him except the last--in which Burns himself -is speaking as the ‘Bard of no regard’. In ‘Holy Willie’ and ‘The Auld -Farmer’, on the other hand, the poet has identified himself with the -character whom he is portraying as completely as Browning ever did with -Fra Lippo Lippi or the Duke of Ferrara. - -Less than adequate notice has been taken of the fact that Burns had -mastered the art of the dramatic lyric and the dramatic monologue more -than half a century before Browning gave the forms their names. His own -statement that all his early lyrics had a personal basis has both led -biographers on wild-goose chases after autobiographical elements in -songs which possess none, and has been used to give false emphasis to -many poems really based on personal experience. Such interpretations -ignore the very foundation of creative art. That the impulse to write -a lyric comes from personal emotion does not mean that the finished -poem is literal history. Keats’s love for Fanny Brawne helped to make -‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ what it is, but not even Mr. Middleton Murry has -been fatuous enough to call Madeline a portrait of Fanny. Rose Aylmer -was not necessarily as perfect as Landor’s elegy upon her; William -Douglas may have had no real intention of laying him down and dying for -Annie Laurie. Yet the whole Highland Mary legend, for instance, rests -on precisely this sort of treatment of a handful of Burns’s songs, in -obstinate disregard of the plain fact that the woman who inspires a -love-lyric no more needs to be herself a lyric woman than the model for -the Victory of Samothrace needed to be a woman with wings. Everyone -has recognized Burns’s unsuccess in his effort to dramatize himself for -Clarinda’s benefit as the pure man of sentiment; his true achievement -could be better understood by recognition of his success in dramatizing -his real self in many of his best ‘personal’ poems. From the ‘Mary -Morison’ of his youth to the ‘O wert thou in the cauld blast’ of his -last illness, his best songs display not Burns himself but a dramatic -projection of one aspect of his mind. - -Commentators from Henry Mackenzie onward have regretted that Burns -never carried out his plans for writing a drama. Yet his triumph in the -dramatic monologue is the best reason for believing that the attempt -would have failed. His numerous references to the drama and dramatic -writing never so much as hint that Burns had grasped the elements -of theatrical technique. For him a play was merely a vehicle for -declamatory speeches and the expression of ‘sentiments’ which would -make neat quotations; a cobbling together of purple patches and of -scattered episodes supposed to depict ‘originality of character’. If it -ever occurred to him that a good play is a unified structure in which -a single impression is built up through a series of artfully contrived -climaxes, he never put the idea on paper. But even had he understood -the technique he had not the right psychological approach for dramatic -writing, any more than Browning had. The true dramatist stands apart -from his characters and develops them from without; the writer of -dramatic monologues identifies himself for the moment with another -individual and develops the character from within. The two temperaments -are seldom united in one man, and Burns in turning away even from the -pastoral drama which Mackenzie had urged him to undertake was once -again instinctively following the bent of his own genius. In the light -of what he accomplished in his chosen forms, Mackenzie’s suggestion was -almost as inept as John Moore’s proposal that he try something like -Virgil’s Eclogues. - -Before he went to Edinburgh Burns had explored his own capacities, but -had not yet realized more than half of them. Fergusson had shown him -how to write satires and descriptions in the vernacular; Ramsay had -revealed the possibilities of the poetic epistle. But his interest -in the folk-songs of which the words and melodies haunted him, still -seemed a rustic or even childish survival. So far as he knew, it was -like taking nursery rimes seriously as poetry. Though he must have -been aware that scholars of repute were beginning to collect old -ballads, he had not yet discovered that they were turning also to the -words and music of folk-songs. In this respect at least, his Edinburgh -sojourn was of incalculable benefit. Apparently he never met David -Herd, the greatest collector among his contemporaries, but he soon -became acquainted with Herd’s published work and learned that even -some university professors esteemed such things. Sending a couple -of songs, ‘the composition of two Ayrshire Mechanics’, to the Rev. -William Greenfield a few weeks after arriving in the city, he hailed -that eloquent but incontinent clergyman as ‘Professor of the Belles -lettres de la Nature’; in the following summer he told William Tytler -that he had once a great many fragments of traditional literature, but -as he had no idea that anybody cared for them, he had forgotten them. -And his next remark showed that he already possessed the essential -qualification of the collector: ‘I invariably hold it sacriledge to -add anything of my own to help out with the shatter’d wrecks of these -venerable old compositions; but they have many various readings.’ Yet -not even then, not even though the singing of old melodies was one -of the commonest amusements both in Edinburgh drawing rooms and at -convivial meetings at taverns, did he realize immediately the task and -the opportunity before him. - -The convivial meetings at first meant much more to him than the -drawing-rooms. The jolly gentlemen who made up the Crochallan Fencibles -had probably as a group little interest in pure poetry, but they had -a very lively interest in brisk songs. If the songs happened to be -improper, that was no handicap among a club which included Charles -Hay and William Smellie and Robert Cleghorn, and to whom Alexander -Cunningham used to sing ‘charmingly’ one of the most indecent of Irish -ditties. Burns’s memory was already well stored with such gems, and -in this congenial company he added to his stock, enriched old songs -with new stanzas of his own, and occasionally composed original verses -of the same type, as he had often done at Mauchline. As a means of -enhancing the pleasures of male company over a bowl of punch such -song-writing amused him and delighted the Fencibles. - -Not until after his Edinburgh _Poems_ were off the press did it begin -to dawn upon him that he might also win new fame in the drawing-room -and--what meant much more to him--do a patriotic service to Scotland. -In the last weeks of April, 1787, he made the acquaintance of an -engraver named James Johnson, who was just bringing out the first -volume of a work which he called _The Scots Musical Museum_. Johnson -was known to Smellie, Dunbar, and others of Burns’s friends, but he -cannot have been in the inner circle of the Crochallans, or Burns -would have met him sooner. He was almost illiterate--his picturesquely -bad spelling is notable even for the eighteenth century--but he was -an enthusiast for the collection and preservation of the traditional -music and songs of his country. He had invented a process for printing -music by stamping the notes on pewter plates instead of the steel or -copper engraving then generally employed. Though the result was a -mean and smudgy page, the process was much cheaper than the old one -and encouraged Johnson to try his hand at publishing. His enthusiasm, -however, far exceeded his knowledge. He had had difficulty in gathering -the hundred songs which made up his first volume, and had even eked it -out with a few English pieces. His meeting with Burns not only remade -the _Museum_, but, poetically considered, was the most important event -of the poet’s life in the capital. - -Writing to Johnson on the eve of his Border tour Burns regretted that -they had not met sooner: ‘I have met with few people whose company & -conversation gave me more pleasure, because I have met with few whose -sentiments are so congenial to my own.’ But though he contributed a -song or two to the collection, the idea that he might take an active -part in the work was still far from his mind. The fantastic Earl of -Buchan, as early as February, had advised Burns to ‘fire [his] Muse at -Scottish story and Scottish scene.’ Burns had replied, in language even -more inflated than the Earl’s: ‘I wish for nothing more than to make a -leisurely Pilgrimage through my native country; to sit & muse on those -once hard-contended fields where Caledonia, rejoicing, saw her bloody -lion borne through broken ranks to victory and fame; and catching -the inspiration to pour the deathless Names in Song.’ Unfortunately, -added the poet, he had instead to go back to working for his living. -Nevertheless, the Border tour offered a chance to fulfil part of the -Earl’s suggestion--according to Burns’s real tastes, if not the Earl’s. -His greatest pleasures on the journey were not the civic receptions -and the elaborate hospitality of the gentry, but the sight of Gala -Water, Leader Haughs and Yarrow, the Bush aboon Traquair, Elibanks and -Elibraes, and other spots celebrated in song. It made no difference -whether the song was singable before ladies or before Crochallans, so -long as it was Scottish, and old. - -The Highland tours added so effectively to his stock that in 1793 he -was able to say that he had made pilgrimages to every spot commemorated -in Scottish song except Lochaber and the Braes of Ballenden. Presumably -on his passages through Edinburgh in August and September he talked -with Johnson, but not until late October, after his return from -Ochtertyre, did he really begin to put his energies into the work. -Johnson obviously had solicited his help, and the poet’s first move was -to write to all his friends who possessed words or music which might be -usable. Nor did he confine himself to his own circle of acquaintance. -Learning to his chagrin that he had unwittingly passed near the home of -the Rev. John Skinner without calling to pay his respects to the author -of ‘Tullochgorum’ and ‘John o’ Badenyon’, he seized the opportunity -given by receipt of a poetic epistle from Skinner to beg the venerable -clergyman’s support for Johnson’s enterprise. He soon started also to -fit words of his own to fine melodies which either lacked them or had -unsuitable ones--at first with a personal motive, in order to publish -the complimentary verses he had written to Margaret Chalmers and -Charlotte Hamilton, but soon with no purpose except that of supplying -his favourite music with words which could be sung. Moreover, he -commenced to gather all available publications of Scottish songs and -song music. How thoroughly he went into this search is revealed by his -quiet remark to George Thomson five years later: ‘Let me have a list of -your airs, with the first line of the verses you intend for them.... -I say, the first line of the verses, because if they are verses that -have appeared in any of our Collections of songs, I know them & can -have recourse to them.’ He had in fact ranged so widely in the old -song books that even yet his editors have been unable to identify the -originals of some of the songs he altered and adapted for the _Museum_, -and later on for Thomson’s _Select Collection_. But though in 1787 he -realized better than Johnson did the magnitude of the task and the -opportunity before them, he was still unaware of its true scope. He -conjectured that there would be three volumes of a hundred songs each. -The completed work filled six. - -From October, 1787, onwards Burns was in fact though not in name the -chief editor of the _Museum_. He collected words and music, wrote -prefaces for the successive volumes, and helped to enlist the aid of a -competent musician, Stephen Clarke, organist of the Episcopal chapel -in Edinburgh, in harmonizing the airs. Johnson willingly submitted to -the poet’s leadership, which he needed. The surviving correspondence -shows Burns carrying on a struggle which nothing except his enthusiasm -for the work could at times have made endurable. Johnson required -constant supervision even in such elementary matters as spelling; -Clarke’s carelessness and indolence were maddening. The work sold -slowly and Johnson, under the pressure of other affairs, inclined to -procrastinate. ‘Why,’ Burns asked in 1793, and the passage is typical -of many, ‘did you not send me those tunes & verses that Clarke & you -cannot make out? Let me have them as soon as possible, that, while he -is at hand, I may settle the matter with him.’ Clarke, ‘with his usual -indolence’, was worse. More than once he mislaid or lost whole sheafs -of songs which had been entrusted to him. ‘“The Lochmaben harper”’, -said the poet in 1795, ‘I fear I shall never recover; & it is a famous -old song.--The rest are, I doubt, irrecoverable.--I think it hard -that, after so much trouble in gathering these tunes, they should be -lost in this trifling way.--Clarke has been shamefully careless.’ Yet -Burns’s enthusiasm kept him going, however negligent or incompetent -the partners on whom he had to depend. The time-table of the work is -sufficient proof of his influence. Volume II, prepared while he was in -Edinburgh, was ready six months after Volume I; the next two volumes, -for which the poet’s contributions had to be made by correspondence, -took two years each. Volume V was prepared while Burns was working also -for George Thomson; it was four years on the stocks. The final volume, -prepared by Johnson’s unaided efforts, took six years, even though he -had still on hand a considerable quantity of Burns’s verse for which -space had been lacking in the earlier numbers. - -Burns’s preface to the second volume, published in February, 1788, -in the very midst of the Clarinda imbroglio, shows how completely, -in the fifteen months since his first arrival in Edinburgh, the poet -had awakened to the literary importance of folk-song. ‘Ignorance and -Prejudice’, he wrote, ‘may perhaps affect to sneer at the simplicity -of the poetry or music of some of these pieces; but their having been -for ages the favourites of Nature’s Judges--the Common People, was -to the Editor a sufficient test of their merit....’ He was no longer -apologetic for his interest in popular literature. If the highbrows -could not appreciate it, so much the worse for the highbrows. He -was determined, moreover, that no poet of the people should lack -recognition if it were possible to give it. ‘Wherever the old words -could be recovered, they have been preserved; both as generally suiting -better the genius of the tunes, and to preserve the productions of -those earlier Sons of the Scottish Muses, some of whose names deserved -a better fate than has befallen them--“Buried ’mong the wreck of -things which were.” Of our more modern Songs, the Editor has inserted -the Authors’ names as far as he could ascertain them.’ The passage -is almost a direct transcript, even to the hackneyed quotation from -Blair’s _Grave_, of what Burns had written in the Commonplace Book two -and a half years before, when he added that it had given him ‘many a -heart-ake’ to reflect that the names of such glorious old Bards were -clean forgotten. No more of them should be forgotten if he could do -anything to prevent it. The ‘communal’ theory of ballad-composition -still slumbered in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land; Burns was sure that somewhere at -the source of every old song was an individual poet of like passions -with himself, and such as he himself might still be but for the -accident of print. - -His one exception to the rule of publishing authors’ names was his own -contributions. He told Mrs. Dunlop that the songs signed ‘R’, ‘B’, or -‘X’ were his own, and those signed ‘Z’ were old songs he had altered -or enlarged. But no one can go through the volumes with this simple -key and identify all of Burns’s contributions. His own negligence and -Johnson’s omitted his initials from numerous songs unquestionably his -own, and the verses signed ‘Z’ have puzzled the ingenuity of editors -ever since. Burns admitted that ‘of a good many of them, little more -than the Chorus is ancient; tho’ there is no reason for telling every -body this piece of intelligence.’ Sometimes his own annotations or -the survival of earlier texts show the extent of his contributions, -ranging from eking out a too-brief song with an extra stanza of his own -to composing a whole lyric to fit a fragment of traditional chorus. -Public opinion unanimously credits Burns with ‘Auld Lang Syne’, yet he -never claimed it. He declared that it ‘had never been in print, nor -even in manuscript’, until he took it down from an old man’s singing. -Three different times, for people as unlike as Mrs. Dunlop, Robert -Riddell, and George Thomson, he wrote out the words without even an -indirect claim to their authorship. Nevertheless, no trace of the song -in anything like Burns’s form has ever been found in earlier records, -and the public has refused to believe that a poem of such appeal could -have been current without being noticed. On the other hand, every -stanza of ‘A Red Red Rose’ has been traced to some older poem; yet -Burns’s skill in selecting the one good image in a mass of commonplace -and weaving his cento of borrowings into a single compact and vivid -lyric makes the song his own, as _Macbeth_ is Shakespeare’s and not -Holinshed’s. - -In such lyrics as these and scores of others Burns had achieved a sort -of dramatic impersonation which far surpassed even the best of his -earlier monologues and dramatic lyrics. Guided always by the spirit of -the music, he had so identified himself with the thoughts and feelings -of the anonymous and half-articulate folk poets whose songs he was -rescuing from oblivion that the most critical eye cannot be certain -where their work ends and Burns’s begins. Again and again he took -fragments of old work and not only reunited them into coherent wholes -but gave the restored poem the lyric elevation its original author had -felt but could not express. Emerson said that an institution was the -lengthened shadow of a single man: Scottish song as the world knows -it today is the lengthened shadow of Robert Burns. What he did not -actually write is so coloured by his influence that it could not exist -without him. With the exception of Lady Nairne’s, his was the last -poetry written in the old folk tradition. The romantic sentimentality -which tinges Burns’s songs at their weakest, overspreads many of Lady -Nairne’s; Scott’s masterpiece, ‘Bonnie Dundee’, is glorious, but it -is not a folk-song. Most of what has been written since 1800 is merely -imitation Burns. - -The _Museum_ was Burns’s opportunity to combine his poetic inclinations -with his fervent patriotism. But it was more than that. By enlisting -the poet’s help in his enterprise, Johnson unwittingly furnished him -the means of sustaining his creative life amid his toil as farmer and -Exciseman. After 1788 extended composition was probably impossible -for Burns. He could scarcely hope to be revisited by the almost -continuous excitement under which he wrote the greater part of his -first volume, and without emotional excitement he could not create. -He had plenty of leisure for writing during his Edinburgh days, but -the urge was lacking. His whole sojourn there produced less poetry -than a single month at the beginning of 1786. Removal to Ellisland, -with all the strain of its ‘uncouth cares and anxieties’, brought his -creativeness to a still lower ebb. Repeatedly he complained that the -Muses had deserted him; during his first two years on the farm the -‘Lines in Friars Carse Hermitage’ were almost his only serious attempt -at non-musical composition, and in the revision of the poem he wavered -between versions in a manner wholly unlike the vigour of 1786. The -frequency, indeed, with which he circulated both versions among his -friends suggests at times a bankrupt’s clinging to the last relic of -his prosperity. But thanks to the _Museum_ he had work to do which -could be shaped to music as he followed his business, and be committed -to paper in his snatches of free time. - -Meanwhile, under Burns’s leadership, the whole plan of the _Museum_ -had been altered. The original scheme had been merely to collect the -existing songs. For this task--at least for all the songs that were -printable--Johnson’s first estimate of two volumes was not a serious -understatement. Burns, ransacking the collections of instrumental -music, and stealing time from his farm work to listen to a fiddler -playing over the pieces that had interested him, discovered, however, -that Scottish music was teeming with good tunes to which no words had -ever been set. The reels and strathspeys which fiddlers and pipers -played as dance tunes had just as much lilting charm as the airs -of traditional songs. His plan now was nothing more nor less than -supplying words to every cottage melody which was capable of vocal -interpretation. He was also making musical experiments in tempo, -finding that gay tunes played in slow time might be transformed into -‘the very language of pathos’. The name ‘Museum’ was growing steadily -more inappropriate; the work was becoming an experimental laboratory -in both poetry and music. Probably Burns never fully defined, even to -himself, the scope of the ambitious project he did not live to achieve, -but the more than three hundred songs he left are evidence that if -anyone could have achieved it, he could. - -Not that all these songs are masterpieces. Burns had no illusions -on that score. His contention was always that the music was the -important thing, and that a good air might better have mediocre -words than none at all. Nevertheless when he was composing Scottish -words to tunes of his own choice the percentage of the commonplace -was small and the range of themes extraordinarily large. The critics -who read autobiography into every love poem pass lightly over the -fact that in some of the best love lyrics, such as ‘Tam Glen’, ‘An’ -O for ane-and-twenty, Tam’, and ‘Whistle and I’ll come to you, my -lad’, the speaker is a woman, and that such wholly dramatic lyrics -as ‘M’Pherson’s Farewell’ and ‘John Anderson’ have a more sustained -intensity of emotion than the admittedly autobiographic ‘Ae fond -kiss’. When Burns’s lyrics were commonplace it was usually because -he was composing them to tunes not of his own choice; above all when -such assigned composition demanded English words. Music which worked -downward from the intellectual to the emotional centres could never -give the same creative release as when the engagement of the emotions -came first. Such was the case with the last of his major poetic -projects--supplying lyrics for George Thomson’s _Select Collection of -Scotish Airs_--but before turning to that work something must be said -of the last and finest of the poems which he did not write to music. - -‘Tam o’ Shanter’ is not only Burns’s greatest single poem but one -of the finest short poetic narratives in all literature. It is the -only one of Burns’s works of which it may truly be asserted that -he opened a new field wherein he never had the chance to reveal -the full range of his powers. In the satire and the epistle, as in -the lyric, he had abundantly displayed both his strength and his -limitations. In the versified folk-tale ‘Tam’ stands alone; it is, as -he said, his ‘standard performance in the Poetical line’. Though he -was doubtless right in concluding that it showed ‘a force of genius -& a finishing polish that I despair of ever excelling’, he might in -happier circumstances have equalled it. But here, as in the satires and -epistles, his inspiration came from without, and the stimulus was never -repeated. - -The story of its composition is too familiar to need rehearsing in -detail. In 1789 Francis Grose the antiquary arrived at Friars Carse -in the course of a collecting tour. He had successfully published an -elaborately illustrated work on the antiquities of England and Wales, -and was now gathering material for a companion volume on Scotland. -The fat and jovial captain, whose encyclopædic knowledge ranged from -ancient arms and armour, costume, and ecclesiastical and military -architecture, to the ribald slang of his day, was as unlike Sir Walter -Scott’s bookish Jonathan Oldbuck as any man could well be. Beside his -vast erudition and ardent spirit the amateurish antiquarianism of -Robert Riddell faded away. Grose was one of the most stimulating men -Burns ever met, and the friendship which sprang up between them had -the double basis of community of interest and congeniality of spirit. -Burns saw in Grose’s projected book an opportunity to glorify his -own birthplace, and suggested that the ruins of Alloway Kirk were a -good subject for an illustration. Grose, no doubt mentally comparing -the scrubby little church with the glories of Melrose and Arbroath, -hesitated. Alloway had neither grandeur of architecture nor richness -of historical association. The latter, however, might be supplied. -Burns had been telling some of the tales of the supernatural which he -had heard in his boyhood, and Grose agreed to include the picture of -Alloway if Burns would furnish a witch-legend to accompany it. Thus -casually his greatest poem was born. - -Burns’s qualifications for writing this tale of witchcraft were -analogous to his qualifications for writing folk-songs. In each -instance he belonged by education to a world where such things were no -longer alive. But his childhood and youth had been spent among people -to whom they were still real. Intellectually he had no more belief -in witchcraft than Benjamin Franklin had, but he knew the minds of -the people who did believe. Hence the blend of broad humour and real -terror which makes the poem unique. To an Elizabethan audience there -was nothing humorous about the witches in _Macbeth_; they were real -beings inspiring fear and hatred. To Washington Irving or Charles -Dickens a tale of the supernatural was purely an excursion into the -Land of Make-Believe. It is only when a belief is fading but not yet -dead that it can be handled with the mixture of humour and conviction -which Burns used. Ghost stories suffered the same fate about a century -later, as scepticism regarding personal immortality became more widely -prevalent. And ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ is as perfect in structure as it is -unique in tone. Custom cannot stale it. To read it or hear it read -for the hundredth time is still to be swept along by the rush of the -narrative and to realize more clearly the artistry which balances each -increasingly wild episode with its introductory paragraph of humorous -philosophizing. A few of its early readers, Mrs. Dunlop among them, -thought the poem scandalously indecent; to the rest it was an artless -effusion of the Heaven-taught ploughman. If any early reader realized -that besides being a merry tale it was a consummate work of art the -opinion was not committed to print. In 1791 literary art still connoted -eighteenth-century ‘elegance’. - -Could Burns have had more of the society of a man like Grose, had even -young Walter Scott of Edinburgh, who in the intervals of his legal -studies was already steeping himself in the ballads and legends of the -Border, thought it worth while occasionally to ride as far as Dumfries -to visit the man whom he had once seen in an Edinburgh drawing-room, -the world might have more poems like ‘Tam o’ Shanter’. But there was no -one in Dumfries to provide the necessary stimulus. Robert Riddell took -much but had little to give; his sister-in-law Maria belonged too much -to the world of fashion to have any enthusiasm for folk-tales; John -Syme’s taste ran more to satirical epigrams than to narrative poetry. -And these three represented the best intellectual companionship -Dumfries had to offer. As for Edinburgh, the influences dominating -the literary life of Scotland at the end of the century were better -represented by George Thomson than by Francis Grose. - -In September, 1792, Burns received a letter from a friend of Alexander -Cunningham’s, asking aid in a poetical and musical venture. George -Thomson, clerk to the Board of Trustees in Edinburgh, was two years the -poet’s senior and possessed all the elegance of taste which Burns’s -education had protected him from. Thomson enjoyed Scottish music in -his ultra-refined way, but was irked by the crudity of the traditional -songs. Baldly stated, his proposal was to collect a hundred of the best -Scottish melodies, to get a professional musician to dress them in -all the frills necessary for concert performance, and to provide them -with tidy English lyrics which would disguise their provincial origin. -In writing to Burns, however, he did not express himself so bluntly. -After explaining that Ignaz Joseph Pleyel, ‘the most agreeable composer -living’, had been engaged to arrange the music, he continued: - - ‘To render this work perfect, we are desirous to have the poetry - improved wherever it seems unworthy of the music; and that it is so, - in many instances, is allowed by everyone conversant with our musical - collections. The editors of these seem in general to have depended on - the music proving an excuse for the verses; and hence some charming - melodies are united to mere nonsense and doggerel, while others are - accompanied with rhymes so loose and indelicate as cannot be sung in - decent company. To remove this reproach would be an easy task to - the author of “The Cotter’s Saturday Night”.... It is superfluous to - assure you that I have no intention to displace any of the sterling - old Songs: those only will be removed which appear quite silly or - absolutely indecent....’ - -The publication, in short, was to be a sort of Golden Treasury of Scots -music, and Burns’s share in the work was to be ‘writing twenty or -twenty-five songs, suitable to the particular melodies’ which Thomson -selected. The editor said nothing, in this first letter, about his -preference for English words. - -No literary salesman ever received more enthusiastic response than -Thomson got from Burns. The poet promised whole-hearted co-operation, -but he had detected enough of Thomson’s temperament to make certain -reservations. In order of importance they were these. His share in -the work was to be a patriotic labour of love, and he would accept no -compensation. For the time being at least his participation was to be -anonymous--perhaps because he did not wish his official superiors to -think he was neglecting his Excise duties; perhaps because he feared -that Johnson might conclude that he was deserting the _Museum_. He was -not to be asked to compose unless he could do so spontaneously, and -Thomson was to have free editorial authority to take or reject his -contributions. Finally, ‘If you are for _English_ verses, there is, -on my part, an end of the matter.--Whether in the simplicity of _the -Ballad_, or the pathos of _the Song_, I can only hope to please myself -in being allowed at least a sprinkling of our native tongue.’ English -verses were precisely what Thomson _was_ for, ‘because the English -becomes every year more and more the language of Scotland,’ but he -hastened to disavow any wish to confine the poet to English--preferring -to wait and argue it out later, poem by poem. - -Greater enthusiasm, knowledge, and art were never enlisted under -more incompetent leadership than in Burns’s alliance with Thomson. -It did not take the poet long to discover that the elaborate plan -which Thomson had outlined in his first letters was really as vague -as an Edinburgh fog. The editor had not yet decided on the list of -airs he intended to include; he had not succeeded in getting the -co-operation of the English poetaster, John Wolcot (‘Peter Pindar’), -to write English songs; Pleyel, who was supposed to be handling the -music, soon departed on a visit to Germany and found his return route -to Britain closed by the armies of the French and the Allies. James -Beattie was to have been asked to furnish an introductory essay on -Scottish song, but Beattie was old and ill and not really interested in -the subject. In consequence of all this, Burns, who had begun on the -understanding that he was to furnish only a few lyrics, shortly found -himself saddled with the entire burden of the literary end of the work. -Even so his position, though laborious, would not have been difficult -had Thomson been merely muddle-headed. But as soon as the editor had -furnished the list of the twenty-five airs he meant to include in -the first number of his collection, and Burns had sent in his first -group of lyrics, Thomson revealed himself as a literary tinker. He was -constantly proposing amendments in phraseology--which always meant -substituting banal English expressions for racy Scots ones. At times -his niggling criticism was too much even for Burns’s enthusiasm and -good nature. One letter, for instance, began with the abrupt outburst, -‘That unlucky song “O poortith cauld,” &c. must stand as it stands--I -won’t put my hand to it again.’ In later years Thomson, to sustain his -pose as whole-hearted admirer of all Burns’s work, carefully inked -over that sentence in the manuscript. But he was guilty of worse than -that. Burns, as always, was steeping himself in the rhythms of the -airs to which he was composing; Thomson had to display his own musical -knowledge by suggesting that the proffered song be set to another tune. -The fact that to Burns the words and the tune were always inseparable -never penetrated his mind. - -Occasionally Burns came forward with a lyric written to an air not on -Thomson’s list, and at such times the editor’s taste and tact were most -fully displayed. For instance, Lady Elizabeth Heron, wife of Patrick -Heron, from whom Burns hoped for political favours, had composed a -little tune called ‘Banks of Cree’ and asked Burns to supply it with -words. Burns told the lady he would like her permission to publish the -song, and sent the words to Thomson, saying that ‘the air I fear is -not worth your while,’ but evidently hoping that Thomson would ask for -it. Thomson instead proposed setting the words to an air on his own -list, ‘Young Jockey was the blithest lad’. Burns replied sharply: ‘My -English song, “Here is the glen & here the bower” cannot go to this -air; it was written on purpose for an original air composed by Mrs. -Heron of Heron.’ But after the poet’s death Thomson erased the vetoing -phrase and published the words to the tune, ‘The Flowers of Edinburgh’, -thereby leaving Burns under the imputation of having lied to Lady -Elizabeth in promising to publish her music. - -Another time Burns found himself haunted by the old lilt of ‘Hey tutti -taitie’, which a wholly unreliable tradition declared to have been -Bruce’s march to Bannockburn. At the end of August, 1793, his impotent -fury over the Edinburgh sedition trials, combined with his enthusiasm -at the news of the French levy _en masse_ for the repulse of the Allied -invasion, found an outlet in composing ‘Scots wha hae’ to this air. -Historically the song is an anachronism. The ideas underlying it are -those of Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson and not of the feudal Middle -Ages; its very language is Scoticized English rather than the true -vernacular--Sir James Murray pointed out, for instance, that in real -Scots the opening phrase would be ‘Scots that has’. The song owes its -enduring popularity largely to the perfect union of the words with the -music they were composed to. But when Burns sent it to Thomson, that -worthy thought the music vulgar, and suggested that lengthening the -fourth line of each stanza would fit the words to another tune, ‘Lewis -Gordon’, which he liked better. This time Burns yielded, accepted -the silly changes, and thereafter circulated the song always in the -weakened version. Thomson published it in this form after the poet’s -death, but the appearance of the original version in Currie’s edition -showed the music-loving public the immense superiority of Burns’s -first thought. Thomson bowed to public opinion, and consigned his -‘improvements’ to the oblivion they deserved. - -In most instances, however, the public had no chance of checking up on -Thomson’s disregard of Burns’s wishes, and by destroying his own end -of the correspondence, after furnishing Dr. Currie with some carefully -edited extracts from it, the editor sought to cover up the extent of -his nagging criticisms. Inasmuch as his vandalism stopped short of -destroying Burns’s letters the ultimate publication of their complete -texts exposed the nature of his fault-finding almost as clearly as -if he had preserved his own originals. He nevertheless inked out a -number of passages in which Burns was too outspoken in comment on his -taste, or seemed to deny his claim to the copyright of the poet’s -contributions. Thomson was intensely jealous of Johnson’s _Museum_, -disliked Johnson personally, and resented Burns’s continuing to help -the rival work. Again and again in the letters Burns would say that if -a song did not suit, Thomson was to return it, and Burns would send it -to the _Museum_. To keep the material out of Johnson’s hands, Thomson -never definitely rejected anything. He carefully docketed the letter -in which Burns said that he had given Johnson no permanent copyright -in his songs, but inked over passages which indicated that Burns was -contributing to the _Select Collection_ on precisely the same terms as -to the _Museum_. - -When Burns’s health was failing in the spring of 1796 Thomson sought -to frighten him by a report that a pirated edition of the songs was -being planned, and enclosed for the poet’s signature a legal document -assigning him the whole copyright. Burns, ill though he was, and -careless as he had always been of his literary property, refused to -sign, and sent instead ‘a Certificate, which, though a little different -from Mr McKnight’s model, I suppose will amply answer the purpose,’ -adding that ‘when your Publication is finished, I intend publishing a -Collection, on a cheap plan, of all the songs I have written for you, -the Museum, &c.--at least of all the songs of which I wish to be called -the Author.’ This was tantamount to telling Thomson that he had a claim -on the first serial rights only, and though Thomson later published two -different texts of what he alleged was Burns’s deed of assignment, he -never produced the original holograph, and it was not preserved among -his papers. In after years Thomson tried the same trick on Sir Walter -Scott and Sir Alexander Boswell. He had succeeded in making Burns’s -executors believe that he owned the copyrights and was generously -waiving them for the benefit of the subscription edition, but Scott -and Boswell were lawyers and saw to it that where their own work was -concerned he got no more than the serial rights. - -Burns ought to have treated Thomson as Beethoven did in 1813, when -the editor demanded changes in the airs which the great musician had -undertaken to harmonize: - - ‘I regret that I am unable to oblige you. I am not accustomed to - tinker my compositions. I have never done so, being convinced - that every partial modification alters the whole character of the - composition. I am grieved that you are out of pocket through this, - but you cannot lay the blame on me, for it was your business to make - me more fully acquainted with the taste of your country and the - meagre abilities of your performers.’ - -But such blunt truth-telling was more than Burns was ever capable of to -a man who claimed taste and education. He said what he thought about -his songs, but said it gently and deferentially, and left them in -Thomson’s hand to be mangled or misapplied. - -To go into such detail of Thomson’s misdoings would be pointless had -he been merely a thick-headed and thick-skinned editor who failed to -appreciate what Burns was doing for him. But Thomson was much more than -that. He represented the whole Anglicizing tendency of the Scottish -gentry and bourgeoisie who were seeking to destroy the language and -individuality of their country. ‘Now let me declare off from your -taste.--“Toddlin hame” is a song that to my taste is an exquisite -production of genius.--That very Stanza you dislike - - “My kimmer & I lay down to sleep” - -is to me a piece of charming native humour.--What pleases me, as simple -& naive, disgusts you as ludicrous & low.--’ So said Burns in one of -the passages which Thomson tried to obliterate. But Thomson’s opinions -were shared by most of his educated countrymen, including some of -Burns’s most intimate friends. Where earlier criticism of the poet’s -vernacular work had failed to break down his Scotticism by the very -absurdity of such suggestions as imitating Virgil, Thomson tried to -accomplish it by the more insidious means of minor verbal changes which -individually seemed to amount to little but which in their cumulative -effect would emasculate the poetry. It is generally recognized that -Burns’s contributions to the _Select Collection_ include a much larger -percentage of the conventional and the commonplace than does his work -for the _Museum_; the marvel is that in the circumstances he achieved -so much that was not second-rate. He was composing to order, frequently -sending off by return of post the lines to a particular tune which -Thomson had asked for, and his efforts were constantly hampered by his -consciousness that certain themes and methods would never please the -silly editor’s taste. It was no wonder that many times he had to induce -a synthetic emotional thrill in himself--either by putting himself -through a course of admiration for a handsome woman, or by the help of -a bowl of punch--in order to be able to compose at all. - -His power of poetic response to music and emotion nevertheless did not -fail with his failing health. A few weeks before his death he asked -Jessie Lewars, sister of one of his best friends among the Excise -officers of Dumfries, to play him her favourite tune. She responded -with the roguish little air, ‘The robin cam to the wren’s nest, and -keekit in, and keekit in’. Burns, humming the tune to himself and -altering the tempo, produced almost extemporaneously the beautiful ‘O -wert thou in the cauld blast’. From his earliest lyric to his latest, -music was the catalyst which transformed emotion into poetry. Yet for -more than a century after his death the dominating influence of music -on his art went almost unrecognized; and George Thomson, the man who of -all others among Burns’s contemporaries had had the best opportunity -to realize the nature and the power of his lyric expression, wrote an -obituary which, besides inaugurating the legend of mental and moral -deterioration in the last years at Dumfries, summed up its author’s -appreciation of the wit, critical acumen, and real erudition of Burns’s -letters by saying that probably the poet ‘was not qualified to fill -a superior station’ to the humble one he held in the Excise. Of all -the Holy Willies who eyed Burns askance during his life and after his -death, he would probably, had he realized his true character, have -despised Thomson most. The others were merely trying to blacken Burns’s -own character. Thomson was trying to destroy the vitality of Scottish -song. - - - - -VII - -THE SCOT - - -Not merely in his struggle for livelihood and in the poetic art which -immortalized him was Burns a Scot of the Scots. He was equally so in -his religion, his politics, and, above all, his patriotism. Only in -this last was he untypical of his generation. Yet such statements are -misleadingly simple. All they can safely mean is that Burns, like -all men in all ages, was influenced in thought and conduct by the -environment in which he lived. Nevertheless, in a nation so small and -self-contained as Scotland in the eighteenth century the pressure -of environment was felt to a degree unrealized in larger and more -cosmopolitan communities. In England during Burns’s manhood the social -and literary worlds of Burke and Sheridan and Horace Walpole, of -Cowper, of John Wesley, of Godwin, of Blake, touched each other only -lightly and tangentially; in the rising generation of Wordsworth, Jane -Austen, Lamb, and Byron the separations would be even wider. Scotland -by comparison was all of a piece. Even her greatest philosophers, Adam -Smith and David Hume, even the much-travelled and Anglophile Boswell, -retained their national stamp. - -Though in their final form Burns’s religious ideas differed little, -if at all, from the sentimental ‘common sense’ deism of England and -France, the process by which he reached them was Scottish. The rigidity -of the doctrines to which he was subjected in his youth determined the -vigour of his reaction from them. As David Hume would scarcely have -been so militantly sceptical if he had been reared in a milder faith, -so Burns might have been less sentimental. His earliest teachings, it -is true, did not stress the more rigorous themes in Scottish Calvinism. -The preaching of Dr. William Dalrymple of Ayr, whose church the Burnes -family attended during the years at Alloway and Mount Oliphant, was -notably mild and gentle; William Burnes’s own little ‘Manual of -Religious Belief’, though it gave a reasonably orthodox definition of -the Fall of Man, was silent on such doctrinal points as predestination -and the Four-Fold State. Undoubtedly, therefore, the Old Light tenets -of Daddy Auld of Mauchline made a deeper impression on Burns’s -eighteen-year-old mind than they would have done had he been exposed -to them from infancy. Yet Burns had encountered _The Man of Feeling_ -before he left Mount Oliphant; the doctrines of sentiment and deism -were in the air he breathed; his emotional nature would have brought -him to them sooner or later, regardless of other stimuli. The most that -can be attributed to Auld is a little hastening and intensifying of the -process of revolt. - -Despite his constant citing of Young’s exhortation, ‘On Reason build -Resolve’, Burns’s approach to life and ideas was always emotional -and not intellectual. When he described himself in 1786 as having -little of divinity ‘except a pretty large portion of honour and an -enthusiastic, incoherent Benevolence,’ his self-analysis had his -customary accuracy. To him, as to the New England Unitarians and to a -man like Mark Twain, escape from the orthodoxy of his youth had come as -a relief and not as a loss. Calvinism had erected a system of thought -as rigidly deductive as the science of geometry. Starting from certain -‘self-evident’ axioms like the omnipotence and omniscience of God, -the fall of man, and the literal authority of the Scriptures, it had -created a religious philosophy from which all emotion except fear had -been removed. Through the sin of Adam all men had earned damnation, but -the inscrutable mercy or caprice of God would choose a remnant minority -for salvation--for His merit, not theirs. Human faith and human -righteousness were filthy rags. - -This cold determinism outraged Burns’s sense of fairness and justice, -as it outraged Channing’s and Emerson’s and Holmes’s. It seemed to him -that the New Lights were ‘squaring Religion by the rules of Common -Sense, and attempting to give a decent character to Almighty God and -a rational account of his proceedings with the Sons of Men.’ But in -investing their deity with human benevolence and loving-kindness, the -New Lights were also, again like the New England Unitarians, more or -less unwittingly surrendering the supernatural sanctions of religion -and assimilating their ideas to those of the Deists. God was the -‘Great First Cause, least understood’; Christ tended to sink from -Godhead to merely an inspired human teacher; personal immortality -became a pious hope instead of a divine promise. If man were indeed -immortal, the surest passport to salvation was righteous living rather -than adherence to a particular creed. And the guide to righteous living -was the still small voice of conscience, the Moral Sense which Francis -Hutcheson had taught was an innate human faculty. - -In his attitude towards these doctrines, Burns was a man of his century -and a Scot of his century. The rigidity of the Kirk, so unlike the -comfortable looseness of Anglican theology, left him no place within -its pale, even though he never openly severed his connexion. As a -youth he had, along with most of his countrymen, read popular works -of divinity like Boston’s _Four-Fold State_, Fisher’s _Marrow of -Modern Divinity_, and Cole _On God’s Sovereignty_. In 1791, when his -rural neighbours of the Monkland Friendly Society insisted on adding -these and other books to their co-operative library, Burns obediently -ordered them from Peter Hill, and lumped them all together as ‘damned -trash’. Though he told James Candlish in 1787 that after having ‘in -the pride of despising old women’s stories, ventured in “the daring -path Spinoza trod”; ... experience of the weakness, not the strength, -of human powers, made me glad to grasp at revealed religion,’ it was -not the revelation of the Kirk. Not even his infatuation for Clarinda, -though it made him momentarily qualify his admiration for Milton’s -Satan, could compel him to bow the knee to Calvin. ‘Mine’, he told her -when she undertook to preach orthodoxy to him, ‘is the Religion of the -bosom.--I hate the very idea of controversial divinity; as I firmly -believe, that every honest, upright man, of whatever sect, will be -accepted of the Deity.--If your verses, as you seem to hint, contain -censure, except you want an occasion to break with me, don’t send -them.... “Reverence thyself” is a sacred maxim, and I wish to cherish -it.’ - -His fullest statement approximating to orthodoxy was written to Mrs. -Dunlop in 1789: - - ‘I have just heard Mr Kirkpatrick preach a sermon. He is a man - famous for his benevolence, and I revere him; but from such ideas of - my Creator, good Lord, deliver me! Religion ... is surely a simple - business, as it equally concerns the ignorant and the learned, the - poor and the rich. That there is an incomprehensible Great Being, to - whom I owe my existence; and that He must be intimately acquainted - with the operations and progress of the internal machinery, and - consequent outward deportment, of this creature which He has made; - these are, I think self-evident propositions. That there is a real - and eternal distinction between virtue and vice, and, consequently, - that I am an accountable creature; that from the seeming nature of - the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfection, nay, - positive injustice, in the administration of affairs both in the - natural and moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene of - justice beyond the grave; must, I think, be allowed by every one who - will give himself a moment’s reflection. I will go farther, and - affirm, that from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of His - doctrine and precepts, unparalleled by all the aggregated wisdom and - learning of many preceding ages, though, _to appearance_, He Himself - was the obscurest and most illiterate of our species--therefore Jesus - Christ was from God....’ - -Another time he told the same lady, ‘We can no more live without -Religion, than we can live without air; but give me the Religion of -Sentiment & Reason.--You know John Hildebroad’s famous epitaph-- - - “Here lies poor old John Hildebroad, - Have mercy on his soul, Lord God, - As he would do, were he Lord God, - And thou wert poor John Hildebroad.”-- - -This speaks more to my heart, & has more of the genuine spirit of -Religion in it, than is to be found in whole wagon-loads of Divinity.’ -This was the same mood in which he had told Clarinda, ‘My creed is -pretty nearly expressed in the last clause of Jamie Deans’s grace, an -honest weaver in Ayrshire; “Lord, grant that we may lead a gude life! -for a gude life maks a gude end; at least it helps weel!”’ Reason and -Sentiment, but with the sentiment much more powerful than the reason, -these were the dominant forces in Burns’s religious attitude. - -Nevertheless Burns was more courageous than many of his contemporaries -in accepting the logical consequences of belief in universal -benevolence. No man knew more clearly the warfare between flesh and -spirit, but he was convinced that both were the gifts of God. The lines -which so shocked Wordsworth, - - ‘But yet the light that led astray - Was light from Heaven’, - -are his frankest summary of his experience. Whatever sufferings his -passions had brought upon him, the passions in themselves were noble. -Asceticism had no appeal for him. He took life as God made it, and saw -that it was good. - -Taken by themselves, his utterances to Clarinda and Mrs. Dunlop might -not be above suspicion. Burns had every motive for wishing favourably -to impress both women, and might have feigned an interest which he did -not feel, or at least have overstated his belief and understated his -doubts. But here, as in his feelings towards his children, what he -said when he may have been on dress-parade is confirmed by his letters -to his intimates. In 1788 he wrote to Robert Muir, then dying of -tuberculosis: - - ‘... An honest man has nothing to fear.--If we lie down in the grave, - the whole man a piece of broken machinery, to moulder with the clods - of the valley--be it so; at least there is an end of pain, care, - woes and wants: if that part of us called Mind, does survive the - apparent destruction of the man--away with old-wife prejudices and - tales!... A man, conscious of having acted an honest part among his - fellow-creatures; even granting that he may have been the sport, at - times, of passions and instincts; he goes to a great unknown Being - who could have no other end in giving him existence but to make him - happy; who gave him those passions and instincts, and well knows - their force.’ - -In the same tone he said six years later to Alexander Cunningham that -the two great pillars which bear us up, ‘amid the wreck of misfortune -and misery’, are the ‘certain noble, stubborn something ... known by -the names of courage, fortitude, magnanimity’ and ‘those feelings and -sentiments which, however the sceptic may deny them or the enthusiast -disfigure them, are yet, I am convinced, original and component parts -of the human soul; those _senses of the mind_ ... which connect us -with, and link us to, those awful obscure realities--an all-powerful -and equally beneficient God, and a world to come, beyond death and the -grave.’ - -The countryman of Francis Hutcheson could scarcely have indicated more -clearly his obligations to the Glasgow philosopher. Burns’s ‘senses of -the mind’ are merely Hutcheson’s Moral Sense a little expanded. Like -Channing and Emerson, having rejected the authority of the church, and -with it the supernatural sanctions of Christian doctrine, Burns fell -back on the authority of intuition to support concepts which he was -unwilling to abandon. The idea of the deity, and His relations with -mankind, which is embodied in these passages, he never deviated from; -what seemed to many of his readers shocking irreverence was aimed at -intolerance and hypocrisy, and not at religion. But he was not able in -all moods to convince himself of personal immortality. - -At times he tried to argue himself into belief: - - ‘The most cordial believers in a Future State have ever been the - Unfortunate.--This of itself; if God is Good, which is, I think, the - most intuitive truth in Nature, ... is a very strong proof of the - reality of its existence....’ - -and he went on to reason that since the ideas of ‘OUGHT, and OUGHT NOT’ -are ‘first principles or component parts of the Human Mind’ and are -synonymous in our thinking with virtue and vice, the soul _must_ be -immortal because, ‘except our Existence _here_, have a reference to an -Existence _hereafter_, Virtue & Vice are words without meaning.’ Thus -he argued to Mrs. Dunlop, who had just told him that her daughter, Mrs. -Henri, was widowed after a few months of marriage. But not long before -he had said to Cunningham, - - ‘All my fears & cares are of this world: if there is another, an - honest man has nothing to fear from it.--I hate a man that wishes to - be a Deist, but I fear, every fair, unprejudiced Enquirer must in - some degree be a Sceptic.--It is not that there are any very - staggering arguments against the Immortality of Man; but, that like - Electricity, Phlogiston, &c. the subject is so involved in darkness - that we want Data to go upon.--One thing frightens me much: that we - are to live forever, seems too good news to be true....’ - -An emotional man deprived of any authority except emotion on which he -could rely, Burns’s religious views are of a piece with his politics -and his patriotism. To get at the underlying emotions is to explain -what appear to be glaring contradictions in thought. John Ramsay of -Ochtertyre found Burns’s politics ‘abundantly motley’, for the poet -managed to combine strong sympathy for the exiled House of Stuart with -liberal if not republican views on contemporary affairs. To Ramsay -this seemed like being simultaneously Catholic and Protestant, whereas -it was only putting into words the unexpressed philosophy that had -swayed the popular mind of Scotland for close on a century. Burns -admired Lord Balmerino, noblest of the victims of the ’45; he also -admired John Wilkes. Between a devoted Jacobite like Balmerino and a -radical Whig like Wilkes, there was only one point in common: both were -anti-Hanoverian. That one point reconciles Burns’s divergent opinions. -The Stuarts embodied the ideal of Scotland as an independent nation; -even though from the accession of James to the death of Anne they had -governed Scotland from London they still commanded the loyalty of -their old kingdom. But the Georges were, as Burns said, ‘an obscure, -beef-witted, insolent race of foreigners whom a mere conjuncture -of circumstances kickt up into prominence and power.’ His phrase -summarizes in vigorous prose the spirit of the ribald satirical songs -by which Scotland had avenged herself for the humiliations following -the rebellions of 1715 and 1745. Burns was far from maintaining -that the Stuarts were perfect, or that the Revolution of 1688 lacked -justification; what he did maintain was that the Hanoverian system was -not perfect either. - -On the Fifth of November, 1788, Burns attended a special service -of thanksgiving held at Dunscore Kirk to celebrate the centenary -of the Revolution. The Rev. Mr. Kirkpatrick’s remarks about ‘the -bloody and tyrannical House of Stuart’ sent the poet home to write -an open letter to his friend David Ramsay, editor of the Edinburgh -_Evening Courant_, in which he mingled unveiled satire with a sense -of historical perspective hardly to be looked for in an ‘unlettered -ploughman’. He went to church, he said, to give thanks for ‘the -consequent blessings of the Glorious Revolution. To that auspicious -event we owe no less than our liberties religious and civil--to it we -are likewise indebted for the present Royal Family, the ruling features -of whose administration have ever been, mildness to the subject, and -tenderness of his rights.’ But, he continues, cannot we give thanks for -our present blessings ‘without, at the same time, cursing a few ruined -powerless exiles, who only harboured ideas, and made attempts, that -most of us would have done, had we been in their situation?’ ‘Were the -royal contemporaries of the Stuarts more mildly attentive to the rights -of man? Might not the epithets of “bloody and tyrannical” be with at -least equal justice, applied to the house of Tudor, of York, or any -other of their predecessors?’ In short, the Stuarts were only fighting -for prerogatives which former monarchs of England and contemporary -monarchs of France enjoyed unchallenged, and the poet disclaims ability -to determine whether their overthrow ‘was owing to the wisdom of -leading individuals, or to the justling of party.’ And then comes the -sting: - - ‘Man, Mr. Printer, is a strange, weak inconsistent being.--Who - would believe, Sir, that in this our Augustan age of liberality and - refinement, ... a certain people, under our national protection, - should complain, not against a Monarch and a few favourite advisers, - but against our whole legislative body, of the very same imposition - and oppression, the Romish religion not excepted, and almost in the - very same terms as our forefathers did against the family of Stuart! - I will not, I cannot, enter into the merits of the cause; but I dare - say, the American Congress, in 1776, will be allowed to have been as - able and enlightened, and, a whole empire will say, as honest, as the - English Convention in 1688; and that the fourth of July will be as - sacred to their posterity as the fifth of November is to us.’ - -The concluding sentence of that peroration is paraphrased from a speech -John Wilkes had delivered in the House of Commons ten years before. -Manifestly Burns followed, closely and sympathetically, the utterances -of the English radicals and reformers; it is well known that ‘A Man’s a -Man’ is ‘two or three pretty good prose thoughts inverted into rhyme’ -from the writings of a former Excise officer named Thomas Paine. Like -most European liberals, Burns admired the leaders of the American -Revolution--one of the toasts which gave offence in Dumfries is said -to have been his proposal of the health of George Washington as ‘a -better man’ than William Pitt--and his admiration would be intensified -by obvious parallels between the grievances of the Americans and the -Scots. His Jacobite sympathies were wholly emotional, and in part -conditioned by the fact that the Jacobites had written all the good -songs. One suspects that he would just as readily have taken the -Catholic view of the Reformation if Scottish Catholics had embalmed -their lost cause in poetry. When he looked at current affairs, his -reason backed his feelings. Politically, Scotland had almost as much -to complain of as the American colonies had had. In some respects, -indeed, she had more. American towns had been free to manage their -local affairs by a system of representative government; in Scotland the -municipalities, like the country’s representation in Parliament, were -self-perpetuating oligarchies. Burns, in common with thousands of men -of higher rank, had no vote even in the government of his own burgh. -Yet his dislike of the system and his contempt for most of its leaders -would probably have expressed itself only in occasional satires had it -not been for the outbreak of the French Revolution. - -A movement for reform of both burgh and parliamentary government -was under way in Scotland. George Dempster, one of the few men of -independent mind among the Scottish representatives at Westminster, -advocated such measures of reform as would allow ‘the industrious -farmer and manufacturer [to] share at least in a privilege now -engrossed by the great lord, the drunken laird, and the drunkener -baillie.’ Country gentlemen of unimpeachable character took up the -agitation, and Burns’s letters to men like William Robertson of Lude, -John Francis Erskine of Mar, and Richard Oswald of Auchencruive, show -that he looked to such leadership as the hope of the country. When his -conduct was under inquiry Burns declared that he had, as a government -employee, taken no active part, either personally or as an author, in -the movement for reform, but that as a man he ‘would say that there -existed a system of corruption between the Executive Power & the -Representative part of the Legislature, which boded no good to our -glorious Constitution; & which every patriotic Briton must wish to see -amended.’ - -The early stages of the French Revolution roused the enthusiasm of -the more liberal-minded men of all classes in Scotland. A dinner in -Edinburgh to celebrate the second anniversary of the fall of the -Bastille was attended by a group of university students which included -John Allen, stepson of the poet’s friend Robert Cleghorn, by numerous -country gentlemen like his friend Robert Riddell and his acquaintance -Alexander Fergusson of Craigdarroch, and by Lord Daer. It seemed to men -like Craigdarroch and Daer that the popular interest in the principles -of the Revolution might be harnessed for the benefit of Scotland in -speeding measures for burgh and parliamentary reform. Actually the -brief alliance with French sympathizers delayed reform for forty years. -All the vested interests of Great Britain rallied to support Burke’s -condemnation of the revolutionary principles, and the counter-attack -swept away every attempt to alter in the slightest degree the existing -scheme of things. - -The full weight of the counter-attack was not felt at once. Indeed, -it was a Scotsman, James Mackintosh, who published the fullest and -best-reasoned of the numerous replies to Burke. Besides seeking to -confute Burke, Mackintosh tried to rally his countrymen to the cause -of reform by citing their medieval reputation as lovers of liberty who -would die rather than surrender their freedom. Certain passages in -Mackintosh were probably as directly responsible for the composition of -‘Scots wha hae’ as _The Rights of Man_ was for ‘A Man’s a Man’. But as -the Revolution swept on with increasing bloodshed to the execution of -Louis XVI and as mobs in various parts of Scotland, including Edinburgh -itself, celebrated King George’s birthday by burning Henry Dundas in -effigy, the authorities became panicky. Scotland felt the heaviest -force of their fright. Long latent memories of the ’45 revived at -Whitehall, and to the dread of Scotland as a focal point for rebellion -was added the practical detail that repressive measures could be better -organized there than in England. England had a few constituencies, -like London and Westminster, in which enough people were enfranchised -to give a really popular vote, and a few members of Parliament whom -neither fear nor bribes could silence. Scotland had neither. Hence -the counter-revolutionary reign of terror struck first and hardest at -Scotland. - -Early in 1793 several leaders of the Friends of the People, a society -organized to agitate for parliamentary reform, were arrested on -charges of treason. Lord Daer was a member of the society, too, but -the authorities, doubtless afraid that not even a packed jury could be -trusted to convict the son of a popular earl, made no move to seize -him. They contented themselves with lesser, but still conspicuous, -victims, and before the series of trials--conducted with such disregard -of justice as in Henry Cockburn’s opinion had not been seen in Britain -since Jeffreys’s Bloody Assizes--was over Thomas Muir, Thomas Palmer, -and several other reform leaders had been condemned to long terms of -penal transportation. All opposition was crushed in Scotland for a -generation. Henry Erskine, the one man who dared to raise his voice in -defence of justice and common sense, paid for his temerity by being -voted out of his office as Dean of the Faculty of Advocates. One of -the last of Burns’s satirical ballads commemorates the event, in which -a young man just admitted to the bar, Walter Scott by name, voted -with the majority to punish Erskine for having the courage of his -convictions. - -Such was the background against which Burns undertook to display -himself as a Friend of the People. He never, so far as can be learned, -actually joined any of the reforming organizations, but it was not in -Burns’s nature to conceal his opinions. From the time when he appeared -in Edinburgh drawing-rooms wearing a waistcoat of Foxite blue and buff, -and inscribed on a window-pane at Stirling verses about the successors -to the Stuarts being ‘an idiot race, to honor lost’, he was marked as -a character who would bear watching. The wonder is not so much that he -came near to losing his job in the Excise as that he ever succeeded in -getting it. If William Corbet and Graham of Fintry had not been the -generous and friendly souls they were, the poet’s service career would -have ended in 1793, and he might even have shared the fate of Muir and -Palmer. - -To note some of Burns’s words and deeds during 1791 and 1792, and -realize that for every reckless phrase that reached paper there were -doubtless a score uttered over the punchbowl, is to marvel at the -poet’s escape. His phrase about the House of Hanover, already quoted, -was written in the privacy of Robert Riddell’s library, but it is hard -to believe that he did not say equally sharp things in more public -places. His most intimate friends in Dumfries were avowed sympathizers -with the Revolution. Dr. James Maxwell had witnessed the execution of -the king, cherished the handkerchief he had dipped in the royal blood, -and was well enough known to the authorities to have his revolutionary -connexions violently denounced by Burke on the floor of the House of -Commons. John Lewars was tainted with ‘D-m-cratic heresy’; Syme, after -enrolling, like Burns, in the Dumfries Volunteers, became heartily -disgusted with the whole wretched business; Maria Riddell was a parlour -revolutionist who on her visits to London associated ‘with a very -pleasant set of Sans-culottes’. Throughout 1792 Burns had let slip -few opportunities of proclaiming his own sympathies. In the spring he -bought the _Rosamond’s_ carronades and dispatched them as a present to -the French Convention; in the autumn, when Maria Riddell asked him to -suggest a programme for a benefit night in Dumfries theatre, he chose -from the repertory of the local company Mrs. Centlivre’s _The Wonder: -A Woman Keeps a Secret_ because it contained some platitudinous lines -about British liberty which could be given political significance by -well-timed applause. Either on this occasion or another the crowd -carried the matter further than Burns had anticipated. - -When ‘God Save the King’ was called for, a group in the pit which -included some of Burns’s friends shouted for ‘Ça Ira’ instead. The -ensuing clamour came to the verge of a free-for-all fight. In his -defence Burns avowed that he never opened his lips ‘to hiss, or huzza, -that, or any other Political tune whatever’ because he looked on -himself ‘as far too obscure a man to have any weight in quelling a -Riot; at the same time as a character of higher respectability, than -to yell in the howlings of a rabble.’ In other words, by sitting -still and not applauding the national anthem he made himself just -as conspicuous as if he had joined in the call for ‘Ça Ira’. He was -anything but the obscure individual he claimed to be, and it was -apparently his public conduct on this occasion that led to his being -reported to his superiors as a disaffected person. - -Seemingly the idea that his opinions might get him into trouble had -never occurred to Burns. The threat of an official investigation threw -him into a humiliating panic, and must also have alarmed his friends -in the higher ranks of the Excise. It is difficult otherwise to -account for Supervisor Corbet’s coming in person to Dumfries to look -into the charges. An accusation brought against a minor officer in -the service was scarcely in ordinary routine a serious enough affair -to call in one of the highest officials; the inference is that Corbet -was rightly fearful of the results if Burns were investigated by an -unfriendly agent. Accordingly the Supervisor examined the poet across -a dinner-table in company with Findlater and Syme, and in that mellow -atmosphere found no ground for the charges ‘save some witty sayings’. -But even so, Corbet, in the name of the Board, had to admonish -Burns--so the poet reported to Erskine of Mar--‘that _my_ business was -to _act_, not to think; & that whatever might be Men or Measures, it -was for me to be silent and obedient.’ - -The hair-splitting particularity of Burns’s defence of his conduct -is in itself proof of the real basis of the charges against him. He -revered the King, he declared, in his public capacity as ‘the sacred -Keystone of our Royal Arch Constitution’, but George’s ‘private worth, -it is altogether impossible that such a man as I can appreciate.’ (On -the report of the King’s first admitted insanity in 1788 he had said, -‘I am not sure whether he is not a gainer, by how much a Madman is a -more respectable character than a Fool.’) He had joined no party for -revolution or reform; his contributions to the radical _Edinburgh -Gazetteer_ had been only a couple of non-political verses. But he did -not mention that in subscribing to the _Gazetteer_ he had urged its -editor, William Johnston, to ‘lay bare, with undaunted heart & steady -hand, that horrid mass of corruption called Politics & State-Craft!’ -and to ‘dare to draw in their native colours these “Calm, thinking -Villains whom no faith can fix”--whatever be the Shibboleth of their -pretended Party.’ Oddly enough, the _Rosamond’s_ carronades had not -been brought up against him. Hence he naturally did not mention them, -but he took occasion to avow that though he had been an enthusiastic -votary of France at the beginning, he had changed his sentiments since -the Revolution had embarked on a career of bloodshed and military -aggression. - -Here Burns was making a Galileo recantation. On the same day on which -he thus denied to Robert Graham that he any longer supported the -Revolution he was using French in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop and adding -that he hoped it was correct, for ‘much would it go against my soul, -to mar anything belonging to that gallant people: though my real -sentiments of them shall be confined alone to my letters to you.’ -Despite her repeated warnings to drop the subject, he continued to talk -about his devotion to Liberty, his friendship with Dr. Maxwell, and his -approval of ‘the delivering over a perjured Blockhead & an unprincipled -Prostitute to the hands of the hangman’ until the offended lady broke -off the correspondence. Seething, as he had said of his feeling in -1788, with the impotent ‘madness of an enraged Scorpion shut up in a -thumb-phial’, Burns had to express himself to someone. He had lied -about his sentiments, and though the lie was to save his family rather -than himself, its taste was bitter in his mouth. Nor was he helped by -the realization that all Scotland was equally cowed and that if he had -not made his recantation he would have shared the fate of four other -citizens of Dumfries who were imprisoned for drinking seditious toasts. -Once before he had challenged authority in the shape of the temporal -power of the Kirk, and had come off not unscathed but undefeated. Now -he had challenged much less openly the State, and had learned the -difference in strength between a vital institution and a moribund one. -The realization of defeat shook his self-confidence as nothing else -had ever done, and helped to drive him to such unmanly conduct as that -which followed his quarrel with Maria Riddell. He who had refused to -sell his songs for money had sold his independence for bread. That it -was his children’s bread and not his own might salve his conscience, -but it could not heal his pride. - -The Man of Feeling had bruised himself against a harsher reality -than anything Harley had found in London or Bedlam; the idealist in -politics had learned the substance of which politicians are made. -Brimming with New Light theories about the Moral Sense, convinced by -primitivists like Rousseau that ‘mankind are by nature benevolent -creatures’ whom mere stress of hunger and poverty makes selfish, Burns -had come naked to battle against the forces of alarmed conservatism -and privilege. Like thousands of others he had taken seriously the -slogans of ‘Liberty’ and ‘the Rights of Man’, and had seen in the -French Revolution the signs that the world’s great age was beginning -anew. His disillusionment went deeper than mere realization of his own -unsafe position as a government employee. He was watching the ancient -forces of selfishness and aggression capture the movement from which he -had hoped so much. His enlistment in the Dumfries Volunteers was not -wholly from dread of further jeopardizing his livelihood by holding -aloof. He still believed in the principles of the Revolution, but that -belief did not commit him to endorsement of its practices, and so, like -many another pacifist, he found himself, still hating war, nevertheless -engaged in supporting it. - -Though he dared no longer give direct utterance to revolutionary -sympathies, he could, and did, express his detestation of war in -a song like ‘Logan Braes’, and couple the ideas of his generation -with the patriotic tradition of medieval Scotland. The low estate -of contemporary Scottish liberty threw into more glorious relief -the traditions of Bannockburn and the lost cause of the Stuarts. -His patriotism accepted without question the legend that ‘Hey tutti -taitie’ had been Bruce’s battle-march, as it accepted the romantic -interpretation of Mary Queen of Scots. Burns might call himself an -unprejudiced inquirer and a sceptic, but his nature had no kinship -with the cool remorseless scepticism of a man like David Hume. Hume’s -was the keenest Scottish mind of his century; Burns, at least in the -height of his rebellion against the Kirk, might have been expected to -find the philosopher congenial. But Burns could endure destructive -criticism only of things he hated. Hume did not confine his scepticism -to religion, and when he brought his devastating intellect to bear on -the romantic traditions of his country Burns turned away in anger. He -might endorse Hume’s demolition of the supernatural sanctions of the -church, but he was disquieted by the application of the same scepticism -to the belief in immortality, and infuriated when it was turned upon -Queen Mary. Hume was mentally akin to Voltaire and Samuel Butler; Burns -to Rousseau and Dickens. - -In repudiating Hume’s treatment of Mary, Burns was unconsciously -illustrating the force of Johnson’s ruthless dictum, which even the -loyal Sir Walter Scott could not wholly deny, that ‘a Scotchman must be -a very sturdy moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth: -He will always love it better than inquiry; and if falsehood flatters -his vanity, will not be very diligent to detect it.’ Few men have -lived more honest than Burns. He would not willingly lie, nor endorse -a lie; but if offered choice between a romantic story which appealed -to his patriotism and an unromantic one which did not, his choice was -never in doubt. His own followers, in their hostility to anything like -dispassionate investigation of the picturesque legends surrounding -him, continue to illustrate the same attitude. Nor, indeed, have the -Burnsians monopolized this aversion to inquiry. It remained for an -Irishman and an American to set forth the true details of the life of -Allan Ramsay, and for another American to write the only complete and -scholarly study of Henry Mackenzie and his times. - -Many Scotsmen besides Burns shared his passionate defence of Queen -Mary; not so many shared his general patriotism. Here Burns, very -Scot of very Scot, belonged to a generation which had passed, though -he prepared the way for one to come. He had much in common with -Claverhouse, Lochiel, or Fletcher of Saltoun; nothing in common with -Bute, Wedderburn, or Henry Dundas. In so far as the patriotism of Sir -John Sinclair sought the improvement of his country by collecting -and tabulating her resources, Burns was with him, but when Sinclair -tried to eradicate the national speech he struck at something Burns -held precious. True, Burns was like his contemporaries in snatching -at everything that seemed like proof that the Scots could equal or -surpass the English at their own games. He applauded the _Mirror_ -and the _Lounger_ because they looked like successful rivals of the -_Tatler_ and _Spectator_; he admired Thomson and Beattie and Blair the -more because even the English had to admit that these men wrote well -in the southern tongue. But he deeply resented the willingness of his -countrymen to sink their national identity in the Union. - - ‘Alas! have I often said to myself,’ he wrote to Mrs. Dunlop in 1790, - ‘what are all the boasted advantages which my country reaps from the - union, that can counterbalance the annihilation of her Independance, - and even her very name! I often repeat that couplet of my favorite - poet, Goldsmith-- - - “----States of native liberty possest, - Tho’ very poor, may yet be very blest.” - - Nothing can reconcile me to the common terms, “English ambassador, - English court,” &c. And I am out of all patience to see that - equivocal character, Hastings, impeached by “the Commons of England.” - Tell me, my friend, is this weak prejudice?’ - -Men like Boswell and Sinclair would have answered without hesitation -that it was. The Union had admitted Scotland to as much share as she -could grasp of the wealth of the British Empire; commerce and industry -were increasing year by year; the poor relation was beginning to live -like the prosperous branch of the family. For such profits, the change -of name from ‘Scotland’ to ‘North Britain’ seemed a small price. To -those who shared in the new prosperity, the suggestion of a nationalist -movement would have seemed rank folly or even downright treason. So -long as the prosperity continued, indeed, the ‘practical men’ had the -overwhelming majority of their countrymen with them. The emergence of -Scottish nationalism as a political force to be reckoned with had to -await the collapse of Scottish industry which followed the World War. -With the loss of material prosperity, the Scots have begun to question -the value of the system which transfers to Westminster the control of -their local affairs. Scottish poverty and Scottish pride are seemingly -interdependent. Removal of the one will make the nation more willing to -swallow the other. - -Even if Burns had shared the material prosperity resulting from the -Union, instead of helping, as tenant of rack-rented land, to pay for -it, his feelings would have been the same. In every fibre of his -being he shared the spirit of those Scots who, in contradiction of -every proverbial association of pawky caution with their race, have -been among the greatest soldiers, explorers, and idealists of modern -history. Montrose and Livingstone, Admiral Duncan and Mungo Park, -expressed in action the national traits which he expressed in song. His -calling, consciously accepted, was that of national poet; his other -activities merely the ‘sweat, that the base machine might have its -oil’. He refused payment for his songs, because the task of supplying -words to national melodies was a patriotic service, embalming and -treasuring up these relics of his country’s spirit to a life beyond -life. - -Without Burns’s share in the work of gathering old Jacobite songs, -for instance, and composing new ones, it may be questioned if such a -halo of romance would have surrounded, in the next generation, the -Rebellions of 1715 and 1745; without that halo, Sir Walter Scott would -have been less readily attracted to them; without Sir Walter, the -romantic vision of Scottish history would never have conquered the -world. No Scottish writer of the eighteenth century, except Burns, -passed on the torch of national pride. Without him, the fact that Hume -and Boswell were Scotsmen, that Thomson was born on Tweed instead of -Thames, would mean no more to the ordinary reader than does the fact -that Swift was born in Ireland or Wordsworth in Cumberland. Without -him, Ramsay and Fergusson would be forgotten minor poets who wrote in -a difficult and obsolete dialect. He gathered together in his own work -all that was vital in the work of his predecessors, infused it with the -fire of his own personality, and sent it out again to keep Scotland -alive. - -Burns came at the last moment when a national poet could succeed in -his task. A few decades later, and the vernacular would have sunk too -low for preservation. Even as it was, he could only embalm it and -not renew it as poetic speech. Except for Lady Nairne’s, scarcely -any vernacular poetry written in Scotland since 1800 deserves higher -ranking than the _Barrack-Room Ballads_. As a poetic influence, Burns’s -work was weak. As a national influence, its force is not yet spent. He -revealed the richness and colour of Scottish life, and in revealing it -gave direction and vitality to the long and noble line of novelists -which began with Sir Walter Scott and John Galt, and continued through -Stevenson to John Buchan and the late Neil Munro. Through these men -the Scotland which was no longer, politically, a nation became more -enduring than anything which depends on rulers and boundaries--a -nation of the mind and heart, a home of lost causes, of impossible -loyalties, of high romance and simple faith. It is not Scott’s kings -and ladies and nobles who keep his books alive; it is people like -Edie Ochiltree, Jeanie Deans, Meg Dods, and Dandie Dinmont--in other -words, the characters who are part and parcel of the world which Burns -depicted and glorified. Steenie Steenson, like Thrawn Janet and Tod -Lapraik, carries on the great tradition of Tam o’ Shanter. Without -Burns the Scottish novel as we know it would never have been; without -the Scottish novel, the literature of the nineteenth and twentieth -centuries would be as much the poorer as seventeenth-century poetry -would be without the Cavaliers. - -In tracing the continuing tradition of sentiment from Henry Mackenzie -through Burns himself to ‘Ian Maclaren’ and Sir James Barrie, Professor -Thompson made perforce a grave omission. The difference between -the dynamic romanticism of England at the beginning of the last -century--the romanticism of the young Wordsworth and of Shelley--and -the insipid prettiness of the same movement in America at the same -time, lies in the invigorating power of the French Revolution. By -giving a fighting edge to romance, the Revolution raised it above mere -fancifulness and sentimentality. His patriotism did the same thing -for the influence of Burns. Without it he might today be only a minor -Man of Feeling. Even as it is, he is neglected and misunderstood. The -strength, the humour, the fighting edge are there, but few people care -to find them. - -He saved Scotland; himself he could not save. Five years after -his death a group of admirers in Greenock organized a Burns Club, -and Paisley and Kilmarnock quickly followed suit. The fashion -spread through Scotland, and among Scotsmen in the rest of the -English-speaking world, bringing in its train the erection of more, and -worse, statues and monuments than have been reared to the memory of any -other British individual with the possible exception of Albert, Prince -Consort. Soon the movement acquired the characteristics of a minor -religious cult, complete with ritual meals and a thriving traffic in -relics, genuine or spurious, of its hero. - -In itself this establishment as hero of a national cult might be -harmless. After all, if any writer was to fill the role, Burns was -the inevitable candidate, for he alone of the great Scottish writers -was truly a man of the people. Not the existence of the cult, but -the direction it took, is the tragedy of Burns. The sentimentality -which lies, like the soft core of an over-ripe pear, at the heart of -writers like ‘Ian Maclaren’, Sir James Barrie, and A. A. Milne, is -widespread in Scotland. In the Burns cult this softness yearns to the -answering softness of ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’, ‘To a Mouse’, and -‘To a Mountain Daisy’, extols its hero as the Bard of Humanity and -Democracy, and rejoices in the bathos of Clarinda and Highland Mary. -Meanwhile the ribald magnificence of ‘Holy Willie’ and ‘The Jolly -Beggars’ is neglected, the homely realism of satires, epistles, and -dramatic monologues goes unread. Worst of all, the splendid treasury of -more than three hundred songs, Burns’s most truly patriotic work, lies -almost untouched on the shelves. Radio and concert stage alike ignore -them. And choice of the few that are known to the public at large runs -true to the same form as with the longer poems. Probably a hundred -people know ‘Sweet Afton’ for one who knows ‘M’Pherson’s Farewell’ or -‘Rantin’ Rovin’ Robin’. - -The flattery of being a national hero would delight Burns. If his -followers were only mealy-mouthed where he was outspoken, they would -merely amuse him. He would not mind if they slobbered over his sins, -for the unco guid were old acquaintance of his. But at the thought of -his worshippers exalting his weakest work and ignoring his best, his -very soul would scunner. The real Burns was not the dropper of tears -over ploughed-under weeds but the man who brought in the neighbours -for a kirn-night and kissed the lasses after every dance; the man who -sat by farmers’ ingles and on ale-house benches listening to the racy -earthy talk of his people and storing his mind with folk sayings and -old songs. He was not ashamed of being a Scottish peasant, the heir -of all the picturesque and frequently bawdy tradition of Scots folk -literature. Neither was the man who wrote, ‘But yet the light that led -astray Was light from Heaven’, ashamed of his human nature. But his -worshippers are ashamed of the best part of his nature and his work. -And nobody else reads him at all. - - - - -INDEX - - - Abbotsford, 227 - - _Aberdeen Almanac_, 45 - - Aberfoyle, 47 - - Adam, Alexander, 119 - - Addison, Joseph, 40, 234 - - _Adventures of John Cheap the Chapman, The_, 46 - - _Adventures of Telemachus_ (Fénelon), 51 - - ‘Ae fond kiss,’ 149, 172, 264 - - Agriculture in Scotland, 10-16, 188 - - Agriculture, Professorship of, Edinburgh, 155 - - Aiken, Robert, 93-96, 98, 142, 144, 147, 193, 194 - - Ainslie, Robert, 65, 107, 110, 112-115, 144, 150, 151, 167, 168, 170, - 173, 186, 214 - - Albert, Prince Consort, 306 - - Allen, John, 110, 291 - - Alloway, 11, 36-41, 48, 279 - - Alloway Kirk, 36, 266 - - Almack, William, 30 - - ‘A Man’s a Man,’ 289, 292 - - American Colonies. _See_ United States - - American Revolution, 70, 82, 225, 290 - - Anderson, Robert, 196, 247 - - Anne, Queen, 60, 287 - - ‘An’ O for ane-and-twenty, Tam,’ 264 - - Antigua, 176 - - Arbroath, 266 - - Archers, Royal Company of, 108 - - Argyll, John, Duke of, 5 - - Armour, James, 77, 94, 139, 142-143, 150, 165, 192 - - Armour, Mrs. James, 168 - - Armour, Jean. _See_ Burns, Jean Armour - - Army, Burns’s opinions of, 155, 179 - - Arnot, John, 191 - - Arran, 47 - - Athole, Jane Cathcart, Duchess of, 116-117 - - Athole, John, Duke of, 116-117 - - Auchencruive, 144 - - Auld Brig, Ayr, 31 - - _Auld Farmer’s New Year’s Morning Salutation, The_, 58, 249, 250 - - _Auld Lang Syne_, 260 - - Auld, Walter, 120, 228 - - Auld, William, 173, 279 - - Austen, Jane, 278 - - Aylmer, Rose, 250 - - Ayr, 195, 279 - - Ayr, Brigs of, 31 - - Ayr, Presbytery of, 92-93 - - - Baker, --, 127 - - Ballads, 25-27, 38, 43-44, 246, 252, 259, 269 - - Ballantine, John, 61, 93-96, 202 - - Ballenden, Braes of, 256 - - Balmerino, Arthur Elphinstone, Baron, 229, 287 - - _Banks of Cree_, 271 - - Bannockburn, 48, 272, 300 - - Barncailzie, 125 - - _Barrack-Room Ballads_, 305 - - Barrie, Sir James Matthew, 305, 307 - - Bayard, 28 - - Beattie, James, 25, 29, 75, 104, 270, 302 - - Bede, 23 - - Beethoven, Ludwig von, 275 - - Begbie, Alison, 69-70, 189 - - Begg, Isabella Burns, 147 - - _Bell_, West-Indiaman, 192-193 - - Benson, Anna Dorothea, 132 - - Beugo, John, 175 - - Bible, 23 - - Black Bull Inn, Glasgow, 166 - - Blacklock, Thomas, 99, 195 - - Blair, Athole, 116-117, 207 - - Blair, Hugh, 29, 97, 104, 118, 155, 195, 244, 302 - - Blair, Sir James Hunter, 240 - - Blair, Robert, 259 - - Blake, William, 243, 278 - - Bloody Assizes, 293 - - Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, 60 - - _Bonnie Dundee_, 261-262 - - Border tour, Burns’s, 113, 200, 208, 240, 247, 255 - - Boston, Thomas, 19, 37, 281 - - Boswell, Sir Alexander, 274 - - Boswell, Euphemia, 165 - - Boswell, James, 11, 29, 60, 91, 103, 107, 111, 129, 278, 302, 304 - - Boyd, Thomas, 120, 213 - - Brawne, Fanny, 250 - - Braxfield, Robert M’Queen, Lord, 102, 108, 129 - - Bremner, Robert, 242 - - _Brigs of Ayr, The_, 248 - - Broadsides, Scottish, 45 - - Brontë, Emily, 162 - - Brown, Richard, 80-83, 84, 89, 92, 137-138, 163, 166, 169, 237 - - Brown, Samuel, 56 - - Browning, Robert, 250, 251 - - Brow Well, 133, 184-187 - - Bruce, King Robert the, 272, 300 - - Brussels, 32 - - Buchan, David Stuart Erskine, Earl of, 100-101, 255 - - Buchan, John, 305 - - Burke, Edmund, 278, 292, 295 - - Burn, Robert, 221 - - Burnes, Agnes Broun (mother of the poet), 37-38, 44, 90, 135-136, - 138-139, 203 - - Burnes, Robert (grandfather of the poet), 36 - - Burnes, Robert (uncle of the poet), 36, 60 - - Burnes, William (father of the poet), 8, 34, 35, 36-39, 41, 42-43, 48, - 49-50, 55, 59, 62, 70, 71-73, 84, 85-88, 90, 279 - - Burness, James, 117, 232 - - Burnet, Elizabeth, of Manboddo, 240 - - Burns, Agnes (sister of the poet), 49 - - Burns, Elizabeth Paton (daughter of the poet), 74, 138-139, 143, 150, - 203 - - Burns, Elizabeth Riddell (daughter of the poet), 183-184 - - Burns, Gilbert (brother of the poet), 11, 34, 37, 41, 48, 50, 55, 59, - 63, 68, 73, 87, 88, 90, 95, 122, 138, 143, 186, 202-203, 208, 214, - 220, 245 - - Burns, Isabella (sister of the poet). _See_ Begg, Isabella Burns - - Burns, Jean Armour, 13, 83, 90, 91-92, 109, 110, 113, 114-115, 118, - 126, 133, 136, 138, 139-144, 146-148, 150, 153, 156, 164, 165, - 167-170, 172-176, 185, 187, 189, 192-193, 201, 212, 214, 217, 220, - 221, 232, 233 - - Burns, John (brother of the poet), 88 - - Burns, Robert, _Poems_. See _Poems_, Burns’s - - Burns, Robert, the poet, _passim_. Specific references are to be found - in association with other persons, topics, or places. - - Burns, Robert (son of the poet), 167, 174, 185 - - Burns, William (brother of the poet), 166, 203-204, 215 - - Burns, William Nicol (son of the poet), 119 - - Burns Clubs, 301, 306-308 - - Burton, Robert, 42 - - _Bush aboon Traquair, The_, 48, 255 - - Bute, John Stuart, Earl of, 5, 301 - - Butler, Samuel, 300 - - Byron, George Noel Gordon, Lord, 109, 278 - - - Cadell and Davies, 199 - - Caedmon, 23 - - _Ça Ira_, 295-296 - - Caledonian Hunt, 99, 127, 197 - - _Caller Oysters_, 248 - - Calton Hill, 118 - - Calvin, John, 19 - - Calvinism, 5, 16-23, 66, 162, 163, 279-287 - - Cameron, Meg, 113, 118, 148, 151, 152, 165, 208 - - Campbell, Mary, 138, 144-149, 250, 307 - - Canada, 190 - - Candlish, James, 30, 62, 281 - - Cape Club, Edinburgh, 105 - - Caroline lyrics, 42 - - Carronades, Burns’s purchase of, 227, 295, 297 - - Carswell, Catherine, 84, 180 - - Catalan, 23 - - Catrine House, 96-97, 195 - - Cawdor Castle, 48 - - Centlivre, Susannah, 295 - - Chalmers, Margaret, 148, 160-161, 164, 256 - - Channing, William Eilery, 280, 285 - - Chapbooks, Scottish, 45-46 - - Chapman, George, 49, 75 - - Chatterton, Thomas, 62, 79 - - Chaucer, Geoffrey, 23, 42, 46 - - Chesterton, G. K., 66 - - Children, Burns’s feelings toward, 150-153 - - Chloris. _See_ Lorimer, Jean. - - _Christabel_, 243 - - _Chronicle_, London, 134, 206 - - Clarinda. _See_ M’Lehose, Agnes. - - Clarke, Samuel, 128 - - Clarke, Stephen, 257-258 - - Class-consciousness, Burns’s, 52-53 - - Claverhouse, John Graham of, Viscount Dundee, 301 - - Cleghorn, Robert, 109-111, 253, 291 - - Clint, Henry, 120 - - Clochnahill, 36 - - Clow, Jenny, 113, 118, 144, 146, 148, 152, 165, 170-171, 221 - - Clydesdale, 50 - - Cockburn, Alison, 43 - - Cockburn, Henry, 103, 108, 293 - - Cockney dialect, 30, 247 - - Coila, 157 - - Cole, Elisha, 281 - - Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 243 - - _Comical Sayings of Paddy from Cork, The_, 46 - - ‘Coming thro’ the rye,’ 26 - - Commonplace Book, Burns’s, 236-239, 242-244, 259 - - Composition, Burns’s methods of, 241-246 - - Connaught, 81 - - Constable, Archibald, 106 - - Copyrights, Burns’s, 199-201, 274 - - Corbet, William, 129, 294, 296 - - Corri, Domenico, 28 - - _Cotter’s Saturday Night, The_, 58, 154, 246, 269, 307 - - _Court of Equity, The_, 111, 146 - - Court of Session, 86 - - Cowper, William, 278 - - Craig, Lord, 162, 165 - - Craigdarroch, 121 - - Crane, Ichabod, 39 - - Creech, William, 100, 105, 106, 161, 165, 169, 197-201, 204-205, 220 - - Criffel, 187 - - Crochallan Fencibles, 104-109, 253, 254, 255 - - Cromek, Robert Hartley, 161 - - Cullen, William, 155 - - Cunningham, Alexander, 107-109, 110, 112, 118, 125, 126, 133-134, 167, - 205, 240, 253, 268, 285, 286 - - Currie, James, 125, 182, 246, 273 - - ‘Cutty stool,’ 17 - - - Daer, Basil William, Lord, 96, 131, 291, 293 - - _Daft Days, The_, 25, 248 - - Dalrymple, 51 - - Dalrymple, William, 279 - - Dalswinton, 114, 207-212 - - Dalyell, Sir John Graham, 124 - - Dalziel, Alexander, 98, 99, 195 - - Darien Expedition, 7 - - Davidson, Betty, 44, 136 - - Davies, Deborah Duff, 149 - - Deans, Jamie, 283 - - Deans, Jeanie, 305 - - _Death and Dr. Hornbook_, 39, 46, 83 - - Death, Burns’s, 133 - - Deists, 20, 22, 281, 286 - - Democracy, Scottish, 32-33 - - Dempster, George, 32, 290 - - Dickens, Charles, 65, 266, 300 - - Dinmont, Dandie, 305 - - Dods, --, 127-128 - - Dods, Meg, 305 - - Don, Lady Harriet, 61, 132 - - Doonholm, 36 - - Douglas and Heron Bank, 16, 70, 85, 230 - - Douglas, Charles, 192 - - Douglas, Gawain, 23, 247 - - Douglas, Lady Mary, 132 - - _Douglas, Tragedy of_, 21, 40 - - Douglas, William, 250 - - Dover, 227 - - Drama, Burns and the, 251-252 - - Drama, in Edinburgh, 21 - - Dramatic lyric, Burns’s use of, 250-251 - - Dramatic monologue, Burns’s use of, 250-251 - - Drummond, William, of Hawthornden, 23 - - Dryden, John, 42 - - Dumfries, 68, 110, 113, 118, 124-134, 152, 160, 171, 177, 208, 219, - 221-233, 267, 294-297, 298 - - Dumfries Academy, 224 - - Dumfries Burgh Council, 224 - - Dumfries Public Library, 106 - - Dumfries Theatre, 179, 295-296 - - Dumfries Volunteers, 228, 231, 232, 295, 299 - - Dunbar, William (the poet), 23, 247 - - Dunbar, William (Edinburgh), 106, 157, 254 - - Duncan, Adam, 303 - - Dundas, Henry, 5, 101, 108, 116, 207, 292, 301 - - Dundas, Robert, 107, 108 - - Dunlop, Andrew, 82 - - Dunlop, Frances Anna Wallace, 61, 96, 101, 148, 150, 151, 152, - 153-160, 167, 194, 199, 206, 209, 240, 260, 267, 282-283, 284, 286, - 297-298, 302 - - Dunlop House, 156, 167 - - Dunlop, Keith, 157, 167 - - Dunlop, Rachel, 156, 167 - - Dunlop, Thomas, 154 - - Dunnottar, 36 - - Dunscore, 288 - - Dunse, 112, 113 - - Durham, 127 - - - East India Company, 6, 190 - - East Lothian, 208 - - Easy Club, Edinburgh, 105 - - Eclogues, Virgil’s, 252 - - Edinburgh, 7-10, 75, 78, 94, 99-119, 124, 153, 162-172, 195-202, - 209-210, 216, 221, 245, 252, 291-293, 294 - - Edinburgh High School, 116, 119 - - Edinburgh University, 8, 96 - - Eglinton, Archibald Montgomerie, Earl of, 197, 202 - - Eglinton, Countess of, 197 - - Eglinton Wood, 82 - - _Elegies_ (Shenstone), 57 - - _Elegy on the Death of Sir James Hunter Blair_, 240 - - _Elibanks and Elibraes_, 48, 255 - - Elizabethan lyrics, 42 - - Elliot, Jean, 43 - - Ellisland, 101, 110, 113-115, 119-122, 158, 174, 202, 203, 207-222, - 262 - - Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 261, 280, 285 - - _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 105 - - _Epistle to John Rankine_, 77 - - Erskine, Andrew, 91, 99 - - Erskine, Henry, 108, 293 - - Erskine, John Francis, of Mar, 291, 297 - - _Esopus to Maria_, 181 - - _Evening Courant_, Edinburgh, 288 - - _Eve of St. Agnes, The_, 250 - - Excise, 55, 98, 101, 109, 115, 116, 129-130, 133, 165, 169, 170, 190, - 206-207, 209-210, 212, 214-233, 262, 269, 277, 289, 294, 296 - - - Faculty of Advocates, 293 - - Falstaff, 167 - - Farington, Joseph, 121, 165 - - Farming, Burns’s, 204, 210-222 - - Fénelon, François, 51 - - _Ferdinand Count Fathom_, 58 - - Fergusson, Alexander, of Craigdarroch, 121-122, 291 - - Fergusson, Robert, 25, 61, 75, 91, 104, 105, 134, 221, 237, 241-242, - 247-248, 252, 304 - - Fergusson, William, 36, 50, 53 - - Ferrara, Duke of, 250 - - Fifeshire, 247 - - ’Fifteen, Rebellion of, 36, 287, 304 - - Findlater, Alexander, 96, 129-130, 217, 219, 229, 296 - - Fisher, Edward, 281 - - Flax-dressing, Burns and, 71, 79-84 - - Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun, 301 - - _Flowers of Edinburgh, The_, 272 - - _Flowers of the Forest, The_, 43 - - Folk-songs, Scottish, 26-28, 38, 43-44, 75, 132, 252-263, 269 - - Fornicators’ Court, 112 - - ’Forty-five, Rebellion of, 4, 7, 26, 46, 287, 292, 304 - - _Four-Fold State_ (Thomas Boston), 19, 37, 279, 281 - - Fox, Charles James, 294 - - Franklin, Benjamin, 22, 61, 100, 103, 266 - - Freemasonry, 67-68, 87, 99, 104, 144, 145, 297 - - French, Burns’s knowledge of, 51-52 - - French Convention, 227, 295 - - French Revolution, 51, 119, 128, 159-160, 182, 226-228, 270, 272, - 290-299, 306 - - Friars Carse, 120, 176, 177, 181, 182, 212, 265 - - _Friars Carse Hermitage, Written in_, 262 - - Friends of the People, 293-294 - - - _Gala Water_, 255 - - Galileo, 297 - - Galloway, Burns’s tour in, 229 - - Galloway, John Stewart, Earl of, 131 - - Galt, John, 305 - - _Gazetteer_, Edinburgh, 297 - - _Gentlemen’s Magazine_, 31 - - George III, 292, 296-297 - - _Geographical Grammar_ (Guthrie), 48 - - _Gillicrankie_, 237 - - Glasgow, 7, 83, 166 - - Glasgow University, 20, 30 - - Glenbervie, 36 - - Glencairn, Elizabeth M’Quire, Countess of, 132 - - Glencairn, James, Earl of, 95, 98-101, 107, 120, 195-197, 209, 210, - 216, 240 - - Glenconner, 211 - - Globe Inn, Dumfries, 120, 174 - - _God Save the King_, 295-296 - - Godwin, William, 278 - - Goldielea, 122, 178 - - Goldsmith, Oliver, 31, 302 - - Gordon Castle, 117 - - Gordon, Jane, Duchess of, 117, 132, 159 - - Gow, Neil, 27 - - Graham, Dugal, 11, 45-46 - - Graham, Robert, of Fintry, 68, 111, 116, 207, 216, 223, 224, 294, 297 - - _Grave, The_ (Blair), 259 - - Gray, James, 124, 152 - - Gray, Thomas, 103, 157 - - Greenfield, William, 252 - - Greenock, 192-193, 306 - - Grieve, James, 85 - - _Grizzel Grimme, Ballad of_, 246 - - Grose, Francis, 121, 176-177, 265, 268 - - Guthrie, William, 48 - - _Guy Mannering_, 104 - - - Halleaths, 182 - - _Hallowe’en_, 248 - - Hamilton, Charlotte, 256 - - Hamilton, Gavin, 72, 76, 78, 87-88, 90, 92-93, 142, 202 - - Hamilton, John, of Sundrum, 85-86 - - Hamilton, William, of Gilbertfield, 24, 45 - - _Hamlet_, 40 - - Hampstead Heath, 244 - - _Handsome Nell_, 236, 242 - - Hannibal, 45, 234 - - Hanover, House of, 4, 26, 287-289, 294 - - _Hardyknute_, 27, 43 - - Harry, Blind, 25, 45 - - Hastings, Warren, 5, 302 - - Hay, Charles (Lord Newton), 106-107, 108, 253 - - Hay, Lewis, 161 - - Health, Burns’s, 54, 83-84, 184-187, 217, 231-233 - - _Helenore_ (Alexander Ross), 24 - - Henley, William Ernest, 138, 144, 145, 168 - - Henri, Susan Dunlop, 152, 286 - - _Henry VIII_, 40 - - Henryson, Robert, 23 - - Herald’s Office, Edinburgh, 35 - - Herd, David, 27, 43, 110, 252 - - ‘Here is the glen and here the bower,’ 272 - - Heron, Lady Elizabeth, 271-272 - - Heron, Patrick, of Heron, 16, 131, 230, 271 - - _Hey, Johnie Cope_, 26 - - _Hey tutti taitie_, 272, 300 - - Highland clans, suppression of, 4 - - _Highland Lassie_, 145 - - Highland Mary. _See_ Campbell, Mary - - Highland tours, Burns’s, 116-118, 256 - - Hildebroad, John, 283 - - Hill, Peter, 106, 200, 281 - - _History of Sir William Wallace, The_, 234 - - _History of the Bible_ (Stackhouse), 48 - - Hogg, James, 102, 135 - - Holinshed, Raphael, 261 - - Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 19, 280 - - _Holy Fair, The_, 76, 248 - - _Holy Willie’s Prayer_, 46, 76, 111, 249, 250, 307 - - Home, John, 21, 28, 40, 42, 75 - - Homer, 49, 75 - - Hopetoun, James Hope, Earl of, 228 - - Horace, 236 - - Housman, A. E., 244-245 - - ‘How are Thy servants blest’ (Addison), 40 - - Hume, David, 29, 31, 197, 278, 279, 300, 304 - - Humphry, James, 83 - - Hutcheson, Francis, 20, 22, 281, 285 - - Hyslop, William, 120 - - - Immortality, Burns’s views on, 284-286 - - ‘I murder hate,’ 82, 155, 237 - - India, 190 - - Inquisition, Spanish, 17 - - Irvine, 67, 71, 72, 79-84, 87, 88 - - Irving, Washington, 266 - - ‘I’ve seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling,’ 43 - - - Jacobitism, Burns’s, 209, 229, 287-290, 304 - - Jamaica, 93, 98, 147, 151, 162, 171, 172, 191-193, 206, 239 - - James I, of Scotland, 23 - - James VI, of Scotland, I of England, 3, 23, 287 - - Jefferson, Thomas, 272 - - Jeffrey, Francis, 29 - - Jeffreys, George, 293 - - _Jocky and Maggie’s Courtship_, 46 - - _John Anderson_, 26, 264 - - _John Barleycorn_, 246 - - _John o’ Badenyon_, 43, 256 - - Johnson, James, 120, 132, 214, 220, 254-264, 269, 273 - - Johnson, Samuel, 11, 24, 29, 31, 43, 102, 300 - - Johnston, William, 297 - - _Jolly Beggars, The_, 59, 111, 144, 249, 307 - - Journalism, Burns and, 205-206 - - _Junius_, 61 - - - Kames, Henry Home, Lord, 102, 108, 129 - - Keats, John, 11, 35, 49, 75, 79, 239, 250 - - Kemp, John, 162, 164, 165 - - Kilmarnock, 76, 167, 193-194, 198, 306 - - Kilpatrick, Nellie, 63, 68, 82, 137, 234-235 - - King’s Arms, Dumfries, 120 - - Kinmonth, 36 - - Kipling, Rudyard, 247, 305 - - Kirk, Scottish, 16-23 - - Kirkcudbright, 125, 131, 230 - - Kirkoswald, 37, 55-60, 69, 72 - - Kirkpatrick, Joseph, 282, 288 - - Kiwanis Club, 104 - - Knox, John, 16, 19, 22 - - - Lake District, 47 - - Lamb, Charles, 278 - - _Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn_, 240 - - Landor, Walter Savage, 250 - - Lapraik, John, 249 - - Lapraik, Tod, 305 - - Laurie, Annie, 250 - - Laurie, Sir Robert, 121-122 - - Lawrie, George, 99, 195 - - Lawrie, Mrs. George, 153 - - _Leader Haughs and Yarrow_, 255 - - Leeward Islands, 176 - - Lewars, Jessie, 130, 148, 149, 277 - - Lewars, John, 130, 295 - - _Lewis Gordon_, 272 - - Letters, Burns’s, 60-61 - - _Letters Moral and Entertaining_ (E. Rowe), 60 - - Linlithgow, 90 - - Lippo Lippi, Fra, 250 - - Lisbon, 9 - - Little, Jenny, 158-159 - - Livingstone, David, 303 - - Lochaber, 256 - - Lochiel, Donald Cameron of, 301 - - Lochlie, 62-63, 70, 72-73, 74, 84-88, 90, 138, 208, 214 - - Lochmaben, 182 - - _Lochmaben Harper, The_, 258 - - Locke, John, 22 - - Lockerbie, 182 - - Lockhart, John Gibson, 118 - - _Logan Braes_, 299 - - Lomond, Loch, 47 - - London, 204, 287, 293, 295 - - Longtown, 204 - - Lorimer, Jean, 148, 149, 219 - - Lorimer, William, 219 - - Loudoun, 99, 153, 195 - - Louis XVI, 160, 292, 294, 298 - - _Lounger, The_, 31, 302 - - Lowell, James Russell, 247 - - Loyal Natives Club, Dumfries, 126-127 - - - M’Auley, John, 151 - - _Macbeth_, 261, 266 - - Mackenzie, Henry, 12, 31, 58, 60, 66, 75, 84, 93, 118, 125, 197, 199, - 201, 251, 252, 301, 305 - - Mackenzie, John, 90-92, 99 - - Mackenzie, S. (Dumfries), 124 - - Mackintosh, James, 292 - - McKnight, --, 274 - - ‘Maclaren, Ian.’ _See_ Watson, John - - M’Lehose, Agnes, 70, 114, 125, 144, 148, 152, 153, 156, 160-172, 174, - 176, 179, 209, 210, 212, 221, 251, 258, 281, 283, 284, 307 - - M’Lehose, James, 162, 166, 171, 172 - - M’Lure, David, 62, 70, 72, 85-88 - - M’Murdo, John, 111, 133 - - Macpherson, James, 27, 43 - - _M’Pherson’s Farewell_, 264, 307 - - Mallet, David, 30 - - _Man of Feeling, The_, 31, 35, 58, 60, 84, 144, 189, 279, 299, 306 - - _Man Was Made to Mourn_, 236 - - Manners, Burns’s, 102-104, 144, 153-157 - - _Manual of Religious Belief_ (William Burnes), 59, 279 - - Marie Antoinette, 160, 298 - - Marischal, George Keith, 10th Earl of, 36 - - Marriage, Burns’s, 168-176, 189 - - _Marrow of Modern Divinity, The_, 281 - - Marxism, 18 - - _Mary Morison_, 251 - - Mary, Queen of Scots, 300-301 - - Masons. _See_ Freemasonry - - Massachusetts, 16, 20 - - Masson, Arthur, 40, 41-42, 58, 60 - - Mathieson, W. L., quoted, 18-19 - - Mauchline, 67, 75, 83, 89, 90, 93, 124, 138, 150, 165, 166, 170, 173, - 174, 195, 212 - - _Mauchline Wedding, The_, 240 - - Maule, Ramsay, of Panmure, 127 - - Maxwell, James, 133, 294, 298 - - Maxwell, Robert, 111 - - Melrose, 266 - - _Merry Muses of Caledonia, The_, 111-112, 253-254 - - _Mill, Mill O, The_, 242 - - Mill Street, Dumfries, 133, 222 - - Millan, --, 30 - - Miller, Eliza, 13, 145 - - Miller, Patrick, 101, 114, 120, 133, 202, 207-212, 220 - - Miller, Mrs. Patrick, 220 - - Miller, Patrick, Jr., 206 - - Milne, A. A., 307 - - Milton, John, 42, 164, 244, 282 - - _Minstrel, The_ (Beattie), 25, 29 - - _Mirror, The_, 31, 302 - - Mississippi Bubble, 7 - - Mitchell, John, 111, 217, 218 - - Moderates. _See_ New Lights - - Moffat, 228 - - Monboddo, James Burnet, Lord, 108 - - Monkland Friendly Society, 106, 281 - - _Monody on a Lady Famed for her Caprice_, 181-182 - - Montgomerie, Margaret, 103 - - Montrose, 117 - - Montrose, James Graham, Marquis of, 303 - - Moodie, Alexander, 76 - - Moore, John, 78, 104, 199, 201, 252 - - Morison, Mary, 68 - - Mossgiel, 13, 73-74, 87-88, 95, 138, 143, 167, 190, 202, 204, 208, - 211, 214 - - Mound, Edinburgh, 8 - - Mount Oliphant, 34, 41, 48, 50, 54-56, 59, 61-62, 70, 72, 208, 220, - 279 - - Muir, Robert, 150, 198, 284 - - Muir, Thomas, 293, 294 - - Muir, Mrs. William, 165 - - Mundell, James, 120 - - Munro, Neil, 305 - - Murdoch, John, 34-35, 39-43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 51-55, 57, 204 - - Murray, Sir James, 272 - - Murray, John, of Broughton, 4, 30 - - Murry, John Middleton, 250 - - Music, Scottish, 26-28, 40, 120-121 - - Music, influence on Burns, 236-237, 240-244, 246, 248 - - ‘My father was a farmer,’ 236 - - ‘My Love is like a red red rose,’ 26, 107, 261 - - - Nairne, Margaret Mercer Elphinstone, Baroness, 261, 305 - - _Nancy_, West-Indiaman, 192 - - Napoleon, 7, 28, 225, 226 - - Nationalism, Scottish, 303 - - New Brig, Ayr, 31 - - Newcastle, 204 - - New England, 16-17, 247, 280 - - New Lights, 21-23, 66-67, 75-78, 95, 280-287, 299 - - Newton, Charles Hay, Lord. _See_ Hay - - Nicol, William, 98, 112, 115-119, 207 - - _Night Thoughts_ (Young), 169 - - Nimmo, Erskine, 162, 209 - - Nith, River, 220, 226, 245 - - Niven, William, 56, 61, 63 - - Norval, Charles, 85 - - - _Observations on the Scottish Dialect_ (Sinclair), 29-30 - - Ochiltree, 244 - - Ochiltree, Edie, 188, 305 - - Ochtertyre, 256, 287 - - ‘Of a’ the airts,’ 149, 174 - - Oldbuck, Jonathan, 265 - - Old Lights, 21-23, 66-67, 75-78, 279-287 - - _On God’s Sovereignty_, 281 - - _On the Death of Lord President Dundas_, 107 - - ‘O poortith cauld,’ 271 - - _Ordination, The_, 76 - - Orr, Thomas, 61 - - _Ossian_ (Macpherson), 27, 43 - - Oswald, James, 27 - - Oswald, Mary Ramsay, of Auchencruive, 144 - - Oswald, Richard, of Auchencruive, 291 - - ‘O wat ye wha that lo’es me,’ 110 - - ‘O wert thou in the cauld blast,’ 251, 277 - - - Paine, Thomas, 226, 290 - - Paisley, 167, 198, 306 - - Palmer, Thomas Fyshe, 293, 294 - - _Pamela_, 58 - - _Pantheon, The_ (Tooke), 49 - - Park, Anne, 146, 148, 174 - - Park, Mungo, 303 - - Parliament, 3-4, 5-6, 289, 290-294, 295, 302 - - Parnell, Charles Stuart, 4 - - Paton, Elizabeth, 74, 76, 138-139, 140, 141, 143, 147, 148, 150, 193, - 194, 203 - - Patriotism, Burns’s, 234, 278, 287-306 - - Patronage, Kirk, 22 - - Pattison, Alexander, 198 - - Peacock, --, 80, 83 - - _Peggy Bawn_, 236 - - Percy, Thomas, 25, 43 - - Perry, James, 206 - - _Philosophy of Natural History_ (Smellie), 105 - - ‘Pindar, Peter.’ _See_ Wolcot, John - - Pinkerton, John, 43 - - Pitt, William, 226, 290 - - _Plane-stanes and the Causey, The_, 248 - - Pleyel, Ignaz Joseph, 268, 270 - - _Poems_, Burns’s, Kilmarnock ed., 29, 82, 94, 98, 118, 139, 142, 154, - 191, 193-196, 202, 239, 244, 247-249 - - _Poems_, Burns’s, 1st Edinburgh ed., 95, 98, 105, 106, 118, 127, - 195-201, 203, 254 - - _Poems_, Burns’s, 2nd Edinburgh ed., 204-205 - - _Poems_, Burns’s, Gilbert Burns’s ed., 203 - - _Poet’s Progress, The_, 234 - - _Poet’s Welcome to his Bastart Wean, A_, 111, 150 - - Politics, Burns’s, 102, 131, 225-226, 230-231, 278, 287-299 - - Poosie Nansie, 57 - - Pope, Alexander, 42, 49, 60, 181, 216 - - Port Antonio, 192 - - Potterrow, Edinburgh, 165 - - _Prayer in the Prospect of Death_, 84 - - Preaching, Scottish, 19-20 - - _Prelude_ (Wordsworth), 234 - - Prestonpans, 26 - - Prior, Matthew, 42 - - Princes Street, Edinburgh, 8 - - Provençal, 23 - - _Psalms_, 40, 135, 151, 236 - - Puritanism, 16-17 - - - Queensberry, William Douglas, Duke of, 225 - - - Raeburn, Sir Henry, 107 - - Ramsay, Allan, 23-25, 75, 91, 104, 247, 248-249, 252, 301, 304 - - Ramsay, David, 288 - - Ramsay, John, 287 - - Rankine, Anne, 68 - - Rankine, John, 74, 77, 98, 249 - - _Rantin’ Rovin’ Robin_, 307 - - ‘Rape of the Sabines, The,’ 122, 180-181 - - Reformation, Scottish, 23, 290 - - Regency Bill, 226 - - Reid, Alexander, 183, 229 - - Religion, 59 - - Religion, Burns’s, 278-287 - - _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_ (Percy), 25, 43 - - Revolution of 1688, 288-289 - - Riccarton, 76 - - Richardson, Samuel, 58 - - Richmond, John, 13, 65, 89-90, 112, 141, 143, 144, 147, 151 - - Riddell, Elizabeth Kennedy (Mrs. Robert), 177, 181, 182 - - Riddell, Jean Fergusson, 177 - - Riddell, Maria Banks Woodley, 105, 110, 122-123, 125, 144, 148, 152, - 175, 176-187, 219, 267, 295, 298 - - Riddell, Robert, 61, 96, 120-124, 148, 176, 181, 182, 260, 265, 267, - 291, 294 - - Riddell, Walter, 122, 127, 176-177, 178, 181, 182 - - _Rights of Man, The_, 292, 299 - - Robertson, William, 22, 31, 155 - - Robertson, William, of Lude, 291 - - Rochester, 11 - - Rockingham, Charles Watson-Wentworth, Marquis of, 225 - - Rodger, Hugh, 55 - - _Rosamond_, schooner, 226-227, 295, 297 - - Ross, Alexander, 24 - - Rossetti, Christina, 162 - - Rotary Club, 104 - - Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 272, 299, 300 - - Rowe, Elizabeth, 60 - - Russell, John, 76 - - Ryedale, 126, 130 - - - Sabbath, Scottish, 17, 92 - - St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, 9 - - St. James’s Lodge, Tarbolton, 67-68, 91 - - St. Kitts, 176 - - St. Mary’s Isle, 131-132 - - Samothrace, Victory of, 250 - - Sanitation, 9-13 - - Satan, Milton’s, 164, 282 - - Savannah-la-Mar, 192 - - Schetki, Theodor, 28 - - _Schoolmistress, The_ (Shenstone), 57 - - Schools, Scottish, 38-42 - - _Scotch Drink_, 248 - - _Scotland and the Union_ (W. L. Mathieson), quoted, 18-19 - - Scots language, 23-31, 75 - - _Scots Magazine_, 31, 100, 228 - - _Scots Musical Museum, The_, 120-121, 214, 220, 254-264, 269, 273-274, - 276 - - ‘Scots wha hae,’ 272-273, 292, 300 - - Scott, Sir Walter, 6, 9, 44, 47, 65, 100, 104, 121, 135, 197, 246, - 261, 265, 267, 274, 293, 300, 304, 305 - - Scottish National Gallery, 8 - - _Seasons, The_ (Thomson), 25, 57 - - Sedition trials, 272 - - _Select Collection of Scotish Airs_ (Thomson), 205, 257, 264, 268-277 - - Selkirk, Dunbar Douglas, Earl of, 96, 131-132, 293 - - Sentimentality, 58 - - _Sentimental Tommy_, 153 - - _Shadow of the Glen, The_ (Synge), 46 - - Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 22 - - Shakespeare, William, 11, 34-35, 42, 261 - - Sharpe, Charles Kirkpatrick, 102 - - Shaw, George Bernard, 65 - - Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 35, 239, 306 - - Shenstone, William, 57, 75, 238 - - Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 278 - - Sheridan, Thomas, 29 - - Sidney, Sir Philip, 28 - - Sillar, David, 65, 89 - - Simpson, William, 244, 249 - - Sinclair, Sir John, 29-30, 301, 302 - - _Six Excellent New Songs_, 45 - - Skinner, John, 43, 256 - - Smellie, William, 103, 105-106, 110, 121, 177-178, 181, 253, 254 - - Smith, Adam, 31, 206, 278 - - Smith, James, 13, 89-90, 112, 150, 173, 249 - - Smith, Leonard, 215, 216 - - Smollett, Tobias, 58 - - Smuggling, 56 - - Snyder, Franklyn Bliss, 145, 147, 199 - - Solway, 184-187, 226 - - _Sorrows of Werther, The_, 115, 125 - - Souter Johnie, 97 - - South Sea Bubble, 7 - - Southey, Robert, 197 - - _Sow’s Tail to Geordie, The_, 26 - - _Spectator, The_, 31, 42, 164, 302 - - Spenser, Edmund, 42, 157 - - Spenserian stanza, 57 - - Spinoza, Baruch, 281 - - Stackhouse, Thomas, 48 - - Staig, David, 223, 224 - - _Star_, London, 205 - - Steenson, Steenie, 305 - - Sterne, Laurence, 42, 66 - - Stevenson, Robert Louis, 305 - - Stewart, Catherine Gordon, of Stair, 153 - - Stewart, Dugald, 61, 96-97, 98, 99, 118, 195 - - Stewart, Mrs. --, 165, 209 - - Stewart, William, 229 - - Stinking Vennel, Dumfries, 221, 222 - - Stirling, 209, 294 - - Stobbie, Adam, 130, 232 - - Stuart, House of, 4, 287-289, 294 - - Stuart, Peter, 205 - - Surgeoner, Jenny, 13, 143 - - _Sweet Afton_, 307 - - Swift, Jonathan, 60, 304 - - Syme, John, 57, 96, 109, 111, 125-134, 174, 181, 203, 229, 267, 295, - 296 - - Synge, John Millington, 46 - - - _Tam Glen_, 264 - - _Tam o’ Shanter_, 59, 121, 204, 264-268, 305 - - Tarbolton, 62-67, 89, 90, 124 - - Tarbolton Bachelors’ Club, 63-66, 88, 89 - - Tarbolton Mill, 165, 167 - - _Tatler, The_, 42, 302 - - Taylor, John, 100 - - _Tea-Table Miscellany_ (Ramsay), 25 - - Telford, Thomas, 127, 213 - - Tennant, John, 211 - - ‘The last time I cam o’er the moor,’ 179 - - ‘The robin cam to the wren’s nest,’ 277 - - Thompson, Harold William, 305 - - Thomson, George, 61, 109, 133-134, 148, 186, 205, 232, 241, 243, 244, - 249, 256, 258, 260, 264, 268-277 - - Thomson, James, 25, 28, 31, 42, 57, 151, 302 - - Thomson, Peggy, 56, 59, 69, 146 - - ‘Thou Lingering Star,’ 148 - - _Thrawn Janet_, 305 - - Tinwald House, 182 - - _Titus Andronicus_, 34-35 - - _To a Haggis_, 248 - - _To a Mountain Daisy_, 59, 307 - - _To a Mouse_, 307 - - _Toddlin hame_, 275 - - ‘To Fanny fair could I impart,’ 242 - - Tooke, Andrew, 49 - - Tooke, John Horne, 226 - - Tories, 225-226 - - _Treatise on Solitude_ (Zimmermann), 125 - - Tudor, House of, 288 - - _Tullochgorum_, 43, 256 - - _Twa Dogs, The_, 154 - - _Twa Herds, The_, 76, 92-93 - - Twain, Mark, 65, 280 - - Tytler, William, 253 - - - Union, Act of, 3, 6, 16, 23, 302-303 - - Unitarianism, 280 - - United States, 7, 29, 190, 218, 289, 290 - - Urbani, Pietro, 28 - - - Versailles, 100 - - _Vicar of Wakefield, The_, 31 - - Virgil, 252, 276 - - Vocabulary, Burns’s, 247 - - Voltaire, 300 - - - Wallace, Lady Antonia, of Craigie, 155 - - Wallace, Lady Eglintoune Maxwell, 155 - - _Wallace, Sir William, History of_ (Blind Harry), 25, 45 - - Wallace, Sir William, 82, 153, 154, 234 - - Walpole, Horace, 278 - - Wardlaw, Lady Elizabeth, 27, 42-43 - - Washington, George, 290 - - Watson, John, 305, 307 - - Wedderburn, Alexander, 301 - - Wesley, John, 14, 278 - - West Indies, 7 - - Westminster, 293 - - ‘When Princes and Prelates,’ 111 - - Whigs, 102, 131, 225-226, 230-231, 287, 294 - - _Whistle, The_, 121-122, 225 - - ‘Whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad,’ 264 - - Whitefoord, Sir John, 91, 99 - - Wig Club, Edinburgh, 104 - - Wigglesworth, Michael, 20 - - Wilkes, John, 287, 289 - - Wilson, John (‘Dr. Hornbook’), 39, 83 - - Wilson, John (Kilmarnock), 194 - - Wolcot, John, 270 - - Wolsey, Cardinal, 40 - - Women, Burns’s views on, 149-150 - - Women, education of, 37, 135-136 - - _Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret_, The, 295 - - Wood, Alexander, 210 - - Woodley Park, 122-123, 178-179, 180, 182 - - Wordsworth, William, 226, 234, 241, 278, 284, 304, 306 - - World War, 303 - - - Young, Edward, 169, 279 - - ‘Young Jocky was the blithest lad,’ 272 - - York, House of, 288 - - - Zimmermann, Johann Georg von, 125 - - * * * * * - - - - - Transcriber’s note - - Spelling within quotations has been retained as published. Minor - punctuation errors have been changed without notice. The following - Printer errors have been changed. - - Page 8: “ridge which parallelled it” “ridge which paralleled it” - Page 65: “described Tarbolton townfolk” “described Tarbolton - townsfolk” - Page 164: “was promising lifelong” “was promising life-long” - Page 166: “The artificial and hot-house” “The artificial and - hothouse” - Page 180: “burlesque of the espisode” “burlesque of the episode” - Page 249: “as the workingday world” “as the working-day world” - Page 312: “Crane, Icabod” “Crane, Ichabod” - Page 316: “Masons. _See_ Freemasons” “Masons. _See_ Freemasonry” - - All other inconsistencies are as in the original. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIDE AND PASSION: ROBERT -BURNS, 1759-1796 *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Pride and Passion: Robert Burns, 1759-1796</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: DeLancey Ferguson</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: January 22, 2023 [eBook #69857]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Tim Lindell, Carla Foust and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIDE AND PASSION: ROBERT BURNS, 1759-1796 ***</div> -<p class="ph2"> -PRIDE AND PASSION</p> -<p class="ph3">ROBERT BURNS 1759-1796 -</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<h1> -PRIDE AND PASSION<br> -<br> -<i>Robert Burns</i><br> -<br> -1759-1796 -</h1> - -<p class="ph3">BY</p> - -<p class="ph2"><span class="smcap">DeLancey Ferguson</span></p> - -<p class="ph4">‘<i>My great constituent elements are Pride and Passion.</i>’<br> -BURNS TO AGNES M’LEHOSE<br> -DECEMBER 28, 1787</p> - -<p class="ph2">NEW YORK<br> -OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS<br> -1939</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> -<p class="ph4"> -Copyright, 1939, by Oxford University Press, New York, Inc.<br> -First Edition</p> - - -<p class="ph4">Printed in the United States of America</p> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</span></p> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak" id="PREFACE">PREFACE</h2> -</div> - - -<p>All witnesses agree that Robert Burns was a vivid -and dynamic personality. All readers of his poetry -concur. Yet somehow the personality which blazes -in the poems and glows in the letters only smoulders -in the biographies. Why is it so hard to write a -dull life of, say, Byron, and so easy to write a dull -one of Burns? For one thing, there are too many biographies, -all following the same stereotyped outline -of dividing the poet’s life according to the places he -lived in instead of according to the things he did and -thought. Then really graphic memorabilia are -scarce, especially for the formative years in Ayrshire. -People keep saying that Burns was a brilliant -talker, but they seldom report his talk. Finally, too -many biographers have worked in the wrong mood, -intent on moralizing or deprecating rather than interpreting.</p> - -<p>This book is not a biography, if that word connotes -a narrative written in straight time-sequence. -It is, instead, my answer to the question, subordinated -or ignored by most chronological biographers, -What sort of a man was Robert Burns? I have therefore -discarded time-sequence in favour of the relationships -of everyday life in which Burns most -clearly revealed his personality. The plan has at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</span> -least the advantage of passing quickly over his -almost undocumented youth, and concentrating -attention upon his fully recorded manhood. The -formal biography, whether it be Mrs. Carswell’s -romantic approach or Professor Snyder’s scholarly -one, suffers from the necessity of devoting more -space to the scantily reported twenty-seven years in -Ayrshire than to the five richly documented years in -Dumfries. I have assumed that Burns’s character -can best be determined from the completest records. -Perhaps to himself John Syme and Maria Riddell -were not so important as Robert Muir and Margaret -Chalmers, but the later friendships can be -studied at full length; the earlier ones cannot. -Hence I have given most space to the relationships -in which guess-work can be kept to a minimum.</p> - -<p>So, too, I have deliberately limited myself to the -best authenticated sources—Burns’s own letters and -poems, and the letters and other records of his immediate -contemporaries. Unsupported oral tradition -I have avoided as basic material. Though I use -such anecdotes now and again as secondary illustrations, -it is always with a warning as to their -nature. I have likewise tried to make clear the distinction -between facts and the inferences I have -drawn from them.</p> - -<p>In one respect at least my preparation for writing -about Burns is unique. Most editors and biographers -have either been bred in the rosy mists of -the Burns legend or have worked their way back to the -original records through a mass of secondary printed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</span> -matter. Up to a dozen years ago my knowledge of -Burns and his times included little beyond such -reading of major works and standard criticism as -one does in preparation for the doctorate. In 1925 I -undertook to edit a reprint of Burns’s chief poems. -Discovering in the course of that job how unsatisfactory -were all editions of his correspondence, I -thereupon plunged into the work of tracing and collating -the original holographs. Not until after thorough -immersion in these primary sources did I extend -my studies to the letters and other records of -Burns’s contemporaries and to the Burns tradition -embalmed in the biographies and standard editions. -When I started I had therefore everything to learn, -but nothing to unlearn, and my basic impression of -the poet and his work was founded on intimate acquaintance -with his own words, and not on what -other people had said about him.</p> - -<p>The large number of new documents which have -turned up in recent years replaces conjecture with -certainty in many once disputed episodes in Burns’s -career. We need no longer depend on libellous -Saunders Tait for details of William Burnes’s troubles -at Lochlie; the chronology of the poet’s Edinburgh -peccadillos is fairly clear; we know why -Mrs. Dunlop broke off her correspondence. The verification -and completion of the texts of more than -three-fourths of Burns’s own letters is only a part of -the fresh material. Collateral documents ranging -from Elizabeth Paton’s discharge of her claim -against Burns to the almost complete correspondence<span class="pagenum" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</span> -of two of his most intimate friends are now -available, and I have used them freely. I have also -drawn upon other sources not fully utilized in the -past. Most biographers, for instance, have contemned -the so-called ‘Train MS.’ in Edinburgh -University library. This collection of notes on Lockhart’s -<i>Life of Burns</i> consists mainly of anecdotes deriving -ultimately from the poet’s friend, John Richmond. -It has been repudiated <i>in toto</i> for no better -reason, seemingly, than that Richmond told a story -about one Mary Campbell which does not tally -with the romantic account of Highland Mary, and -was mistaken in the identity of a lady who once -called at Burns’s lodgings in Baxter’s Close. Against -these two doubtful items I set the fact that the author -of the notes so accurately described unpublished -letters and verses which he had seen that -every one of them since published can be instantly -identified. I base no major conclusions on this MS., -but I can see no justification for ignoring it.</p> - -<p>I need not enumerate the volumes of biography, -history, and memoirs which have contributed background -materials. They are listed in all the standard -bibliographies. The one great addition to the -older lists is the <i>Journals</i> of James Boswell, which -have furnished graphic details of Scottish life. I hasten -to add, however, that Chapter I is not intended -as a complete survey of eighteenth-century Scotland. -Even had completeness been possible in the -space at my disposal, it would have been useless to -attempt to repeat what Professor H. W. Thompson<span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</span> -has so superbly done in <i>A Scottish Man of Feeling</i>. -Hence I have limited myself to those aspects of national -life which bore directly upon Burns, as I have -also done in considering the influence of contemporary -literature. The eighteenth century was not -all ‘elegance’, but it was the elegant authors, and not -Swift, Fielding, and Johnson, who appealed to -Burns.</p> - -<p>Lest British readers charitably assume that I sin -through ignorance, I ought perhaps also to add that -in writing of Burns’s world I have not hesitated to -equate some of its social and political aspects with -their twentieth-century American analogues. To -describe a dead world in dead terms seems a poor -way of revivifying it. My omission of footnotes is -likewise deliberate. In a score of articles in various -journals during the past decade I have presented, -and fully documented, the evidence on many controversial -points. The articles evoked an almost passionate -apathy; nevertheless they, and their footnotes, -are there if anyone cares to look them up. -Furthermore, nearly all the source documents I -have used are now in print, despite the efforts of -Burns’s self-appointed literary executors to suppress -certain of them. On two points I recant some -of my earlier statements: I know now that the circumstances -of Burns’s quarrel with the Riddells are -not so clear as I once thought them, and Mr. Stanley -Cursiter of the Scottish National Gallery has -given me reason to doubt my identification of the miniature -portrait belonging to Mr. Oliver R. Barrett.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</span></p> - -<p>Transcripts of most of the unpublished documents -I have used are included in Mr. Robert T. Fitzhugh’s -Cornell University dissertation, ‘Robert -Burns as Seen by his Contemporaries’ (1935). I am -deeply indebted to Mr. Fitzhugh for the use of this -material and of other documents he has discovered -more recently, chief among them the letter in which -Robert Ainslie described to Agnes M’Lehose his -visit to Ellisland in October, 1790. In addition to -the Train MS., above mentioned, Mr. Fitzhugh’s -thesis includes numerous letters by Burns’s contemporaries, -of which the most important are the -forty-one which passed between John Syme and -Alexander Cunningham from 1789 to 1797. On -publication in the <i>Burns Chronicle</i> these letters were -considerably expurgated, the deletions including details -of the Caledonian Hunt’s revelry in Dumfries -and the most graphic description which has yet -come to light in connection with Burns of a wet -evening over the punchbowl.</p> - -<p>Many other people have helped me in the work. -My wife typed most of it in its original form, clarified -doubtful points by debating them, and did her -best to restrain the wilder excesses of Ph.D. diction. -My colleague, Winfield H. Rogers, read the manuscript, -and made many useful comments. A famous -British firm gave me free permission to use one of -Burns’s bawdier letters, but after I published it they -were taken to task by one of the literary executors -above mentioned. Since they found it easier to repudiate -a foreigner than to face the wrath of a compatriot,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</span> -I shall not embarrass them by repeating my -thanks here. I am indebted to Col. Sir John Murray, -D.S.O., for use of the original MS. of Burns’s -journal of his Border tour. Mr. Davidson Cook, -Mr. George W. Shirley, and Mr. John M’Vie have -all shared their Burns discoveries with me, and -Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach, Mr. Gabriel Wells, and the -late Mr. Charles Sessler renewed my obligations to -them by allowing me to collate MSS. which came -into their hands after my edition of the <i>Letters</i> was -published. And finally, I owe a still deeper renewal -of gratitude to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial -Foundation, to whose grant-in-aid this present -volume owes its appearance.</p> - -<p class="author"> -<span class="smcap">De L. F.</span></p> - -<p><i>Western Reserve University<br> -20 August 1938</i> -</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHRONOLOGY_OF_BURNSS_LIFE">CHRONOLOGY OF BURNS’S LIFE</h2> -</div> - - -<p class="center">I. AYRSHIRE</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1759. <i>Jan. 25.</i> Robert Burns born at Alloway; eldest son -of William Burnes (1721-1784) and his wife Agnes -Broun (1732-1820). The other children were Gilbert -(1760-1827), Agnes (1762-1834), Anabella -(1764-1832), William (1767-1790), John (1769-1785), -and Isabella (1771-1858).</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1765. Robert and Gilbert sent to school to John Murdoch.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1766. William Burnes rents Mt. Oliphant farm.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1768. Murdoch gives up Alloway school. The <i>Titus Andronicus</i> -incident.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1772. Robert and Gilbert attend Dalrymple parish -school, week about, during summer quarter.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1773. Robert studies grammar and French with Murdoch -for three weeks; writes his first song, ‘Handsome -Nell’, for Nellie Kilpatrick.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1774. Hard times begin at Mt. Oliphant.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1775. Burns attends Hugh Rodger’s school at Kirkoswald.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1777. At Whitsun William Burnes moves from Mt. Oliphant -to Lochlie.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1779. Burns joins a dancing class ‘in absolute defiance’ of -his father’s commands.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1780. The Tarbolton Bachelors’ Club organized.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1781. Burns courts Alison Begbie. His father’s dispute<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</span> -with David M’Lure, his landlord, begins. Burns -joins the Freemasons, and about midsummer goes -to Irvine as a flax-dresser.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1782. <i>Jan. 1.</i> The Irvine shop burnt out; soon after, -Burns returns to Lochlie.<br> -<i>Sept. 24.</i> William Burnes’s dispute referred to arbiters.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1783. <i>Jan.</i> Burns wins a £3 prize for flax-seed.<br> -<i>April.</i> Burns begins his Commonplace Book.<br> -<i>May 17.</i> M’Lure gets a writ of sequestration against -William Burnes.<br> -<i>Aug. 18.</i> The ‘Oversman’ reports in Burnes’s favor.<br> -<i>Aug. 25.</i> Burnes makes first appeal to Court of Session.<br> -Autumn. Robert and Gilbert secretly arrange to -rent Mossgiel.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1784. <i>Jan. 27.</i> The Court of Session upholds William -Burnes.<br> -<i>Feb. 13.</i> Death of William Burnes. The family -moves to Mossgiel.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1785. <i>May 22.</i> Birth of Elizabeth, the poet’s daughter by -Elizabeth Paton.<br> -<i>Nov. 1.</i> Burial of John Burns, the poet’s youngest -brother. During this year Burns began to write his -satires, composed ‘The Jolly Beggars’, and in Oct. -finished his first Commonplace Book. He also met -Jean Armour.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1786. <i>Jan.</i> (?). Burns plans migration to Jamaica.<br> -<i>April 3.</i> ‘Proposals’ for the Kilmarnock <i>Poems</i> sent -to press.<br> -<i>c. April 23.</i> James Armour repudiates Burns as a -son-in-law.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</span><br> -<i>May 12.</i> Supposed date of composing ‘The Court -of Equity’.<br> -<i>May 14.</i> Supposed date of farewell to Highland -Mary.<br> -<i>July 9.</i> Burns’s first penitential appearance in -church.<br> -<i>July 22.</i> Burns transfers his share in Mossgiel to -Gilbert.<br> -<i>July 30.</i> Burns in hiding from James Armour’s writ.<br> -<i>July 31.</i> The Kilmarnock <i>Poems</i> published.<br> -<i>c. Sept. 1.</i> First postponement of Jamaica voyage.<br> -<i>Sept. 3.</i> Jean Armour bears twins, who are christened -Robert and Jean.<br> -<i>c. Sept. 27.</i> Second postponement of Jamaica voyage.<br> -<i>Oct. 23.</i> Burns dines at Catrine House.<br> -End of <i>Oct.</i> Abandonment of Jamaica plans.<br> -<i>Nov. 27.</i> Burns sets out for Edinburgh.<br> -<i>Dec. 1.</i> Elizabeth Paton accepts Burns’s settlement -of her claim.</p> -</div> - - - -<p class="center">II. EDINBURGH</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1786. <i>Nov. 29.</i> Burns arrives in Edinburgh.<br> -<i>Dec. 9.</i> Henry Mackenzie praises the Kilmarnock -<i>Poems in The Lounger</i>.<br> -<i>Dec. 14.</i> William Creech issues subscription bills -for the Edinburgh edition of the <i>Poems</i>.</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1787. <i>Jan. 13.</i> The Grand Lodge of Scotland toasts Burns -as ‘Caledonia’s Bard’.<br> -<i>April 21.</i> Edinburgh <i>Poems</i> published.<br> -<i>April 23.</i> Burns sells his copyright for 100 guineas.<br> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</span> -<i>May 5-June 1.</i> Burns tours the Border.<br> -End of <i>May</i>. <span class="allsmcap">VOL. I</span> of <i>Scots Musical Museum</i> published.<br> -<i>June 2.</i> Burns receives Meg Cameron’s appeal.<br> -<i>June 8.</i> Burns’s ‘<i>éclatant</i> return to Mauchline’.<br> -End of <i>June</i>. Burns tours West Highlands as far as -Inverary.<br> -<i>July 29.</i> Jean Armour ‘in for it again’.<br> -<i>Aug. 2.</i> Burns completes his autobiographical letter -to Dr. John Moore.<br> -<i>Aug. 8.</i> Burns returns to Edinburgh.<br> -<i>Aug. 15.</i> Burns freed of Meg Cameron’s writ.<br> -<i>Aug. 25-Sept. 16.</i> Highland tour with William -Nicol.<br> -<i>Oct. 4-20.</i> Tour in Stirlingshire.<br> -<i>Oct.</i> Death of poet’s daughter, Jean.<br> -<i>Nov.</i> Burns begins active work for the <i>Museum</i>.<br> -<i>Dec. 4.</i> Burns meets Agnes M’Lehose.<br> -<i>Dec. 7.</i> Burns dislocates his knee.<br> -<i>Dec. 8.</i> The Clarinda correspondence begins.<br> -</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1788. <i>Jan. 4.</i> Burns’s first visit to Clarinda.<br> -<i>Feb. 13-14.</i> Peak of the Clarinda correspondence: -four letters in two days.<br> -<i>Feb. 18.</i> Burns leaves Edinburgh.<br> -<i>Feb. 23.</i> Burns returns to Mauchline; is ‘disgusted’ -by Jean.<br> -<i>Feb. 27 (?)-Mar. 2.</i> Burns visits Ellisland with John -Tennant.<br> -<i>Mar. 3.</i> Jean bears twin girls, of whom one dies -on Mar. 10 and the other on Mar. 22.<br> -<i>c.</i> <i>Mar. 13.</i> Burns returns to Edinburgh.<br> -<i>Mar. 18.</i> Burns signs lease of Ellisland.<br> -<i>Mar. 24.</i> Burns leaves Edinburgh.<br> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</span> -<i>Mar.</i> <span class="allsmcap">VOL. II</span> of <i>Scots Musical Museum</i> published.<br> -Late <i>April</i>. Burns acknowledges Jean Armour as -his wife.<br> -<i>April-May.</i> Burns receives Excise instructions at -Mauchline.<br> -</p> -</div> - -<p class="center">III. DUMFRIESSHIRE</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1788. <i>June 11.</i> Burns settles at Ellisland.<br> -<i>July 14.</i> Burns’s Excise commission issued.<br> -<i>Nov. 5.</i> Centenary of the ‘Glorious Revolution’.<br> -<i>Nov.</i> Jenny Clow bears Burns a son.<br> -<i>Dec.</i> Jean joins Burns in borrowed quarters at the -Isle.<br> -</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1789. <i>Feb. 16.</i> Burns goes to Edinburgh to close accounts -with Creech and to settle Jenny Clow’s suit.<br> -<i>Feb. 28.</i> Burns returns to Ellisland.<br> -Summer. Burns meets Francis Grose.<br> -<i>Aug. 18.</i> Francis Wallace Burns born.<br> -<i>Sept. 1.</i> Burns begins duty as Excise officer.<br> -<i>Nov.</i> Burns ill with ‘malignant squinancy and low -fever’.<br> -</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1790. <i>Jan. 27.</i> Burns’s name placed on list of those eligible -for promotion as Examiners and Supervisors.<br> -<i>Feb.</i> <span class="allsmcap">VOL. III</span> of <i>Scots Musical Museum</i> published.<br> -<i>July.</i> Burns transferred to Dumfries 3d Division.<br> -<i>July 24.</i> Death of William Burns in London.<br> -<i>Dec. 1.</i> MS. of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ sent to Grose.<br> -</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1791. <i>Mar. 31.</i> Anne Park bears Burns a daughter, Elizabeth.<br> -<i>April 9.</i> William Nicol Burns born.<br> -<i>April.</i> ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ published in Grose’s -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</span> -<i>Antiquities of Scotland</i> and in the March <i>Edinburgh -Magazine</i>.<br> -<i>June 19-22.</i> Burns in Ayrshire to attend Gilbert’s -wedding.<br> -<i>Aug. 25.</i> Auction of crops at Ellisland.<br> -<i>Sept. 10.</i> Formal renunciation of Ellisland lease -signed.<br> -<i>Nov. 11.</i> Burns moves into Dumfries.<br> -<i>Nov. 29-Dec. 11.</i> Burns in Edinburgh. Farewell -again to Agnes M’Lehose.<br> -</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1792. <i>Feb.</i> Burns promoted to Dumfries Port Division.<br> -<i>Feb. 29.</i> Capture of schooner <i>Rosamond</i>.<br> -<i>April 10.</i> Burns made honorary member of Royal -Company of Archers, Edinburgh.<br> -<i>April 19.</i> Sale of the <i>Rosamond’s</i> carronades.<br> -<i>Aug.</i> <span class="allsmcap">VOL. IV</span> of <i>Scots Musical Museum</i> published.<br> -<i>Sept. 16.</i> Burns begins work for Thomson’s <i>Select -Collection</i>.<br> -<i>Nov. 13.</i> Burns subscribes for Edinburgh <i>Gazetteer</i>.<br> -<i>Nov. 21.</i> Birth of Elizabeth Riddell Burns.<br> -Mid-<i>Dec.</i> Burns’s last visit to Dunlop House.<br> -<i>Dec. 31.</i> Inquiry into Burns’s loyalty.<br> -</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1793. <i>Jan. 5.</i> Burns defends himself to Graham of Fintry.<br> -<i>Feb. 1.</i> France declares war against England.<br> -<i>Feb.</i> Second Edinburgh edition of <i>Poems</i> published.<br> -<i>March.</i> Burns asks, and receives, burgess privileges -in the Dumfries schools.<br> -<i>May 19.</i> Burns moves to house in Mill Vennel.<br> -<i>June.</i> First number of Thomson’s <i>Select Collection</i> -published.<br> -<i>c.</i> <i>July 30-Aug. 2.</i> First Galloway tour with Syme.<br> -<i>Aug.</i> The Edinburgh sedition trials.<br> -<i>c.</i> <i>Aug. 30.</i> ‘Bannockburn’ sent to Thomson.<br> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xix">[Pg xix]</span> -<i>c.</i> <i>Dec. 31.</i> Beginning of the Riddell quarrel.<br> -</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1794. <i>Jan. 12.</i> Final breach with Maria Riddell.<br> -<i>April 21.</i> Death of Robert Riddell.<br> -<i>c.</i> <i>May 1.</i> Burns declines a post on <i>Morning Chronicle</i>, -London.<br> -<i>c.</i> <i>June 25-28.</i> Second Galloway tour with Syme.<br> -<i>Aug. 12.</i> Birth of James Glencairn Burns.<br> -<i>c.</i> <i>Dec. 22.</i> Burns appointed Acting Supervisor at -Dumfries.<br> -</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1795. <i>Jan. 12.</i> Burns posts the letter which estranged -Mrs. Dunlop.<br> -<i>Jan. 31.</i> Burns joins in organizing the Dumfries -Volunteers.<br> -<i>Feb.</i> Reconciliation with Maria Riddell.<br> -<i>April.</i> The Reid miniature painted. Alexander -Findlater resumes his duties as Supervisor at Dumfries.<br> -<i>Sept.</i> Death of Elizabeth Riddell Burns.<br> -<i>Dec.-Jan.</i> Burns ill with rheumatic fever.<br> -</p> - -<p class="hanging-indent1">1796. <i>Mar. 12-14.</i> Food riots in Dumfries.<br> -<i>July 3-16.</i> Burns at the Brow Well.<br> -<i>July 18.</i> Burns writes his last letter.<br> -<i>July 21.</i> Death of Burns.<br> -<i>July 25.</i> Funeral of Burns, and birth of his son -Maxwell.<br> -<i>Dec.</i> <span class="allsmcap">VOL. V</span> of <i>Scots Musical Museum</i> published. -</p> -</div> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - - -<table class="autotable"> -<tr> -<td class="tdl" colspan="2">PREFACE</td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_v">v</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl" colspan="2">CHRONOLOGY OF BURNS’S -LIFE</td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="rm">I.</td> -<td class="tdl">SCOTLAND</td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="rm">II.</td> -<td class="tdl">EDUCATION</td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="rm">III.</td> -<td class="tdl">MEN</td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="rm">IV.</td> -<td class="tdl">WOMEN</td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="rm">V.</td> -<td class="tdl">LIVELIHOOD</td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="rm">VI.</td> -<td class="tdl">SONG</td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_234">234</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="rm">VII.</td> -<td class="tdl">THE SCOT</td> -<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_278">278</a></td> -</tr> -</table> - - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="ph2">PRIDE AND PASSION</p> -</div> - -<p class="ph3">ROBERT BURNS 1759-1796</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span> -<p class="ph2" id="PRIDE_AND_PASSION">PRIDE AND PASSION</p> -</div> - - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 id="I">I</h2> -</div> - -<p class="ph2">SCOTLAND</p> - - -<p>A Scot in the eighteenth century was a poor relation, -subject to the slights and scorns of more prosperous -kinfolk, and reared amid poverty, theology, -and filth. When Robert Burns was born, on January -25, 1759, his native land was almost at the nadir -of its independent existence. Proud and warlike and -desperately poor, Scotland had been still an essentially -feudal nation when King James VI was called -from amid the bickerings of his jealous nobles and -intransigent clergy to become James I of England. -The permanent removal of the court to London left -the country more than ever the prey of contention -among its nobles and fanaticism among its ecclesiastics; -governed by a parliament without authority; -torn at intervals by rebellion and civil strife; denied -commercial parity with England, and cut off from -the old-time free intercourse with France.</p> - -<p>The Act of Union of 1707, by admitting Scotland -to commercial privileges formerly restricted to -England, started the country on the road to material -prosperity, but promised to destroy the last vestiges -of national pride. It was ‘the end of an old -song’. Thenceforward the affairs of Scotland were -entrusted to a handful of representatives at Westminster, -too small, in those days of patronage and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span> -pocket-boroughs, to have enabled even a Scottish -Parnell, had there been one, to sway the balance of -power. Scotland was no longer Scotland; it was -North Britain. And when the House of Hanover -succeeded to the English throne, the last vestige of -Scottish influence in the government seemed to -have vanished. Ruled no longer by the Stuarts—her -own kings, even though absentee—but by ‘an insolent, -beef-witted race of foreigners’, Scotland turned -more and more to the things of the flesh. The last -flicker of the ancient loyalties in the ’45 shed only -light enough to reveal their death. The Lowlands, -though they could not stomach the double treason -of a man like Murray of Broughton, acquiesced in -the brutal destruction of the Highland clans. Most -of the comfortable merchants and landed gentry -had viewed the uprising with an apprehension even -livelier than that felt by the German court four -hundred miles away; when the Highlands were -crushed they rejoiced in their own increased security, -and showed their loyalty to the reigning House -by christening their daughters Charlotte and Wilhelmina, -and their new streets and squares Hanover -and Brunswick and George.</p> - -<p>By the middle of the century Scottish affairs had -settled into an order which might alter in degree, -but would not alter in kind, for two generations at -least. Politically, the country was little more than a -conquered province. Economically it was beginning -to emerge from age-old poverty, but the new prosperity -of the lucky few was widening the gap between<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span> -them and the poor and still further depressing -the latter. Religiously it was awakening from the -nightmare of Calvinism which had paralysed free -thought and free action for two centuries. Intellectually -its literary life was being overwhelmed by the -fashions and standards of England, and its educated -citizens were suffering from an inferiority complex -of national scope.</p> - -<p>When Warren Hastings was impeached, Burns -was angry because it was done in the name of the -Commons of England and not of Great Britain. Had -he expressed his opinion in public, instead of in a -private letter, it would have roused little sympathy -among his more influential countrymen. Most -would have dismissed it as the rant of a fanatic; a -few would have held it downright treason. There -was no money in being a Scottish patriot. As in -England, all things political went by favour. The -only difference was that in Scotland they went by -favour of one man—the Duke of Argyll, the Earl of -Bute, or Henry Dundas, as the case might be. All -power concentrated at last in the hands of the national -boss. He ‘suggested’ the choice of the sixteen -Scottish peers who were to represent their country -in the House of Lords; he controlled the election of -the forty-five members of the Commons; his word -was law as to all appointive offices. Fifteen members -of the Commons were chosen by the burgh councils—self-perpetuating -groups which in ‘the taciturn -regularity of ancient affairs’ allowed no outsider to -intrude on their privileges and their graft. The other<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span> -thirty were chosen by the counties, and in all Scotland -there were fewer than three thousand qualified -electors, every man of whom was ticketed as to party -allegiance and family connection. Most of them also -had their prices plainly marked on their tickets. Of -course the price need be nothing so crude as cash. -Every job, from a cadetship with the East India -Company to the governorship of a province, was obtainable -by influence, and by influence only; hence -there were plenty of ways of swaying a man’s vote, -especially if he had a rising family of hungry younger -sons, without soiling his fingers with gold.</p> - -<p>Everyone played the game, and took the rules for -granted. Why wait for merited promotion, if you -could get it quicker by pulling wires? The only man -Sir Walter Scott ever deliberately cut was the one -who publicly criticized him for securing his brother’s -appointment to a post which he knew was soon to be -abolished—with a pension for the ousted incumbent. -It was a comfortable system for those on the -inside. As for the others, they were expected to do -their duty in that state of life to which it had pleased -God to call them.</p> - -<p>But it was not merely in political jobs that the influential -classes were doing well for themselves. The -Act of Union had admitted Scottish merchants to -the privileges of the colonial trade formerly open -only to the English. Throughout the eighteenth century -the south of Scotland experienced a whole series -of industrial and real estate booms. Though by -twentieth-century standards of bankruptcy the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span> -booms were small and local, they had all the familiar -characteristics. Glasgow and its neighbourhood, -for instance, when once it had recovered from the -losses of the crazy Darien Expedition—as wild a -speculation as the later Mississippi Bubble in France -and the South Sea madness in England—throve -soberly on its steadily increasing commerce with the -West Indies and the American Colonies. The passerby -today, between the Trongate and the Broomielaw, -may read in Union Street and George Square -how mercantile Scotland felt towards the loss of its -parliament, and find Jamaica and Virginia Streets -underscoring the reason; further west, St. Vincent -Street, Nile Street, Pitt Street, and Wellington -Street show the direction of Glaswegian sympathies -in the long struggle with Napoleon. And since commerce -is by definition two-sided the ships which -brought back American cotton and tobacco and -sugar took out Scottish linens and woolens and -shoes from steadily growing centres of manufacture.</p> - -<p>On the east coast, Edinburgh was not merely expanding; -it was on the way to transforming itself. -Unable by its location to share directly in the overseas -trade, it throve on the legal business which grew -out of that trade, on the increasing demand for -education which benefited both the university and -the printers and booksellers, and on the invested -profits of Scotsmen who had made money in the -East or West Indies and who settled in the capital -when they retired. Until after the ’45 the city was -still packed along the ridge from Holyrood to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span> -Castle, its population crowded into the tall tenements -which shut out the low northern sun from the -narrow wynds. Its first expansion was to the south, in -a development, near the present site of the University, -on which Burns’s father and uncle found work -when they struck out for themselves in 1750. To the -north of the Old Town all was then open country. -At the foot of the Castle Rock, where the railway -tracks now run, the marshy Nor Loch still received -whatever of the city’s garbage did not remain in the -streets. Burns was four years old when the real -growth of the modern city began with the building -of the North Bridge to connect the Old Town with -the ridge which paralleled it to northward. Each -year thereafter saw new houses or new squares -added, but as late as 1800 the New Town still consisted -only of Princes, George, and Queen Streets -from St. Andrew Square to Charlotte Square.</p> - -<p>Until after Burns’s death the whole area, despite -the Georgian dignity and charm of its houses, retained -many of the features of a new and raw development. -In particular, the valley was half choked by -the hideous Mound formed of the earth excavated -in grading the New Town. The laying out of the -Princes Street Gardens and the crowning of the -Mound with the Scottish National Gallery were -still far in the future—there was even talk of a row -of buildings on the south side of Princes Street which -would have blinded one of the finest city vistas in -the world, and have made the Gardens forever impossible. -By 1786, when Burns first saw Edinburgh,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span> -wealth and fashion had already deserted the Old -Town, and middle-class respectability was beginning -to follow, but the business life of the city still -centred in the shops and taverns which lined the -High Street, crammed the narrow Luckenbooths -which congested traffic beside disfigured St. Giles’s, -and overflowed into all the adjacent courts and -closes. Professional men transacted their business -in taverns in preference to their crowded living-quarters; -all Edinburgh was accustomed to gather at -midday in the neighbourhood of the Cross to arrange -business and social appointments.</p> - -<p>Sanitation did not exist. Water for cooking and -such exiguous washing as was done was carried by -porters from the public wells to the various flats in -the tall ‘lands’; the day’s filth of the household was -collected in a tub on the landing of the stairs and at -bedtime the barefoot maid-servants emptied it out -of the windows—theoretically to be gathered up by -the scavengers; actually, too often, to lie where it -fell until a rain washed it away. Even the hardy nostrils -of Londoners quailed before the marshalled -stenches of Edinburgh, and travelling Scotsmen -gauged the smells of foreign cities like Lisbon by -their nasal memories of home. That children should -die like flies was inevitable; the marvel is that any -survived. Deficiency diseases were as rife as filth -diseases. Rickets was taken for granted—a simile, -humorous in intent but ghastly in effect in one of -Scott’s letters, gives a glimpse of nurse-maids in -Princes Street trying to compel unhappy rachitic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span> -children to walk. Human life has always been Scotland’s -cheapest commodity. That a high degree of -social and intellectual culture should flourish amid -this filth is merely another proof of human capacity -for ignoring what it is too indolent to correct.</p> - -<p>Outside the cities, as well as in them, Scottish life -was beginning to change. Primitive agriculture in -the northern kingdom, like the sanitation of Edinburgh, -seemed almost to be an effort to demonstrate -just how badly a thing could be done. The poorest -sorts of oats and barley, the scrubbiest of cattle, were -raised by the worst methods. The unfenced fields -were divided by a system of ridges and ditches which -managed to combine the maximum of soil wastage -with the minimum of drainage. The ‘infield’, as this -dyked portion of the farm was called, was cultivated -with ploughs so crude and awkward that they required -four horses and two men to handle them. The -‘outfield’, or pasture, was never cultivated or manured; -overrun with moss and weeds it yielded even -in summer only a scanty and unwholesome pasturage, -with little if any surplus to carry the cattle -through the winter. All excess stock was slaughtered -in the fall, and for six months of the year the people -who could afford meat at all had to subsist like seamen -on salt beef and smoked mutton hams. The -wretched beasts which were kept through the winter -were fed mainly on straw, and frequently by -spring were so weak and emaciated that they had -to be carried to the pasture.</p> - -<p>The owners of the cattle lived in a style which an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span> -Iroquois would have thought primitive. Gilbert -Burns resented the statement that his famous -brother was born in a hovel. The Alloway cottage, -he declared, was better than the houses then occupied -by many substantial farmers. So it was. It had -a chimney, whereas in many a cottage and farmhouse, -long after Burns’s youth—Keats saw plenty -of them in Ayrshire in 1818—such of the smoke as -did not enter the eyes and lungs of the tenants escaped -through the door. But even with a chimney -the average farmhouse or labourer’s cottage, with its -walls of stone or rammed clay, its earthen floor and -thatched roof, and with the fire seldom built up except -for cooking, had a winter chill and dampness -that bred tuberculosis in the young and rheumatism -in the old. As at Alloway, the stable was usually -under the same roof, and its reek mingled with -the dampness and the smell of unwashed humanity. -An English proverb in the seventeenth century asserted -that the Scots had neither bellows, warming-pans, -nor houses of office; and that the proverb -still held in the eighteenth is proved alike by experiences -of Johnson and Boswell in gentlemen’s -homes in the Highlands and by episodes in the -chapbooks of Dugal Graham which reveal the same -use of the fireplace as Shakespeare records of the inn -at Rochester. Outside the door was the midden-dub -or glaur-hole, manure-heap of man and beast alike, -often so surrounded with stagnant water that the -‘rather pretty’ girl whom Keats saw standing at a -cow-house door in the Highlands, ‘fac’d all up to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span> -the ankles in dirt’, would in the Lowlands a generation -earlier have been a sight too commonplace to -excite remark. When the seepage from the midden-dub -reached the water-supply the cycle of filth and -typhoid was complete. Dead animals which could -not be eaten were usually dumped into the nearest -stream, so that if the water-supply was not contaminated -in one way, it was pretty sure to be in another. -But unless the animal were a horse, it had to -be very dead indeed not to be eaten. Sheep that had -died by accident or disease had a special name—‘braxies’—and -were the perquisite of the shepherds; -the flesh of diseased cattle was sometimes the -only meat farm servants tasted; in Edinburgh young -Henry Mackenzie once observed two bakers of -cheap ‘mutton pies’ suspiciously engaged by night -about the carcass of a horse on the bank at the back -of the Castle.</p> - -<p>Within doors all domestic equipment was on the -same primitive scale as the housing. At meal-times -the pot containing the thick oatmeal porridge which -was the staple food was placed in the centre of the -table, and each member of the family—servants included—fell -to work with his own spoon. Barley for -broth was prepared on the knocking-stone, counterpart -of the Mexican <i>metate</i>. Pewter dishes were a -luxury, and crockery ones almost unknown. Wooden -trenchers were frequently used even by the clergy, -and were the regular thing in farmhouses; the milk -was kept in wooden vessels so permeated with dirt -and bacteria that it soured in a few hours. The entire<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span> -family lived and ate and slept in two rooms, with -sometimes a windowless loft above as additional -sleeping-quarters for the servants or some of the -older children. Every cottage had at least one box-bed -built into the wall. When the occupants retired -and closed the sliding wooden doors they enjoyed a -practically airless seclusion amid their own effluvia. -The rest of the family slept on rough cots, or even -straw pallets on the floor. The popular saying, ‘The -clartier [dirtier] the cosier’, was not satire; it was -just a matter-of-fact summary of rural living conditions.</p> - -<p>In dwellings like these, where a large family was -often augmented by several servants, privacy was as -impossible as in an army barrack. Any conversation -too intimate to be shouted above the uproar of the -children into the ears of a mixed audience had to be -conducted elsewhere than in the house—in the -fields, if the weather permitted; in the stable otherwise. -Even so, of course, all the circumstances leading -up to the conversation were known to a large -and intensely interested group. Hence the young -people, making a virtue of publicity, took their -cronies into their confidence and employed them to -arrange their trysts. Thus if James Smith beckoned -Jean Armour or Betsy Miller away from her giggling -family it was fairly certain that he was making an -appointment for Rob Mossgiel and not for himself; -if Burns waited on Jenny Surgeoner it was in John -Richmond’s interests and not in his own. It was difficult -to surprise, and impossible to shock by any of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> -the normal processes of nature, a people who lived -in such conditions. No one had to explain ‘the facts -of life’ to the children of that world; they witnessed -them daily. It would almost seem that a belief in -original virtue, rather than original sin, was requisite -to explain why the moral status of the peasantry -was often so much less squalid than their physical -surroundings.</p> - -<p>As the century advanced, however, closer intercourse -with England roused ambitious landlords to -attempt improvements. Trees were planted on the -hillsides and about the naked houses; the ‘infields’ -were levelled and enclosed. Yet nine-tenths of the -fences in Ayrshire were not built until after 1766, -and as late as 1800 two-thirds of Fife was still fenceless. -Rotation of crops, better cultivation, artificial -grasses, more productive types of grain, were all experimented -with. Potatoes and turnips, regarded as -garden luxuries in the early part of the century, began -to be grown on a large scale for human food and -stock feed respectively. John Wesley in 1780 noted -that vegetables had become as plentiful in Scotland -as in England, though on his first visit, in 1762, he -had found none at all, even on noblemen’s tables. -Carts were introduced for farm work, to take the -place of the ‘creels’ or panniers, in which manure -had formerly been borne on horseback to the fields, -and of the rough sledges on which the sheaves had -been hauled from harvest field to stackyard. The -wide use of carts, however, had in many districts to -await the improvement of the roads; in some instances,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span> -when landlords first offered wheeled vehicles -as gifts to their tenants, they were refused because -it seemed impossible to drag them through -the mud.</p> - -<p>Some few of the improving landlords were actuated -by disinterested zeal to better living-conditions; -their stubborn and superstitious peasants -were helped against their will. Many more landlords -were motivated by simple greed to improve their -rent-rolls. By breaking up small holdings occupied -on short-term leases, and throwing several together, -they made more profitable farms which were rented -for long terms. The consequent evictions, however, -produced an over-supply of would-be tenants -whose desperate need for land resulted in competitive -bidding from those willing to take a gambling -chance on getting from the soil more than it really -had to give. If they succeeded, it was too often at -the expense of the health and strength of themselves, -their children, and their servants.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, so far as the improvements in -methods increased the productivity of the farms, the -new developments were economically sound. But -the nation’s increasing foreign trade operated to inflate -land values. Merchants who had made money -in the Indies wished to retire, and the prestige of -setting up as landed gentry combined with the lack -of sound corporate investments to bid up the value -of land in the more attractive parts of the kingdom -to levels where a fair return on the investment was -possible only by rack-renting the tenants. Burns<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span> -himself, and his father before him, were victims of -this over-capitalization. They had to pay for marginal -lands at rates which would have been fair -rentals for the best. And of course speculation in -land brought with it speculative banking. In Burns’s -youth many of the Ayrshire gentry were crippled or -ruined outright by the failure of the Douglas and -Heron Bank, which, organized on a lavish scale, -quickly got into trouble through excessive loans on -real estate. The ruined gentry retired to the Continent, -or to lodgings in Edinburgh, and their estates -were taken over by nabobs home from the Indies.</p> - -<p>All this drama of political corruption and of social -and economic change was played against the background -of the old religious life of Scotland. Though -the intellectual life of the country had never been -squalid like its physical life, it had at the beginning -of the eighteenth century become torpid. From the -time of John Knox until after the Act of Union the -real government of Scotland, like that of colonial -Massachusetts, was a theocracy. The King and the -powers of the state were far off from the life of the -average peasant or tradesman, but the Kirk watched -all his goings out and comings in. Not only did it -administer matters which in other times and other -nations have been regarded as spiritual concerns, -but it also largely took the place of magistrates and -police. Critics of puritanism who have chosen colonial -New England as their dire example have made a -mistake. They should have chosen Scotland. Whatever -the theory of church government in New England<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span> -may have been, in practice the man at odds -with the establishment suffered few real hardships -beyond the loss of his vote and a moderate amount -of discriminatory taxation—provided he had the -discretion to mind his business and keep his mouth -shut. But in seventeenth-century Scotland estrangement -from the church might mean exile from the -kingdom, under penalty of practical starvation if the -rebel tried to stick it out at home. Except that it -lacked the power to relax its heretics to the secular -arm for mutilation or death, the Scottish hierarchy -was own brother to the Spanish Inquisition.</p> - -<p>In every parish the Kirk Session was supposed to -maintain a snooping committee to investigate the -conduct of the laity. The reckless parishioner who -desecrated the Sabbath by cooking a hot meal, by -puttering in his garden, or even by taking a walk, -was haled before the Session for discipline, and could -be reinstated in the communion only by confession -of his sin and payment of a fine. For more serious -offences the penalties were proportionately heavier, -unless one were wealthy or powerful enough to cow -the inquisitors. Burns had painfully intimate knowledge -of the cutty stool, or mourners’ bench, whereon -those guilty of fornication or other deadly sin had -thrice to appear before the congregation while the -minister rebuked them at length and with specific -detail. Girls sometimes committed suicide or murdered -their children to escape the public shame, and -the effect of the ordeal on those who submitted was -more likely to be hardening than chastening. Many<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span> -another youth besides Burns inwardly resolved -thenceforth to live up to the reputation thus fastened -upon him.</p> - -<p>The Kirk frowned upon, and tried to suppress, -such secular amusements as music and dancing. In -spite of the ban, the custom of ‘penny weddings’, -whereby impecunious young couples in the rural districts -sought, by giving what was in effect a subscription -ball, to raise money enough to set them up in -housekeeping, still persisted; but even these gatherings -had a slightly furtive quality, and in the stricter -homes all such things were taboo. The moral results -of the policy of repression were almost wholly bad. -The older men, in default of other relaxation, devoted -themselves to drink; the younger, to the pleasures -that give its point to Burns’s simile, ‘as busy as -an Edinburgh bawd on a Sunday evening’.</p> - -<p>Probably none but a native Scot can understand -the finer points of Scottish theology. Fortunately, -however, such understanding is not needed for a -general grasp of church affairs in the eighteenth century. -Primitive Calvinism shares with Marxism the -distinction of being the most completely deterministic -philosophy ever widely accepted in the western -world. All men were held to be equally sinful and -equally deserving of eternal damnation. ‘Adam as -the federal representative of the human race had determined -its fate once and for all by violating that -unfortunate covenant which he and the Deity had -contracted with regard to the forbidden fruit. A -vicarious sacrifice had indeed been offered; but the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span> -power to avail themselves of this expiation was to be -communicated to only a few of the minority to -whom it had been made known; and these were to -be saved to show that God was merciful, as the rest -were to be damned to show that He was just.’<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> This -was the creed of which Oliver Wendell Holmes said -that any decent person really holding it ought to go -mad out of mere self-respect. And like every other -rigid system it had the effect of stultifying its sincerest -adherents. The most patriotic of historians -are compelled to recognize the general intellectual -torpor of Scottish theological and philosophical -writing in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. -The thinking of the clergy had been finished -for them by John Calvin and John Knox; all that -remained for them to do was to expound. No first-rate -mind can subdue itself to the mere unquestioning -exposition of other men’s views without losing -its edge, and few of the parish clergy in Scotland had -started with first-rate minds. Their preaching was -commonly a dreary reiteration of the doctrine of -the Four-Fold State of Man—first, Innocence or -Primitive Integrity, next Nature or Entire Depravation, -then Grace or Begun Recovery, and finally -Consummate Happiness or Misery—brightened -only by sadistic imaginings of the details of eternal -torment. As if these doctrinal limitations were not -sufficiently deadening, custom required that one of -the minister’s two discourses each Sunday should be -preached from his ‘ordinary’ text—which meant -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>that he was expected to take the same text week -after week and torture it into new applications of -doctrine. If his invention failed under the strain, and -he changed his ‘ordinary’ too often, zealous parishioners -were likely to complain to the Presbytery. -Add to these handicaps the fact that few ministers -had money enough to buy books, even had they -wished for books, and one begins to realize why -Scottish manses two hundred years ago contributed -no such leaders of national thought as were even -then emerging from English rectories.</p> - - -<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> W. L. Mathieson: <i>Scotland and the Union</i> (Glasgow, 1905), p. 225.</p> - -</div> -</div> - -<p>Nevertheless the tides of changing ideas stirred -even the strongholds of Calvinism. Before the seventeenth -century ended Michael Wigglesworth in -Massachusetts had found himself compelled slightly -to modify the doctrine of infant damnation in the -direction of human decency; in Scotland the ‘common -sense’ doctrines of the Deists penetrated during -the eighteenth century even among those who abhorred -the name of Deism. From 1729 until his -death in 1746 Francis Hutcheson, as professor of -Moral Philosophy in Glasgow University, expounded -to steadily growing classes his theory of the ‘moral -sense’—an allegedly innate human capacity for distinguishing -right from wrong. This concept of innate -virtue as opposed to the idea of original sin -rapidly gained ground among the laity and the -younger clergy of the cities, despite bitter hostility -on the part of the conservatives. Preaching began to -stress conduct rather than the will of a cruel and -capricious god as the way of salvation. A healthier<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span> -and more prosperous nation was in fact rebelling -against a harsh and depressing philosophy, and the -clergy were following the lead of their congregations. -By the third quarter of the century the liberal faction, -the Moderates or New Lights, were in almost -undisputed control in the metropolitan districts, -though the fundamentalists, or Old Lights, still -flourished in the smaller towns and in the rural parishes. -The more rigorous extremes of kirk discipline -began to relax. Though in 1757 John Home was -compelled to resign his pulpit to escape the consequence -of having written <i>The Tragedy of Douglas</i>—to -witness the early performances of which a few of -his more daring clerical brethren disguised themselves -in the garments of the laity—the ban on the -theatre gradually sank into desuetude. Even while -the Edinburgh playhouse was still unlicensed, and -dramas had to be advertised as concerts of music -between the parts of which the play of the evening -would be presented gratis, it became possible for -ministers to attend the performances openly.</p> - -<p>But the warfare of New Lights versus Old was not -conducted wholly in the realm of ideas. The fact -that the more influential laity were early converts -to the new doctrines brought into the struggle politics -in its most worldly form. In parishes where the -local magnates exercised the right of presenting the -minister, New Light candidates had the preference. -Hence it was the New Lights’ interest to uphold the -right of patronage against the congregation’s democratic -claim to elect its own minister. The supporters<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span> -of patronage triumphed in the election of William -Robertson as Moderator of the General Assembly in -1763; the result made the church almost as much a -part of the spoils system as the government was, and -gave its leadership into the hands of supple ecclesiastical -politicians. In consequence the spread of New -Light doctrine went hand in hand with a steady decline -in the moral influence of the clergy, while -schisms and secessions sapped the organization. Because -the Kirk was morally as well as intellectually -bankrupt the laughter of Burns’s satires shook it to -its foundations. To the church of John Knox such -ridicule would have meant no more than a mosquito -means to an elephant. Burns’s Edinburgh -friends were right in maintaining that the conduct -and doctrines which he attacked would have disappeared -in another generation without his aid; -what neither they nor he could foresee was that in -1843 it would be the Old Light clergy who would -restore moral leadership to the ministry by daring -to give up their livings for conscience’ sake.</p> - -<p>Behind the New Light doctrines expounded by -Hutcheson and his followers lay of course the ideas -of such English Deists as Locke and Shaftesbury. -Strong convictions on philosophical and theological -questions were going out of fashion; like Franklin -in America the New Light Scots had persuaded -themselves that enlightened self-interest, sweet reasonableness -and common sense, were attainable -goals for mankind at large, and could be trusted to -solve problems of morals and economics alike. And<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span> -this English influence in the field of theology and -philosophy was typical of the entire range of literary -expression in Scotland. The national inferiority -complex showed itself most plainly of all in the -realm of words.</p> - -<p>Historically the Scottish language is to English -what Provençal is to French and Catalan to Spanish—an -ancient and independent local dialect -which had developed its own literature at least as -early as had the more central region which afterwards -took the lead. The speech of Lowland Scotland -was the direct descendant of that Northumbrian -dialect of Old English which Bede and -Caedmon spoke. Throughout the Middle Ages and -the early Renaissance Scotland maintained amid -her poverty as rich a literary tradition as England -did. In fact, from the death of Chaucer until the -beginning of the Elizabethan era the student of British -literature must look north of the Tweed to find, -in the writings of King James I, Robert Henryson, -Gawain Douglas and William Dunbar, anything -worthy the name of poetry. The decay of Scots as a -literary language was started by the Reformation -and finished by the Union. By introducing the Geneva -version of the English Bible the Reformation -made Southern English the language of the church, -in idiom if not in pronunciation. The accession of -James VI to the English throne made Southern English -also the language of the court. King James himself -wrote in Scots; his subject, William Drummond -of Hawthornden, wrote in English. Drummond’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span> -example was followed by all the prose writers and -most of the poets of Scotland from his day to ours. -After the Union even the poets who used Scots did -so consciously and not because such expression was -wholly spontaneous.</p> - -<p>Of these poets, Allan Ramsay, whose productive -period covers roughly the three decades from 1711 -to 1740, was the most popular. And Scots poetry, -as practised by Ramsay and by his friend and contemporary -William Hamilton of Gilbertfield, tended -more and more to what Samuel Johnson would have -described as the easy and vulgar, and therefore the -disgusting. Their work exhibits humour, and something -of the conversational quality of the familiar -essay, but dignity and deep poetic emotion are -notably absent. Moreover, the dialect in which they -wrote tended more and more to become a synthetic -and standardized language, embodying words and -idioms common to a large section of southern Scotland -but without firm roots in any one region. The -Aberdeenshire dialect used by Alexander Ross in -his <i>Helenore</i> is almost the last fresh transcription of -the speech of a definite section of the country. Written -Scots was rapidly becoming what nineteenth-century -English and American authors made other -dialects—a semi-literary vernacular employed for -humorous effect or for an affectation of colloquial -ease. Even Burns himself at times gave artificial -Scottish flavour to his verse by using English idioms -in Scottish spelling. Since the end of the eighteenth -century no writer of Scots verse has succeeded in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span> -introducing any new elements. At its best, such writing -sounds like imitations of Burns; at its worst, like -imitations of his imitators.</p> - -<p>But when Burns came before the public even this -conventionalized literary Scots seemed on the point -of extinction. Though Ramsay’s <i>Tea-Table Miscellany</i>—which -included many purely English verses—was -still popular as a song-book, the rest of his work -was neglected. Hamilton of Gilbertfield’s recension -of Blind Harry’s <i>History of Sir William Wallace</i> was no -more than a story-book for children. The unhappy -Robert Fergusson, starved and neglected, had ended -his life in a madhouse, and fashionable Edinburgh, -glancing askance at his satirical verses, said it served -him right. Ramsay was a crude homespun figure of -the generation in which Thomson by writing <i>The -Seasons</i> had given his countrymen a poem which they -could show to Englishmen without blushing; ‘The -Daft Days’ and the rest of Fergusson’s work was -little better than a national disgrace when set beside -the beauties of James Beattie’s <i>Minstrel</i>. Nevertheless -there still underlay the new fashions a literary -tradition which most of the anglicizing gentry -scorned or ignored. An oral Scottish literature was -still alive, though it was soon to perish when its -lovers smothered it by writing it down. Percy’s -<i>Reliques of Ancient English Poetry</i>, which first gave -highbrow sanction to the popular ballads of Scotland -and northern England, were not published -until Burns was six years old, and even Percy only -scratched the surface of this rich deposit. Throughout<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span> -the century scores of ballads still circulated by -oral tradition which had never been recorded in -writing, and in these the genuine spirit of the Scottish -language flourished without concession to -fashionable English.</p> - -<p>Even more important than the ballads for the -training of a poet like Burns were the folk-songs. -The Scots had always been a musical people, and -despite the opposition of the stricter clergy traditional -songs or airs for almost every human occasion -were known to everyone, high or low. The tradition, -moreover, was still very much alive. Scottish song -gave the nation its revenge for the military humiliations -of the ’45. The taunting lilt of ‘Hey, Johnie -Cope, are ye waukin yet?’ could be relied on to remind -English garrisons of the inglorious conduct of -their fellow soldiers at Prestonpans, and all Scotland’s -contempt for the Hanoverian kings and their -mistresses went into the ribaldry of ‘The Sow’s Tail -to Geordie’. Even so, only a fraction of the popular -songs had any political bearing. More of them were -convivial; many more of them erotic. Every phase -of sexual love from the crudest bawdry to idyllic -beauty found some expression in verse—the latter, -it must be confessed, more rarely and less effectively -than the former. Yet these crude songs, interesting -mainly for the surprising variety and ingenuity of -their erotic symbolism, were the raw material—raw -in more than one sense—from which Burns wrought -such lyrics as ‘My Love is like a red red rose’, ‘John -Anderson’, and ‘Coming thro’ the rye’. While Burns<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span> -was still a lad, David Herd, a retiring antiquary in -Edinburgh, began the systematic collection of this -folk poetry on so large a scale and with such a complete -absence of prudery that it was not until the -twentieth century that the whole of his manuscript -collection was printed. He had himself published in -1776 two volumes of what he considered the best -work. At the same time musicians like James Oswald -and Neil Gow were collecting the airs of Highlands -and Lowlands alike. The singing of the old songs, -with or without instrumental accompaniment, was -a favourite pastime in Scottish drawing rooms, and -even unliterary folk would frequently feel moved to -compose new words to some well-liked melody.</p> - -<p>Alongside this honest love of native things, -whether expressed in a girl’s singing at her harpsichord -or in David Herd’s careful recording of old -words, another literature was growing up of imitation, -forgery, and ‘improvement’. It had become a -literary convention for every composer of an imitation -ballad to offer it to the public as a copy from -an ancient manuscript. Though a few of these imitations, -like the ‘Hardyknute’ of Lady Elizabeth -Wardlaw, were close enough to the spirit of folk literature -to deceive even experts, the mass of them -were so mawkish and verbose as to bring the term -‘Scottish poetry’ to the verge of contempt. Primacy -in these qualities, as in popularity, belonged to -James Macpherson’s alleged translations of the -poems of Ossian—a work passionately defended by -the Scots because it depicted their savage ancestors<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span> -as a trifle more chivalrous and vastly more sentimental -than Bayard or Sidney, admired on the Continent -because it supported the current delusion -about the nobility of man in a state of nature, and -cherished by Napoleon Bonaparte as one of the -simple pleasures which appeal to the enterprising -burglar in his hours of relaxation.</p> - -<p>But the harm done to traditional literature by -imitations and forgeries was trivial compared with -that inflicted by some of those people who professed -to admire it. In the latter part of the eighteenth century -the teaching of music in Edinburgh had passed -largely into the hands of foreigners. Names like -Domenico Corri, Pietro Urbani, and Theodor -Schetki are as prevalent on title-pages as their -owners were on the concert stage, and under this -Italianate influence many traditional melodies were -‘harmonized’ and ‘improved’ until all their native -vigour was lost in empty flourishes. And as with the -music, so with the words. ‘Correct’ and sentimentalized -lyrics were substituted for the sturdy old words, -remained in use long enough to push the latter into -oblivion, and then, their novelty gone, themselves -sank into disuse and dragged the music with them.</p> - -<p>This effort to refine the national heritage of music -was merely one phase of the whole sense of provincial -inferiority which afflicted Scotland. Italian -music and English literature, speech, and manners, -were the ideals towards which genteel Scots strained. -National pride in James Thomson and John Home -exulted more in the fact that they wrote English<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span> -acceptable in England than in their use of Scottish -materials. Even the devastating scepticism of David -Hume was forgiven him because he had almost -purified his language of Scotticisms. When Johnson -ridiculed Hume’s English Boswell writhed in agony, -and was correspondingly elated when the dictator -praised Blair’s sermons and was moved to tears by -Beattie’s <i>Minstrel</i>.</p> - -<p>When Thomas Sheridan came to Edinburgh in -1761 to give a course of lectures on elocution, ‘he was -patronized by the professors in the College, by several -of the clergy, by the most eminent among the -gentlemen at the bar, by the judges of the Court -of Session, and by all who at that time were the -leaders of public taste’.</p> - -<p>Thenceforward, ‘correct pronunciation and elegant -reading’ were reckoned ‘indispensable acquirements -for people of fashion and for public speakers’. -In other words, these people of fashion, like Francis -Jeffrey on his return from Oxford, gave up the -broad Scots in return for the narrow English. In the -very year of the Kilmarnock <i>Poems</i>, Sir John Sinclair -of Ulbster, one of the most public-spirited Scots of -his generation, brought out a two-hundred-page -volume of <i>Observations on the Scottish Dialect</i>. His purpose -was not to preserve but to destroy his native -speech. His book is a comprehensive index expurgatorius -of all the words, phrases, and idioms a Scotsman -must avoid—many of them today a part of the -standard speech of the United States, and even of -England. Thus, ‘best man’ is a Scotticism for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span> -‘bride’s man’; ‘hairdresser’ is to be preferred to -‘barber’; ‘sore eyes’ is a vulgarism; ‘whisky’ should -be called ‘usquebae’ or ‘aquavitae’. ‘Heather’ and -‘peat’ and ‘bracken’ are condemned along with -‘mittens’ and ‘kindling’; it betrays provincial origin -to ask if a friend is in, or if he has gone out walking. -‘It is, indeed, astonishing,’ says Sir John, ‘how uncouth, -and often how unintelligible, Scotch words -and phrases are to an inhabitant of London, and -how much it exposes such as make use of them, to -the derision of those with whom they happen to -have any communication or intercourse.’ However, -he adds, a Scot should choose carefully even from -the speech of London. ‘Cockney phrases a Scotchman -is very apt to get into when he makes his first -appearance in London. And when he can easily and -fluently bring out, <i>this here thing</i>, and <i>that there thing</i>, -for <i>this</i> or <i>that thing</i>; <i>I knode</i>, for <i>I knew</i>; <i>on it</i>, for <i>of it</i>, -as, <i>I heard on it</i>; <i>grass</i>, for <i>asparagus</i>; <i>your’n</i> and <i>his’n</i>, -for <i>yours</i> and <i>his</i>, he fancies himself a complete Englishman.’</p> - -<p>The anglicizing mania extended even to people’s -names. David Malloch, when he crossed the Border, -changed his name to Mallet; John Murray the publisher -was originally M’Murray, as his predecessor, -Millan, had been Macmillan; William Almack, the -proprietor of the famous assembly-rooms in London, -had started life as M’Caul. One of Burns’s own -friends, James M’Candlish, dropped the prefix when -he entered Glasgow University, and became simply -Candlish. Even today, in spite of Burns, the anglicizing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span> -process continues: the visitor in Ayr, for instance, -will find the street-signs pointing him to the ‘New -Bridge’ and the ‘Old Bridge’.</p> - -<p>By 1780 Scotland could afford to smile at Johnson’s -dictum that her northern lights were only -farthing candles. In literature at least she could face -English competition on equal terms. James Thomson -had become a classic; Adam Smith and Hume -and Robertson had demonstrated that the north -could more than hold its own with the south in history -and philosophy; Mackenzie’s lachrymose <i>Man -of Feeling</i> disputed with <i>The Vicar of Wakefield</i> the -claim to be the most popular short novel of the century. -In Edinburgh a <i>Scots Magazine</i> was emulating -the methods and materials of the English <i>Gentleman’s -Magazine</i>, though when Mackenzie and his -friends tried, first in <i>The Mirror</i> and later in <i>The -Lounger</i>, to produce a Scottish <i>Spectator</i> they found -the city not metropolitan enough to support such -an enterprise. Many people took anything sharp in -the way of satire as a personal attack, but namby-pamby -was not read, and so between poverty of -material and poverty of support the journals’ straw-fire -flickered and went out.</p> - -<p>But while the poor relations of England were thus -looking forward hopefully to the day when their -speech and writing should no longer betray their -provincial origin, the social life of the country -changed more slowly. The gentry added silks and -laces to their clothing, and tea and other luxuries -to their tables, but felt no special urgency for greater<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span> -cleanliness. George Dempster, fresh from a visit to -Brussels in 1756, was shocked to find that a baronet’s -son of his acquaintance had been calling on a lady -of title ‘in a valet de chamber’s frock and an unpowdered -brown greezy head’. Even at the beginning -of the nineteenth century the inhabitants of a -Highland mansion, though they had got beyond the -point where they were satisfied to give themselves -‘a “good wash” on Sundays, and make that do for -the week’, found their domestic routine upset by a -guest who not only insisted on a daily bath but refused -to go to the river to take it. Servants in the -better houses were provided with shoes and stockings, -but the general standards of neatness were still -so low as to make the cleanliness of Holland a constant -source of wonder to the visiting Scot.</p> - -<p>But the aping of English manners had not yet -undermined the traditional Scottish democracy of -intercourse. Though the barriers which divided gentleman -from commoner were fully as strong in Scotland -as they were in England, they were not so -visible. If many of the gentry lacked wealth, they -did not lack pedigree, and a plebeian could rarely -hope to cross the boundary that excluded him from -social equality. Nobles married with nobles, and -lairds with lairds. Yet until the end of the century -the sons of nobles, lairds, and ploughmen commonly -began their education together in the village school, -where boy-fashion they took each other at face-value -without regard to rank. The result was an almost -total absence among the lower classes of that servility<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span> -which was bred into their compeers in England. -Only as more and more of the sons of gentlemen -were sent to English public schools did the old system -decay, and some of the gentry begin to compensate -for the inferiority they had been made to -feel in the presence of the English by assuming a -haughty air with their humbler countrymen.</p> - -<p>In short, all that had distinguished Scotland as a -nation was on the way to oblivion. Literature, language, -manners, and institutions were being anglicized -as fast as a people roused to uneasy self-consciousness -could manage it. In 1786 it seemed -evident that when the former things passed away -it would be into the darkness in which men and nations -prefer to bury the ruder and more discreditable -features of their early days. That the memory -of the discarded heritage should be embalmed as a -precious possession, and that the old world should -be forever surrounded by the romantic glory of a -golden sunset was due more to Robert Burns than -to any other person. He made the Scots conscious -of the richness of their national tradition. He could -not restore it to life, but he taught his people to -cherish its ruins.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="II">II</h2> -</div> - -<p class="ph2">EDUCATION</p> - - -<p>Robert Burns was nearly nine years old before anything -revealing his personality impressed his family -enough to make them remember it. Unreliable tradition -has it that he was a puny infant; slightly better -evidence shows him as a nervous and temperamental -child, alternating between wild high spirits -and moody sullenness. Once, it is said, Robert hid -in a cupboard when he and his schoolmates were -frolicking. The master in restoring order struck the -door a resounding blow with his tawse, and the nervous -shock threw the child into such uncontrollable -hysterical sobs that he had to be sent home. But the -most devout worshipper would have trouble in discerning -a future poet in so undifferentiated an episode. -It is easier to do so in Gilbert Burns’s story of -what happened at Mount Oliphant one evening in -1768.</p> - -<p>John Murdoch the schoolmaster had got a better -post, and was paying a farewell visit to the parents -of two of his promising pupils. As a parting gift, he -brought a copy of <i>Titus Andronicus</i>. Beginning to read -the play aloud, he soon came to the scene where her -ravishers taunt the mutilated Lavinia. The children, -in an agony of tears, implored him to read no more; -whereupon their father dryly remarked that in that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span> -case there was no use in Murdoch’s leaving the -book. Robert exclaimed fiercely that if it was left, he -would burn it. Murdoch warded off the father’s rebuke -by commending the display of so much sensibility, -though he failed, then or later, to explain why -he considered <i>Titus Andronicus</i> suitable reading for -children. <i>The Man of Feeling</i> was not yet written, but -‘sensibility’ was already a word of power, and -Robert Burns was already displaying the stormy -emotions which were his to the grave.</p> - -<p>Murdoch’s farewell marked the end of Burns’s -elementary schooling, but the education of a boy -reared as he was cannot be appraised in terms of -mere schooling. If it could, the whole story might be -told in a few paragraphs. Burns’s real education -came from his family, from what the world taught -him, and from what he taught himself. His schooling -was incidental.</p> - -<p>The poet once had the curiosity to visit the Herald’s -Office in Edinburgh, only to discover that -‘Gules, Purpure, Argent, &c., quite disowned’ him—no -man of his name had ever borne coat armour. -The nearest he could come to it was ‘Burn’. Inquiry -into his ancestry is fruitless, because nothing in his -ancestry explains Burns, any more than the dull line -of squires into which he was born can explain Shelley, -or a London livery-stable Keats. Burns’s family -produced no genius before him; it produced none -after him. It is enough to record that William -Burnes, the poet’s father, came of peasant stock -from the eastern Lowlands of Scotland. The poet<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span> -cherished the belief that some of his forebears had -been out in the ’Fifteen in the train of George Keith, -tenth Earl Marischal, but documentary proof is -lacking. The poet’s grandfather, Robert Burnes, -farmed, apparently with indifferent success, in Kincardineshire, -first on the farm of Kinmonth, in -Glenbervie, and later at Clochnahill, Dunnottar. -Robert Burnes’s second farming venture having -failed in 1747, his son William (born 1721) set out in -the following year with his younger brother, Robert, -to seek work.</p> - -<p>William Burnes had had some training as a gardener, -and found his first employment in Edinburgh. -By 1750, however, he was in Ayrshire, where, -after brief service on two other estates, he finally -entered the service of Provost William Fergusson, -laird of Doonholm in Alloway parish. These frequent -moves were not wholly the result of unsettled -labour conditions. Pride and self-assertiveness handicap -the man doomed to subordination, and these -traits William Burnes possessed in full measure. -‘Stubborn, ungainly Integrity’, said Burns of his -father, ‘and headlong, ungovernable Irascibility are -disqualifying circumstances’. William Burnes needed -to be his own master, and in 1757 managed to ‘feu’ -(lease in perpetuity) seven acres of land a few hundred -yards north of the ruined old Kirk of Alloway.</p> - -<p>Besides longing for a farm of his own, William -Burnes wanted a wife and a home. Seven acres of -market-garden, supplemented by continued part-time -employment at Doonholm, made marriage<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span> -possible. With his own hands he raised the rammed-clay -walls of a cottage on his land—a cottage which -his younger son declared, with more emphasis than -the timid Gilbert usually permitted himself, to be -‘such as no family of the same rank, in the present -improved style of living, would think themselves ill -lodged in’. From without, the whitewashed walls -and thatched roof of the ‘clay biggin’ were picturesque -enough; within, it was damp, dark, and narrow, -and smelly withal, for the byre and stable were -under the same roof of rat-infested thatch. But such -rural Scots as lived to grow up in those days were -inured to dampness, smells, and vermin, and it was -probably with unmixed pride that William Burnes -and his wife set up housekeeping in December, -1757.</p> - -<p>The bridegroom was ‘advanced in life’; he was in -fact almost as old when he married as his famous -son was when he died. His red-haired bride, twelve -years his junior, was Agnes Broun of Kirkoswald. -The daughter of a small farmer, she had been accustomed -from childhood to the life of toil which -marriage intensified. Her girlhood as housekeeper -for her widowed father and manager of his younger -children had given plenty of domestic training, but -formal education was too great a luxury for girls; the -mother of Scotland’s greatest poet was never able to -write her own name. She had, however, a sort of -literary education more valuable for her son than -savouring at first hand the dullness of Boston’s <i>Fourfold -State</i> could have been. Blessed with a sense of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span> -humour, a retentive memory, and a keen ear, the -girl had stored her mind with a wealth of ballads, -folk-songs, and country sayings which later became -an integral part of her son’s thought and art. The -seeds of the poet’s imagination and wit were his -mother’s; William Burnes’s most conspicuous contribution -to his son’s character was his fierce and -prickly pride.</p> - -<p>A little more than thirteen months after his parents’ -marriage, on January 25, 1759, Robert Burns -was born. The Scottish winter was doing its worst—‘a -blast o’ Janwar’ win’ blew handsel in on Robin’. In -other words, a few days after the poet’s birth a wild -Atlantic gale tore out part of the clay gable of the -cottage where it had settled unevenly round the -stone jambs of the chimney. Mother and baby had -to be carried through the storm to a neighbour’s -house, where they sheltered until the damage could -be repaired. To Burns in later years the incident -seemed an augury of his own stormy life. The world -had begun to educate him to its harshness almost before -he knew that he was in it. Fortunately he had a -father who was determined that his children should -also have an education in the more conventional -sense.</p> - -<p>Though Scotland theoretically provided a free -school in every parish, the usual gap separated theory -and practice. Sometimes there was no school at -all; often the school was an unsanitary hovel presided -over by a master who was expected to live on -a salary of perhaps ten or fifteen pounds a year, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span> -who therefore was constantly driven to desperate -shifts to provide for himself and his family. John -Wilson of Tarbolton, for instance, the victim of -‘Death and Dr. Hornbook’, tried to eke out his meagre -earnings by starting a little grocery shop in his -cottage, and in 1790 was ready to undertake the -drudgery of a legal copyist in Edinburgh in order to -better his condition. After the close of the century, -when every parish was ordered by Act of Parliament -to provide its schoolmaster with a house of at least -two rooms, some lairds objected to erecting ‘palaces -for dominies’. And even when a parish had a decent -schoolhouse and a competent teacher, bad roads -and lack of conveyance often made it impossible for -children from outlying farms to reach it.</p> - -<p>When William Burnes built his cottage at Alloway -the fact that there was no school nearer than -Ayr would scarcely have worried him. His own -book-learning was sketchy, his writing cramped and -laborious, though his speech was more precise and -‘better English’ than that of most of his neighbours. -But he was devoutly religious, and cherished the -sound Presbyterian conviction that first-hand acquaintance -with the Scriptures was essential to -knowledge in this world and salvation in the next. -By the time his eldest son was six years old the -father, conscious of his own inadequacy as a teacher, -arranged with half a dozen neighbours to hire a -master of their own. Their choice fell on John Murdoch, -a solemn and pedantic youth of eighteen, who -in mentality somewhat resembled Ichabod Crane.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span> -For wages of about sixpence a day and his board—which -meant a share of the oatmeal and kail and -part of a bed in each crowded cottage in turn—Murdoch -undertook to instruct his charges, not -without tears, in the three R’s and also in such elementary -music as would enable them to sing the -Psalms of David in metre at family worship.</p> - -<p>In this latter accomplishment he found Robert -Burns, who in manhood was able to remember and -distinguish in all their subtle variations hundreds -of folk melodies, an almost hopeless pupil with a -harsh and untuneable voice. At the task of beating -into the future poet the elements of spelling, grammar, -and syntax he was more successful. Instruction -in reading was based largely on a volume of extracts -compiled by another Scottish schoolmaster named -Arthur Masson—good enough literature for the -most part, but too declamatory to be really within -the grasp of a six- or seven-year-old intelligence. -Robert’s first conscious realization of poetic experience -came from Addison’s hymn, ‘How are Thy -servants blest, O Lord’: he also memorized the ‘Fall -of Cardinal Wolsey’ and other set pieces so thoroughly -that throughout his life their phrases came -unbidden from his pen. If Murdoch found difficulty -in making the children understand the poetic merits -of Hamlet’s soliloquies or of long passages from -Home’s <i>Tragedy of Douglas</i>, he at least convinced -some of them that poetry had meaning. One of his -favourite exercises was making them paraphrase -poetry into straight-forward prose—a device which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span> -his most famous pupil subsequently employed in exposing -bad grammar in a female admirer’s verses.</p> - -<p>Murdoch was not the man to set a poetic child’s -imagination on fire, and since he applied the usual -schoolmasterly standard of judging the pupils according -to their docility, it is hardly surprising that -he found the timid and gentle Gilbert a more promising -lad than his brother. In any case, Murdoch’s -service was too brief to have much permanent influence -on Burns’s mind. Before the master had completed -his tenure of about two years and a half at -Alloway, William Burnes had removed to Mount -Oliphant farm, separated from the school by two -miles of sodden road which must have made regular -attendance difficult, and sometimes impossible. Yet -the master retained a sort of puzzled affection for the -boy whom he was too prosaic to understand, and -Burns reciprocated the feeling with real respect and -esteem. Murdoch, in the schoolroom and in the long -evenings in what he called the argillaceous fabric or -mud domicile at Alloway, had at least impressed the -lesson that books had meaning and that words -should be used with precision. That Burns in later -life never had any difficulty in saying precisely what -he meant, he probably owed at root to Murdoch’s -severe drill; that his style of saying it was frequently -much too formal he likewise owed to the dominie -and to the prose selections of Arthur Masson.</p> - -<p>The earliest stages of book education are seldom -important in shaping the maturity of the learner. -They only furnish him with a few tools which he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span> -may later apply in his own way to his own ends. -But with Burns the whole pressure of his formal education -was all his life in direct conflict with his instinctive -preferences. For John Murdoch, as for -Arthur Masson, Scottish vernacular literature did -not exist. Scottish writers like James Thomson and -John Home, who had made reputations in England -by writing in standard English, were admired to the -far side of idolatry, but for Scottish youths, as for -English, Pope was the model for poetry; the <i>Tatler</i> -and <i>Spectator</i> for prose. Shakespeare, Milton, and -Dryden were the only writers earlier than 1700 who -were widely read and unreservedly admired, though -the beginnings of romanticism were evoking some -lip-service to Spenser. If Chaucer was read at all, it -was in the modernizations and imitations of Dryden, -Pope, and Prior; the Elizabethan and Caroline -lyrists were safe sources for newspaper poets to steal -from, as Sterne stole from Burton. By modern standards, -the amount of native literature needed in order -to appear well-read was limited, but its very limitation -intensified its pressure. Poverty kept Burns from -the influence, for good or ill, of the classics; nothing -could preserve anyone, who read at all, from the influence -of the neo-classics. Outside the door the rich -vernacular literature of Scotland was still vigorously -alive, but no schoolmaster in Burns’s boyhood would -have dreamed of letting it in.</p> - -<p>This literature, indeed, was being steadily thrust -further out of the cultivated world. Two years before -the poet’s father was born, Lady Elizabeth<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span> -Wardlaw had written the ballad fragment of -‘Hardyknute’ with genuine folk skill; in the next -generation such interest as remained was contaminated -with literary sophistication. The gentlefolk -of William Burnes’s generation could no longer -write true ballads, but they could and did write true -folk-songs, as witness Jean Elliot’s ‘Flowers of the -Forest’, Alison Cockburn’s ‘I’ve seen the smiling of -Fortune beguiling’, and John Skinner’s ‘Tullochgorum’ -and ‘John o’ Badenyon’. The gentlefolk of -Robert Burns’s generation had lost this power too. -Burns was six years old when Percy’s <i>Reliques</i> inaugurated -the serious study of popular literature and -let loose the spate of forgery and imitation of which -Macpherson’s <i>Ossian</i> was the most brilliant success. -The national will to believe in Macpherson’s fabrication -was proof alike against the scorn of Dr. Johnson -and the learning of antiquaries. To many Scots -besides Burns Ossian was the ‘prince of poets’, to be -read and admired as a patriotic duty, even if few -of his vague and turgid phrases could be remembered -long enough to quote. And what Macpherson -did on the grand scale ballad ‘editors’ like John -Pinkerton were doing on a small one, debasing even -their genuine material with sentimental trash which -blinded many readers to the merits of a really honest -and accurate editor like David Herd.</p> - -<p>But all this activity, alike of forgery and of honest -collecting, never touched Burns in his formative -years. In the boy’s world the folk literature which -David Herd was recording was still alive. It is a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span> -favourite fallacy of the half-educated to identify -book-learning with education. The things which -made the mind and the art of Burns did not come -from John Murdoch, but from people whom Murdoch -no doubt patronized in his most schoolmasterful -style. Agnes Broun was illiterate, but she was not -ignorant. Like most intelligent illiterates, she had -cultivated her memory, storing it with the pithy sayings -which sum up generations of folk experience, -and with the words and music of scores of old songs -and ballads. These simple rhythms, sung as she went -about her work, sank into her son’s mind without -his knowing it. Years afterwards some chance association -would recall an old line or stanza of his -mother’s to supply the ‘starting note’ for a song of -his own. And her repertoire was powerfully supplemented -by old Betty Davidson’s, who ‘had the -largest collection in the county 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’. To these tales, -listened to with delighted shudders, he ascribed the -first awakening of his imagination, even though some -of them scared him so thoroughly that their effect -stayed with him into manhood. No doubt many a -gentleman’s son heard similar stories from nurses -and servants, but formal classical education effectually -smothered any idea of putting them to literary -use. Sir Walter Scott was almost the first child -of the upper ranks to realize his folk-heritage, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span> -probably he owed much of his freedom to do so to -the interruption of his scholastic training. Ill-health -saved him from formalism, as poverty saved Burns.</p> - -<p>Burns’s acquaintance with popular and traditional -literature was not, however, limited to what -he heard at home. The eighteenth century was the -heyday of the chapbook and the broadside—forms -of popular literature resulting from the spread of -literacy among the middle and lower classes, which -were finally swept away by the newspaper. In -Burns’s childhood every peddler’s pack contained an -assortment ranging from topical songs and reports -of the death and dying words of the latest criminal -to abridgements of old histories and romances. Even -the poorest labourer could afford the penny or two -these publications cost, and they passed from hand -to hand until they were worn out. William Hamilton -of Gilbertfield’s modernization of Blind Harry’s -<i>History of Sir William Wallace</i>, which so roused -Burns’s boyish patriotism, may have reached the -lad in chapbook form; the Life of Hannibal which -he also mentions was almost certainly a chapbook; -he was familiar from his earliest years with such -ephemera as ‘The Aberdeen Almanac’ and ‘Six Excellent -New Songs’. But he nowhere mentions another -group of writings which he assuredly read.</p> - -<p>Only a few years before Burns was born, Dugal -Graham, the hunchbacked bellman of Glasgow, -began publishing a series of Scottish chapbooks. -Their popularity was enormous; total sales are alleged -to have run into the hundreds of thousands.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span> -The most pretentious of Graham’s works was a -metrical history of the ’45; the most characteristic -were the humorous prose tales such as ‘Jocky and -Maggie’s Courtship’, ‘The Adventures of John -Cheap the Chapman’, and ‘The Comical Sayings of -Paddy from Cork’. These chaps were made up of -traditional anecdotes of a broadly comic sort, loosely -strung together but supplied by Graham with the -local colour of Scottish peasant life. Much of Graham’s -material had a long history; coarse jests which -go back at least as far as Chaucer; folk-tales of unquenchable -vitality, such as the one on which Synge -long afterwards based <i>The Shadow of the Glen</i>; quaint -figures of speech and wild exaggerations, some of -which crossed the Atlantic to become the progenitors -of the American ‘tall story’. The peasant world -as Graham depicted it was tough and crude and -unlovely, but full of a coarse vitality which enlivened -even the baldest passages of Graham’s prose -and which at its best expressed itself in pungent -phrases remembered and used by Burns, probably -long after he had forgotten their source. The most -indecorous stanza in ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’ is based -on a phrase from ‘Jocky and Maggie’s Courtship’, -as is a similar stanza in ‘Death and Doctor Hornbook’.</p> - -<p>But the peasant life of Scotland, however squalid -its physical circumstances as Dugal Graham portrayed -them, had a variety of interest unknown to -the modern dweller in a city slum. When the technique -of all the varied crafts necessary to rural life<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span> -had to be learned by example and oral tradition, -the whole process of living was an education. Almost -as soon as they were able to walk the children began -to take their part in the work of the farm. At the -age of six or thereabouts the boys would be helping -to guide the four-horse team which dragged the -clumsy plough; not long afterwards they began to -share in reaping, threshing, and winnowing, besides -doing the innumerable and endless small chores of -the farm. These tasks, with all their accompanying -observations of plants and animals, of weather and -seasons, were stronger influences on Burns than -John Murdoch was. No poet has revealed a closer -or more accurate knowledge of nature; no poet, it -may be added, had less of romantic enthusiasm for -pure scenery. Burns knew nature as the peasant -and the savage knows it, as something on which his -health and prosperity and his very life depend. -Readers who are surprised that Burns spent much of -his youth in sight of the noble peaks of Arran without -ever mentioning them in his verse simply fail to -understand the realism of the peasant’s point of -view. It was not the dalesmen who won a hard living -from valley farms or kept their sheep on the bleak -mountainsides who found the poetry in the Lake -District. Had Burns been reared on Loch Lomond -or at Aberfoyle it would have made no difference; -he would have been too busy trying to wring a living -from the soil to note the scenery. That had to wait -for Sir Walter Scott, who had nothing to do but -admire it. Even when he had won fame and had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span> -consciously accepted his vocation as a national poet -Burns paid only lip-service to scenery as scenery. -For him it was merely background for human figures, -preferably female. The spots which really -stirred his emotions were those with associations of -history or song—Cawdor Castle, the field of Bannockburn, -Elibanks and Elibraes, the Bush aboon -Traquair. And the fact that so many of the folk-songs -of Scotland celebrate the streams whose valleys were -the only fertile spots may have fostered the love for -running water repeatedly expressed in his poetry, -as it certainly roused him to do for the streams of -Ayrshire what his anonymous forerunners had done -for the streams of the Border.</p> - -<p>Not all the boy’s education, however, was thus -casual and informal. When his removal from Alloway -to Mount Oliphant made it impossible for his -sons to continue regular schooling William Burnes -procured a few textbooks such as Guthrie’s <i>Geographical -Grammar</i> and Stackhouse’s <i>History of the -Bible</i> for their instruction. Despite the burden of -farm work the father managed at times to set regular -lessons to be conned at evening by the light of -the kitchen fire or a tallow dip. Robert and Gilbert -helped to teach their younger brothers and sisters to -read and write; their own lessons included the use of -a brief religious catechism which their father had -himself prepared with Murdoch’s help, for William -Burnes was a devout man. Even in boyhood Burns, -said Gilbert, was a reader when he could get books. -He read whatever he could get his hands on, however<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span> -dull or ponderous it might be, from theology to -poetry. His own lists in his autobiography, highly -selective though they are, are proof enough. His first -knowledge of classical mythology, for instance, came -from Andrew Tooke’s <i>Pantheon</i>, an appallingly dull -and didactic outline of Greek and Roman religion. -He never had Keats’s good fortune in discovering -the Elizabethans: his Homer was Pope’s and not -Chapman’s. But he reached manhood with a working -knowledge of history and geography, a keen interest -in current affairs, and an acquaintance with -literature which, though spotty, was the more detailed -because of its relatively narrow limits.</p> - -<p>William Burnes’s effort to educate his children at -home was part of a family struggle which became -one of the strongest influences in forming his son’s -character. The usual destiny of the children in a -peasant family was to be hired out at the age of ten -or twelve as farm servants. This fate, with its breaking -of ties, cessation of schooling, and frequent moral -danger, William Burnes was determined to avoid if -possible. He was a stern father, but an affectionate -one. John Murdoch remembered his wrath at a labourer’s -‘smutty innuendoes’, and his children knew -that carelessness in word or deed would be sharply -rebuked. But they likewise remembered many acts -of wordless affection, as when during a thunderstorm -the father came to sit with his daughter Agnes -because he knew she would be frightened.</p> - -<p>When it became evident that the few acres at Alloway -could not continue to support his growing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span> -family, William Burnes rented from his old employer, -Provost Fergusson, the larger farm of Mount -Oliphant. Gilbert Burns, who seldom used superlatives, -declared that Mount Oliphant was almost the -poorest land he had ever seen in cultivation. Yet for -its seventy bleak and stony acres William Burnes -undertook to pay £40 a year for the first six years of -his lease, and £45 for the next six. It may not be too -uncharitable to assume that the Provost saw in the -tenancy of the stubbornly independent Burnes a -chance to get a poor farm raised to a better level of -cultivation. At any rate he showed his confidence -in his tenant by advancing a hundred pounds towards -stocking the place. Without this help the venture -would probably have been impossible; nevertheless -it saddled the family with an additional load -of debt. The weight of the burden can be realized -from the fact that in the 1770’s in nearby Clydesdale -twopence a dozen was a fair price for eggs, and -chickens sold for sixpence a pair. Despite all handicaps, -however, things went fairly well for the first -half of the lease. In 1771 the family failed to take -advantage of their privilege of relinquishing the -farm, and accordingly were committed to another -six years at an increased rental. Then began the -series of disasters which ultimately killed William -Burnes and permanently undermined the health of -his eldest son.</p> - -<p>Just at the onset of these dark days William -Burnes, vexed at his children’s bad handwriting, -managed to send Robert and Gilbert, turn about, to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span> -Dalrymple parish school for instruction in penmanship -and grammar, that they might be better qualified -to teach their brothers and sisters. By the following -summer (1773), John Murdoch had returned -to Ayr and Robert was spared from the farm for -three weeks’ additional tutoring. The lad clutched -at the opportunity like a famished man at food. He -was with Murdoch ‘day and night, in school, at all -meals, and in all [his] walks’. At the end of the first -week, Murdoch says, ‘I told him, that as he was now -pretty much master of the parts of speech, &c., I -should like to teach him something of French pronunciation; -... and immediately we attacked the -French with great courage. Now, there was little -else to be heard but the declension of nouns, the -conjugation of verbs, &c. When walking together, -and even at meals, I was constantly telling him the -names of different objects, ... so that he was -hourly laying in a stock of words, and sometimes -little phrases. In short, he took such pleasure in -learning, and I in teaching, that it was difficult to -say which of the two was most zealous in the business; -and about the end of the second week of our -study of the French, we began to read a little of the -<i>Adventures of Telemachus</i> in Fénelon’s own words.’ -How much French Murdoch really knew is doubtful, -though he later undertook to teach it in London, -and apparently secured some pupils until the Revolution -filled the city with refugees who captured -the market. Burns ultimately acquired a reading -knowledge of the language, but if his riming ‘<i>respectueuse</i>’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span> -with ‘Susie’ is a specimen of the pronunciation -Murdoch taught he would scarcely have made himself -understood in Paris.</p> - -<p>Murdoch was this time most favourably impressed -by Robert’s ability, and, in his own inimitable language, -regretted that at the approach of harvest -‘Robert was summoned to relinquish the pleasing -scenes that surrounded the grotto of Calypso, and, -armed with a sickle, to seek glory by signalising himself -in the fields of Ceres; and so he did, for although -but about fifteen, I was told that he performed the -work of a man.’ Murdoch had seen no signs of the -qualities which Burns afterwards declared made him -as a child by no means a favourite with anybody; in -his eagerness for learning he displayed only the retentive -memory and the enthusiastic ardour which -would have most endeared him to the pedantic master. -The ‘stubborn ungainly something’ which later -ripened into pride was filling him with smothered -rebellion against his lot in life; the weeks with Murdoch -opened for a moment a door through which it -seemed that he might escape. He was becoming -class-conscious, and was developing a hatred of stupid -wealth and power which never left him. His -earliest associations with the sons of the gentry had -not been unpleasant, for these lads had not yet acquired -‘a just sense of the immense distance between -them and their ragged Playfellows’. ‘My young -superiours’, he said, ‘never insulted the clouterly -appearance of my ploughboy carcass, the two extremes -of which were often exposed to all the inclemencies<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span> -of all the seasons.’ They gave him stray -volumes of books; one lad even helped him with his -French. Nevertheless, he could remember in manhood -how as a mere child he almost choked with -rage in church one Sunday at the sight of a pretty -servant-lass being compelled to leave her pew to -make room for the stupid son of her employer.</p> - -<p>About the time of his last association with Murdoch -he began to have occasions for rage without -going to church for them. Provost Fergusson died in -1771, and the administration of his property fell into -the hands of a steward or factor. Fergusson had -probably been lenient if his tenant could not make -payment in full on each quarter-day, but it was the -factor’s business to get in the rents, and if they were -not paid he wrote threatening letters to demand -them. It is always difficult for a debtor to see things -from the creditor’s point of view; for Robert Burns -it was impossible. For him the factor was a scoundrel, -and his dunning letters were deliberate efforts -to humiliate the unfortunates in his power. Not but -what the Burnes family had reason for feeling resentful. -They were doing everything that was humanly -possible, and more than was wise, to meet -the factor’s demands. They lived very poorly, even -by Scottish peasant standards; meat was almost unknown -on their table; they gave up all hired help. -At the age of fourteen, as Murdoch noted, Burns -was doing a man’s work, guiding the clumsy plough, -flailing out grain by hand, and performing all the -other tasks at which brute strength had to serve not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span> -merely instead of machinery but instead of well-made -tools. His gait became the clumsy tread of the -ploughman; his young shoulders developed a permanent -stoop from handling the awkward plough-stilts. -But the worst physical effect was invisible. -The adolescent boy doing a man’s work on insufficient -food was incurably injuring his heart. When -the lesion began to manifest itself in dizziness and -faintness Robert was not sent to a doctor. Probably -it would have made no difference if he had been, for -the trouble could scarcely have been diagnosed -without a stethoscope. Instead he used heroic measures -which must have aggravated the ailment. At -one time he kept a tub of water beside his bed, and -when faintness came on him in the night he would -take a cold plunge. All his life he was plagued with -fits of depression which he described by the fashionable -term, hypochondria. His heart lesion intensified -the nervous instability he had shown as a child, -and thereby contributed to the perennially reckless -conduct of his manhood. In all his life, as in his -death, he continued to pay the heaviest share of the -price of his father’s struggle to hold on at Mount -Oliphant.</p> - -<p>A boy seldom realizes that he is overstraining -himself. What irked Burns at the time, far more than -‘the unceasing moil of a galley-slave’, was the fact -that he was almost wholly cut off from social intercourse. -Burns may not have been wholly an extrovert, -but he needed society as an outlet for his high -spirits and as a refuge from his low ones. In his earlier<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span> -boyhood he had found friends both among -schoolfellows of his own rank and among the sons of -neighbouring gentlemen. At Mount Oliphant he -was cut off. Murdoch would come out on his half-holidays, -‘with one or two persons more intelligent -than [himself], that good William Burnes might enjoy -a mental feast’. This conversation of ‘solid reason, -sensible remark, and a moderate seasoning of -jocularity’ was not what the boy needed. Robert -and Gilbert ‘began to talk and reason like men, -much sooner than their neighbours’, but this precocious -maturity only made the lad more acutely -conscious of his own lack of advantages. He envied -the greater ease and assurance of his more fortunate -fellows, and out of this envy and self-consciousness -grew the aggressive manner upon which some of the -gentry later remarked with disfavour.</p> - -<p>As William Burnes’s tenure at Mount Oliphant -neared its end the clouds opened a little. The father -had never wholly abandoned his hope of providing -his eldest son with some sort of education, and in the -summer of 1775 managed to send him for a few -weeks to learn ‘dialling and mensuration’ at Kirkoswald. -Superficially the venture seemed as fruitless as -the earlier effort to learn French in three weeks. The -master, Hugh Rodger, was as pedantic as Murdoch, -but inclined to be harsh and sarcastic where Murdoch -was earnest and encouraging. Though Burns -acquired some practical mathematics which later -proved useful in his Excise work, he found the more -vivid part of his education outside the classroom.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span> -With William Niven, a classmate of his own age, he -indulged in spirited impromptu debates on such -adolescent topics as ‘Whether is a great general or a -respectable merchant the most valuable member of -society?’ With a girl named Peggy Thomson he fell -in love briefly, but so violently as to disorganize his -work during his last days at school. Above all, he got -glimpses of a sort of life very different from the seclusion -of Mount Oliphant.</p> - -<p>In the later eighteenth century smuggling rated -as one of the major British industries. An excise tax -of twenty shillings a gallon on spirits set an even -higher premium on illicit dealing than prohibition -did in the United States in the 1920’s. Few of the -‘best people’ had any more scruples about dealing -with smugglers than Americans had about dealing -with bootleggers. Nor was smuggling confined to liquors. -Tea, French silks and laces, and other goods -on which the tariff was high were also run in in -quantity. The coast near Kirkoswald was a centre -for landing goods intended for the Ayrshire and -Glasgow markets because it was almost the last -point smuggling vessels could approach without -grave risk of being trapped by the revenue cutters -in the narrow waters of the Firth of Clyde. Samuel -Brown, the uncle with whom Burns stayed at Kirkoswald, -probably had a quiet share in the business; -at any rate his nephew saw plenty of smugglers. In -the taverns where these men spent the profits of their -successful ventures Burns witnessed roistering of a -wilder sort than market nights at Ayr exhibited. His<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span> -extremely limited means, however, make it improbable -that he often looked unconcernedly on a large -tavern bill, though ten years later he thought he -had. More likely the awkward youth was a spectator, -as the poet was at Poosie Nansie’s in 1785. A -Shakespearian delight in the salty flavour of raw -humanity was one of Burns’s life-long characteristics -which first found expression at Kirkoswald. In -1783 he wrote to John Murdoch, ‘I seem to be one -sent into the world, to see, and observe; and I very -easily compound with the knave who tricks me of -my money, if there be anything original about him -which shews me human nature in a different light -from anything I have seen before.’ His respectable -friends often deplored what seemed to them a depraved -taste for low company, but, as his best friend -in Dumfries explained, it was not the lowness of the -company that attracted him; his companions were -of ‘low ranks, but men of talent and humour’. It was -the colour of such company, its shrewdness, its reckless -wit, and its unashamed gusto for life that made -Burns prefer it to the drab respectability of the -church-going bourgeoisie.</p> - -<p>Crude humanity, however, was not the only -thing Burns studied at Kirkoswald. He encountered -some new books as well. Thomson’s <i>Seasons</i> introduced -him to the chief Scottish poet of the century -who had made his reputation by writing in standard -English; Shenstone’s ‘Elegies’ and ‘The Schoolmistress’ -initiated him into the poetry of sentiment, and -the Spenserian stanza of the latter gave him the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span> -verse-form for ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’. In -reading these poets, however, he was merely extending -an acquaintance already made through the -specimens in Arthur Masson. His prose reading -opened a different world. Novels were not to be -found in the stricter Presbyterian homes, so <i>Pamela</i>, -an odd volume of <i>Ferdinand Count Fathom</i>, and above -all Mackenzie’s <i>The Man of Feeling</i>, were a vivid experience. -Nothing in his previous training had inoculated -him against the virus of sentimentality; exposed -to its most extreme form, he was infected for -life. This, the lad no doubt said to himself, was the -way persons of superior sensitivity looked upon life; -very well, he could prove that his sensibility was -equal to theirs. At the first opportunity he bought a -copy of <i>The Man of Feeling</i> and carried it with him -everywhere until he wore it out.</p> - -<p>Had Burns known more of literature and of the -world he would have been able to take Mackenzie’s -sentiment at the proper discount. Then the book’s -influence might have been good. It might gently -have corrected the harshness of his peasant background, -as the literature of sentiment in general -ameliorated the brutality of the eighteenth-century -world. As it was, the book set up a preposterous ideal -which divided Burns’s energies and sometimes vitiated -his work. The crudities of peasant life needed -softening and elevating, but sentimentalism made -many of his efforts in this direction mawkish instead -of humane. The poet who portrayed an old farmer’s -affection for a faithful mare was revealing sentiment<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span> -in the best sense of that much-abused word; the poet -who moralized over a ploughed-under weed was -pumping up emotions such as no real farmer ever -felt. Hence it is no exaggeration to say that the foundations -for the weakest elements in his work, as well -as for the magnificent zest of ‘The Jolly Beggars’ and -‘Tam o’ Shanter’, were laid at Kirkoswald.</p> - -<p>Burns was probably right in saying that he came -home considerably improved. But he was also discontented. -Mount Oliphant seemed narrower and -drabber than ever after the colour of the smuggling -village, and he had become acutely conscious—thanks -equally to Peggy Thomson and to his tavern -companions—of his own awkwardness. This consciousness -led him to his first overt act of rebellion. -In ‘absolute defiance’ of his father’s commands, he -attended a country dancing school, to improve his -manners. William Burnes’s ‘Manual of Religious -Belief’ indicates a willingness to mitigate some of the -sterner points of Presbyterian theology, but he was -in full agreement with the Kirk’s condemnation of -worldly amusements. Gilbert Burns, as well as some -of his brother’s biographers, tried to explain away -the remark about defiance, and the father may not -have pressed the point too far when he saw that -Robert’s mind was made up. Undoubtedly, however, -Burns was correctly describing his own feelings -at the time, and though the father sensibly accepted -the accomplished fact and later allowed his other -children to learn dancing he thenceforth regarded -his eldest son’s conduct with suspicion and concern.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span></p> - -<p>On leaving Kirkoswald Burns had undertaken to -carry on a literary correspondence with some of his -schoolfellows. He was bent on improving his powers -of expression and acquiring a literary style. But the -medium he selected was prose. Probably in retrospect -he exaggerated the actual extent of this correspondence—it -is hard to believe that ‘every post’ -brought him as many letters as if he had been a merchant, -or that he could have paid the postage if it -had. The few surviving specimens are quite enough. -The poet’s uncle had once set out to buy one of the -manuals of letter-writing which supply models for -most of the imaginable contingencies of human life; -he brought home instead ‘a collection of letters by -the Wits of Queen Ann’s reign’. The exact volume -has never been identified, though Burns’s subsequent -quotations show that it included letters of -Pope, Bolingbroke, and Swift. But the eighteenth -century, until Boswell taught it better, did not publish -really familiar letters. Such collections as Pope -helped to bring out were really composed of brief -essays. Personal opinion was subdued; personal news -was deleted. The ‘unbridled effusions’ which make -the charm of familiar letters were suppressed. On -such unfortunate models, almost as stiff as Elizabeth -Rowe’s ‘Letters Moral and Entertaining’ which he -had found in his Masson, Burns set to work. The result -was the same as when he encountered <i>The Man -of Feeling</i>. A youth bred among literate people would -have realized intuitively that these models showed -only one side of letter-writing. Burns, with no other<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span> -standards to measure them by, took them as the -whole of the law and prophets, and shaped his epistolary -style accordingly. His ear, attuned to the -subtlest modulations of poetry, remained always -deaf to the quieter graces of prose: when Dugald -Stewart commended the simplicity of Franklin’s -writing, Burns could see nothing in it, ‘when compared -with the point, and antithesis, and quaintness -of <i>Junius</i>.’</p> - -<p>Those who have judged Burns adversely as a -letter-writer would have still more grounds for their -criticism had more letters survived like the few to -William Niven and Thomas Orr. These country -youths admired Burns’s solemn analyses of Pride and -Courage and his exhortations to be content with -poverty; so, unfortunately, did the better-educated -friends of his later life. The letters which he transcribed -for Lady Harriet Don in 1787 and for -Robert Riddell in 1791-93 belonged to the same -school of prose as his earliest epistles to Niven. -Burns would never have thought of making, nor his -friends of asking for, transcripts of the admirable -discussions of Scottish song which he sent to George -Thomson, nor of his easier letters to John Ballantine -and Mrs. Dunlop. No epistolary Robert Fergusson -ever came into his hands to show him the way to a -conversational style. When he wrote easy prose it -was in spite of his models and because he had something -to say which really demanded saying.</p> - -<p>When the family at last escaped from Mount Oliphant -in 1777 Burns was eighteen, the age at which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span> -Chatterton, seven years before, had taken his own -life. But Burns’s self-education was a much slower -process than Chatterton’s. At eighteen he was still -an awkward rustic, with all his intellectual and artistic -powers still to find. The most positive result -of the long ordeal at Mount Oliphant—apart from -its injuries to his health—had been the building up -of a strong sense of family loyalty. William Burnes -had made every sacrifice to keep his family together, -and the feeling that this was a primary obligation -had been deeply impressed on his son. For the moment -their prospects seemed hopeful. The father had -managed to lease the larger farm of Lochlie near -Tarbolton, and had again obtained from his landlord -a cash advance for stock and improvements. -But again Burnes was paying the penalty of his -desperately independent character. For Lochlie’s -hundred and thirty acres of sour clay—so sour that -the lease provided for two separate applications of -lime at the rate of 400 bushels to an acre—its putative -owner, David M’Lure, set a rental of £130. It -was a ruinous bargain which broke William Burnes’s -spirit, helped to kill him, and gave his children some -first-hand acquaintance with the chicanery of the -law.</p> - -<p>On Burns the first effect of the removal to Lochlie -was social. The farm was within easy reach of Tarbolton -village, where he found the companionship -his nature craved. Of his friends at Mount Oliphant -James Candlish’s is the only name that has not perished; -those of the Tarbolton cronies are enshrined<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span> -in both verse and prose. For the first couple of years -the records are almost blank. By his own testimony, -and Gilbert’s, he was constantly falling tempestuously -in love, usually with girls of his own rank, or -below it, for ‘he had always a particular jealousy of -people who were richer than himself, or who had -more consequence in life’. His imagination could -always endow any girl to whom he was attracted -with a plentiful stock of charms which bystanders -often failed to perceive. His ready pen, moreover, -was constantly at the service of his less fluent friends -who sought his aid in composing their love-letters, -and he ‘felt as much pleasure at being in the secret -of half the amours in the parish, as ever did Premier -at knowing the intrigues of half the courts of -Europe.’ But Gilbert’s testimony corroborates his -own statement that none of these early affairs passed -the bounds of decorum. The fervours which he had -first experienced when reaping with Nellie Kilpatrick -at the age of fifteen were growing stronger -and more clearly defined, but they were still -adolescent.</p> - -<p>This adolescent Burns figures also in the proceedings -of the Tarbolton Bachelors’ Club, a social and -debating society which he and a few friends organized -in the autumn of 1780. Its fragmentary records -show the youths arguing such windy topics as Burns -had discussed with Niven five years before, but with -a more direct application to his own walk of life. -E. g., ‘Whether is the savage man or the peasant of a -civilized country, in the most happy situation?’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span> -‘Whether is a young man of the lower ranks of life -likeliest to be happy who has got a good education, -and his mind well informed, or he who has just the -education and information of those around him?’ -‘Whether between friends, who have no reason to -doubt each other’s friendship, there should be any -reserve?’ Such topics point to Burns as their propounder, -as do some of the Club’s rules. The one -which barred religious topics was doubtless in the -interest of peace, but Burns’s hand is evident in the -tenth and last:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘Every man proper for a member of this society must -have a frank, honest, open heart; above anything dirty or -mean; and must be a professed lover of one or more of the -female sex. No haughty, self-conceited person, who looks -upon himself as superior to the rest of the club, and especially -no mean-spirited, worldly mortal, whose only -will is to heap up money, shall on any pretence whatever -be admitted....’</p> -</div> - -<p>Indecorum of language was likewise barred, and -clerical biographers in discussing these rules have -left the impression that the Club was a kind of -Y.M.C.A. From what we know of peasant life in -Scotland and of the adolescent male everywhere, it -is possible that the biographers were mistaken. -Whatever his conduct in 1780, Burns was soon -applying the tenth rule in no platonic or idealistic -sense.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless the Club played an important part -in developing his powers. Besides giving him an audience<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span> -for his ideas it showed him that he could -dominate his audience. Thenceforward Burns took -the lead in any social group where he was intimate; -his companions, re-echoing his wit, believed that -they shared it and even convinced him that they -did. The roster of his friends includes many wholly -commonplace people like John Richmond and -Robert Ainslie who shone only by reflected light, but -whose satellite nature Burns was quite unaware of -at the time. Moreover, the Club gave him almost his -first experience of the wine of applause, and he found -it a heady vintage.</p> - -<p>Among the Tarbolton Bachelors was David -Sillar—not a charter member of the Club, but admitted -to it early in 1781. A year younger than -Burns, Sillar, under his friend’s inspiration, produced -a few commonplace poems which gave Burns -the excuse for hailing him as brother poet. Sillar -had a certain gift for characterization in prose; he -described Tarbolton townsfolk as ‘uncontaminated -by reading, conversation, or reflection’, and left the -most vivid extant picture of Burns on the threshold -of manhood. Burns was beginning to reveal the playboy -elements in his nature—that desire above all -things to be conspicuous which he shared with such -very different geniuses as Sir Walter Scott, Charles -Dickens, Mark Twain, and Bernard Shaw. In a day -when strict Presbyterians still cropped their hair, -after the fashion which in the previous century had -earned them the name of Roundheads, Burns let -his grow long and wore it in a queue—‘the only tied<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span> -hair in the parish’. When everyone else was wearing -plaids of ordinary shepherd’s gray, Burns sported -one of dead-leaf colour. And since the uncontaminated -parishioners of Tarbolton were orthodox Old -Lights Burns acquired easy notoriety by setting up -as a heretic.</p> - -<p>Throughout his life Burns managed always to acquire -a maximum of ill-repute with a minimum of -actual transgression. It was not so much that he was -conspicuously sinful as that he sinned conspicuously. -Sometimes the conspicuousness was mere ill-luck. A -fair portion, for instance, of the Edinburgh gossip -which clung to his name may well have originated -in the fact that both the servant girls with whom he -had relations in the city brought legal action against -him—a consequence he could scarcely have foreseen. -On the other hand, his desire to startle the parish -frequently bore fruit in suspicions and enmities -impossible to live down. G. K. Chesterton once advised -the village genius who wants to conquer something -fundamentally and symbolically hostile and -also very strong, not to come up to London but to -stay at home and have a row with the rector. This -was precisely what Burns did. The New Light doctrines -which soft-pedalled such Calvinistic dogmas -as predestination had already conquered Edinburgh -and Glasgow and were beginning to invade the -provinces. In any case Burns’s saturation in the -sentimentalism of Mackenzie and Sterne would have -made him receptive to the New Light emphasis on -Benevolence and the Moral Sense. But when the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span> -congeniality of the new doctrines was joined with -an opportunity to startle his neighbours the combination -was irresistible. He began, he says, to debate -theology with such heat and indiscretion as to -raise a cry of heresy which persisted in Tarbolton -and Mauchline as long as he remained there. An -anecdote, perhaps apocryphal, pictures him in the -kirkyard between services, expounding heretical -doctrines with such vigour as to elicit hisses and -cries of ‘Shame!’ from his auditors. At least the story -is true in spirit. Burns was determined to be conspicuous, -even if it meant hisses instead of applause.</p> - -<p>Masonic affiliations, which after his return from -Irvine supplanted the Bachelors’ Club, gave him still -another chance to indulge both his social instincts -and his sympathies with liberal thought. A rural -lodge like St. James’s at Tarbolton was, to be sure, -no such centre of political liberalism as were the -Masonic lodges of the Continent during the later -eighteenth century. The chief activity, in fact, of -most of the Scottish lodges seems to have been convivial, -with the additional feature, lacking in the -ordinary social club, that the members were pledged -to help their fellows in sickness or distress. Nevertheless -the knowledge that brother Masons in England -and abroad were disseminating ideas which challenged -absolutism in government and religion must -have reached even village youths in Tarbolton. In -Scotland, moreover, the ritual which dignified the -childish thrill of membership in a secret organization -gave Freemasonry an emotional appeal which the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span> -drab services of the Kirk and the narrow routine of -every day lacked. From the time when he joined -St. James’s Lodge, about 1782, until after his sojourn -in Edinburgh, Burns took his Masonic duties -with the utmost seriousness. He helped to put the -struggling and almost bankrupt lodge on its feet; -from 1784 to 1787 he was its Depute Master. In -Edinburgh he continued his affiliations, and perhaps -the highest moment of all his early triumphal -progress in the capital came at the meeting of the -Grand Lodge of Scotland on January 13, 1787, -when the Grand Master gave the toast, ‘Caledonia, -and Caledonia’s Bard, brother Burns!’ It is idle to -conjecture if the coolness which followed his first -acclaim in Edinburgh reached into Masonic circles; -certainly the poet’s interest in the craft waned in his -later years. His letters from Ellisland and Dumfries -scarcely mention it, except when he was in trouble -and wanted Robert Graham to help him as a Mason -as well as a friend. He duly affiliated himself with -the Dumfries lodge, and became its Senior Warden, -but if silence means anything the zest was gone.</p> - -<p>The Masonic fellowship of course was male, but -Burns was not forgetting his obligations as a member -of the Bachelors’ Club. His own statements and -Gilbert’s, already quoted, show a succession of passing -infatuations with various girls whose names, -even, are doubtful, and of whose personalities the -most ardent legend-mongers can scarcely summon -up a wraith. By comparison with such shadows as -Anne Rankine and Mary Morison, even Nellie Kilpatrick<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span> -who stirred the poet’s blood for a single -harvest, and Peggy Thomson, who overset his trigonometry -at Kirkoswald, are three-dimensional. The -one figure who half emerges from the shadows is -Alison (or Ellison) Begbie. Burns met her in 1780 or -1781, but understanding of the matter is not clarified -by the possibility that some of the five letters -supposed to have been addressed to her may really -be drafts of the love-letters he frequently wrote for -his friends. Assuming them all to be Alison’s, they -prove mainly that Burns had not yet learned much -about women. If ever farm-lass was wooed in such -stilted and temperate phrases it is pretty certain that -she was not in this humour won. Burns’s intentions -were serious; he wanted to marry Alison. Unfortunately -the intentions made him serious too. He -seemed afraid to commit himself in writing. A -bystander is not surprised that Alison refused the -man who told her that her company never gave him -those giddy raptures so much talked of among lovers, -and who announced that in his opinion married -life was only friendship in a more exalted degree. -It did surprise Burns. Indeed the shock of it led him -subsequently to charge her with having jilted him, -a difficult feat when his own letters prove she had -never accepted him. No doubt she had merely employed -the ancient technique of mild and noncommittal -encouragement while she was making up -her mind. Burns had prided himself on his skill in -letter-writing and on his address with women. To -be flatly rejected the first time he made a serious<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span> -proposal upset him for several months. It also completed -his sentimental education. Thereafter, until -he met Clarinda, he knew better than to do his -courting by post.</p> - -<p>But friendships with men and women, though -they helped him momentarily to escape his blue -devils, could not obscure the problem of his own -and his family’s future. He still lacked an aim. -Conscious of more than average powers in himself, -he had no purpose to which to direct them. Moreover, -the years at Lochlie were bringing him for the -first time to a realization of the workings of the -larger economic laws. The American War was ruining -the West of Scotland. Half its market for manufactured -goods was closed; its exports to the West -Indies were being raided by American privateers. -Just before the war an over-expanded bank had -failed, dragging down with it half the gentlemen in -Ayrshire and leaving a trail of wreckage which was -not wholly obliterated for a couple of decades. Even -the wartime demand for farm produce was no help -when multitudes of jobless artisans could not pay -the high prices which at best would scarcely have -yielded a fair return on the over-capitalized land. -M’Lure, the landlord of Lochlie, was heavily mortgaged -to the defunct bank. Hard pressed for cash, -he tried to extort from his tenants more than was -his due. William Burnes resisted, and became involved -in litigation which followed him to the grave. -In similar circumstances at Mount Oliphant Burns -had seen merely a personal situation in which a villainous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span> -factor was demanding more rent than the -family could pay. Now he began to realize that a -man may be frugal and diligent in his business, and -yet be destroyed by forces which he did not start -and was powerless to control.</p> - -<p>As early as 1780 Burns had experimented at -growing flax of his own on a few acres of land subleased -from his father; later he won a prize for his -seed. His success led him in 1781 to go to Irvine to -learn the trade of flax-dressing. Some consequences -of that venture belong in the next chapter; educationally -the results, like those of so many youthful -experiences, were mainly negative. His distaste for -the work, and its ill effect on his health, left him -more aimless than before. He concluded that he was -unfit for the world of business, and where he had -formerly yearned for some chance of advancement -he now decided that he was destined to be only a -looker-on at life. All that restrained him from -complete shiftlessness was his sense of responsibility -for his family.</p> - -<p>Intellectually, that sense was keener and more insistent -than ever, but now for the first time it was -in direct conflict with a storm of emotions. Burns -had come home empty-handed as the prodigal, to -find his father visibly sinking under the united effects -of worry and tuberculosis. It was plain that -even if his contest with his landlord should be decided -in his favour he would never be fit to undertake -another farm. By the beginning of 1783 the -whole family, including William Burnes, realized<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span> -that death was at best a matter of months. M’Lure -the landlord realized it too, and such scenes as had -accompanied the reading of the factor’s letters at -Mount Oliphant were re-enacted at Lochlie with -triple poignance. The children were old enough -this time to understand the whole meaning of the -affair; their father was a broken man, and where the -factor had merely threatened legal action, M’Lure -was taking it. The outcome of the case and the -practical means whereby Gavin Hamilton helped -the family through the crisis will be told later; its -emotional impact on Burns himself, coming as it did -on the heels of his own failure at business, could -hardly be overstated. He saw his father’s lifetime of -struggle for independence ending in defeat and -despair. Recollection of Mount Oliphant and Lochlie -never ceased to haunt his own ventures as a -farmer, and helped to damn them. Fear and hatred -of one’s economic position are seldom the heralds of -success.</p> - -<p>Burns’s whole nature, in fact, was beginning to -cry out against the life he was expected to lead. -Not even the loyally accepted burden laid upon -him from his father’s weakening hands could hold -him steady. He had come back from Irvine, as before -from Kirkoswald, incapable of fitting again -into the narrow pattern of the life he had lived before -his departure. He had outgrown his mould. The -dying father noted with concern that his son was -spending longer hours with wilder companions, and -displaying a new aggressiveness and assurance in his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span> -manner of speaking with women. Nevertheless the -shadow of the old man’s authority was still enough, -when reinforced by the desperate need of securing -the future of the family, to inhibit the full expression -of the new tendencies. Gilbert’s testimony is explicit. -At Lochlie he and Robert were both allowed -the usual labourer’s wage of £7 a year, against -which was charged the value of every piece of clothing -manufactured at home. Neither there nor at -Mossgiel did Robert’s expenditures exceed this frugal -sum. It was extravagance of emotion, of speech and -conduct, not of expense, that beset the poet.</p> - -<p>On his deathbed, on February 13, 1784, William -Burnes muttered that there was one member of his -family for whose future conduct he feared, and -Robert, in tears, took the admonition to himself. -Hardly was the family settled at Mossgiel, after -some strictly legal dodging which must have increased -the poet’s inward distaste for the whole business, -when the traits his father had dreaded began -their full play. Though he entered on his responsibilities -as head of the family with the best of resolutions, -his heart was not in the undertaking. He read -farming books, calculated crops, and attended markets, -but his mind was elsewhere. According to his -own account, he lost interest in the work because of -two successive crop-failures, the first owing to bad -seed and the second to a wet harvest. But this was -an excuse, not an explanation. The real reasons lay -within himself. They were his passions and his art.</p> - -<p>His father’s death had removed the last check<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span> -upon social indulgence. Always shunning the solitude -which produced brooding melancholy, he had -found in Mauchline a new and gayer set of cronies -whose company was more congenial than that of -his family in the crowded cottage at Mossgiel. -More and more of his time was spent in the village -taverns—not for drunkenness, but for the pleasure -of sharing the hilarity of careless youths and the uninhibited -wit of older ‘men of talent and humour’ -like his neighbour John Rankine. The rigidly righteous -began to frown on the young farmer whose -reckless sallies were sure to provoke the wildest outbursts -of laughter. And even at Mossgiel there were -distractions from a sober and godly life. The household -included a young servant-lass named Betty -Paton, whose charms, like those of most of Burns’s -sweethearts, were mainly physical. Within a few -months of his father’s death Betty became Burns’s -mistress, and in May, 1785, bore his first child amid -all the accompaniments of a public scandal in the -parish.</p> - -<p>Unpropitious though such beginnings were for a -career as a tenant farmer, they were relatively unimportant -compared with the inner compulsions -arising from his discovery of his poetic vocation. -Many another young farmer had sowed his wild -oats and then settled down to rear a legitimate -family and become an elder in the Kirk. For Burns -such a future had really ceased to be possible even -before he left Lochlie. In April, 1783, under the -melancholy influence of his own ill-health and his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span> -father’s dark prospects, he had begun to keep a -commonplace book with the avowed intention of -some day showing the world that a young ploughman, -little indebted to scholastic education, was -nevertheless capable of rime and reason. When he -started the book his literary models were Shenstone, -Mackenzie, and the folk-songs of his country. At -some time during the next year, however, the poems -of Robert Fergusson came into his hands. They -roused him as Chapman’s Homer roused Keats. -For the first time he realized that the Scottish dialect -might be something more than a dying relic of -the past. He had been long acquainted with Allan -Ramsay, but Ramsay belonged to the primitive -age before Scottish letters had been ennobled by -such geniuses as Henry Mackenzie, James Beattie, -and John Home. Now he found that Fergusson, -only ten years older than himself, had returned to -the speech and the verse-forms of Ramsay. And -Fergusson was no country boy but an educated -lawyer’s clerk bred in the Athens of the North. -Reading these poems Burns realized their vivid descriptions -and their wit—realized also that what -Fergusson had done he could do as well, or better. -Mauchline parish offered as many themes for -homely satire as Edinburgh did.</p> - -<p>The theme ready to hand was ecclesiastical controversy. -The neighbourhood was ululating with disputes -between Old Lights and New Lights, and the -leaders on both sides were behaving with the lack -of charity peculiar to Christians on the war-path.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span> -Moreover, Burns’s landlord and friend, Gavin -Hamilton, was in the thick of it, standing trial before -the Kirk Session on a charge of Sabbath-breaking. -Two neighbouring Old Light ministers—John -Russell of Kilmarnock and Alexander Moodie -of Riccarton—chose this time for a quarrel over -parish boundaries, and conducted their holy row -with the heat and personal invective of a heresy-hunt. -Burns improved the occasion by composing -‘The Twa Herds’. Copying the poem in a disguised -hand he showed it to Hamilton, remarking with -studied gravity that he had no idea who the author -was, but that he thought it pretty clever. Hamilton -thought so too. Copies were passed from hand to -hand; the New Lights, clergy as well as laity, received -it with roars of applause; the Old Lights -were correspondingly furious.</p> - -<p>When Burns followed up ‘The Twa Herds’ with -‘The Holy Fair’, ‘The Ordination’, and ‘Holy -Willie’s Prayer’, the applause redoubled, and so did -the enmity of the Old Lights. The man who challenges -established institutions to their face needs to -be sure of his own position. Burns’s indiscretion -with Betty Paton not only left him wide open to -counter-attack but assured him of far more unpleasant -notoriety than ordinarily accompanied such -lapses in peasant Scotland. It was impossible to remain -in the parish without submitting to the discipline -of the Kirk. Even at its mildest the ordeal -of three successive penitential appearances before -Mauchline congregation would have been intensely<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span> -humiliating to a man as sensitively proud as Burns. -But a young bachelor’s slips from grace were not -usually treated very seriously except by the clergy -and the Holy Willies. Had Burns been otherwise in -good standing in the community he would have -been able to go on much as before, but when the -evidence of his breach of sexual morality was augmented -by his ill-fame as a derider of the church he -became, among all the more conservative members -of the parish, little better than an outcast.</p> - -<p>He may not have realized the full bitterness of the -feeling against him until his repudiation by the -Armours in the spring of 1786, but he realized -enough. His reaction was as inevitable as the community’s -had been. If he was to be an outcast he -would live up to his reputation. Many of his biographers -since, as well as many of his neighbours at -the time, have taken at face value the blatant pride -in his ill-repute which marks such poems as the -‘Epistle to John Rankine’. But this was not part -of his real nature; he was simply brazening out his -humiliation. The unco guid had decided that he -was a dog with a bad name. He would show them -that they had underestimated his capacity to shock -them. That in the process he would make the parish -too hot to hold him was a consideration not likely to -occur to him in the full tide of his resentment.</p> - -<p>But if his conflict with the Kirk had brought him -humiliation it had also brought him the sense of -power and the intoxication of applause. He had -long known that his conversational wit and fire<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span> -could dominate a knot of cronies. Now he had -learned that he could write things which stirred -both the laughter and the deeper emotions of educated -men as well as of his social equals. The hostility -of the Holy Willies was even more inebriating -than the applause of Gavin Hamilton and his -friends. Men do not hate unless they fear; the measure -of his success and power was the measure of the -antagonism he had aroused. The youth whose -weakness it had always been to lack an aim had -found one now. His education was complete. Intimate -observation and experience of a small community -had acquainted him with human nature, -and had at last roused him to realization of his own -capacities and his true vocation. His estimate of -himself and his work, he later told John Moore, -was pretty nearly as high in 1785 as it was two -years later, after all the adulation of Edinburgh. -All that he needed now was the opportunity to display -his talents on a larger stage.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="III">III</h2> -</div> - -<p class="ph2">MEN</p> - - -<p>Burns entered on his manhood at Irvine in 1781. -Before his ill-starred venture as a flax-dresser he -was an aimless and inarticulately rebellious youth; -after it, though he was still aimless for a time, his -rebellion against the narrow world of his origin was -overt and vocal. Yet even under the stimulus of -Irvine he was long in finding his proper speech. -When he wrote the earliest of his extant letters, -Burns, already a man in years, was still a boy in -mind. His self-conscious disquisitions on such high-resounding -themes as Pride and Courage mark him -as less mature at twenty-one than Chatterton was -at sixteen; he had passed the age at which Keats -died before he began to say anything worth heeding. -At twenty-two, his vague aspirations momentarily -focussed on the idea of establishing himself in business -as a necessary prelude to matrimony, he made -his sole attempt at living according to the standards -of a working-day world. Materially, the attempt was -an abject failure; spiritually, it set him on the direct -road to realizing himself.</p> - -<p>Knowledge of the material side of the Irvine partnership -is limited to what Burns himself told in his -autobiographic letter, which is not wholly reliable -evidence. Not that Burns intentionally coloured the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span> -facts. The safest rule in reading his letters is to take -it for granted that if he said a thing about himself -it was true; if he said a thing about someone else, -he believed it to be true. But to his passionate temperament -and ‘skinless sensibility’ (the phrase is his -own) anyone through whom he suffered loss or -humiliation became almost automatically a villain -of the blackest. Hence his charges that Peacock, his -Irvine partner, ‘was a scoundrel of the first water, -who made money by the mystery of thieving’, need -not be taken literally. Burns, a complete greenhorn -at business, may possibly have been taken in by an -unscrupulous rascal, but it is equally possible that -Burns in retrospect blamed Peacock for a failure in -which they were both at fault. In any case, the business -side of these months influenced Burns’s future -only as it convinced him of his unfitness for ‘the little -chicaning art of bargain-making’. What really -mattered were the new friends, and the new ideas -of himself and his place in the world inspired by -these friends and by the introspection resulting from -ill-health.</p> - -<p>Chief of the new friends was the sailor, Richard -Brown, whom Burns looked up to as a junior schoolboy -looks to the athletic senior. Brown was about -the poet’s age, but had all the worldly experience -Burns lacked. He was better educated than most -seamen of his day, though perhaps his story of having -been patronized by a wealthy man who promised -to set him up in life was only another sailor’s -yarn. He had at any rate abilities of a sort. An incompetent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span> -man could not have become the master -of a West Indiaman while still in his twenties. But -in 1781 that promotion was still to win. Brown just -then was down on his luck. His ship had recently -been captured by an American privateer, and he -had been put ashore on the coast of Connaught -with nothing but his life and the clothes he wore. -Nevertheless the friendship with Burns probably -began with something of patronage on Brown’s part. -The experienced, far-travelled, and distinctly hard-boiled -sailor was interested in the awkward, stoop-shouldered -country lad who in company alternated -between sullen silence and—if he felt himself at -ease—unusually vivid and copious speech. Obviously -Brown realized that there was something in -him; obviously also he took pleasure in enlightening -him as to the ways of the world. Burns saw in Brown -‘every noble, manly virtue’ and strove to imitate -him. Burns was already proud; Brown taught his -pride to flow in proper channels—whatever that -may mean. But Brown also was the only man the -poet ever met who was a bigger fool than himself -where women were concerned. The various goddesses -by whom Burns’s tinder heart was continually -lighted up still roused a hobbledehoy calf-love, -as adolescent as his hero-worship of the sailor. -Brown taught him that direct action might usually -be counted on to bring results, and here, as Burns -later admitted, the friendship did him a mischief.</p> - -<p>Yet Brown was something more than a hard-boiled -sailor initiating a green youngster. One<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span> -Sunday afternoon the pair took a walking trip to Eglinton -Wood, where under the inspiring influence of -a spot associated with the memory of Sir William -Wallace Burns confided to his mentor that he occasionally -tried to write poetry. He was already poet -enough to have a copy in his pocket. Brown listened, -and declared that verses of such merit ought to be -sent to a magazine. It was actually this, Burns recorded -long afterwards, that first gave him the idea -that he might amount to something as a poet. It -was one thing to have one’s verses praised by a rural -maiden like Nellie Kilpatrick or by one’s own admiring -family; it was quite another to have them -endorsed by a man of the world. Unfortunately -Burns failed to name the poem Brown commended. -At a guess it may well have been the two somewhat -bawdy stanzas beginning ‘I murder hate by field or -flood’, Andrew Dunlop’s manuscript of which was -headed, ‘On the great Recruiting in the year 17— during -the American war’. Burns had no motive for -mystifying Dunlop; hence the date of these stanzas -can scarcely be later than 1781, and Brown would -have been more likely to applaud such lines than -the conventional religious pieces more or less contemporary -with them.</p> - -<p>The good as well as the ill of Brown’s friendship -belongs to the six or eight months at Irvine. If the -friends met during the next four or five years, no -references to their intercourse survive. When the -Kilmarnock <i>Poems</i> were published, Brown received -the only inscribed presentation copy on record, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span> -in December, 1787, the two began a correspondence -which lasted for a couple of years in the intervals of -Brown’s voyages. Their only recorded meeting, however, -was in Glasgow in February, 1788, when the -poet told Brown all about Jean Armour. Burns’s last -letter, in November, 1789, in reply to a complaint -about his silence, is as cordial as ever, yet the friendship -ended. According to tradition, Burns’s charge -about Brown’s moral influence had reached the -sailor, now a married man with a steadily improving -position to maintain and far from eager to be reminded -that he had heard the chimes at midnight. -After Brown’s death, the presentation copy was -found hidden away in the back of an old sideboard. -The sailor was not the only friend who in later -years wanted to live down his associations with the -poet. The descendants of John Wilson concealed for -more than a century the fact that instead of resenting -‘Death and Dr. Hornbook’ he appealed to Burns -for help when his position as schoolmaster at Tarbolton -became intolerable. On the other hand, James -Humphry of Mauchline continued till his dying day -to boast that he was ‘Burns’s bletherin’ bitch’.</p> - -<p>During the same months in which Brown was stirring -Burns to a new self-confidence his health was -producing opposite effects. Throughout his life his -diseased heart reacted unfavourably to nervous stress; -the Irvine experience was the first of many. Realization -of his bad bargain with Peacock combined with -the unaccustomed strain of dusty indoor labour to -bring on a period of ‘hypochondria’—in other words,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span> -nervous depression resulting from defective heart-action. -Its tangible results were such lachrymose -verses as the ‘Prayer in the Prospect of Death’ and -the letter to his father in which he announces that -he is ‘quite transported at the thought that ere long, -perhaps very soon, I shall bid an eternal adiew to all -the pains, and uneasiness, and disquietudes of this -weary life; for I assure you I am heartily tired of it.’ -The letter is not merely morbid, it is adolescent; -and Mrs. Carswell has noted that the solemn announcement -that ‘I am not formed for the bustle of -the busy nor the flutter of the Gay’ is cribbed verbatim -from <i>The Man of Feeling</i>. William Burnes, -however, probably regarded it as admirable proof -that his son was beginning to take serious views of -religion and life. In any case it represents only a -passing mood of ill-health. The important fact -about the Irvine days is that Burns was considering -seriously his own abilities and his future position.</p> - -<p>The partnership had at least the merit of a dramatic -and even spectacular finish. A New Year’s -Eve celebration, whatever it may have done for -Burns, brought his partner and his wife to such a -state of drunkenness that they knocked over a lamp -and set fire to the shop. The place was completely -burned out, and after a month or two Burns returned -to Lochlie poorer than he went, but with a -rich store of experiences, a new outlook on life, and -a mature confidence in himself which he had never -before possessed. But he still lacked an aim. For -another four years the pride which Brown had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span> -taught to flow in proper channels was still to display -itself mainly in obscure rebellion against his -lot in life, and in anything but obscure defiance of -the unco guid.</p> - -<p>The situation confronting him at home would in -any event have matured him, but without Irvine -it might have been in a different way. Firmly convinced -as always of his own justice and rectitude—a -conviction which he imparted with equal vigour -to his eldest son—William Burnes was closing his -long series of misfortunes in a violent contest with -his landlord, David M’Lure. The dispute had begun -in a difference over their respective shares of -the expenses of liming and fencing the farm and -erecting new buildings. Pending arbitration of the -case, William Burnes had held up payment of his -rent. In September, 1782, the matter was submitted -to James Grieve of Boghead and Charles -Norval of Coilsfield—chosen respectively by M’Lure -and Burnes—for adjudication. When they were unable -to agree, John Hamilton of Sundrum was -chosen as ‘Oversman’ or referee. Not until August, -1783, did Hamilton complete his analysis of the -accounts and hand down his decision, which was -that of £775 claimed by M’Lure, £543 was offset -by credits for improvements made by Burnes, part -payments on rent, and other items. But before this -decision was rendered M’Lure, whose estates were -heavily mortgaged to the defunct Douglas and -Heron Bank, and who desperately needed cash, had -tried to force payment by entering a sequestration<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span> -on the stock and crops of Lochlie. By the time John -Hamilton reported, M’Lure was so deep in debt -that it was uncertain whether the rent belonged to -him or to his creditors. Thereupon indomitable -William Burnes carried the case to the Court of -Session at Edinburgh. His first petition being -thrown out on a technicality, he renewed it, and -at last, on January 27, 1784, less than three weeks -before his death, won his case. He had had the cash -on hand to deposit with the court, when he made -his appeal, the whole amount due; the decision absolved -him of further responsibility in the matter, -and summoned the various claimants to bring in -their claims for adjudication. William Burnes had -vindicated himself; his view of his obligations had -been upheld by the highest court in the land. All -that it had cost him was the last of his money and -the last of his strength. He was not an old man, but -the long struggle for livelihood, culminating in the -protracted lawsuit, made him the easier prey to -tuberculosis. His conviction of his own rightness, like -his irascibility, grew stronger as his body weakened, -and mingled with his wrath at M’Lure was anxiety, -bluntly expressed, over Robert’s growing defiance -of Presbyterian decorum.</p> - -<p>In calmer circumstances, his father’s displeasure -would have weighed heavily on the poet’s mind, -but now he was looking beyond it. Watching their -father’s sinking health, the children were consulting -with each other about their future. The end of -Lochlie could not be long delayed: death would<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span> -evict them, because after the litigation none of the -claimants to the property was likely to give them a -renewal of the lease. Though Robert subsequently -gave Gilbert the credit of being a full partner in the -next undertaking, he probably was not. It is difficult -to imagine the timid and subservient Gilbert -taking the lead in anything. Not long after returning -from Irvine Burns had made the acquaintance of a -prosperous Mauchline lawyer named Gavin Hamilton, -who may have been attracted to the young -farmer by reports of his outspoken ridicule of the -Old Lights in the Kirk. Hamilton being also a -Mason, they doubtless met first in the fellowship of -square and compass. The lawyer, already in hot -water with his more orthodox neighbours, may also -have realized the potential value of Burns’s wit in -the impending contests, but whatever his motives it -was Hamilton who suggested to William Burnes’s -children a practical and legal way out of their -trouble.</p> - -<p>Several years before, Hamilton had rented Mossgiel -farm, about three miles from Mauchline, and -had rebuilt the cottage as a country retreat. The -plan of being gentleman farmer as well as lawyer -had palled, and Hamilton now offered to sublet -Mossgiel to Robert and Gilbert at a lower rental—£90 -a year for 118 acres—than they were paying at -Lochlie. The lease was quietly signed at Martinmas, -1783, it being apparent by that time that William -Burnes had not many weeks to live. Secrecy was -necessary; the Court of Session had not yet rendered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span> -its decision, and their action, if it became known, -might be unfavourably construed. Whatever small -savings had not gone for legal expenses were invested -in the new enterprise, and Hamilton pointed -out a loop-hole through which the children might -salvage something after their father’s death. Robert -and Gilbert were already credited with the regular -wages of labourers. Let the other children also get -themselves ranked as employees on the farm. Then -they could enter claims for unpaid wages against -their father’s estate, thereby becoming preferred -creditors who must be paid in full before M’Lure -or his mortgagors got anything. The scheme worked. -Enough was saved from the wreck to enable the -family, shaken and desperately poor—when the -youngest boy, John, died in November, 1785, they -could not raise the few shillings to pay for the best -mortcloth at his funeral—to re-establish their household -at Mossgiel, intact except for its head.</p> - -<p>The new head was Robert, and in the months that -followed his father’s death the full results of his -Irvine lessons showed for the first time. In the two -intervening years he had been too much oppressed -with labour and anxiety to have time or inclination -to show the new spirit in all its fullness, though he -had shown enough to disturb his father. Now he -was free, and the fruits of his freedom were varied -and not always edifying. The earnest young debater -of the Tarbolton Bachelors’ Club and the self-conscious -author of essay-letters gave place to Rab -Mossgiel. Burns became the focus for a group of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span> -reckless youngsters, most of them younger than -himself, who looked up to him much as he had -looked up to Richard Brown three years before. -Foremost in the group were John Richmond and -James Smith, both of them full of the animal high -spirits which so often disguise the basic commonplaceness -of young minds. Along with Burns they -set out to scandalize the orthodox, and succeeded. -By the end of 1785 Richmond and Smith, like Burns, -had mounted the cutty-stool for fornication, and -Richmond had fled from the turmoil to the comparative -sanctuary of an Edinburgh lawyer’s office.</p> - -<p>These cronies are chiefly noteworthy as evidence -of Burns’s still uncritical mind. As with Bob Ainslie -later, there was really nothing to them except -youthful exuberance. Their laughter was the ready -chorus for Burns’s wit; his sparkle made them shine -with a reflected light to which they actually contributed -little. By comparison the poor poetaster, -Davie Sillar of the Tarbolton Bachelors, was almost -a genius. In his characterization of Tarbolton townsfolk -Sillar left behind him at least one quotable -phrase, which is more than any of the Mauchline -group did. They cannot be charged with leading -Burns astray—if any leading was needed Burns -supplied it—and their biographical importance is -negligible except as they gave him an outlet for confidences -which might not otherwise have been recorded. -When Burns went to Edinburgh he lodged -with Richmond during his first winter; during the -second winter Richmond was in Mauchline a good<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span> -part of the time. Burns’s last extant letters to him -reveal some details about Jean Armour and her -children, but lack the enthusiasm of the ones written -in 1786. Smith left Mauchline to engage in calico-printing -at Linlithgow. Failing there, he fled to the -West Indies and died obscurely, as Burns came so -near doing. Both friendships were spent and empty -before the correspondence closed. The contrast between -the mediocre abilities of the two men and the -quality of the poetry they evoked from Burns is -even more remarkable than the disparity between -the illiterate farm-lasses of Tarbolton and Mauchline -and the lyrics Burns addressed to them.</p> - -<p>By the time he was twenty-six Burns’s status -among people of his own rank was firmly established. -He was the unquestioned leader of the reckless -young; the welcome companion of ribald and -unorthodox elders. The attitude toward him of the -staid and sober ranged from sad head-shaking to -violent denunciation. With people of rank above -his own, however, he was still uneasy. Hamilton -was probably the first man of the professional class -with whom he formed a genuine friendship. John -Mackenzie, the Mauchline surgeon who attended -William Burnes in his last illness, remembered that -on first visiting Lochlie he found Gilbert frank, modest, -well-informed, and communicative, the father -revealing the remains of an able mind beneath the -cloud of illness and distress, and the mother quiet, -sagacious, and self-possessed. But Burns sat glowering -in a dark corner, ‘distant, suspicious, and without<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span> -any wish to interest or please’; scrutinizing -Mackenzie and obviously prepared to resent any -display of superiority or patronage. As the doctor -showed himself affable Burns gradually thawed. -Though the written records of the friendship are -meagre, Burns plainly liked and trusted Mackenzie, -and Mackenzie reciprocated. From the time of their -first meeting, the doctor declared, ‘I took a lively -interest in Robert Burns, and, before I was acquainted -with his poetical power, I perceived that he -possessed very great mental abilities, an uncommon, -fertile and lively imagination, a thorough acquaintance -with many of our Scottish poets, and an enthusiastic -admiration of Ramsay and Fergusson. I have -always thought that no person could have a just -idea of the extent of Burns’s talents who had not an -opportunity to hear him converse. His discrimination -of character was great beyond that of any person -I ever knew....’ The surgeon introduced -Burns as a poet to his own friend and patron, Sir -John Whitefoord, who had previously known of -the young farmer only as an earnest member of -St. James’s Lodge; he also gave an introduction to -Captain Andrew Erskine of Edinburgh, Boswell’s -friend, and claimed to have been the first to bring -the Kilmarnock <i>Poems</i> to the attention of Hugh -Blair. It was to Mackenzie and not to Gavin Hamilton -that Burns turned for very practical help in the -stormy weeks preceding his final acknowledgement -of his marriage to Jean Armour, and when Mackenzie -provided Jean and her lover with quarters in his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span> -own house he must have faced a weight of criticism -from the embattled saints and gossips of the village -that would have daunted many a man with a professional -status to maintain.</p> - -<p>The pride which Richard Brown had taught to -flow in proper channels was becoming all the more -touchy as Burns’s confidence in himself increased. -Sure of himself now among his equals, he was still -resentfully helpless when superiors rubbed in their -superiority. He had come as far as he could in his -merely social capacity; what carried him the rest -of the way was his poetry. Here Gavin Hamilton -more or less unwittingly took the lead in introducing -Burns to a new world. The Kirk Session of Mauchline, -seeking to re-establish the old-time rigours of -the Scottish Sabbath, had decided for once to make -an example of a prominent citizen instead of an -obscure one. Accordingly in the summer of 1784 -Hamilton was summoned to stand trial for various -ecclesiastical crimes such as absenting himself from -church, habitually neglecting family worship, and -causing a servant to dig new potatoes on a Sunday. -On being convicted, Hamilton promptly appealed -his case to the Presbytery of Ayr, and ultimately -won it. How Burns intervened with ‘The Twa -Herds’ has already been told. His authorship of -that poem and its successors was soon avowed as -the manuscripts passed from hand to New Light -hand amid roars of Homeric laughter. People and -institutions accustomed to taking themselves and -being taken by others with the most intense seriousness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span> -are helpless in the face of mirth. Burns had -found the one weapon which the orthodox could -not withstand, though they could, and did, revenge -themselves on the author of their humiliation. The -fury generated by his satires did as much as, or -more than, the odium of his personal sins to make -Mauchline so unbearable that by 1786 Burns was -ready to flee to Jamaica.</p> - -<p>But if his satires made the village too hot for him -they were also the direct means of enabling him to -escape both from the village and from the ranks of -the peasantry. One of the first friends to whom -Hamilton showed ‘The Twa Herds’ was another -lawyer, Robert Aiken of Ayr, who conducted and -won Hamilton’s case before the Presbytery. Hamilton, -apart from the conviviality almost inseparable -from a man of his profession in eighteenth-century -Scotland, was cool and businesslike. Aiken -was emotional and enthusiastic, a good forensic -reader and speaker, and an easy prey to sentiment. -Pathos, in life or in a poem, suffused his eyes with -tears and set the buttons popping on his tight waistcoat. -But, like the more famous Man of Feeling, -Henry Mackenzie, Aiken seldom in daily life permitted -sentiment to overcloud common sense. Along -with his fellow townsman, John Ballantine the -banker, the lawyer soon became the poet’s confidant -and chief literary adviser. ‘Orator Bob’ lost no opportunity -of reading his young friend’s verses aloud, -with such expression that Burns later declared he -had never fully appreciated his own work until he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span> -heard Aiken read it. As the poet’s troubles thickened -in the early months of 1786 it was with Aiken and -Ballantine that he discussed both his plans for emigration -and his arrangements for publishing his -poems, their decision as to what ought to be included -in the Kilmarnock volume apparently being -final. Though Aiken’s action, as James Armour’s -legal adviser, in cancelling whatever ‘lines’ Burns -had given Jean, caused a momentary chill, the lawyer -soon proved that his professional conduct did -not interfere with his private friendships. He obtained -145 subscriptions for the Kilmarnock <i>Poems</i>—nearly -one-fourth of the entire edition. Even amid -the excitement of his first dazzling fame in Edinburgh -Burns recalled with a glow of affection the -kindly patronage of Aiken and Ballantine, and long -after he had quitted Ayrshire forever he continued -from time to time to send them new poems which -he thought they might like. As late as 1791 he was -still gratefully remembering Ballantine’s part in -handing him ‘up to the “Court of the Gentiles” in -the temple of Fame’—a figure of speech which combined -neatness and literal accuracy. It was only to -the outer court—that of the bourgeoisie and minor -gentry—that Aiken and Ballantine were able to -conduct him.</p> - -<p>The association with Hamilton fared worse. -Poetry, except in the form of humour and satire, -did not, it would seem, appeal to Hamilton as it did -to Aiken, and between him and Burns was always -the barrier of their business relation as landlord and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span> -tenant. Ultimately, indeed, a matter of business estranged -them. In the spring of 1788, nearly two -years after Gilbert Burns had become the sole lessee -of Mossgiel, Hamilton apparently asked Burns to -become his brother’s surety. The poet, who was -lending Gilbert nearly half the proceeds of the Edinburgh -<i>Poems</i>, declined to commit himself any further:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘The language of refusal is to me the most difficult -language on earth, and you are the man of the world, excepting -One of R<sup>t</sup> Hon<sup>ble</sup> designation [i. e., Lord Glencairn], -to whom it gives me the greatest pain to hold such -language.... I never wrote a letter which gave me so -much pain in my life, as I know the unhappy consequences: -I shall incur the displeasure of a Gentleman for -whom I have the highest respect, and to whom I am -deeply oblidged.’</p> -</div> - -<p>The foreboding was justified. After that reluctant -refusal, Burns’s relations with his former landlord -never regained their old cordiality.</p> - -<p>In his contacts with Aiken, Ballantine, Hamilton, -and certain of the New Light clergy Burns had, by -the spring of 1786, taken a further step in the realization -of his own capacities. He found himself quite -at ease, at least in male company, among members -of the professional class to whom as a lad he had -looked up with awe. He was discovering, moreover, -that he was not their inferior in native ability. -Though he did not know it then, he had in fact -reached as high a level as he was ever to maintain -in Scottish society. These lesser gentry not only<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span> -received him, but treated him as an equal. The higher -gentry—people of estates and pedigrees—the higher -professional classes, and the nobility, might receive -him for a time, but always with a latent condescension. -Sooner or later, even with Mrs. Dunlop, even -with Robert Riddell, some incident would reveal -that their feeling toward him was after all <i>de haut en -bas</i>. The friends whom he kept among men of social -and professional standing, from Aiken and Ballantine -at the beginning of his career to Alexander -Findlater and John Syme at its close, were gentlemen, -were men of education, but they were not, in -Burns’s favourite capitalized phrase, Great People.</p> - -<p>But in the summer and autumn of 1786 it seemed -there might be no limit to Burns’s social advancement. -As he went about the country during August -and September, collecting the subscriptions for his -poems, the parish outcast of a few months earlier -found himself everywhere courted and applauded. -New acquaintances and old united to draw him out, -and the bolder his remarks the better they liked -them. But he was still capable of awe. In October -came an invitation to dine on the 23rd at Catrine -House, country home of Dugald Stewart, Professor -of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh University. The -company included Basil William, Lord Daer, the -flighty and consumptive but liberal-minded son and -heir of the Earl of Selkirk. In an amusing set of -verses Burns described how, at the prospect of meeting -a peer for the first time, his knees shook as he -sidled into the Professor’s drawing-room, and he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span> -reverted to his old trick of watching from a corner -until he had taken the measure of the company. -The incident is worth mentioning because it was -probably the last time Burns was ever unsure of -himself in society. In later months and years he was -often irritated and uncomfortable when members -of the upper classes emphasized their elevation, but -such feelings were the reverse of awe. Two months -after the dinner at Catrine he was meeting professors -and peers by the dozen instead of the brace, and was -maintaining not merely self-possession but critical -appraisal.</p> - -<p>Burns’s standards of social intercourse, as of so -many other things, were firmly established before -the surviving records become full enough for detailed -study. They were as honest and straight-forward -as the rest of his dealings. Except for the -brief embarrassment of a first meeting, rank as such -meant nothing to him. What he demanded, and all -he demanded, of any man was, in his own phrase, -that he have something to him. That something -must be native; a matter of mind and personality, -not of social place. A Souter Johnie was better company -than a Hugh Blair, because the cobbler’s wit -and wisdom were the product of native shrewdness -dealing with first-hand experience; the professor’s -attainments were ‘meerly an astonishing proof what -industry and application can do’. To his cultured -friends, Burns seemed to have a perverse taste for -low company, whereas his real quest was genuine -company. His own unbridled wit and tempestuous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span> -emotions naturally made him gravitate towards -other similarly endowed people, who too often were -not pillars of society, but this was not his reason for -choosing them. When a pillar of society bore himself -‘to all the Actors, high and low, in the drama of Life, -simply as they merited in playing their parts’, and -excelled in telling a story—in other words, when -the pillar was Dugald Stewart—Burns enjoyed his -company as much as John Rankine’s or Willie -Nicol’s. Nor was wit or waggishness necessarily demanded. -Grave wisdom Burns could relish as well -as gay, though not in every mood; what he could -never endure was dullness, pomposity, or conceit.</p> - -<p>As the autumn of 1786 wore on, new friends and -old agreed that the success of the Kilmarnock <i>Poems</i> -should make Burns abandon his flight to Jamaica. -He ought to publish a second edition in Edinburgh -and then settle down, either on a farm of his own, -or—as Aiken suggested—in the Excise service. The -poet would find plenty of friends to help him win a -hearing, and publishing in the capital would give -him a national instead of a local audience. Burns -must have made up his mind immediately after his -dinner with Dugald Stewart. Among his new friends -was Alexander Dalziel, steward of the Renfrewshire -estates of the Earl of Glencairn. On November 1 -Dalziel wrote to congratulate Burns on abandoning -the West Indian venture and to tell him that he had -showed the <i>Poems</i> to the Earl himself. The Earl -bought a copy, which he had richly bound, and expressed -warm interest in the poems and their author.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span></p> - -<p>Thus began Burns’s most successful acquaintance -with a peer—the only association of the sort which -did not sooner or later end in apathy on one side -and humiliation on the other. Though the circumstances -of Burns’s earliest introduction to Edinburgh -society are obscure, the obscurity is lightened if we -take at face value the poet’s repeated statements -that he owed everything to Glencairn—that the -Earl, as he put it, took him by the hand and led -him up to fame. Burns afterwards said that he went -to the city without letters of introduction, but that -can have been true only in the narrowest sense. -Dalziel certainly apprised Glencairn of Burns’s -plans, as Dr. Mackenzie apprised Sir John Whitefoord -and Andrew Erskine, and as the Rev. George -Lawrie of Loudoun apprised the blind poet, Thomas -Blacklock. Dugald Stewart also must have known -of the decision. Within a week of his arrival, Burns -was the lion of the Edinburgh season. Many new -friends must have contributed to such immediate -success, but the poet’s emphasis on Glencairn’s kindness -marks the Earl as the man who secured the -patronage of the fashionable Caledonian Hunt, and -probably also as his sponsor in Masonic society.</p> - -<p>All this the Earl succeeded in doing without offending -the touchy poet by condescension, though -Burns’s pride sometimes suffered because of Glencairn’s -deference to people of superior rank. Once, -indeed, Burns was ‘within half a point’ of throwing -down his ‘gage of contemptuous defiance’ because -the Earl was giving too much attention to a wealthy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span> -dunderpate, but even then he was quickly reassured -as to Glencairn’s sincere good wishes. Touchiness -aside, Burns’s position in Edinburgh recalls Benjamin -Franklin’s at Versailles a decade before. In -each place the fashionable world thought it had discovered -a child of nature; in each place the newcomer -had really a shrewder mind and a quicker -penetration of character and motive than most of -the <i>élite</i> who patronized him. The contrast between -Burns’s attitude toward Glencairn and toward his -fellow peer, the Earl of Buchan, shows how thoroughly -the poet had learned to take men’s measure regardless -of rank. Buchan also had professed great -interest in Burns and was lavish with advice, but -Burns recognized the man as an egotistical windbag -and received his advice with an elaborate irony of -compliment which would have betrayed itself to -anyone less conceited than the busybody who once, -when Sir Walter Scott lay ill, volunteered to arrange -his funeral, and who, when he himself had written -some amazingly bad verses, accepted as a tribute -John Taylor’s publication of them in a part of <i>The -Scots Magazine</i> ‘distinct from the mass of vulgar -poetry’.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, Burns’s deference to Glencairn had -unfortunate results. In securing William Creech, his -brother’s former tutor, as Burns’s publisher, Glencairn -thought he was doing the best possible good -turn. Yet the outcome was months of vexation and -delay for the poet, and the loss of all profits from -later editions of his poems. Moreover, the poet had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span> -soberly decided that his best hope for a livelihood -lay in securing an Excise post which would support -him while he banked his profits as a reserve fund for -his children. But Glencairn, like Mrs. Dunlop and -other gentry whose knowledge of the lives of tenant -farmers was limited to the quarterly receipt of their -rents, was all for the poet’s investing his capital in a -farm of his own. Disapproving of the Excise scheme, -Glencairn would do nothing to forward it, though a -word from him in the right place—that is, in the -ears of Henry Dundas—would have procured Burns -the appointment he sought. As it was, all hints fell -dead, while meantime Patrick Miller dangled the -bait of Ellisland. When at last Burns interested a -man willing to help the Excise plan, the mischief -was already done; he was committed to the undertaking -which swallowed all his little capital. The -best intentions of his would-be patrons kept turning -to evil for Burns; even Glencairn’s gift of a diamond-pointed -pencil made trouble by supplying the poet -with the means of inscribing blazing indiscretions -on window-panes.</p> - -<p>Burns observed the rest of the Edinburgh gentry -and literati as closely as he did Glencairn and Buchan. -He was measuring himself and his native ability -against them, and was not inclined to award -himself second place. But he was not comfortable -with most of them. Even if they did not offend him -by overt condescension he was fully aware that they -received him only because he was the fad of the moment. -When the novelty staled he could not hope to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span> -continue many friendships in exalted quarters. The -tide of popularity had swept him higher than he -could expect to remain; its ebb might leave him -stranded far lower than he deserved. It was not -long, indeed, before his hosts began to find things to -criticize. Burns not only said what he thought, he -said it with an emphasis they found unbecoming in -a man of peasant birth. The great Doctor Johnson -could be as gruff as he pleased with his Scottish hosts -because he was Johnson; Lord Braxfield could roar -and Lord Kames rave, both bawdy, in a gentleman’s -home because they were Lords of Session; for -Burns to express emphatic opinions argued a lack of -the humility which beseemed a ploughman entertained -by his betters.</p> - -<p>The fact was that Burns lacked both the finesse -which would have enabled him neatly and inoffensively -to deal with snubs, and the insensitive egotism -which could have ignored them. No one could -snub the Ettrick Shepherd, because his magnificent -self-esteem made it impossible for him to see any remark -in anything but a complimentary light. One -did not safely snub Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, because -that wasp could sting. Burns’s pride, unfortunately, -not only made him sensitive; it made him -aggressive and heavy-handed. When he flaunted the -blue-and-buff of the Whigs he was going out of his -way to assert his independence among people who -were mostly Tories; when he told a lady, who had -not waited an introduction before inviting him to -her party, that he would come if she would also invite<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span> -the learned pig from the Grassmarket, he was -making a show of himself in one way in the very -act of resenting being made a show in another. The -consciousness that he was acting a part—whether -behaving like a country bumpkin in Smellie’s printing-house, -or posing as the Bard of Nature in drawing-rooms—no -doubt partly explains some of his -more violent outbursts. Thus when he demolished a -clergyman, whose niggling criticisms of Gray had -goaded him beyond endurance, with the Johnsonian -thunderbolt, ‘Sir, I now perceive a man may be -an excellent judge of poetry by square and rule, and -after all be a damned blockhead!’ the victim was -probably drawing all the electric tension which had -been accumulating in the poet’s nerves through a -long series of irritations and repressions. But such -things did him no good in Edinburgh society.</p> - -<p>It was not that his manners were worse than gentlemen’s. -In some respects they were probably better. -‘Swearing,’ Henry Cockburn dryly records, -‘was thought the right, and the mark, of a gentleman. -And, tried by this test, nobody, who had not -seen them, could now be made to believe how many -gentlemen there were.’ Boswell’s long-suffering wife, -Margaret Montgomerie, took her husband to task -for his loud and abusive manner of asserting himself -in argument, and Boswell admitted to his journal -that she was right. Benjamin Franklin remarked -that Edinburgh was the only place he knew where -violent disputatiousness was not confined to lawyers -and university men. But when a mere peasant<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span> -exhibited, in however mild a form, the traits of the -gentry, he was forgetting his place, and should be -put back in it.</p> - -<p>Moreover, Burns quickly realized that these gentry -scorned the national tradition which was his -life-blood. If they did not all, like Dr. John Moore, -urge him henceforth to write in standard English, -they at least made it plain that a Scots poet could -not aspire to literary equality with Dr. Beattie and -Dr. Blair. Robert Fergusson was a regrettable scamp -whom Edinburgh preferred to forget; Burns erected, -at his own expense, a monument to Fergusson, and -insisted, in speech and writing, on praising the dead -poet and heaping scorn on the gentry who had let -him starve. The place where Burns, after the first -few weeks, really enjoyed himself in Edinburgh and -where he made most of his intimate and lasting -friendships, was among the Crochallan Fencibles. -This was one of the numerous clubs in which lawyers -and merchants carried on the old convivial -traditions of their city. Edinburgh clubs were ancient -institutions which arrayed bibulous functions -in ceremonials ranging from the harmless High -Jinks described by Scott in <i>Guy Mannering</i> to almost -psychopathic debauchery in such an organization -as the Wig Club. They were, in fact, along with the -Freemasons, the ancestors both of the American -fraternal orders and of the Rotary and Kiwanis -Clubs. In the more elaborately organized groups -each officer, and sometimes every member, had a -special title. Thus each member in Allan Ramsay’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span> -Easy Club took the name of an old Scottish writer; -in the Cape Club, to which Robert Fergusson belonged, -each member was a Knight Companion of -the Cape, with tides like Sir Cape, Sir Brimstone, -Sir Precenter (Fergusson himself), Sir Nun and Abbess, -and Sir Pope. The Fencibles went in for military -designations. William Smellie, the gruff, slovenly, -and erudite printer who was handling the -Edinburgh edition of the <i>Poems</i>, as Adjutant of the -corps introduced the poet. Burns’s publisher, -Creech, proved a social disappointment as well as a -financial disaster; his printer was a man after his -own heart, an ‘old Veteran in Genius, Wit and -Bawdry’. Smellie, like Burns, concealed an inward -diffidence and sensitivity beneath an aggressive -manner; like Burns, too, he was self-educated. The -poet was not far wrong in describing him as ‘a man -positively of the first abilities and greatest strength -of mind, as well as one of the best hearts and keenest -wits that I have met with.’ He had displayed his intellectual -power in his <i>Philosophy of Natural History</i>, -long regarded as a standard work, and in writing -large sections of the original <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>; -his wit he reserved for conversation, where, like -Burns’s, it allowed no considerations of reverence or -prudery to stand in its way. Despite his rough exterior, -he was able to captivate an intelligent woman -of the world like Maria Riddell, as well as the ebullient -poet. But the records of this friendship were too -much for Smellie’s squeamish executors; his biographer -piously relates that ‘many letters of Burns to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span> -Mr. Smellie which remained, being totally unfit for -publication, and several of them containing severe -reflections on many respectable people still in life, -have been burnt.’</p> - -<p>The records of another friendship which had its -start among the Edinburgh bookmen fared better. -Peter Hill, five years the poet’s senior, was in 1787 -a clerk in Creech’s shop, but was soon to set up in -business for himself and prove a kindly and indulgent -master to an apprentice named Archibald Constable. -Hill’s was one of the few friendships Burns -made in Edinburgh which suffered no abatement -with time. From the summer of 1787, when Hill was -handling some of the innumerable details of business -relating to the Edinburgh <i>Poems</i>, until the beginning -of 1796, when Burns sent his ‘annual’ gift -of a kippered salmon from the Nith, their association -was unclouded. Hill supplied the poet with -books, sent presents to his family, and took care of -miscellaneous business errands in the city. Burns secured -for Hill the book-orders, first of the Monkland -Friendly Society and later of the Dumfries Public -Library, and interspersed his business communications -with hearty blasts of execration, broad humour, -and messages to all their common friends. Though -the phraseology of the letters often seems stilted, behind -its stiffness glows a genuine affection and esteem.</p> - -<p>But the backbone of the Fencibles was the lawyers. -Their Colonel, William Dunbar, was a jolly -little bachelor some years older than the poet; their -Major and Muster-Master General was Charles<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span> -Hay, friend of Boswell in the days when the latter -was striving for distinction at the Scottish bar, whose -port-inflamed countenance blinks above his judicial -robes as Lord Newton in Raeburn’s superb portrait -in the Scottish National Gallery. More notable for -‘law, paunch, whist, claret, and worth’ than for literary -interests, Hay’s one poetic suggestion to Burns -had humiliating results. He was among those who -urged the poet to compose the unfortunate elegy -‘On the Death of Lord President Dundas’, the complete -ignoring of which by Dundas’s son inflicted on -Burns’s pride a wound which never healed.</p> - -<p>Among the lawyer Fencibles the most congenial -to Burns was Alexander Cunningham, a distant and -impoverished relative of Lord Glencairn. Though -Burns described him to his face as dissipated but not -debauched—a subtle distinction of which the exact -import is probably forever lost—Cunningham was -diffident and retiring. Perhaps for this reason, perhaps -also because of his kinship to Glencairn, Burns -never sent him on such ticklish errands as he entrusted -to Bob Ainslie, but their literary and intellectual -fellowship was sincere. Unlike Hay and -Ainslie, Cunningham had real fondness for the higher -types of poetry, though to offset this he had the anglicized -Scotsman’s inability to see anything but the -ludicrous and the low in folk literature. Burns felt -that in offering ‘My Love is like a red red rose’ to -Cunningham he had to apologize for its simplicity; -Popean imitations would have been more in his line. -The young lawyer, in short, belonged to the generation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span> -which was trying to live down the national -characteristics that meant most to Burns. In Edinburgh -the legal profession was the last stronghold of -the rich old gusto of Scottish life, the last group of -men unashamed of being ‘characters’. But even -there such traits belonged mainly to the generation -passing or past which included men like Braxfield, -Monboddo, and Kames, or to the already mature -generation of Charles Hay and Henry Erskine. Cunningham -belonged more nearly to the generation of -Henry Cockburn, without Cockburn’s relish for the -memories of traits which he did not share.</p> - -<p>Within the limits imposed by his diffidence and -his tastes, Cunningham had no reason to complain -of lack of sympathy or confidence from Burns. When -his first sweetheart jilted him with humiliating publicity, -Cunningham told his sorrow to Burns, who -had previously supplied him with a poor song in -furtherance of his suit, and who now condoled in -terms which bore hard on the young lady. The -poet’s letters ranged from gay impromptu verses to -the confession that as a result of the fiasco of the -elegy, ‘I never see the name, Dundas, in the column -of a newspaper, but my heart seems straitened -for room in my bosom; & if I am obliged to read -aloud a paragraph relating to one of them, I feel my -forehead flush, & my nether lip quivers.’ On his -part, Cunningham obtained for Burns the last national -honour which Edinburgh conferred in his -lifetime—election to membership in the socially exclusive -Royal Company of Archers. And at the end<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span> -Cunningham received one of the poet’s desperate -appeals for help—not for money, but for intercession -with the Commissioners of Excise not to put -him on half-pay during his illness. Cunningham, -moreover, shared with John Syme the credit for setting -on foot the subscription for Jean and the children -after Burns’s death, though his diffidence made -him a poor collector of funds. Through diffidence, -also, he permitted George Thomson to prepare for -the newspapers the obituary he should have written -himself, and by this neglect did injury to his friend’s -memory.</p> - -<p>But the names of three other friends are associated -with much more damage to Burns’s reputation during -his life and after his death. Only one of the three -was a Fencible—Robert Cleghorn, a jolly gentleman -farmer from Corstorphine. Cleghorn had what Cunningham -lacked, a strong relish for vernacular literature, -publishable or unpublishable. Thus he became -the recipient of many choice bits of verse, -sometimes traditional and sometimes original, for -his own and his friends’ edification. The correspondence -harmed Burns’s reputation not through its publication -but through its long suppression. That remarkable -moralist, Lord Byron, read the Cleghorn -letters in manuscript and set down in his journal a -highly-coloured summary of them as ‘full of oaths -and obscene songs’ which stimulated the imaginations -of several generations of readers. Now that the -surviving letters can be read in full, they produce no -such revulsion as do some of the things Burns wrote<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span> -about Jean Armour and Maria Riddell. For readers -who do not relish broad humour they may be distasteful, -but beneath their coarseness is the record -of a genuine friendship with an honest, hearty, and -generous man. One suspects that had Cunningham, -for instance, visited Burns at Ellisland or Dumfries, -he would have felt the same disillusionment at sight -of the poet’s narrow and primitive domestic life -which the pettier Robert Ainslie recorded. Cleghorn -made such a visit in 1795, when Burns’s health -and spirits were already declining, and left behind -him a warm glow of renewed and strengthened -friendship.</p> - -<p>It is regrettable that Cleghorn’s name should be, -for most readers of Burns, associated with the poet’s -collection of ‘cloaciniad’ verse. In fact, Cleghorn received -no more of such work than did a dozen other -friends, but John Allen, his stepson and heir, had -ideas about the treatment of a great poet’s manuscripts -which differed from those of William Smellie’s -executors. Allen did not feel free, by mutilating -some of his most characteristic letters, to ‘protect -the memory’ of a poet who had never tried to disguise -any side of his own nature. And Cleghorn’s -tastes were as catholic as David Herd’s, or as Burns’s -own. He measured the merit of a song by its singing -quality, and not by its suitability for use in a young -ladies’ seminary. Burns sent him the charming ‘O -wat ye wha that lo’es me’ with the certainty that it -would please him as much as the broadest ribaldry. -The male who in male company does not occasionally<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span> -relish crude humour is a scarce creature in any -age or nation; was perhaps unusually scarce in -eighteenth-century Scotland. The songs which went -to Cleghorn went also to Graham of Fintry and -Provost Maxwell, to Collector Mitchell and John -M’Murdo and John Syme—in other words, to some -of the best and most loyal characters in Burns’s circle. -Boswell’s journals are crammed with proof that -similar tastes prevailed in still higher ranks of -society.</p> - -<p>To avoid misunderstanding both Burns and his -friends, a brief digression is necessary regarding the -book entitled <i>The Merry Muses of Caledonia</i>. Burns -was well aware that his own work, like the folk-songs -he collected, was divided into the publishable -and the unpublishable. But he did not draw the line -where his later editors did. To him, ‘The Jolly Beggars’, -‘A Poet’s Welcome’, and ‘Holy Willie’ were -no fitter for general circulation than were ‘When -Princes and Prelates’ and ‘The Court of Equity’. -They were <i>jeux d’esprit</i> intended for private circulation -among a few intimates. His riotous imagination -respected no boundaries when it began to play; -what distinguishes most of his bawdry from the -common sort is its wit. And this wit as frequently -saw how an improper folk-song could be made -more brilliantly improper as it saw how a halting -one could be made lyric. Much of his folk collection, -together with ‘a very few’ of his own composition, -was written into a manuscript volume which he -sometimes lent about, with strict injunctions as to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span> -secrecy. According to tradition, that volume fell -after his death into unscrupulous hands and formed -the basis of the earliest of the various collections -called <i>The Merry Muses</i>. The tradition is almost -certainly wrong. The ultimate source may have been -Burns, but not the immediate one. In all the editions -the authentic Burns verses are too garbled to -have been printed from his own copies. They bear -every sign of oral transmission or hasty transcription -at several removes from the original. The real manuscript -was probably destroyed after Burns’s death; -certainly it was never printed. It would have been -better for his reputation if it had, for he now stands -father or godfather to a garbled mass of Scottish, -English, and Irish filth, little of which he wrote, and -some of which he never even saw.</p> - -<p>Neither Robert Ainslie nor William Nicol needed -the chance association of their names with fescennine -verse to bring discredit on Burns. Their own -conduct sufficed. Ainslie, like Cunningham, was a -young lawyer, but the two moved in different orbits, -and were never brought together even by their -friendship for Burns. They appealed to different -facets of the poet’s nature, Ainslie’s relation to him -being that of Smith and Richmond in the days of -the Fornicators’ Court. The son of a good family in -the Border village of Dunse, Ainslie was celebrating -his recent emancipation from parental government -by sowing a plentiful crop of wild oats. Full of the -high spirits of twenty-one, he furnished the same -ready chorus of laughter the Mauchline cronies had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span> -provided, and was rapidly qualifying himself to discuss -with Burns the pleasing topic of comparative -bastardy. The most enjoyable part of the poet’s -Border tour in May, 1787, was his visit to Dunse; -after Ainslie left him he complained that he never -had a mouthful of really hearty laughter on the trip.</p> - -<p>Even the mutilated letters which survive show -that Burns freely confided his past and present peccadillos -to Ainslie; the sequel proves the confidence -to have been ill bestowed. At the end of the Border -tour, for instance, Burns found awaiting him in -Dumfries post-office a letter from Meg Cameron, an -Edinburgh servant girl who was to bear a child -which she claimed was his. Ainslie was commissioned -to ‘send for the wench and give her ten or -twelve shillings’ against the poet’s return to the city. -In reply, Ainslie broke the news that he had himself -just become the father of an illegitimate son, and received -from his friend a roaring welcome to ‘the venerable -Society of Fathers’. Again in the following -year Burns favored Ainslie with a highly-coloured -account of his final reconciliation with Jean Armour, -and early in 1789 instructed his young friend to locate -Jenny Clow so that Burns, on his arrival in -Edinburgh, could settle the suit Jenny had brought -against him. More creditable matters also occupied -the correspondence. Some of Burns’s earliest doubts -about Ellisland, some of his deepest gloom about his -own and his family’s future, were told to Ainslie. -But the friendship died before Burns did, and -through Ainslie’s fault.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span></p> - -<p>On Friday, October 15, 1790, Ainslie came to -Ellisland for the week-end. On Monday he reported -the visit to Agnes M’Lehose, with whom he was by -this time on confidential, and even flirtatious, -terms. The warmth of Burns’s welcome was gratifying, -but the house, he noted, was ‘ill contrived—and -pretty Dirty, and <i>Hugry Mugry</i>’, and its other -inmates pleased him little. Jean was ‘Vulgar & -Common-place in a considerable degree—and -pretty round & fat’, but ‘a kind Body in her Own -way, and the husband Tolerably Attentive to her’. -Also present were Burns’s sister and sister-in-law—‘common -looking girls’—and ‘3 Male and female -cousins’ who had been helping with the harvest.</p> - -<p>Burns rejoiced that his friend had arrived ‘upon -his <i>Kirn</i> night, when he Expected some of his friends -to help make merry’, but sight of the guests deepened -Ainslie’s depression, for they were ‘a Vulgar -looking Tavern keeper from Dumfries; and his Wife -more Vulgar—Mr. Miller of Dalswinton’s Gardener -and his Wife—and said Wife’s sister—and a -little fellow from Dumfries, who had been a Clerk’. -Burns and the rest had a good time, ‘Dancing, and -Kissing the Lasses at the End of every dance’, while -Ainslie shuddered to the depths of his paltry little -soul. Burns the peasant was enjoying himself in the -world of his birth, and the young snob from Edinburgh -couldn’t understand him at all:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘... Our Friend himself is as ingenious as ever, and -Seems very happy with the Situation I have described—His<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span> -Mind however now appears to me to be a great Mixture -of the poet and the Excise Man—One day he sits -down and Writes a Beautiful poem—and the Next he -Seizes a cargo of Tobacco from some unfortunate Smuggler—or -Roups out some poor Wretch for Selling liquors -without a License. From his conversation he Seems to be -frequently among the Great—but No Attention is paid -by people of any rank to his wife....’</p> -</div> - -<p>After such a letter—withheld from complete publication -until 1938—it is plain enough why the -friendship went into a swift decline. For another -year or two Burns continued to write, gaily or confidentially, -but got small response. Ainslie’s last letter, -early in 1794, ‘was so dry, so distant, so like a -card to one of his clients’, that the poet ‘could -scarce bear to read it’, and never answered it. The -lawyer was already on his way, via the fashionable -<i>Werther</i> melancholy, back to the orthodox piety -which led him, early in the nineteenth century, to -compose a couple of devotional pamphlets. But -neither piety nor loyalty sufficed to make him protect -the memory of the friend whose name has kept -his alive. Preserving the reckless letters Burns had -written him, he allowed them to pass into circulation, -once at least accompanied by a formal docket -certifying that Burns was the author of a letter -signed with a humorous pen-name. The mutilations -which so many of the manuscripts have suffered -were the work of later owners.</p> - -<p>Ainslie’s chief injury to Burns’s fame was inflicted -after the poet’s death; William Nicol, Latin<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span> -master in Edinburgh High School, harmed him in -life. A coarse, egotistical, drunken man of violent -temper, Nicol was also one of the foremost Latin -scholars of his day. In his bawdy violence of language -Burns saw wit; his emphatic dislike of his -superiors Burns interpreted as proof of an independent -spirit. No great harm might have come of -the friendship had it been confined to drinking -bouts in Edinburgh and to correspondence thereafter. -Unfortunately Burns took Nicol as his travelling -companion on the tour of the Highlands in -September, 1787. This tour was Burns’s chance to -meet influential folk in their homes and to show -himself at his best. Thanks to Nicol he came near to -showing himself at his worst. Among the people -from whom he had invitations were the Duke and -Duchess of Athole. Their reception of him at Blair -Athole was all the touchy poet could desire. The -Duke and Duchess were cordiality itself; among the -guests was Robert Graham of Fintry, Commissioner -of Excise, whose friendship and influence could be -of the utmost importance to Burns; a still more influential -person, Henry Dundas, dispenser of patronage -for all Scotland, was expected next day on one -of his periodical inspections of his political fences. -Everything seemed to be going well for Burns when -Nicol, the ‘most unprincipled savage’, intervened. -The boorish schoolmaster, finding himself neglected -in favour of his companion, decided to move on at -once, and insisted on Burns’s going with him. The -poet’s pride made him guilty of outrageous bad<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span> -manners. In reply to Nicol’s insistence, Burns should -have bidden him go to the devil his own gait. But -that might have been interpreted as subservience to -the Great. Through what can only be described as -inverted snobbery, Burns allowed Nicol to drag him -away. The scene was repeated at Castle Gordon, -where the merry Duchess, who had declared in -Edinburgh that Burns swept her off her feet, pleaded -in vain against Nicol’s urgings. Though he afterwards -wrote complimentary and apologetic letters, -and cursed the ‘obstinate son of Latin Prose’, Burns -could not efface the impression he had made. He -never saw the Atholes or the Gordons again.</p> - -<p>Throughout the trip Nicol’s conduct was the -same; he even snatched Burns away before breakfast -from the home of his cousin, James Burness of Montrose. -The Highland tour, though he did not then -realize it, was Burns’s last opportunity to enlist the -active friendship of people whose influence might -have changed his life. His failure was largely Nicol’s -fault. Reports of his abrupt and ungracious conduct -undoubtedly came back to Edinburgh and contributed -to the comparative neglect he suffered during -his second winter in the city. Edinburgh was too -small a place for misconduct to hide in; every lawyer -in the old Parliament House would have heard -that a servant girl had brought suit against the Ayrshire -Bard; the stories from the Highlands, losing -nothing in the telling, would add to the swelling -tide of hostile gossip. The talk, indeed, reached so -far, and was believed so implicitly, that not even<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span> -death could alter Edinburgh opinion. Cunningham’s -efforts to interest prominent citizens in the -subscription for Burns’s widow and children met repeated -snubs and refusals; to this day, despite the -monument on the Calton Hill, the city pays only a -half-hearted tribute to his memory.</p> - -<p>Of course all blame for the hostile talk cannot be -shifted to Nicol, or even to Meg Cameron and Jenny -Clow. Burns was indiscreet enough to start plenty of -tales without help. But his too long stay unfortunately -predisposed many people to believe the worst -not only of his conduct in the city but afterwards. -Henry Mackenzie and Dugald Stewart, for instance, -both accepted at face value the second-hand reports -of Burns’s alleged misdoings in Dumfries, and wrote -him off their books. For years anecdotes showing -Burns in an absurd or discreditable light circulated -in Edinburgh. Some may have been true; others -were malicious distortions which point the direction -taken by city opinion. Thus Lockhart told how -Hugh Blair had suggested, when a party of gentlemen -were discussing possible changes in the Kilmarnock -<i>Poems</i>, that ‘tidings of salvation’ might advantageously -be emended to ‘tidings of damnation’. -Thereupon the poet, according to Lockhart, embarrassed -the professor by asking permission to acknowledge -his improvement in a footnote. The basis -of the story is truth; its details are not. Blair did -suggest the change; Burns did, in conversation with -other people, acknowledge his help. But Blair’s suggestion -came in writing, as a carefully veiled hint<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span> -amid other criticisms of the poems. The episode as -Lockhart told it is city gossip intended to display -Blair as the urbane professor and patron and Burns -as a clumsy rustic. Of no importance in itself, the -story is symptomatic of the attitude of cultured -Edinburgh after the first enthusiasm over Burns had -waned.</p> - -<p>But no realization of the trouble Nicol was helping -to make, no recognition of the schoolmaster’s -real character, affected Burns. He continued, after -he left the city, to correspond with Nicol; when the -obstinate son of Latin Prose got into the row which -finally led to his resignation from the High School, -Burns championed him against his amiable principal, -Dr. Alexander Adam. By christening one of his -sons William Nicol, Burns proclaimed his friendship -to the world at large, and during the years at Ellisland -performed such services as getting appraisals -of a farm Nicol was buying, and maintaining a -broken-down mare which a horse-coper had passed -off on the schoolmaster. The friendship lasted until -February, 1793, when Burns was suffering from the -rage and humiliation which followed the official inquiry -into his revolutionary sympathies. Some report -of the matter having reached Nicol, he undertook -to rebuke Burns in a would-be facetious vein. -The poet was in no mood for rebuke or good advice, -facetious or not, and with his heavily satirical reply -to Nicol their correspondence ended—too late.</p> - -<p>In any case Edinburgh friendships, good or bad, -however much he might try to maintain them by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span> -correspondence, could not supply companionship -when Burns moved to Ellisland. Though on his first -visit to Dumfries he had professed himself enchanted -with the company he met, he was lonely enough -when he actually settled there. He made acquaintances, -no doubt ‘men of talent and humour’, among -the tradesfolk and professional men of the town, but -people like Dr. James Mundell, Walter Auld the -saddler, Henry Clint of the King’s Arms, William -Hyslop of the Globe Inn, and Thomas Boyd, the -contractor who built Ellisland, are names and little -more. Apart from his landlord, Patrick Miller, with -whom his relations were soon strained, the most congenial -friend he had during the three years on the -farm was Robert Riddell of Glenriddell, whose estate -of Friars Carse marched with Ellisland.</p> - -<p>Riddell was a country gentleman turned amateur -antiquarian. He had embellished his grounds with a -‘Druid Circle’ and a ‘Hermitage’; he dabbled in -numismatics and church architecture. These would -scarcely have interested Burns—though he remained -in the hermitage long enough to inscribe some verses -on the window with Glencairn’s diamond-pointed -pencil—but Riddell was also a musician in a small -way. Besides composing a few commonplace airs of -his own he professed great interest in the traditional -music of his country. Here Burns shared his enthusiasm -and far excelled his knowledge. The laird, perhaps -at Burns’s suggestion, subscribed for Johnson’s -<i>Museum</i> and had his set bound with blank interleaves -for notes on the songs, their authors, and their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span> -history. The number of his annotations gives the -measure of his knowledge. Out of four hundred -songs, one hundred and seventy have notes. Of -these, one hundred and fifty-two were written by -Burns, who must have spent many evenings at the -task in his friend’s library; eighteen were by Riddell -himself or an amanuensis. Sir Walter Scott summed -up the laird’s prose writings as ‘truly the most -extravagant compositions that ever a poor Man -abandoned by providence to the imaginations of his -own heart had the misfortune to devise.’</p> - -<p>The company which sometimes came to Carse, -including as it did men like Joseph Farington the -painter—who noted that ‘Mr. Burns the Scottish -Poet’ was ‘a middle-sized man, ... black complexioned, -and his general appearance that of a -tradesman or mechanick’, had ‘a strong expressive -manner of delivering himself in conversation’, and -knew no Latin—and Francis Grose, the antiquary -whose inspiring enthusiasm was the real source of -‘Tam o’ Shanter’, was more important than Riddell -himself. The laird’s real tastes and aptitudes were -convivial. A man of powerful physique and a rather -overwhelming robustiousness of manner—William -Smellie spoke of ‘his immense fist and stentorian -voice’—he succeeded, like so many gentlemen of his -day, in wrecking his health at an early age. The -notorious ‘Whistle’ contest, in which Riddell and -his kinsmen Sir Robert Laurie and Alexander Fergusson -of Craigdarroch undertook to drink each -other under the table for the possession of a family<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span> -heirloom, was probably more typical of the laird’s -true aptitudes than the annotations were. Even at -that, though, he was outdone by Craigdarroch, who -won the whistle by drinking ‘upds. of 5 Bottles of -Claret’. Burns, like most of the friends of the contestants, -found the incident vastly amusing; Burns’s -biographers have argued the question of his real -presence at Friars Carse with an almost theological -fervour; nevertheless its only interest or value for -posterity lies in the light it sheds on Robert Riddell’s -character. According to biographical tradition, -Robert Riddell was the staid member of the family -and his brother Walter the wild one; actually such -distinction between them seems as baseless as the -kindred legend that Gilbert Burns was a better -farmer than his brother. But whether Glenriddell -led or followed in the events which for a time -estranged the poet from the whole Riddell family, -the circumstances of the breach resemble with painful -clarity many other episodes in Burns’s contacts -with the gentry.</p> - -<p>The full story of the ‘Rape of the Sabines’ is Maria -Riddell’s more than her brother-in-law’s, but Robert -Riddell had a share in the trouble. During 1792 -and 1793, when Walter Riddell and his wife Maria -were occupying the estate of Goldielea or Woodley -Park, family relations were not always harmonious. -At a guess, Walter wanted to borrow from his elder -brother the funds to complete payment for Woodley -Park; at a guess, the wives failed to charm each -other. Whatever the causes, by the autumn of 1792<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span> -Burns had to assure Maria that he would listen to no -stories about her from Glenriddell—and presumably -also from Glenriddell’s wife. Yet for another year or -more the poet managed to stay on good terms with -both families. The year 1793 was, poetically and -flirtatiously, the highest point of Burns’s friendship -with Maria; the same year produced asseverations -of friendship as ‘ardent & grateful’ on Burns’s part -as Robert Riddell’s was ‘kind and generous’. In -leisure moments the poet was transcribing a collection -of his letters as a companion volume to the collection -of unpublished verse he had given the laird -in 1791. On Christmas day he was still transcribing. -On January 12, 1794, his quarrel with Maria had -reached its climax. Somewhere between those two -dates had occurred the mysterious brawl in which -Robert Riddell’s part is still a matter of controversy.</p> - -<p>If Robert Riddell was the host, who, by compelling -Burns to drink more than he wished to, reduced -the poet to a state in which he insulted his hostess, -the laird’s conduct admits of small excuse; if, as report -has it, the scene occurred at Woodley Park and -Robert Riddell subsequently took up the quarrel, -he is even less excusable. Whichever version one -accepts, Riddell was displaying innate snobbishness -towards a man he considered, after all, a social -inferior. If he was the host, realization of his own -share in the matter should have made him charitable; -if his brother was the host, Glenriddell was indulging -in violent and uncalled-for partisanship. He -held, it would seem, the same theory of a gentleman’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span> -privileges as was enunciated a few years later -by Sir John Graham Dalyell: ‘I am a gentleman, -and I will be treated as such; and if any person presumes -to pervert my meaning in any way whatever, -if his rank is not equal to mine I will kick him; and -if it is equal I will shoot him.’ Burns, as a plebeian, -was kicked. There is a little satisfaction in knowing -that the poet held to his resolution not to apologize -to his host. The ‘Remorseful Apology’ supposed to -have been addressed to a Riddell was really sent, -early in 1796, to a Mr. S. Mackenzie. Four months -after the quarrel Glenriddell was dead, still unreconciled -to the poet who had done more for him than he -could ever have done for the poet. A loud blustering -squire, a hollow and unsubstantial mind; that was -Robert Riddell.</p> - -<p>For the last five years of his life Burns’s social -world centred in Dumfries. About it cluster dark -stories and darker hints, in the effort to refute which -the poet’s defenders have sometimes been led to -dangerous extremities of special pleading. The truth -is that Burns in Dumfries was neither better nor -worse than Burns in Tarbolton and Mauchline. -Such a report as James Gray’s of finding Burns reading -poetry with his children and hearing the older -boys recite their lessons does not refute the tales of -boisterous revelry in taverns; both are true. The sole -difference is that Burns in Tarbolton was an unimportant -young man amid a group of other youths; -in Edinburgh he was partly lost in the crowds; in -Dumfries he was a prominent figure whose every<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span> -action was noted. He did not degenerate in Dumfries, -but neither did he become a chocolate seraph.</p> - -<p>Fortunately it is no longer necessary to rely on -conjecture and second-hand reports in studying -Burns’s last years. The letters which passed between -two of his most intimate friends, John Syme of Dumfries -and Alexander Cunningham of Edinburgh, are -now available to replace guess-work with facts. Of all -the friends of Burns’s last years, Syme is now the one -who emerges most clearly, and with most credit to -himself. A man of good education, a college friend -of Dr. James Currie, the poet’s first biographer, -Syme regarded Dumfries as a place of exile in which -Burns’s society was almost the only redeeming feature. -Having lost his small paternal estate of Barncailzie -near Kirkcudbright, he had managed to -recoup his fortunes by getting appointed to the -sinecure post of Collector of Stamps at Dumfries. He -first met Burns in 1788, but not until two years later -did they become intimate. Syme was a man of sentiment -in the best tradition of Henry Mackenzie and -<i>The Sorrows of Werther</i>. He went into raptures over -thunderstorms and desolate scenery; he read Zimmermann’s -<i>Treatise on Solitude</i>; he thought Clarinda’s -the finest love-letters ever written. Rhapsodic and -absent-minded, he was the sort who could set off on -a long-planned hunting-trip and find on arriving at -his destination that he had forgotten his dogs. Maria -Riddell paid warm tribute to his good head and excellent -heart, but added that in matters of business -he wanted method: ‘He is always in a labyrinth of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span> -papers and accounts, and, somewhat like the cuttlefish, -he obscures himself altogether in a mist of his -own creating.’</p> - -<p>Burns admired Syme’s education and literary -taste; Syme thought the poet ‘a noble fellow’, admired -his wit and brilliant conversation, but could -not admire his wife. ‘Methinks he has exhibited his -poetical genius when he celebrated her’, he said to -Cunningham after his first sight of Jean. Before long -Burns was submitting his new poems to Syme and -expressing implicit confidence in his judgement, -though Syme avowed that he scarcely dared to -touch a line of them. Sometimes the two would meet -in a boisterous crowd at a tavern; again they would -spend a quiet evening over a single bottle of wine in -the little croft of Ryedale which Syme regarded as -his refuge ‘from the frivolous and dissipated society’ -of Dumfries. Without Burns, said Syme, his life in -the town would be ‘a dreary blank’. Syme had set -himself up as a clearing-house for humorous and -satirical verses written or collected by his friends, -and Burns quickly became the chief contributor to -the hoard. Some of the verses compelled caution in -sharing them. Of the epigram on the Loyal Natives -Club, for instance, Syme told Cunningham that, -though he and Burns were ‘far from differing from -them on sentiments of loyalty, we differ on <i>sentiment</i>, -abstractly considered. They scarcely know the -meaning of the word Sentiment, & their Society -consists in roaring & drinking.’ ‘Don’t,’ he added -after quoting the epigram, ‘let any Dumfries person<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span> -see this, for one of the Savages, if he heard it, might -cut Robin’s pipe.’</p> - -<p>Syme’s letters abundantly illustrate what he -meant by ‘frivolous and dissipated society’. When -the Caledonian Hunt met at Dumfries in November, -1794, ‘Baker, one of the knowing english -Squires on the Turf, made an elegant appearance -by insulting in the grossest manner Squire Walter -Riddel of this place, who pursued him to Durham -and made him ask pardon, which is published in -our papers of last week.’ On the same occasion the -Honourable Ramsay Maule of Panmure showed that -for once at least Burns was justified in the tone of a -satirical epigram, for Panmure and some drunken -companions smeared a helpless underling’s hair with -mustard and stuck it full of toothpick quills, ‘by way -of hedgehogging him’. That Burns gnashed his teeth -and passed by on the other side when he encountered -such members of the organization to which he -had dedicated his Edinburgh <i>Poems</i>, is no ground for -wonder. He had larded the Caledonian Hunt with -flattery, and they were behaving like cads and -bullies.</p> - -<p>But though Burns shrank from the Caledonian -Hunt he did not always avoid similar company. -There were meetings at which he and Syme drank -bumpers out with wild Irishmen—such meetings as -led Thomas Telford the engineer jovially to warn -Burns that if he went on ‘in his old way, not even a -<i>she Devil</i> will be able to meet with a Milt in him.’ -There was a drunken brawl with one Captain Dods,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span> -who took hot exception to the poet’s toast, ‘May our -success in the present war be equal to the justice of -our cause.’ That Burns escaped a duel only because -he was not the Captain’s social equal did not lessen -his humiliation. Most biographers have held that -such a toast in the presence of gentlemen holding the -King’s commission was a huge breach of the proprieties, -and so it was—if Burns was not goaded into -giving it. Nothing in the record as it stands forbids -belief that Dods, or some other officer who knew -that Burns was suspected of sympathy with the -French, may have called for a round of loyal toasts -with the deliberate intention of embarrassing the -poet. In that case, nothing could have been neater -than Burns’s evasion, and since nothing came of the -episode it is to be presumed that Samuel Clarke succeeded -in making the sobered Dods realize what his -objection to the sentiment implied.</p> - -<p>But there were other similar episodes which cannot -be so favourably explained, and which multiply -proof that Burns had never acquired finesse, whether -in toasting, flattering, or sinning. Whatever he did -was done so forthrightly that it attracted attention. -And the moment he attracted attention his companions -recollected that after all he was a peasant -received on sufferance into gentle company. The -outcome might be expulsion from the house for conduct -which a gentleman born need not even have -apologized for, it might be a verbal attack like Captain -Dods’s, or it might be merely a tacit resolve to -drop him forthwith. The Edinburgh experience<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span> -repeated itself in Dumfries. Burns’s ill-repute in certain -quarters during his life and after his death was -not owing to his being a sinner above the other -Caledonians, but simply to his lack of the social -standing which enabled Kames and Braxfield and -Boswell to misbehave without penalty, and which -would have tempered the sting of his satirical outbursts.</p> - -<p>Occasional public drunken squabbles are not the -only evidence that during these last years Burns’s -nerves were often exacerbated. The loyal Syme -once undertook to rebuke him for some of his wild -doings and sayings. His language was too strong—telling -the story afterwards he admitted, ‘I may -have spoken daggers, but I meant none.’ The poet, -his face black with anger, fumbled with his sword-cane. -Syme, half laughing, half serious, exclaimed, -‘What! and in my own house, too!’ The conscience-stricken -Burns flung away the cane, burst into tears, -and positively grovelled in contrition on the flagstone -floor. It is not a pleasant scene, and though the -vividness with which it stayed in Syme’s memory is -indication enough that it was exceptional, it cannot -be ignored. No man, drunk or sober, whose nerves -were normal could have behaved so.</p> - -<p>Fortunately the vividness of Syme’s memory is not -the only proof that such conduct was exceptional. -Others besides Syme who were nearest to Burns in -his last years concur in their loyalty and affection. -At the end of 1790 Alexander Findlater reported to -his official superior, Supervisor Corbet, that Burns<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span> -was ‘an active, faithful & zealous officer’, gave ‘the -most unremitting attention to the duties of his office -(which, by the bye is more than I at first looked for -from so eccentric a Genius)’, and might ‘be considered -a credit to the profession’. And the judgment -which Findlater thus expressed at the beginning of -the poet’s Excise career he reaffirmed after his death. -Others testified to their regard in deeds as well as -words. Though Burns continued to display his life-long -preference for the company of extravagant and -<i>outré</i> sorts of people the best men in the Excise were -the ones who esteemed him most. John Lewars, for -example, brother of the Jessie of the songs, was a -man of some education, and above the level of the -common riding-officer. His father had been Collector -at Dumfries, and thus a man of standing in the -community. Burns called Lewars ‘a young fellow of -uncommon merit—indeed, by far the cleverest fellow -I have met with in this part of the world’, and -Lewars reciprocated the poet’s affection by service -to him and his family during his illness and after -his death. And that Burns’s long absence from duty -did not bear more heavily on him was due to the -kindness of Adam Stobbie, a young expectant who -throughout the spring of 1796 performed Burns’s -rounds without pay, that the poet might continue to -draw his full salary.</p> - -<p>Fortunately, too, Syme records bright passages -as well as dark in the last years. There were evenings -at Ryedale when they consumed more cups of tea -than bottles of wine, and when ‘Robin’s confounding<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span> -wit’ played as sharply as it ever did over a -punchbowl. In 1793 and 1794 there were brief excursions -with Burns into Kirkcudbright on which -the mercurial poet displayed every facet of his nature, -bursting into furious rage over a spoiled pair -of boots, fulminating brilliantly satirical epigrams -against the Earl of Galloway, announcing that he -would dine nowhere where he could not ‘eat like a -Turk, drink like a fish and swear like the Devil’, and -anon proving a decorous and fascinating houseguest -at St. Mary’s Isle, seat of the Earl of Selkirk, -whose son Lord Daer had given Burns his first -glimpse of the peerage. Burns still shrank from the -ordeal of encountering such exalted folk—‘I am -indeed ill at ease whenever I approach your Honorables -& Right Honorables’—though now for a different -reason. In 1786 the consciousness of his own -rusticity had been uppermost; in 1794 he did not -wish to be laid open either to a fresh snub or renewed -condescension. But his last recorded intercourse with -the peerage was as pleasant—and as dangerous—as -his first. The Earl of Selkirk was one of the few Scottish -peers who were Whigs at a time when all power -belonged to the Tories; thus meeting Burns on congenial -grounds he helped to draw him into the last -of his ill-advised meddlings with politics by interesting -him in the parliamentary campaign of Patrick -Heron of Heron. So to the last the peerage influenced -Burns against his own best interests. Nevertheless -this visit to St. Mary’s Isle is refutation -enough of the charge that in his last years Burns<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span> -had sunk so low that gentlefolk shunned him. The -man who so charmed the Earl’s young daughter, -Lady Mary Douglas, that she lent him a volume of -music and entered into correspondence about his -task of fitting Scottish airs with words, can scarcely -have been the social outcast some biographers have -portrayed. In fact, he strikingly resembles the man -who in 1787 swept the Duchess of Gordon off her -feet, and won the esteem of Lady Harriet Don and -the Dowager Countess of Glencairn.</p> - -<p>Despite their intimacy, it would be false to claim -that Syme shared all Burns’s interests. No one man -could do that. The very topic on which Burns and -Lady Mary found common ground was outside -Syme’s range. He never could understand what -Burns saw in the crude and half-literate James Johnson, -because he never understood the bond of fellowship -established by mutual devotion to Scottish folk-song. -Nevertheless, Syme was probably the closest -to Burns of all his Dumfries friends, and knew—as -certain impassioned defenders like Anna Dorothea -Benson could not—the worst as well as the best in -his later conduct. The man who noted that ‘Robin’s -temper is not cold and frugal’, and who did not hesitate -to record the sword-cane story and certain other -episodes, cannot be charged with allowing affection -to obscure the full truth about his friend. Hence -Syme’s deeds and words at the time of Burns’s death -give as reliable a verdict on the poet’s last years as -can now be reached.</p> - -<p>As Burns’s health failed in 1796 Syme watched<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span> -him with increasing anxiety. As long as he could he -hoped for recovery, but when the poet returned -from the Brow Well his ‘cadaverous aspect and -shaken frame’ told the truth which the doctors confirmed. -On July 17 Syme wrote to warn Cunningham -and to urge him to press their friend’s petition -to the Commissioners of Excise that they continue -his full salary. Two days later, when Syme called at -the little house in Mill Street, he saw the hand of -Death visibly fixed on Burns:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘I cannot dwell on the scene. It overpowers me—yet -gracious God were it thy will to recover him! He had life -enough to acknowledge me, and Mrs. Burns said he had -been calling on you and me continually. He made a -wonderful exertion when I took him by the hand. With a -strong voice he said, “I am much better today—I shall -soon be well again, for I command my spirits & my mind. -But yesterday I resigned myself to death.” Alas it will -not do.’</p> -</div> - -<p>Syme was already consulting with Patrick Miller, -John M’Murdo, Dr. Maxwell, and other Dumfries -friends to set measures afoot for the welfare of Jean -and the children; when he wrote again on the 21st, -shaken by the ‘variety of distressful emotions’ stirred -by Burns’s death, he gave further details of their -plans, and urged Cunningham to launch a similar -plan in Edinburgh and to see that a proper obituary -was prepared. Here Cunningham blundered. He -entrusted the obituary to George Thomson, and the -latter’s remark that Burns’s ‘extraordinary endowments<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span> -were accompanied with frailties which rendered -them useless to himself and his family’ roused -the Dumfries friends to indignation. ‘We were much -hurt at this,’ said Syme, ‘& reckoned it indelicate, if -not unfeelingly superfluous on that occasion.’</p> - -<p>These feelings were intensified by the appearance -in the London <i>Chronicle</i> of a longer article, also by -Thomson, which included assertions that Burns’s -‘talents were often obscured and finally impaired by -excess,’ that ‘his conduct and his fate afford[ed] but -too melancholy proofs’ of his possessing the failings -as well as the powers of genius, and that, ‘like his -predecessor Fergus[s]on, though he died at an early -age, his mind was previously exhausted.’ Thomson -had never been in Dumfries, and had never met -Burns. The friends in Dumfries who read his article -did not concur. Syme’s comment was brief and -pointed. These statements were ‘d——d illiberal lies’. -On that comment, by the man who knew him best -in his last years, the case for the defence of Burns -against the stories of his deterioration in Dumfries -may be allowed to rest.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="IV">IV</h2> -</div> - -<p class="ph2">WOMEN</p> - - -<p>Burns was twenty-six before he ever entered the -home of a woman sufficiently well-to-do to have -carpets on her floors. Though the last ten years of -his life included many friendships with ladies, his -basic ideas of the other sex were the fruit of the -peasant environment he was reared in. His sentiment -and chivalry were literary by-products; underneath -them was always the crude realism of the -Ayrshire countryfolk. In moments of stress it was -only too apt to come to the surface.</p> - -<p>The only subtlety the peasant women of Burns’s -youth could claim was that native to every daughter -of Eve. Schooling was too expensive to waste on -girls. The majority, like Agnes Broun, could not -write their own names; many could not even spell -out the Scriptures or the Psalms of David in metre. -Their fathers, their husbands, or the minister could -read the Bible to them, and thus they could obtain -the light of salvation at second hand. But this is -not to say that they knew no literature. In fact it -was only among an illiterate population that the -songs and ballads of popular tradition were living -realities. James Hogg’s mother spoke for her whole -class when she told Sir Walter Scott that he had -killed her ballads by writing them down. Learning<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span> -to read destroyed both the sense of reality in the -traditional literature and the retentiveness of memory -which made its transmission possible. Had -Betty Davidson, Agnes Broun, and Jean Armour -been literate women they would not have furnished -Burns with the mass of traditional literature he -owed to them.</p> - -<p>A girl’s real education in rural Scotland was obtained -in the kitchen, the dairy, and the fields. Almost -as soon as they could walk boys and girls alike -helped with the sheep and cattle and in all the work -of seedtime and harvest. As they grew older the girls -were trained more and more for the indoor duties of -which cooking was the smallest part. Most of the -clothing was made at home, from the carding and -spinning of the wool and flax to the sewing of the -finished webs into garments. Itinerant tailors made -the Sunday clothes of the men; all the rest was the -work of the women of the household. Add to these -activities the manifold duties of kitchen and dairy -and poultry yard and no peasant woman could have -reason to complain of lack of occupation. At harvest -time men and women alike turned out into the -fields, the men to mow with scythe and sickle, the -women and boys to bind and stack the sheaves and -to glean after the reapers.</p> - -<p>It was from these barefooted illiterate lasses that -Burns got his first experiences in love and his whole -simple theory of the relations of the sexes. Woman -as the peasant knows her, sharing his daily toil, is -not a superior being set apart for adoration. There<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span> -is no mystery about her except the endless mystery -of sex. There may be companionship and a more -intimate sharing of the man’s interests than women -of higher rank attain. But the peasant woman cannot -expect and does not get the graces of deference. -Burns’s attitude towards the girls of his class differed -in one respect only from that of any other possessive -young male. He was a poet, and from the very beginning -poetry and sex were inextricably mingled. -When as a fifteen-year-old boy he helped Nellie Kilpatrick -to bind sheaves in the harvest field, and experienced -the primitive coquetry which sought his -help in extracting nettle and thistle stings from her -fingers, his first impulses were those of any adolescent -just becoming conscious of desire. But the second -impulse was different. Unable to possess Nellie, -he made a song about her.</p> - -<p>As we have seen, courtship among the peasantry -was no private matter. Not only did everyone know -who was courting whom, but the aid of interested -friends was habitually enlisted in arranging trysts. -While still in his teens Burns displayed a command -of the written word—insufferably turgid though the -few surviving specimens of his early love-letters seem -to us—which made him the chosen secretary for his -less fluent cronies. He himself fell into love and out -again with ease and frequency. But his early sweethearts -are, like Nellie Kilpatrick, names and nothing -more. Burns’s statement that his relations with -women were entirely innocent until after he met -Richard Brown in 1781 is countered by Brown’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span> -charge that he was already fully initiated. As Henley -says, it is one man’s word against another’s; since -Burns was not in the habit of lying about his own -conduct we may believe him. Where, when, or with -whom his initiation took place is both uncertain -and unimportant. His own assertion that he ‘commenced -a fornicator’ with Betty Paton is subject to -the discount always to be charged against poetical -versions of prose facts. The certainty is that the -years following his return from Irvine were loaded -with emotional tension by three women—Elizabeth -Paton, Mary Campbell, and Jean Armour. Of the -three the one who has received the most attention -probably deserves the least.</p> - -<p>No glamour of romance shields Betty Paton. A -servant of his mother’s at Lochlie and Mossgiel, she -succumbed willingly enough to the advances of the -young farmer whom his father’s death had just released -from tutelage, and in due course bore him a -daughter in the spring of 1785. According to Gilbert -Burns, Robert wanted to marry her, but was dissuaded -by his family, who feared that her coarseness -would soon disgust him. Perhaps so, but the only -contemporary letter does not include matrimonial -desire among the feelings it hints at. After the first -embarrassment wore off and he and Betty had duly -stood thrice before the congregation of Mauchline -Kirk to be admonished for their sin, Burns brazened -it out to the scandal of his stricter neighbours, and -Betty accepted it resignedly, knowing that such accidents -would happen and that they need not necessarily<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span> -impair her future career. Part of her resignation, -however, may have been conviction that -Robert Burns had insufficient prospects to make -marriage worth fighting for. In the fall of 1786, -when the Kilmarnock <i>Poems</i> had supplied her erstwhile -lover with a little ready cash, Betty promptly -demanded maintenance for herself and her child. -In settling the claim Burns apparently had to pay -over rather more than half his profits, besides legally -binding himself for the complete support and education -of his daughter. When on December 1, 1786, -she signed with her mark the legal discharge of her -claim, Betty Paton disappeared from Burns’s life. -She was a merry lass; her lover had paid for his fun; -the account was closed—except for the black-eyed -little girl being reared by a long-suffering grandmother -at Mossgiel.</p> - -<p>Jean Armour’s case was different, though it commenced, -like Betty’s, in purely physical attraction. -To begin with, the status of the girls was different, -even though both were red-knuckled, barefooted -country lasses. Betty was merely a farm servant -whose family ties, whatever they were, were already -broken. Jean was the eighteen-year-old daughter of -James Armour, a well-to-do master-mason and contractor -in Mauchline. She was educated to the extent -of being able to read the Bible and write her -own name. The story of her first meeting with Burns -is probably legend, yet in spirit the anecdote is at -least partly true. Burns at a village dance, embarrassed -by a too-faithful collie which followed him<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span> -about the floor, remarked as he expelled the animal -that he wished he could find a lass to love him as -well as his dog did. Whether or not Jean actually -asked him a few days later, when he found her -bleaching linen on the green, if he had yet found -such a lass, the fact was that he had. From that -moment until his death Jean lavished upon him a -docile and much-enduring devotion which leaves -nothing derogatory in the comparison. She was playing -with fire and must have known it. The scandal -of Betty Paton was still fresh; Burns was a notorious -man, glorying in the reputation of village Lothario -and writing verses to warn the Mauchline belles how -devastating he was. Experience had convinced him -that all women are sisters under the skin—a dangerous -half-truth which made trouble for him when -he met women of another social level. They may all -be sisters under the skin, but not on it or outside it. -The fascination exerted so successfully over girls of -his own class was in fact disastrous training for subsequent -encounters with ladies. A lady may yield -to a lover like any peasant lass, but she expects some -finesse in his approach. But in the summer and -autumn of 1785 Burns seemed as likely to enter Edinburgh -drawing-rooms as to enter Parliament. He was -merely an unsuccessful tenant-farmer with a dangerous -talent for writing satirical verse and a dangerous -light in his eye when an attractive young -woman was in sight.</p> - -<p>Between the tradition of his first meeting with -Jean in 1785 and the beginning of surviving references<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span> -to the affair in February, 1786, its history is a -blank. On the surface Jean’s experience merely repeated -Betty Paton’s. She surrendered to Burns and -in due course endured the consequences. Yet on -Burns’s side the cases were not alike. However -brazenly he may have begun his courtship he soon -found that Jean roused deeper emotions than Betty -ever had. His first extant reference to the affair, -apart from verses in praise of Jean’s charms, was on -February 17th, 1786, when he told John Richmond—who -after a similar scrape had fled to Edinburgh—that -he had important news ‘not of the -most agreable’ with respect to himself. In other -words, Jean had told him she was pregnant. Entirely -on his own initiative Burns undertook to do -the right thing he had successfully avoided, or been -dissuaded from, doing for Betty Paton. Sometime -in March he gave Jean, if not marriage lines, at -least some written acknowledgement that she was -or would be his wife. That he acted in a certain glow -of self-righteousness is a fair deduction from the -violence of his subsequent reaction. Rab Mossgiel, -the village Lothario, had behaved like a man of -honour and expected due recognition of his conduct.</p> - -<p>The recognition he got was humiliating in the -extreme. The details can be reconstructed only by -inference from the result. Apparently Jean’s parents, -suspecting her condition, began to question her. -She produced Burns’s written pledge. A domestic -storm burst, not so much because Jean was to bear -Burns’s child as because he expected Jean to bear<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span> -his name. To James Armour an illegitimate grandchild -was preferable to such a son-in-law as Robert -Burns. Jean meekly surrendered her lines to her -father—throughout her life she was usually passive -in the hands of male authority—and Armour carried -the document to Burns’s patron and friend, Robert -Aiken, whom he persuaded to cut out the names. -Not the least extraordinary element in the affair is -the apparent belief of a successful lawyer that a contract -could be voided merely by mutilating the -written evidence. Armour’s desire publicly to humiliate -Burns was greater than his desire to protect his -daughter. He succeeded admirably. In the same -letter in which the poet told Gavin Hamilton that -the document was mutilated he declared he ‘had -not a hope or even a wish to make her mine after -her damnable conduct’, yet amid his execrations he -paused to invoke a blessing on his ‘poor once-dear -misguided girl’. The letter was the first of a series of -denunciations and repudiations of Jean much too -loud and too shrill to be convincing. They suggest -that Burns had to talk at the top of his voice to -maintain the degree of indifference which he felt -self-respect called for.</p> - -<p>Perhaps nothing in Burns’s whole life more completely -demonstrates the impossibility of judging -him and the society in which he was reared by the -standards of nineteenth-century middle-class respectability. -When James Armour learned that the -subscription for the Kilmarnock <i>Poems</i> was a success -he showed that, though unwilling that his daughter<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span> -should bear Burns’s name, he was quite willing she -should share Burns’s money. Accordingly he sued -out a writ <i>in meditatione fugae</i> to require Burns to -guarantee the support of Jean’s expected child. The -news reached Burns, probably from Jean herself, -and he acted promptly. By formal deed of assignment -he conveyed to Gilbert not only his share in -Mossgiel, but also the entire proceeds of his forthcoming -poems in consideration of Gilbert’s undertaking -to provide for Betty Paton’s child. Burns had -checkmated James Armour, and so doing had almost -evened the honours for ungenerous conduct. By -nineteenth-century standards his conduct was caddish, -but by the same standards Armour could have -done only one of two things—either expel his daughter -from his home, or protect her technical good -name by insisting upon marriage however distasteful -the prospective son-in-law was. But even by his own -standards Burns was acting ignobly. The man who -had written</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">‘But devil take the lousy loon</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Denies the bairn he got</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or leaves the merry lass he lov’d</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To wear a ragged coat,’</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>and who less than six weeks after the deed of assignment -eloquently reproached John Richmond for -neglecting his late mistress and future wife and her -baby daughter, was allowing spite to degrade him -below the standards of the class to which he belonged -by birth, and much further below the standards he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span> -had consciously set for himself. This was not acting -according to the example of Harley the Man of -Feeling. If the episode stood by itself it might be -easier to condone. Unfortunately it is merely the -first conspicuous incident in a series which includes -his remarks about Jean to Clarinda and Bob Ainslie, -his neglect of Jenny Clow, his attack upon dead -Mrs. Oswald of Auchencruive, and his lampoons of -Maria Riddell, and which justifies Henley’s phrase -that such things ‘roused the cad’ in Burns. Where -women were concerned, it was always too easy for -him to drop the thin cloak of acquired culture and -revert to his peasanthood.</p> - -<p>Alongside the Armour quarrel runs the mystery -of Mary Campbell. Burns himself began the mystery -by his curiously veiled allusions to the affair, -but the real work of obfuscation was done by biographers -who erected upon exiguous foundations of -fact an ornate superstructure of legend.</p> - -<p>The exact date at which Burns composed the -‘Jolly Beggars’ is uncertain—if it was really written -after a slumming frolic with John Richmond it must -have been in 1785—but the closing episode is either -autobiography or prophecy. The Bard, whose sentiments -in the closing chorus are definitely Burns’s -own, is depicted with a doxy upon either arm. After -the stormy spring and summer of 1786 Burns confessed -to Robert Aiken that he had plunged into all -sorts of riot, Mason meetings, and dissipation, to -distract his mind from the humiliation of the Armour -affair. What form his dissipation took may<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span> -reasonably be guessed not only from Burns’s own -temperament but from human nature in general. -Yet nothing about his relation with Mary Campbell -is free of doubt. All that can definitely be proved is -that there was a servant-lass of that name to whom -Burns apparently addressed certain lyrics and to -whom he certainly gave a pair of Bibles bearing -peculiar inscriptions. It is useless to rehearse the -endless controversy between the romantics to whom -Mary Campbell was a Lily Maid of Astolat and the -realists to whom she was just another girl who -couldn’t say no. But a few facts must be underscored. -The critical analysis of the legend made with caustic -humour by Henley in 1896 and subsequently elaborated -by Professor Snyder has never been rebutted -nor even answered. The scripture texts Burns wrote -on the fly-leaves of that Bible are such as would -have been chosen by a man to whom a frightened -girl was appealing for protection and who was impulsively -promising it on his word of honour as a -man and a Mason. That he also sang Mary’s praises -as ‘Highland Lassie’ and in another lyric asked—for -poetic effect at least—if she would go to the Indies -with him means little, if anything. The enthusiasts -prefer to forget that during the same summer Burns -said farewell to Eliza Miller in a lyric quite as fervid -as any of those addressed to Mary.</p> - -<p>Out of the mass of legend and conjecture the only -solid facts which emerge are that during this spring -of 1786 Burns was having some sort of a love affair -with Mary; that she left Ayrshire in May, and that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span> -she died in the early autumn. Burns may have -turned to her for consolation after the breach with -Jean; the affairs may have been simultaneous. Most -biographers incline to the sequel theory on the -naïve assumption that love affairs, unlike electric -batteries, are always mounted in series and never in -parallel. In view of the social attitude of the Ayrshire -peasantry the question of whether or not Mary -was technically chaste is both metaphysical and -irrelevant. Burns’s attitude toward the other sex -was direct; perhaps the strongest argument for -Mary’s chastity would be the complete lack of reference -to her in his contemporary letters, were it -not for his subsequent description of her as ‘as -charming a girl as ever blessed a man with generous -love’. Burns ordinarily meant such expressions in -the most literal sense. Despite the evidence in the -Bibles that he had tried again to do the right thing -it is hard to believe that in retrospect Mary would -have touched him any more deeply than Jenny -Clow or Anne Park later did had it not been for her -untimely death. She certainly meant little in May -and June of 1786. In the same month in which he -gave her the Bible he composed the long and bawdy -‘Court of Equity’; throughout the summer his letters -to his intimates mingle execration, devotion, -and regret for Jean Armour in precisely the same -tones he had used in April. A man who had really -found an adequate new love might be supposed to -speak of the old one as Burns had spoken of Peggy -Thomson in 1784. Resentment of the Armours’ conduct<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span> -might explain the execration, but hardly the -regret and certainly not the devotion. If Burns really -intended to make a new start in Jamaica with Mary -Campbell, it is strange indeed that he never hinted -of it to his friends—unless we accept the tradition, -reported at second hand from John Richmond, that -Mary was a light-skirts whose character Richmond -and some other friends exposed to the poet. In that -case, he would have had good reason for silence.</p> - -<p>When in October he summed up his situation in -a long letter to Robert Aiken it was still Jean who -was the cause of his secret wretchedness and who -was the source of ‘the pang of disappointment, the -sting of pride, with some wandering stabs of remorse’. -The sole passage in the letter which Snyder -thought might apply to Mary—‘I have seen something -of the storm of mischief thickening over my -folly-devoted head’—may now be interpreted as referring -instead to the disconcerting reappearance of -Betty Paton as a claimant for support. The sole evidence -surviving from 1786, apart from Burns’s lyrics, -is his sister’s story, told many years after his death, -that one day in October he received a letter which -he read with a look of agony and then crushed into -his pocket as he silently left the house. Connecting -this story with Burns’s later statement that ‘a malignant -fever hurried my dear girl to her grave before -I could even hear of her illness’, biographers have -assumed that the painful letter bore the news of -Mary’s death. But this, even granting perfect reliability -to Isabella Begg’s memory, is pure assumption.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span> -Burns’s sole references to her were written from -three to five years after the supposed event. With -one exception they were intended for the mystification -rather than the enlightenment of Robert Riddell -and George Thomson. That exception is the -composition of ‘Thou Lingering Star’ and the letter -to Mrs. Dunlop which accompanied it—both of -them written in a neurotic state close to complete -nervous breakdown. The Highland Mary we know -is the creation of biographers, and should be suffered -to abide in the Never-Never Land of romance. -The truth about the Burns of flesh and blood had -better be sought in his relations with flesh and -blood women.</p> - -<p>In these relations there were three main degrees. -The foremost group consists of women who profoundly -stirred him, and on whom for a time at -least he concentrated his intellect and his affections -as well as his desires. In this group belong Jean -Armour, Margaret Chalmers, Clarinda, and probably -Maria Riddell. Next come the women who -engaged his passing fancy, and for whom he felt -some tenderness, but who did not influence him -deeply or long. Among these are Betty Paton, Anne -Park, Jean Lorimer, and Jessie Lewars. A woman -who appealed to Burns on either of these bases need -not have been his mistress; in fact, only three of those -named ever yielded to him. But below these was a -third group, represented by Meg Cameron and -Jenny Clow, who were mistresses and nothing -more—the mere conveniences of the moment. These<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span> -last never roused even a momentary spark of poetry -in their lover. Judged purely on the basis of literary -by-product, Mary Campbell belongs in the second -group, but not in the first. Even her most ardent -champion might hesitate to assert that any lyric -addressed to her is the equal of ‘Ae fond kiss’ or ‘Of -a’ the airts’. Jessie Lewars and Jean Lorimer both -inspired better songs than Mary ever did.</p> - -<p>But Burns’s tenderness, even for the women who -meant most to him, was often of a peculiar sort. -Though he told Deborah Davies that ‘Woman is the -blood-royal of life; let there be slight degrees of -precedency among them, but let them all be sacred’, -his practice was more accurately summarized -in what he said about love in confiding to George -Thomson his admiration for Jean Lorimer:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘... I am a very Poet in my enthusiasm of the Passion.—The -welfare & happiness of the beloved Object, is -the <i>first & inviolate</i> sentiment that pervades my soul; & -whatever pleasures I might wish for, or whatever might -be the raptures they would give me, yet, if they interfere -& clash with that <i>first</i> principle, it is having these pleasures -at a dishonest price; & Justice forbids, & Generosity -disdains the purchase!—As to the herd of the Sex, who -are good for little or nothing else, I have made no such -agreement with myself; but where the Parties are capable -of, & the Passion is, the true Divinity of love—the man -who can act otherwise than as I have laid down, is a -Villain!—’</p> -</div> - -<p>One fears that Burns remained on these chivalrous -heights only when the woman was unattainable;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span> -should she yield to him, she would too readily take -her place among ‘the herd of the Sex’. Certainly he -freely discussed his loves not only among his male -friends but with a patroness like Mrs. Dunlop. -When, for instance, after his conquering hero’s return -to Mauchline in June, 1787, the Armours bade -him welcome and Jean succumbed once more, he -lost no time in reporting the victory to Smith and -Ainslie. To put it briefly, beneath the veneer of -sentiment, beneath even the poetic response, Burns’s -attitude towards women of his own age was the elemental -possessiveness which regards sex primarily -as a ribald jest. His sincerest tenderness belonged to -no woman as deeply as it did to his children, however -or wherever begotten.</p> - -<p>Burns never revealed more truly his own feelings -than in the ‘Poet’s Welcome to his Bastart Wean’ -which hailed the birth of his eldest child, Betty -Paton’s daughter. Its mixture of bawdry with affection, -of rollicking defiance of the unco guid with exultant -pride in paternity, may distress the tender-minded -who prefer not to admit the existence in -parental relations of even a sublimated carnality, -but it is the very essence of Burns himself. His plainest -expressions of his love for his children occur not -in letters to women but in letters to his most intimate -male friends, and often amid flagrant ribaldry. It -was not to Mrs. Dunlop that he wrote that Jean’s -first twins ‘awakened a thousand feelings that thrill, -some with tender pleasure and some with foreboding -anguish, thro’ my soul’; it was to Robert Muir, companion<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span> -of his revels and recipient of broad jests. -Robert Aiken was told that the feelings of a father -outweighed in Burns all the sound reasoning and all -the bitter memories that joined in urging him to -carry through the Jamaica project. ‘God bless them, -poor little dears!’ he exclaimed to John Richmond -on reporting the birth of the twins. Such remarks to -men before whom he had no motive for acting a -part, are more convincing proof of real feelings than -are the dissertations, garnished with quotations from -James Thomson’s dramas, on parental anxieties in -his letters to Mrs. Dunlop.</p> - -<p>Especially notable is the letter he wrote to Bob -Ainslie on August 1, 1787, in response to the latter’s -announcement of the birth of an illegitimate son. -Beginning, ‘Give you joy, give you joy, my dear -brother!’ he goes on to say that he has ‘double -health and spirits at the news’, and to welcome -Ainslie to ‘the society, the venerable Society of -Fathers’. There follow eight lines of the metrical -version of Psalm 127, obviously quoted with as much -sincerity as when he later used it, in quite different -context, in writing to John M’Auley. He continues, -‘My ailing child is got better, and the Mother is -certainly in for it again, and Peggy [Meg Cameron] -will bring me a half Highlandman’, and announces -his intention of getting a farm, bringing them all -up in fear of the Lord and of a good oak stick, and -of being the happiest man alive. Then the letter -shifts to snatches of bawdy song, some quoted, others -apparently impromptu. This primitive joy in paternity,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span> -this exultation over the mere fact of birth, -whether the child was his own or another’s, was -part of his heritage from the Scottish soil. The same -spirit shows three years later in his reply to -Mrs. Dunlop’s news that her widowed daughter -Mrs. Henri had borne a posthumous son:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘... I literally, <i>jumped for joy</i>—how could such a -mercurial creature as a Poet, lumpishly keep his seat on -the receipt of the best news from his best Friend—I seized -my gilt-headed Wangee rod, an instrument indispensably -necessary in my left hand in the moment of Inspiration & -Rapture—and stride—stride—quick & quicker—out -skipt I among the broomy banks of Nith to muse over my -joy by retail.’</p> -</div> - -<p>Nor did his paternal emotions dissipate themselves -in rejoicings over birth. Testimony abounds of his -devotion to his children, his concern over their -proper education, his anxiety for their futures. -James Gray on evening visits in Dumfries found him -explaining poetry to the eldest boy and hearing him -recite his lessons; Maria Riddell was impressed by -his constant devotion to the children’s welfare. But -towards their mothers, once the fancy had passed, -he was indifferent. ‘I am very sorry for it, but what -is done is done’, he said of Meg Cameron, and -though Clarinda’s rebuke stung him into something -like remorse for his treatment of Jenny Clow, even -there his last thought was for his son: ‘I would have -taken my boy from her long ago, but she would -never consent.’ The one possible exception to his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span> -generalization was Jean Armour, but Jean’s later -history belongs elsewhere, beside Clarinda’s.</p> - -<p>In brief, Burns’s experience among women up to -his departure for Edinburgh had made him the -‘magerfu’’ man Sentimental Tommy had longed to -be. His love-making might involve him in tangles -which he was neither astute nor callous enough to -avoid, but he had found his attraction enhanced by -his reputation as a dangerous man. He had learned -the value of aggressiveness; he had not learned -finesse. When he met ladies his lack sooner or later -became painfully evident.</p> - -<p>Among women of the upper classes he was at his -best in association with those whose interest was -motherly rather than actually or potentially amorous. -Before going to Edinburgh he had charmed -middle-aged Mrs. Stewart of Stair as well as mature -Mrs. Lawrie, wife of the minister of Loudoun, and -had begun with Mrs. Dunlop a correspondence -which ended only on his deathbed. In its progress -this friendship reveals much of what was best in his -relations with women; in the estrangement which -interrupted it it reveals also his shortcomings. Since, -moreover, it is the only one of his friendships in -which both sides of the correspondence have been -preserved, no guess-work is required in tracing its -rise and decline.</p> - -<p>Frances Anna Wallace Dunlop belonged by both -birth and marriage to the old landed gentry of Scotland, -and claimed collateral descent from Sir William -Wallace. In the autumn of 1786 her mind was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span> -‘in a state which, had it long continued my only -refuge would inevitably have been a mad-house or -a grave; nothing interested or amused me; all -around me served to probe a wound whose recent -stab was mortal to my peace, and had already -ruined my health and benumbed my senses.’ Grief -at her husband’s recent death had something to do -with it, but the chief wound was her eldest son’s extravagance -and marital scandals. About the beginning -of November a copy of the Kilmarnock -<i>Poems</i> reached her and her reading of them—significantly -enough it was ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ -and other poems based on the genteel tradition of -eighteenth-century poetry that won her admiration—roused -her to fresh interest in life. ‘The poignancy -of your expression’, as she put it, ‘soothed my -soul.’ To one reading her letters without reference -to her age she often sounds like a decrepit and almost -dying woman. Actually when she began writing -to Burns she was only fifty-six, and she outlived -him by nineteen years. She opened the correspondence -with an order for six copies of the poems; the -flattered poet could scrape together only five, which -he dispatched with a complimentary letter that included -the news that he was planning a second -edition in Edinburgh. Mrs. Dunlop immediately -elected herself one of his chief advisers, and among -other things suggested that in revising his poems he -should avoid describing her great ancestor as ‘unhappy -Wallace’ and should make the Twa Dogs sit -down more decorously. Later she offered the two<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span> -most inept of all the recorded plans for the poet’s -future. In February, 1787, she proposed that he -should use the proceeds of his Edinburgh subscription -to buy a commission in the army. The man -who wrote ‘I murder hate by field or flood’ and -whose dislike for ‘the lobster-coated puppies’ of the -army more than once got him into hot water would -have cut a strange figure in any officers’ mess. On -April 1, 1789, she suggested his applying for the -newly established Professorship of Agriculture at -Edinburgh University. The self-taught peasant -would have cut a still stranger figure as the colleague -of Robertson, Cullen, and Blair.</p> - -<p>The history of the first few months of his friendship -with Mrs. Dunlop reveals how far Burns was -from understanding the finer points of etiquette. To -begin with he ignored her suggestions for altering his -poems. True, he could do nothing else. Her advice -was merely typical of what genteel Scotland thought -about his work. To accept all emendations would -have reduced his poems to namby-pamby; to accept -some and reject others would have doubly -offended those whose criticism he ignored. But he -should have explained this to Mrs. Dunlop, and did -not. Her vexation at the discovery was intensified by -an innocent blunder he made in arranging for the delivery -of copies she had ordered for her stepmother, the -dowager Lady Wallace of Craigie. The copies went -instead to the estranged wife of her eldest son, also a -Lady Wallace but regarded by her mother-in-law as -the worst blemish the family tree had ever suffered.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span></p> - -<p>Their relations were first put on a really cordial -basis when Burns visited her at Dunlop House in -July, 1787. Annoyance at his social blunders evaporated -before the charm of his personality, and -thereafter the correspondence on both sides took a -new tone of affection and esteem. Her interest in -Burns was generous and motherly. She plied him -with good advice, which he generally ignored, and -frequently added substantial help with both money -and influence. Towards her Burns seems to have -felt as many a man does towards his mother—she -bored him but he loved her. She often accused him, -no doubt justly, of not reading her letters. They -were long, tedious, and wholly unpunctuated; he -probably glanced over them when they arrived and -then laid them aside for more careful reading at a -leisure hour which never came. But though he seldom -answered her questions he took her unreservedly -into his confidence—or almost unreservedly. -He never did more than hint about Clarinda, but -he told her everything about Jean. In fact he -must have told almost too much; it is hard otherwise -to explain his embarrassment over breaking -the news that he had finally married the girl who -had borne him ‘twice twins in seventeen months’.</p> - -<p>By the beginning of 1788 the friendship was so -firmly established as to survive a most humiliating -incident. When he visited Dunlop House on his way -back from Edinburgh in February his reception was -warm and flattering. Mrs. Dunlop’s unmarried -daughters were agog with admiration. Miss Rachel<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span> -was hard at work on a painting of his muse, Coila, -as to whose appearance she sought the poet’s expert -advice. Miss Keith discussed poetry with him and -revealed the somewhat surprising fact that she had -never read Gray. Before he left he had promised to -lend the ladies his copy of Spenser, a recent gift from -William Dunbar of Edinburgh. When a few days -later he fulfilled his promise he added to the parcel -a copy of Gray as a present for Miss Keith, only to -learn that a plebeian poet must not presume too far. -Mrs. Dunlop replied that she did not allow her -daughter to receive presents from men who were -not members of her own family, and proposed either -to return the whole book or at most to permit -Miss Keith to tear out the pages containing the -poems she liked best. That Burns continued in -friendship with Mrs. Dunlop after this rebuff is eloquent -proof of the esteem in which he held her; he -had lampooned others of the gentry for less.</p> - -<p>Not that this was the only time when Mrs. Dunlop -made him conscious of the difference in their -ranks. Her occasional gift of a five-pound note, -though usually tactfully designated as for some -special purpose or occasion, always hurt his pride—the -more so because he could not deny that he -needed the money. He silently drew the line, however, -when she proposed, in one of those fits of -economy which sometimes afflict the well-to-do, -that he help to sell some decorative fringe which she -had been manufacturing. Over this as over others -of his sins of omission she displayed an irritability<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span> -more like a schoolgirl’s than a grandmother’s; most -schoolgirlish in its evanescence. A thorough scolding -which sounded like a total breach of relations would -be countered by some new poems or new compliments -from Burns, and her next letter would contain -a five-pound note for the latest baby.</p> - -<p>Though as Burns became more heavily burdened -with labour and responsibility his letters grew -shorter and fewer than at the peak of the correspondence -during the summer of 1788, no serious -rift appeared until December, 1792. When it came -it was the result of Burns’s pride working in combination -with his want of tact. Among the servants -on Mrs. Dunlop’s estate was a milkmaid named -Jenny Little, whom Burns’s success had inspired to -burst into rime. Burns had already endured a good -deal of her output, both from manuscripts sent to -him by Mrs. Dunlop and from a pilgrimage of -adoration which Jenny had made to Ellisland in -1790—an unsuccessful pilgrimage, for she had found -the poet laid up with a broken arm and in no mood -for entertaining an aspiring poetess. When Burns -reached Dunlop in 1792 he found his patroness’s interest -in her protégée still unshaken. With her assistance -Jenny had recently printed her poems, and -Mrs. Dunlop produced the volume with the request -that Burns give his opinion of certain of the verses -which she pointed out. He said, ‘Do I have to read -all those?’ in a tone which she afterwards described -as the equivalent of a slap in the face.</p> - -<p>It was supreme tactlessness. Burns was bored and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span> -showed it. A more politic man would have waded -through the verses however much his jaw might -ache with suppressed yawns. But boredom was not -the worst aspect of the incident from Burns’s point -of view: his pride was wounded. Of all his patrons -in the upper ranks of society Mrs. Dunlop alone -had kept up her interest in him and had appeared to -treat him as an equal. Now she unconsciously revealed -that she saw no <i>essential</i> difference between -his writing and Jenny Little’s. To her he was after -all merely a peasant poet with the accent on the -adjective; the difference between him and Jenny -Little was a difference in degree and not in kind. -Both wrote in dialect; she failed to see that one -wrote Scots poetry and the other Scots twaddle.</p> - -<p>The incident illustrates once more what Maria -Riddell meant when she described Burns as devoid -in great measure of refinement and social graces. -The abrupt and masterful manner, successful with -the girls of his own original class, sooner or later -annoyed other ladies besides the Duchess of Gordon. -Mrs. Dunlop, however, did not allow her vexation -to cause an immediate coolness; she contented herself -with a lengthy silence followed by an explanation -of her reasons for being offended. Yet when -the real break came two years later Burns’s unbridled -tongue and pen were again at fault. -Mrs. Dunlop heartily disapproved of his sympathy -with the French Revolution, and had warned him -more than once to drop the subject in his letters. -Inasmuch as four of her sons and one grandson<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span> -were or had been in the army and two of her daughters -were married to French royalist refugees, Burns -should have known that her sympathies would be -Tory. Yet in face of her warnings he wrote in January, -1794, the most outspoken of all his political -remarks, describing Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette -as a perjured blockhead and an unprincipled -prostitute who had met their deserved fate at the -hangman’s hands, and adding a guarded hope that -revolutionary principles might have more scope in -England. This time Mrs. Dunlop broke off the correspondence. -Though Burns made two attempts -during the next year to reopen it, she maintained -dogged silence until his pathetic letter of farewell, -written on his deathbed, at last broke down her reserve. -Her letter of reconciliation was almost the -last message which reached him before his death. -For a century charitable biographers conjectured -that the estrangement must have been due to the -lady’s hearing reports that Burns was living an -evil life in Dumfries. The recovery of the complete -text of his letter of January, 1794, revealed the -simple truth that the breach resulted from nothing -more serious than a failure in tact. There, as always, -his trouble came because he had not taken heed to -his ways, that he offend not with his tongue.</p> - -<p>The same trouble underlay his relations with -other women of a rank above his own—Margaret -Chalmers, Agnes M’Lehose, and Maria Riddell, -though in different ways and different degrees. With -Margaret Chalmers, indeed, he maintained for a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span> -couple of years the nearest approach he ever made -to a non-flirtatious friendship with a woman of his -own age, but of the three just named this clever -daughter of a gentleman farmer in Ayrshire was the -least removed in station from himself. Unfortunately, -only Burns’s side of the correspondence survives, -and that in fragments. Apparently it began, -as usual, with love-making, but when Margaret -gently put a stop to that—probably by telling Burns -that she was already engaged to Lewis Hay, whom -she married in 1788—their relation ripened into a -genuine friendship which produced what Cromek -rightly called some of the best letters Burns ever -wrote. The poet took her unreservedly into his confidence -about his troubles with Creech and his -anxiety over his future, so that his three or four letters -to her during the height of his correspondence -with Clarinda come like a breath of bleak but pure -air in that hothouse atmosphere. But the friendship -ended, apparently through Burns’s neglect. Two -years after her marriage he sent regards to her -through another friend, and called himself a wretch -for not writing her, but seemingly he could not -write when he felt that his confidences might be -shared with her husband. An estranged husband -would not have mattered, as his flirtation with Agnes -M’Lehose proved.</p> - -<p>The Clarinda episode has more prominence in -most accounts of Burns than it deserves. In its beginning -and growth it was in fact quite untypical -of the man—his one intensive effort to act a part<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span> -not natural to him. Its development in this way was -mainly the result of the accident which threw him -back on letter-writing instead of speech in conducting -his suit. Agnes M’Lehose when Burns met her -was a plump young matron about his own age. -Born Agnes Craig of Glasgow and a relative of one -of the Lords of Session, she had married in romantic -haste at the age of seventeen a young lawyer named -James M’Lehose, and when Burns met her had already -had eleven years of leisure to repent. Her -husband, after abusing and neglecting her and getting -into debt and disgrace, had at last been exiled -by indignant relatives to Jamaica—that tropical -refuge for Britons who had made their native climate -too hot for them. His wife, trying to rear three sickly -children on a microscopic annuity, had turned for -consolation to literature and religion. In the latter -she had espoused under the dynamic preaching of -the Rev. John Kemp the strictest tenets of Calvinism; -in the former she had familiarized herself with -the most elegant authors of the day and had taken -to versifying occasionally with the fluency and inaccuracy -prevalent among women poets prior to -Christina Rossetti and Emily Brontë. Like most of -Edinburgh in 1787 she had been eager to meet -Burns. When at last she did so at a tea-party given -by her friend, Miss Erskine Nimmo, she and Burns -became so visibly absorbed in each other as to -rouse the amusement of the other guests. The poet’s -experiences hitherto with young women of the -upper classes had been disappointing. They were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span> -polite and attentive, but reserved. Here at last was -an indubitable lady, and a young and attractive one -at that, who displayed something like the enthusiastic -attention he had been accustomed to receive -from the belles of Mauchline. Before the tea was -over Burns had accepted Mrs. M’Lehose’s invitation -to a party of her own. If ever a woman threw -herself at a man’s head Agnes M’Lehose did, and -Burns was not the man to refuse such a challenge. -A letter to Richard Brown in the early days of his -infatuation leaves no doubt that he thought he had -made a conquest; but he had reckoned without -Clarinda’s Calvinism and her social traditions.</p> - -<p>The affair might have spent itself in a passing -flirtation had not chance, in the form of a drunken -driver who overturned a coach and dislocated the -poet’s knee, confined him to his room for several -weeks. His note explaining and deploring his inability -to attend the tea-party was answered by -one offering sympathy and regret. Burns and -Mrs. M’Lehose both wielded free-flowing pens; their -correspondence rapidly gained momentum and fervour. -By the third exchange of letters she felt it her -duty to remind him that she was a married woman. -The result may or may not have been what she intended. -Assuring her that his intentions were strictly -honourable Burns seized the opportunity to express -far more ardent chivalry and devotion than he -would probably have ventured on had she been -free. In reply she suggested their writing under Arcadian -pseudonyms—no doubt as evidence of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span> -strictly Platonic nature of their sentiments; displayed -her acquaintance with <i>The Spectator</i> by calling herself -Clarinda; and suggested Sylvander for Burns. -Having thus safely wrapped their correspondence in -asbestos they relaxed in a vapour-bath of emotion.</p> - -<p>Less than three weeks after Burns’s accident he -was assuring Clarinda that she was a gloriously -amiable fine woman and was promising life-long -devotion. But he was not admitting her as yet into -his inner doubts and perplexities. Margaret Chalmers -was the only woman who shared those. In fact -both Sylvander and Clarinda seemed to have reserved -their more intimate communications for -personal speech. Apparently not until their long-deferred -second meeting in January did Burns tell -her about Jean and his children and Clarinda give -him the whole tale of her unhappy marriage. She -also sought in both speech and writing to convert -him to Mr. Kemp’s particular brand of Calvinism. -But here even at the height of his infatuation she -failed. The most she got was a partial recantation of -his liking for the heroic qualities of Milton’s Satan.</p> - -<p>So long as communication was limited to pen and -ink the affair for Burns was little more than a literary -exercise. After they began to meet it became -different and, in its effects on him, worse. Physical -nearness could not fail to stir a man of his temperament. -Soon their conversation was supplemented by -caresses which Clarinda, however, managed to keep -within bounds. As a result, Burns left these interviews -with his blood at fever heat. A servant-girl<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span> -named Jenny Clow, successor to the Meg Cameron -of the previous winter, provided the consummation -which Clarinda denied, and in due course added -yet another to his growing list of paternal, legal, -and emotional perplexities.</p> - -<p>Clarinda was of course unaware of Jenny’s existence, -but she soon had other reasons for being uncomfortable. -Edinburgh was not a city in which a -gentlewoman could be indiscreet and get away with -it. More than a dozen years later Euphemia Boswell -told Joseph Farington that Edinburgh’s chief drawback -was that everybody knew all his neighbours’ -affairs. The poet’s visits to the Potterrow were freely -discussed. Lord Craig heard of them and was annoyed -by his kinswoman’s indiscretion; the Rev. -Mr. Kemp heard of them and felt it his duty to admonish -his parishioner. When Clarinda confided -these troubles to Burns they of course roused him to -new fervours of knight-errantry. Moreover, other -agitations were intensifying the emotional stress of -the love affair. A great lady named Mrs. Stewart -who was expected to help his Excise project chose -to lecture him on the error of his ways; rumours -were afloat that William Creech was insolvent; -above all there was bad news from Mauchline. -Jean’s parents had this time chosen the heavy -melodramatic role and had bidden their erring -daughter not to darken their doors again. She was -being sheltered by friendly Mrs. Muir of Tarbolton -Mill, but her future was black. In these circumstances -it is unjust in the extreme to judge Burns’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span> -conduct by the cool standards of sobriety and sanity. -The man was in such a state of frenzy that he cannot -be held accountable for his words nor even for all -his actions.</p> - -<p>What had begun as a flirtation and had continued, -in part at least, as a piece of play-acting had by -the middle of February become an imbroglio. Burns -and Clarinda, both of them sentimentalists whose -roused emotions were stronger than their reason, had -gone so far that they could no longer regard their -relations as simple friendship. By the time Burns set -out on the 18th for Mauchline by way of Glasgow -he had indulged in a perfect delirium of sentiment -and rash vows. If he had not actually pledged himself -to wait until James M’Lehose should be considerate -enough to die and leave Clarinda free to marry -Sylvander it at least appears that she expected him -to wait. Meanwhile they were to write to each other -every day.</p> - -<p>The artificial and hothouse nature of the affair is -fully demonstrated by the change which came over -Burns’s letters as soon as removal from Edinburgh -plunged him into the chilly air of everyday. The -promise of a daily letter was the first to fail. Burns -reached Glasgow on the evening of the 18th to find -Richard Brown awaiting him at the Black Bull Inn -in the company of young William Burns, who had -ridden up from Mauchline with his brother’s horse. -Before settling to a convivial evening Burns managed -to dispatch a hurried note to Clarinda, but it -was four days before he found time to write again.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span> -His next letter shows how effectively those four days -had brought him back from a sentimental dream-world -to crude reality. Doubtless William had -brought the latest bulletins about Jean, but no hint -of them was passed on to Clarinda. A feverish day of -entertainment among the prosperous weavers of -Paisley was followed by two days of more decorous -pleasure at Dunlop House and then by another wild -bout at Kilmarnock. The letter from Kilmarnock is -devoted mainly to a broadly humorous account of -his Paisley host’s troubles with a daughter who had -been to boarding school, a son who wanted a latchkey, -and himself who thought it better to re-marry -than to burn. Not a word about Jean, scarcely a -word about worthy Mrs. Dunlop and none about -artistic Miss Rachel and poetic Miss Keith—in -short, just such a letter as Burns might have written -to Bob Ainslie or Alexander Cunningham, and in -comparison with all the previous Clarinda correspondence -as inappropriate as Falstaff in love.</p> - -<p>But this letter jars on the reader only because it is -wrong in its context. Two which he wrote after his -arrival at Mauchline on the 23rd jar for a different -reason. Only one of these, however, was to Clarinda. -She had given him a couple of little shirts for Baby -Robert, who was being cared for at Mossgiel. As -soon as he had delivered these and seen his family, -Burns set off to interview ‘a certain woman’ at Tarbolton -Mill. ‘I am disgusted with her; I cannot endure -her! I, while my heart smote me for the prophanity, -tried to compare her with my Clarinda:<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span> -’twas setting the expiring glimmer of a farthing taper -beside the cloudless glory of the meridian sun. Here -was tasteless insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and mercenary -fawning; there, polished good sense, heaven-born -genius, and the most generous, the most delicate, -the most tender Passion. I have done with her -and she with me.’</p> - -<p>Of the many things in Burns’s life which might -better have been left unsaid or undone this letter -might claim first place were it not for the one he -wrote to Bob Ainslie ten days later. Here he describes -his reconciliation with Jean. What makes this -letter revolting is not so much its biological detail as -the realization that the alleged events which Burns -describes occurred less than a fortnight before Jean’s -confinement. On March 3 she again bore her lover -twins, who did not live even long enough to be -baptized. Still worse, if it is true, is his assertion that -he had sworn Jean ‘privately and solemnly never to -attempt any claim on me as a husband, even though -anybody should persuade her she had such a claim, -which she has not, neither during my life nor after -my death. She did all this like a good girl....’ -Here, however, it is more than possible that he was -talking brazenly for Ainslie’s edification; Henley’s -doubt that Mrs. Armour could have been reconciled -to her daughter without a promise of marriage seems -well founded. Moreover the statement proves that -by this time, whatever he may have thought in 1786, -Burns realized that the destruction of the original marriage -lines had not necessarily voided the contract.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span></p> - -<p>Whatever he said or did at his first interview with -Jean he must, before he returned to Edinburgh in -March, have made up his mind that sooner or later -he would acknowledge Jean as his wife. The letters -to Clarinda during the remaining two weeks of his -absence were noticeably lacking in fervour. They -contained, however, more news about his personal -affairs, especially the doubts and uncertainties that -still kept him hesitating between farming and the -Excise, than any of the earlier ones did. An unsolved -mystery in his life is the nature of his relations with -Clarinda during the fortnight he spent in Edinburgh -in March. To the modern reader with full knowledge -of the facts the fervour of his latest letters seems -still more forced and artificial than before, but it -may be questioned if this truth was equally obvious -to Clarinda. Indeed their final meeting, at which -Burns presented her with a pair of drinking-glasses, -a poem, and an inscribed copy of Young’s ‘Night -Thoughts’, clearly had enough romantic intensity to -satisfy even Clarinda. Herein lies the mystery. The -later developments prove that Burns had told her -nothing of his reconciliation with Jean, yet Burns -was not a man who could ordinarily act a part convincingly. -This time he must have tried. The results, -combined with anxiety over livelihood, are displayed -in a letter of March 20, in which he told -Richard Brown that worry over his lease, ‘racking -shop accounts’ with Creech, ‘together with watching, -fatigue, and a load of care almost too heavy for -my shoulders, have in some degree actually fever’d<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span> -me.... These eight days, I have been positively -crazed.’</p> - -<p>He returned to Mauchline on the 22d to receive -his six weeks of Excise instructions, publicly to acknowledge -Jean as his wife, and incidentally to compose -a formula whereby to explain his action to his -friends and patrons:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘I had a long and much-loved fellow creature’s happiness -or misery in my determination, and I durst not trifle -with so important a deposite.’</p> -</div> - -<p>This statement with only slight variations he used to -half-a-dozen different correspondents. Whether he -used it to Clarinda or not is uncertain; he may have -entrusted Ainslie with the delicate task of breaking -the news. However the news reached her, it quite -naturally angered her. If Burns wrote it to her she -destroyed the letter, and we know that he destroyed -her reply calling him a Villain and accusing him of -perfidious treachery. When he visited Edinburgh -again in February, 1789, she refused to see him and -told Ainslie that she intended to keep away from her -windows while he was in town lest she catch a -glimpse of him in the street.</p> - -<p>In the fall of 1791, however, she had a chance to -reopen the correspondence. Jenny Clow in June, -1788, had undertaken some sort of legal action -against Burns and one purpose of his return to -Edinburgh in the following February had been to -settle with her. Whatever the nature of the settlement<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span> -it had not helped much. When in 1791 Jenny -somehow communicated with Clarinda, the latter -found the girl ill, destitute, and friendless, in a miserable -lodging. Clarinda’s discovery of the means -whereby Sylvander had managed to keep his courtship -on so lofty a plane must have been humiliating -and disillusioning, but she was woman enough to -turn her discovery to account. Her letter to Burns -described Jenny’s condition briefly and effectively -and suggested that there was a striking contrast -between his practice and the high principles of -generosity and humanity which he professed. She -meant her letter to sting, and it did. Burns begged -her to relieve Jenny’s immediate needs and promised -personal action at the first opportunity. At this -point Jenny vanishes from the record. What Burns -did, whether Jenny lived or died, whether her son -lived or died, if he lived what became of him—all -these are questions without answers.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile Clarinda had been attempting to re-establish -her own life. Her husband had sought a -reconciliation, and she was planning to join him in -Jamaica. When Burns made his last visit to Edinburgh -in November, 1791, her departure was already -arranged. She was fully reconciled to Sylvander -now, and for the first time their relationship -revealed simple and genuine emotion. The Arcadian -names vanished in the correspondence; she became -‘my dearest Nancy’ instead of Clarinda, and when -Burns returned to Dumfries, fully convinced that he -had said farewell forever, he produced the one really<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span> -first-rate lyric Clarinda ever inspired—‘Ae Fond -Kiss, and Then We Sever’.</p> - -<p>The sequel was the last of the anti-climaxes which -marked the affair. Clarinda reached Jamaica to -find James M’Lehose’s disposition not sweetened by -time, and a brood of mulatto children proved that -he had not suffered by her absence. She returned to -Scotland on the same ship which took her out. For -some time after her return she did not communicate -with Burns. When she did so it was in terms of cautious -esteem which inspired him to so bombastic a -reply that he shortly afterwards tried to disguise its -date by describing a transcript of it as ‘the fustian -rant of enthusiastic youth’. The first part of the description -is accurate. For Burns the episode was -closed, and closed, as it had opened, in posturing -affectation of emotion. But Clarinda lived on it for -the rest of her long life, exhibiting his letters to her -friends after his death until some of them were worn -to tatters. Her caution, however, equalled her vanity. -After some of the letters had been surreptitiously -transcribed and published in 1802 she went over the -manuscripts, destroying the addresses, scoring out -or clipping away proper names and erasing some of -the more ardent love-making, and being reduced at -last in senile old-age to selling some of them for a -few shillings each. Sylvander’s was the happier fate -after all.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, whatever bombast or adoration her -husband was addressing to Clarinda, the ‘certain -woman’ was lavishing on Burns the devotion he had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span> -wished for at his first meeting. Various stories are -told of how and when he acknowledged Jean as his -wife. The probability is that he never did so, in the -sense of going through a formal marriage service. -On April 28th he confided to James Smith that -‘Mrs. Burns’ was Jean’s ‘private designation’; a -month later, in a letter to Ainslie, he avowed the -title ‘to the World’. By Scots law, avowal in the -presence of witnesses constituted a legal, though irregular, -marriage; a peculiar letter to Smith at the -end of June suggests that Burns even evaded this -legal requirement:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘I have waited on Mr. Auld about my Marriage affair, -& stated that I was legally fined for an irregular marriage -by a Justice of the Peace.—He says if I bring an attestation -of this by the two witnesses, there shall be no more -litigation about it.—As soon as this comes to hand, please -write me in the way of familiar Epistle that, “Such things -are.”’</p> -</div> - -<p>In other words, he was asking Smith—who had not -lived in Mauchline for two years—to testify, but not -on oath, that Burns had acknowledged the marriage -in his presence. Armed with Smith’s letter, and another, -he then presented himself again before the -minister, who overlooked the doubtful legality of -the evidence as two years before he had allowed -Burns’s doubtful status as a bachelor. On August 5th -Burns and Jean made their formal appearance before -the Kirk Session, avowed their marriage as of -1786, and were readmitted to the communion after<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span> -‘Mr. Burns gave a Guinea note for the behoof of the -Poor.’</p> - -<p>All this time Burns was alternating between -Mauchline and Ellisland, to the detriment of his -interests in each place. A man absent from his farm -every other fortnight could scarcely expect work to -go forward quickly, but there were no living accommodations -for Jean and young Robert until in -October a neighbour, moving into Dumfries for the -winter, offered Burns the use of his house. But the -periods of absence roused Burns once more to lyric -fervour for Jean, and the man who six months -earlier had pledged undying devotion to Clarinda -composed ‘Of a’ the airts’ in tribute to his wife.</p> - -<p>But it was the last song that can with complete -certainty be connected with Jean. She sank before -long to the status of a hard-working, child-bearing -domestic fixture, losing her good looks—at first sight -of her in 1790 John Syme concluded that Burns’s -lyrics in her praise were poetic licence—but keeping -her equable temper and her devotion to her husband. -Of all the women who had loved Burns more -or less, and whom he, more or less, had loved, she -alone had to live with him. And yet she continued to -love him, not weighing his merits, but pardoning his -offences. She had things to pardon, though when he -married her Burns thought he had shaken himself -‘loose of a very bad failing.’ Eighteen months after -this announcement of reformation, Jean went home -to Ayrshire for a visit, and her husband strayed into -the arms of Anne Park at the Globe Inn. When the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span> -blonde barmaid in due course bore him a child, and -died in doing it, Jean took in the little girl and reared -her with ‘no distinction shown between that and the -rest of their children.’ Maria Riddell, whose words -are just quoted, added that Burns told her the story -‘with much sensibility’.</p> - -<p>Burns could not take Jean into the society to -which he was himself admitted, so she remained unnoticed -at home, tending the children and keeping -the house in slatternly Scots fashion, but with a sober -Scots thrift which probably accounted for her -husband’s living within his income and at last dying -with little more than the debts incurred during his -final illness. Burns seldom spoke of her in his last -years, but when he did so it was ‘with a high tribute -of respect and esteem’. Maria Riddell—perhaps a -prejudiced witness—states that ‘he did not love her, -but he was far from insensible to the indulgence and -patience, “the meekness with which she bore her faculties” -on many occasions very trying to the tempers -of most individuals of our sex.’ One suspects, sometimes, -that Burns would never have continued to -love any woman after he had won her; that no matter -who she was, he might still have summed up his -marriage as he did to John Beugo:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘Depend upon it, if you do not make some damned foolish -choice, [marriage] will be a very great improvement on -the Dish of Life.—I can speak from Experience, tho’ God -knows my choice was random as Blind-man’s buff. I like -the idea of an honest country Rake of my acquaintance, -who, like myself, married lately.—Speaking to me of his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span> -late step, “L—d, man,” says he, “a body’s baith cheaper -and better sair’t!”’—</p> -</div> - -<p>Maria Riddell may have been one reason for -Burns’s abrupt closure of the correspondence with -Clarinda in 1793. After Clarinda had refused to continue -it as an emotional communion he no longer -needed it as an intellectual one. He had found a -woman friend who surpassed Clarinda as much in -intellect as she did in social position, and the only -occasion on which he reopened communications -with Agnes M’Lehose was during his subsequent estrangement -from Mrs. Riddell—when he used the -opportunity to send Clarinda copies of the crude -lampoons he had composed upon Maria.</p> - -<p>Walter Riddell, younger brother of Burns’s friend -at Friars Carse, had compressed a good deal of experience -into the first twenty-eight years of his life. -After a short period in the army he had married an -heiress who within a year made him a widower and -the owner of an estate in Antigua. In 1790 he met at -St. Kitts Maria Banks Woodley, youngest daughter -of the governor of the Leeward Islands, and after a -brief courtship married her when she still lacked two -months of being eighteen. Though Maria’s mother -was a native of St. Kitts, the girl had been born and -educated in England and soon after their marriage -the young couple returned there.</p> - -<p>According to one interpretation of a letter from -Francis Grose to Burns in January, 1791, they must -have proceeded at once to an autumn visit at Friars<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span> -Carse, where Grose was also a guest. Grose told -Burns that ‘after the Scene between Mrs. Riddell -Jun<sup>r</sup> and your humble Servant, to which you was -witness, it is impossible I can ever come under her -Roof again.’ The letter also refers to the Governor—‘a -spoilt Child with a Number of good Qualities’—whom -its editor identifies as Walter Riddell, -Mrs. Riddell Junior being Maria. But there was -also an extremely senior Mrs. Riddell at Friars -Carse, for Robert’s grandmother lived with him. -Hence the Junior may equally well have been -Mrs. Robert Riddell, and inasmuch as Maria had -no roof of her own in Scotland until 1792, it is -hard to see how any misconduct of hers could have -shut Friars Carse to Grose.</p> - -<p>If this was really Maria’s first meeting with Burns -it was an inauspicious start. But the early stages of -the friendship are obscure. The extant correspondence -does not begin until February, 1792, and by -that time Maria’s life was so truly invaluable to -Burns that to lose her would leave a vacuum in his -enjoyments that nothing could fill up. By this time, -too, she was the mother of a daughter, born in England -in August, 1791. Her husband was again in -Dumfries, negotiating for an estate, and Maria had -gone to Edinburgh with the double purpose of seeking -expert medical advice and finding a printer for -her narrative of her voyage to the West Indies. To -this latter end Burns introduced her to his old friend -Smellie in a letter which paid the highest compliments -to her intellectual and literary accomplishments—if<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span> -it can be called a high compliment to say -that her verses ‘always correct, and often elegant’, -were ‘very much beyond the common run of Lady -Poetesses of the day’. The introduction resulted in a -friendship between Smellie and Maria of which the -written records, being more decorous than Burns’s -own letters to the printer, were published by the latter’s -biographer. Maria liked to collect curios, and -her interest in Smellie might perhaps be thus explained. -But the gruff and erudite printer’s continued -interest in Maria is further evidence that she -had brains as well as charm, though her letters are -evidence enough.</p> - -<p>In the spring of 1792 Walter Riddell purchased -the estate of Goldielea near Dumfries, renamed it -Woodley Park in Maria’s honour, and set up as a -country gentleman. More accurately, he paid a -small deposit on the purchase price without knowing -how he would raise the main sum. Burns visited -frequently at Woodley Park, though its master bored -him. Walter Riddell apparently shared his brother’s -convivial habits without his brother’s modicum of -literary and intellectual interests, and the poet’s attitude -towards him is more clearly shown by the -almost total absence of Walter’s name from his letters -to Walter’s wife than even by the crude epitaph -which described the man as empty-headed and -poisonous-hearted.</p> - -<p>In letter-writing at least the friendship with -Maria reached perihelion in the autumn of 1793. -Walter was then in the West Indies, trying to raise<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span> -money on his estate there, and Maria was living -alone at Woodley Park with her books, her music, -and two baby daughters. By this time Burns was -ponderously flirtatious. Maria was the first and -fairest of critics, the most amiable and most accomplished -of her sex, and it was the final proof of his -unhappy lot that when he was in love ‘Impossibility -presents an impervious barrier to the proudest daring -of Presumption, & poor I dare much sooner -peep into the focus of Hell, than meet the eye of the -goddess of my soul!’ At least one impassioned lyric -which originally began ‘The last time I cam o’er the -moor And passed Maria’s dwelling’ had been composed -and submitted to the lady’s criticism accompanied -by a postscript which transparently disclaimed -personal application. In Walter’s absence, -many of their meetings during this autumn were at -the homes of mutual friends or at the little receptions -which Maria held between the acts in her box -at the theatre. These latter, however, were sometimes -subject to interruptions. On at least one occasion -Burns found an army officer—‘a lobster-coated -puppy’—already in possession, and withdrew without -even announcing himself. Maria chided him for -his failure to appear and invited him formally to -share her box at the next performance; he kept her -supplied with all his latest lyrics, including those -addressed to Clarinda.</p> - -<p>It would be a mistake to take Burns’s impassioned -avowals too seriously. Maria was a young and fascinating -woman of the type which pleases men<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span> -better than it does members of her own sex, and Burns -thoroughly enjoyed her conversation. To the pleasures -of intellectual intercourse her company added -a subdued erotic stimulation which he expressed -in the only language he knew. The very frankness of -his remarks and Maria’s calm acceptance of them is -proof that they were neither meant nor taken literally.</p> - -<p>And then came the breach seemingly inevitable in -Burns’s relations with every woman of higher station. -Its details are still obscure. Even its exact date -cannot be determined, though it must have been in -Christmas week of 1793. The traditional story is that -Burns was dining at Woodley Park and that the -men’s talk over their wine somehow got round to the -Rape of the Sabines. It was drunkenly agreed that -on returning to the drawing-room the men should -stage a burlesque of the episode. They did, and -Burns, singling out his hostess as his prey, put too -much ardour into the game. Mrs. Carswell interprets -the thing as a deliberate rag on the part of the -other men to get Burns to make a fool of himself. -Such at any rate was the result. After a stormy scene -during which some of the other ladies present tried -to intercede for the poet he was ignominiously expelled. -The next day he grovelled in contrition before -the offended lady in the painfully humiliating -‘letter from Hell’. She refused to be placated and -after two more abortive efforts on Burns’s part the -breach between them was complete.</p> - -<p>This accepted story leaves unexplained several<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span> -important details. Foremost among them is the fact -that in his apology Burns blames his host for constraining -him to drink more than he wished to. -Maria had told Smellie in November that Walter -Riddell was in the West Indies and was not expected -back until spring. On January 12th, when the -breach with Burns had already occurred, she again -mentioned her husband’s absence. If these letters -were correctly printed by Smellie’s biographer, -Walter Riddell could not have been the host; therefore -the scene could not have occurred at Woodley -Park. The alternative explanation is that it really -happened at Friars Carse, with Robert and Elizabeth -Riddell in the roles usually assigned to Walter -and Maria. In this case Maria, hearing of -Burns’s conduct, must have undertaken to discipline -him.</p> - -<p>Whatever the circumstances, Burns’s subsequent -conduct was inexcusable. During the early spring -of 1794 he wrote several epigrams on Maria which -are utterly caddish, lacking alike in wit and decent -feeling. One of them he even offered to a London -newspaper, the editor of which had sense enough to -reject it. He also wrote the long, dull, and vulgar parody -of Pope which bears the title ‘Esopus to Maria’ -and which attacks everything about Mrs. Riddell -from her hair to her morals. This last was meant for -the ‘quite private’ delectation of John Syme and one -or two other intimates, but even if Burns had published -it his conduct could not have appeared in -much worse light. The epigrams and the ‘Monody<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span> -on a Lady Famed for Her Caprice’ are enough in -themselves to put it beyond condoning.</p> - -<p>While Burns was thus exhibiting the worst side of -his nature, his victims’ circumstances were changing. -Walter Riddell had returned from the Indies -without the money he had gone to raise, and in the -course of the spring Woodley Park was repossessed -by its former owner, Walter forfeiting his £1000 deposit -on the purchase price as well as all that he had -laid out in improvements. On April 21st Robert -Riddell died, and Friars Carse was put on the market, -the relations between the two families being so -uncordial that Elizabeth Riddell refused any settlement -which would leave her brother-in-law in possession -of the estate. Walter and Maria attempted -the usual expedient of impoverished gentry—a prolonged -stay on the Continent—but found their way -barred by the armies of the French Revolution. Accordingly -after a few months in England they returned -to the neighbourhood of Dumfries to resume -life on a much reduced scale. They settled at Tinwald -House, a tumble-down estate near Lochmaben, -or rather Maria settled, for her husband was -absent most of the time. In May, 1795, they moved -again, this time to Halleaths, between Lochmaben -and Lockerbie, where they remained until they left -Scotland forever in 1797. How much Maria had -heard of Burns’s conduct towards her no one but -herself knew, and she never told. When Currie published -some of the letters referring to the quarrel she -affected complete ignorance of their relation to herself,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span> -though it is hard to believe that some kind friend -had not shown them to her.</p> - -<p>If Burns showed the worst side of his nature in the -quarrel, Maria showed the best of hers in the reconciliation. -Early in 1795 she made the first move by -sending him a book she had heard he wished to read. -He replied in a formal note in the third person which -nevertheless welcomed the overture and opened the -way for further intercourse. By the beginning of May -he was writing in his old vein of flirtatious gaiety and -even confiding to Maria about the mysterious Reid -miniature of himself—mysterious because no one -knows for whom he had it painted, nor why. The -woman who quarrelled with Burns in 1794 may -have been capricious, and have pushed her rigour -further than was wise in dealing with a man of -Burns’s temperament. After all, twenty-one is not infallible -even when feminine and married. But the -woman who reinstated Burns in her good graces in -1795, after his caddish attacks upon her, was certainly -not petty.</p> - -<p>The renewed friendship had not long to live. -Shadows of another sort soon began to fall across it, -for Burns’s health was breaking. A note written at -the end of May to accompany the loan of the Reid -miniature mentioned that he was so ill as scarcely to -be able to hold pen to paper; a month later he feared -that his health was gone forever. The autumn -brought further affliction in the death of his little -daughter, and it was to Maria that he uttered the -only existing record of his grief: ‘That you, my<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span> -friend, may never experience such a loss as mine, -sincerely prays R B.’</p> - -<p>And so, through bereavement, illness, and despair, -the passionate, irritable poet and the vivacious -young woman of the world drew towards their -last meeting. The bleak little watering-place, the -Brow Well on the Solway, was the scene. Maria’s -health also was bad, and she evidently, like Burns, -lacked the funds to take her to a better resort. On -the 5th of July, 1796, she sent her carriage for -Burns: not until she saw him did she realize how -serious his condition was.</p> - -<p>He was dying, and knew it. His overdriven heart, -which had never wholly recovered from the strain of -doing a man’s work on insufficient food at the age -of fourteen, was giving out, and he was hastening his -end according to the best medical advice in Dumfries. -A doctor who thought that angina was ‘flying -gout’ had ordered sea bathing, and the dying poet -was plunging himself daily in the chilly waters of the -Solway, as he had earlier in life sought to cure fainting-fits -in a tub of cold water at his bedside. Maria -was startled by the visible stamp of death on the features -of the emaciated man who tottered from her -carriage, and her concern was increased by his almost -total inability to eat. But the presence of a -young and attractive woman could still, as always, -rouse Burns to his best efforts, and his talk might -even have been gay—after his preliminary, ‘Well, -Madam, have you any messages for the other -world?’—had Maria been able to forget his haggard<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span> -countenance long enough to reply in kind.</p> - -<p>As it was, they had ‘a long and serious conversation -about his present situation, and the approaching -termination of all his earthly prospects.’ The -man who had never lied about himself, to himself or -others, now frankly faced the fact that he was dying. -And the presence of a sympathetic and intelligent -listener urged him on to speech about the matters -nearest his heart. Two things perturbed him on the -brink of the grave—anxiety for his family, and anxiety -for his fame. His eldest son was not yet ten; -there were three younger, and Jean was hourly expecting -a fifth; at least two others needed a father’s -help to lighten the stigma of illegitimacy. And as -for his literary reputation—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘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 and -improper freedom, and which he earnestly wished to have -buried in oblivion, would be handed about by idle vanity -or malevolence when no dread of his resentment would -restrain them or prevent the censures of shrill-tongued -malice or the insidious sarcasms of envy from pouring -forth all their venom to blast his fame.’</p> -</div> - -<p>Could Burns have looked into the future, the prospect -would have deepened the pain in his harassed -soul. His anxiety for his family would have been -allayed, to be sure, but not even in his darkest hour -could he have visualized the future of his personal<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span> -and literary fame. He foresaw attacks of his enemies; -he did not foresee the cowardice or treachery -of his friends. He need not have worried about his -trivial or unguarded writings, for time automatically -washes away the sand and leaves the gold, if -gold there be, and the publication of trifling letters -cannot harm their writer if the pattern of his soul -itself is not trifling. That spiritual descendants of -Holy Willie should deplore his best and strongest -work and shake their heads over passions of which -their impotent pulses were incapable, that enemies -eager for revenge and underlings eager for drink -should lie about their relations with him—these -things were to be expected. But that Bob Ainslie, -turned pious, should exemplify his own piety by -preserving and circulating Burns’s worst letters, that -George Thomson should not only ignore his dying -wishes but even, before his corpse was in the grave, -rush into print with a distorted and melodramatic -version of his last years which would set the tone -of biographies for a century to come, that Gilbert -should lack the courage to deny stories which he -knew to be false—all this, and much more, was mercifully -hidden from him. But it would have warmed -his heart to know that the one intimate friend who -would come before the world with a truthful account -of his character, extenuating nothing, and -setting nothing down in malice, was Maria Riddell, -on whom he had made unforgivable attacks, and -who nevertheless had forgiven him. The woman -with whom the dying poet talked that day until the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span> -distant bulk of Criffel turned dark against the sunset, -and the chill tide in which he had been ordered to -bathe ebbed away from the dismal flats of the Solway, -was to prove herself the most devoted friend of -her sex he had ever had, Jean Armour always excepted.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="V">V</h2> -</div> - -<p class="ph2">LIVELIHOOD</p> - - -<p>To Burns in the vigour of his early manhood the -question of livelihood seemed easily answered. He -was a good enough ploughman to be assured of the -porridge and the few shillings a week which a skilled -labourer could earn on a Scottish farm. There was -no degradation in such service. The labourers, like -the hired help on New England farms, ate with the -family and took whatever share in the conversation -they were capable of. Moreover, anyone, whatever -his rank, who was capable of ‘a sensible crack’ was -sure of welcome in households which had either to -provide their own entertainment or go without. Not -even the prospect of dependent old age held any -terrors. The tradition of the blue-gowns, or licensed -beggars, still persisted in rural Scotland. An old man -past work who could talk interestingly could count -on a meal and a place by the fire at almost any -farmer’s ingle. Burns seriously thought of this as a -possible end of his own life. The expression of the -idea in several poems might be dismissed as rhetoric -had he not repeated it in the sober prose of his letters. -He actually pictured himself as spending his -manhood in labour, love-making, and poetry and -his old age as a sort of Edie Ochiltree.</p> - -<p>Such a vision of course was adolescent. To fulfil it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span> -a man must have no dependents. Burns seems to -have imagined at first that if he could help to keep -the home together until his brothers and sisters -were able to establish themselves his responsibilities -would end. The liberation of his poetic talent entailed -among other things a shrinking from the burdens -of marriage on narrow means. His rejected -proposal to Alison Begbie had come before his realization -of his poetic calling; his rejected offer to -Jean Armour in 1786 was the result of sympathy for -her condition and not of a desire to settle down. But -he soon learned that he could not so simply escape -responsibility. His children must be provided for -somehow even if he did not marry their mothers. -Despite the casualness with which he incurred paternity -his parental feelings were strong. ‘<i>Vive -l’amour et vive la bagatelle</i>’ sounded well as a motto -until it was confronted by the actual problem of -helpless lives which owed their existence to him. -As a Man of Feeling he could not, even had he -wished to, turn his back on them with Don Juan-like -callousness. Besides, the law might have something -to say in the matter—as Burns learned in the -course of four suits or threatened suits by four different -women within two years. Unless he chose to flee -the country and repudiate his obligations he had to -provide himself with settled livelihood.</p> - -<p>For a man of his rank and education the possible -choices open in 1786 were limited. He could continue -as a farmer; he could attempt to support himself -by writing, or he could seek a salaried position at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span> -home or in the colonies. Each alternative had its -drawbacks. By the beginning of 1786 his reputation -in the community was such that he could scarcely -continue the partnership at Mossgiel, but he lacked -the capital necessary for setting up independently -elsewhere. The hope of any large financial returns -from his poetry seemed too fantastic for consideration; -he lacked the training for journalism or hackwork -when Grub Street was crowded with penniless -university men. There remained the chance of some -salaried position. Yet even if he had been temperamentally -fitted for a commercial job he was by this -time too old. Merchants’ clerks began their apprenticeship -as boys in their teens. Burns was twenty-seven. -A post in the Excise Service might be feasible -but was not easy to get. All government jobs went -by favour, and despite the unpopularity of the service -among the people at large the number of aspirants -so far exceeded the available places that the -endorsement of some influential person was almost -essential. The same thing was true of India, where -the East India Company’s monopoly gave patronage -as large a part as it had in the government services. -The United States, not yet united, were in -economic chaos; Canada was undeveloped. There -remained the West Indies, then at the height of a -prosperity built on slave labour, where independent -planters with Scottish connexions were numerous -enough to make it possible for a Scotsman with the -necessary introductions to secure some sort of work. -The story of Burns’s struggle for livelihood is the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span> -story of his efforts in each of the four possibilities -open to him.</p> - -<p>The West Indian venture was the only one which -never came to actual trial. The documents are lost -which would settle the date at which Burns began -seriously to consider emigration, but his mind was -made up at the very beginning of 1786. Through -friends in Ayrshire he obtained the offer of a position -at thirty pounds a year as clerk and overseer -on a Jamaica plantation. The story is still repeated -that he published the Kilmarnock <i>Poems</i> to pay his -passage-money, but his own contemporary account -of the matter is sufficient refutation. He had already -arranged to go to Jamaica, his employer to pay his -fare and deduct the sum from his first year’s salary, -before he decided to print the poems. For Burns -emigration was not only flight but almost a death -sentence. He had some justification for his feeling. -The West Indian climate helped to insure the financial -success of a small minority of white immigrants -by killing off most of their rivals. He published his -poems because he wished, before saying farewell -forever to Scotland, to leave behind some tangible -memorial. When the publication proved so unexpectedly -successful it immediately cancelled his -flight.</p> - -<p>Burns’s first extant reference to Jamaica is in a -letter to John Arnot of Dalquhatswood, which was -written in April, 1786, when the subscription for the -<i>Poems</i> was well under way. Negotiations were then -almost complete: by June 12th Burns was able to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span> -announce that the ship was on her way home that -was to take him out; on August 14th he explained -that he was entering the employ of Charles Douglas -of Port Antonio and all that remained to settle was -the route by which he was to travel. In view of the -time required for exchange of letters between Scotland -and the West Indies it is certain that the correspondence -with Douglas must have begun in the -winter, before the Kilmarnock volume was planned -and while a considerable part of it was still unwritten. -As the troubles with the Armours thickened -during the summer so did Burns’s references to his -impending emigration. During July and the first -part of August he was announcing that he had -booked passage from Greenock to Savannah-la-Mar -in the <i>Nancy</i>, sailing about September 1. Then returned -Jamaicans advised him that the route was -too roundabout, and when the captain of the <i>Nancy</i> -notified him that the ship was about to sail, Burns -decided that the notice was too abrupt. The <i>Nancy</i> -sailed without him, and he transferred his booking -to the <i>Bell</i>, which was to sail direct to Port Antonio -at the end of September.</p> - -<p>The truth was that he was already wavering. The -enthusiastic reception of his poems, the interest -which influential gentlemen began to take in his -welfare, were changing his opinion of himself and -his prospects in Scotland. Moreover, the Armours -were calming down; friends had promised to help -him should Jean’s father renew the effort to execute -his warrant. Nevertheless he did not immediately<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span> -abandon the Jamaica plan. Though the <i>Bell</i> in her -turn sailed without him, he still watched the shipping -news as he collected his subscriptions and set -his affairs in order. Jean’s twins, born on September -3rd, increased the need for settled livelihood, but -increased also his reluctance to leave Scotland.</p> - -<p>Most of his letters of the autumn of 1786 have -perished. As late as October he was still talking of -emigration, though he had again postponed it after -actually packing his trunk and starting for Greenock -at the end of September. He still feared, he told -Robert Aiken, that ‘the consequences of his follies’ -might banish him; in other words, Betty Paton was -threatening to sue him. The Armour affair had already -been compromised by dividing the responsibility -for the care of the twins between the two families. -When the extant correspondence resumes a -month later, Jamaica had been discarded. By -November 1st the poet had decided to try his luck -in Edinburgh. For this reversal the Kilmarnock -volume was directly responsible.</p> - -<p>When Burns had begun in April to solicit subscriptions -for a volume of his poems he had had no -idea of making it a commercial success. The book -was intended as a memento of himself—a souvenir -for his friends and a final and unanswerable fling at -his enemies. He probably hoped for no more material -return than would cover the expenses of publication. -Its success therefore was all the more intoxicating. -Six hundred and twelve copies were printed, of -which about half were subscribed for in advance,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span> -thanks mainly to Robert Aiken. When the book -came out at the beginning of August it furnished the -first literary sensation Ayrshire had ever known. -The subscribers’ copies were passed from reader to -reader, creating such a demand that the entire edition -was sold within three months. When Mrs. Dunlop -ordered six copies in mid-November only five -were left. At the end of July Burns had been a fugitive -with a warrant out against him, to escape which -he was shifting from one friend’s house to another. -Two weeks later he was a celebrity. His journeys -through the country as he collected his subscriptions -became a sort of royal progress. The fact that he was -making a profit out of the book meant far less to him -than the applause of all sorts and conditions of men. -People of influence assured him that something -could be done for him at home, though they were -vague as to precisely what. After the printer’s bills -were paid the volume showed a profit of more than -£50, though forfeited deposits on passage money -and a substantial payment to Betty Paton reduced -his net gain to about twenty. But Burns still had no -wish to write poetry for money. He considered that -‘downright Sodomy of Soul’. Poetry was his calling, -but he refused to think of it as his livelihood.</p> - -<p>Another man for other reasons doubted the commercial -prospects of poetry. In spite of the handsome -balance-sheet of the first edition, John Wilson, the -Kilmarnock printer, declined to undertake a second -without advance payment for all labour and materials. -He felt that the first had glutted the market.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span> -His timidity helped to transform Burns from a local -celebrity into a national figure. When friends -in Mauchline and Ayr suggested republishing the -poems in Edinburgh Burns thought it an attractive -but impractical dream. But when copies of the book -reached people of influence in the capital and they -repeated the suggestion it wore a different look. By -October the hope of a favourable reception in the -city had come to Burns from at least three different -sources. His friend, the Rev. George Lawrie of Loudoun, -had sent a copy of the book to Thomas Blacklock, -the blind poet; Blacklock had commended it -warmly and had even promised—not so warmly—to -bring it to the attention of Hugh Blair. The famous -professor of rhetoric, Blacklock thought, was -too refined in his taste to relish it. Another eminent -professor was not so finicky. Dugald Stewart, whose -country home was at Catrine a few miles from -Mauchline, read and enjoyed the poems, invited the -poet to dinner, and added his personal encouragement -to the Edinburgh venture. Finally the book -reached even the peerage.</p> - -<p>On November 1st Alexander Dalziel, steward of -the Earl of Glencairn’s estates, wrote that he had -showed the poems to the Earl and that the Earl had -expressed his pleasure in them and his desire to befriend -their author. This approbation was heartening -as Blacklock’s and even Dugald Stewart’s could -not be. The Earl had a reputation for generosity and -for keeping his word; he was one of the most popular -and influential peers in Scotland and his endorsement<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span> -would have weight with the people of wealth -and fashion on whom the success of a subscription -would have to depend. But the Earl had nothing to -do with the abandonment of Jamaica. The same -letter which brought the news of the Earl’s interest -also brought Dalziel’s congratulations on Burns’s -giving up his plans for leaving the country. What -Glencairn really did was to confirm the poet in his -determination to offer his poems to a larger audience.</p> - -<p>Undoubtedly Burns realized before he went to -Edinburgh that he was setting out on the old and -painful quest of patronage—a quest which had -broken the hearts of more poets than it had ever -freed from penury. But it was still fame more than -money that he looked for from his poems. He continued -to hope for some means of modest livelihood -independent of his writing; if his subscription -brought a little capital to help him on his way, so -much the better. When he reached Edinburgh he -made no effort to appear more than he was; he even -sought deliberately to appear less. He dressed as a -plain young farmer, and finding that the metropolitan -critics were praising his work as that of an unlettered -ploughman who wrote from pure inspiration -he did his best to act the part. When Robert -Anderson pointed out in private conversation some -evidence of extensive knowledge of other poets -Burns readily admitted his indebtedness, but in public -he would not permit his claims to pure inspiration -to be challenged. If an unlettered bard was what his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span> -patrons wanted he would do his best to be one. -Many times, however, his role was trying, especially -when stupider people than himself condescended, -and gave him good advice.</p> - -<p>Undoubtedly there were matters in which he -needed good advice, but he did not get it even from -the patrons who did not condescend. Among all his -new friends there was no one to take his part as Sir -Walter Scott later took Southey’s in seeing that he -got a fair contract with his publisher. Glencairn had -been as good as his word in securing fashionable -subscriptions. The Countess of Eglinton made the -Earl subscribe ten guineas; the entire membership -of the aristocratic Caledonian Hunt put down their -names, but altered the first proposal that they give -two guineas each to a mere subscription at the regular -price. But Glencairn knew nothing about the -business end of publishing. In introducing Burns to -William Creech, his brother’s former tutor and the -best-known publisher in the city, Glencairn no -doubt felt that he had done his best. He had, up to -that point, but at that point a good contract lawyer -was needed. Unfortunately Henry Mackenzie and -the other men of letters in the city still adhered to -the convention of the writing gentleman who was -supposed to disdain pecuniary rewards. A few years -earlier, when David Hume was alive, Burns might -have been secured better terms; a few years later -under the leadership of Scott he would certainly -have secured them. Burns’s perverse pride would not -allow him to haggle over a contract which in any<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span> -case offered more ready money than he had handled -in all his previous life. What he needed and did not -have was a hard-boiled business friend to do his -haggling for him.</p> - -<p>As it was, Creech made an agreement which left -Burns to bear all the immediate risks and perhaps -to receive a modest immediate profit, but which reserved -the long-term earnings for the publisher -alone. As was often the case with books published by -subscription, the man whose name appeared on the -title-page was not the publisher in the modern sense, -but merely the author’s agent. He provided the -facilities for collecting the subscriptions and distributing -the books, but took none of the financial -responsibility. The author received the entire payment -for the subscribers’ copies, but out of these -receipts had to pay the printer, the bookbinder, and -also, presumably, the transportation charges on -copies delivered out-of-town. Furthermore, the -agents who distributed the books naturally expected -to be paid. Hence Burns, wherever possible, -enlisted his friends for this service—Alexander Pattison -at Paisley, for instance, and Robert Muir at -Kilmarnock—and when that was not feasible still -sought to avoid the regular booksellers because they -took ‘no less than the unconscionable, Jewish tax -of 25 p<sup>r</sup> Cent. by way of agency’.</p> - -<p>The price to subscribers was set at the modest sum -of five shillings, and close to three thousand subscriptions -were obtained. Burns objected to printing -the names of the subscribers—quite naturally, for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span> -the thirty-eight pages meant money out of his -pocket merely to gratify the vanity of people yearning -to see their names in print as patrons of literature—but -was overborne by some friends whom he -did not ‘chuse to thwart’. Professor Snyder calculates -Burns’s utmost possible gross receipts from the -subscription at £750. But after all charges were paid -the net profit cannot have been more than half that -sum. He told Mrs. Dunlop that he cleared about -£540, but there, as in a similar statement to John -Moore, he was reckoning in Creech’s payment of -100 guineas for the copyright.</p> - -<p>That was the sum agreed on when, just as his -book was ready for delivery, Burns decided, ‘by -advice of friends’ to dispose of his copyright. Once -more he had sought the advice of others, and once -more they told him the wrong thing. In this instance, -the person most at fault was Henry Mackenzie, -to whom Burns and Creech referred the question. -Mackenzie was a lawyer, and ought to have -warned Burns against the absolute sale of his rights -in a potentially valuable piece of property. Instead -Mackenzie contented himself with naming one -hundred guineas as his idea of a fair price. That was -on April 17. Creech delayed his acceptance until the -23rd, on the pretence of waiting to hear if Cadell and -Davies would buy a share for their London trade, -but finally consented to ‘take the whole matter -upon himself, that Mr. Burns might be at no uncertainty -in the matter.’ Thereupon Creech left town, -without either paying the money or giving his note<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span> -for it. A few days later Burns himself started on his -Border tour, still without any legal contract with -Creech, but with his hands full for the time being -with the task of arranging deliveries, collecting subscriptions, -and paying the printer and the binder. -Had not Peter Hill, then Creech’s chief clerk, taken -a good part of the burden on himself, Burns would -have been swamped under the worry of larger transactions -than he had known in all his life before.</p> - -<p>In August Burns returned to Edinburgh, but -Creech was either again absent or again coy. Not -until October 23 did the publisher at last set his -hand to a note promising to pay the sum ‘on demand’. -How soon Burns began to ask for payment is -uncertain, but by January Creech had delayed and -evaded so often that Burns ‘broke measures with -[him], and ... wrote him a frosty keen letter. He -replied in forms of chastisement’, promised payment -on a set date—and broke his promise. To add -to the poet’s anxiety, rumours were afloat. It was -hinted that Creech was on the verge of bankruptcy; -it was also hinted that he had cheated Burns by secretly -printing additional copies of the <i>Poems</i>, which -he sold for his own profit. Burns bewailed his own -fate as a ‘poor, d-mned, incautious, duped, unfortunate -fool’; two months later ‘that arch-rascal -Creech’ was still making promises, and still reneguing. -Not until May 30, more than seven months -after he had agreed to pay ‘on demand’, did Creech -at last part with his hundred guineas. And even then -Burns’s troubles were not over. Still another visit to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span> -Edinburgh, at the end of February, 1789, was necessary -before Creech paid over the final sums due -the poet for subscription copies, so that at last he -could report to Jean: ‘I have settled matters greatly -to my satisfaction with Mr. Creech.—He is certainly -not what he should be nor has he given me -what I should have, but I am better than I -expected.’</p> - -<p>The estimate of Creech was temperate enough; -indeed, it erred, like Burns’s statement to John -Moore that Creech had ‘been amicable and fair’ -with him, on the side of charity. It is easy to condone -Mackenzie’s blunder and Creech’s sharp bargain on -the ground that neither of them could guess the future -value of the copyright, but it is impossible to -excuse Creech’s postponements of the day of reckoning. -Prompt settlement of accounts after the book -was published would have sent Burns back to the -country with his pockets comfortably lined and with -some of the glowing enthusiasm of his first season in -Edinburgh still undimmed. By his paltry delays -Creech kept the poet in the city until the interest of -his fashionable ‘patrons’ had waned, until all the -pleasure of publication and fame had evaporated in -bitterness and disgust, and until the mere necessities -of living must have made considerable inroads on -his irreplaceable capital.</p> - -<p>Indeed one of the extraordinary facts about -Burns’s life in Edinburgh is that he emerged from it -without greater depletion of his capital. Contemporary -report calls him dissipated. Yet somehow Burns<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span> -managed to spend nearly a year and a half either in -residence in Edinburgh or in journeying to and fro, -and still came out with about four hundred and -fifty pounds. So far as is known he had no income -from July, 1786, when he assigned his rights in Mossgiel -to Gilbert, until he reaped his harvest, such as -it was, at Ellisland in the autumn of 1788. Even -then he netted little, for the outgoing tenant exacted -a price of £72 for the standing crops. However great -his experience in the distracting ‘task of the superlatively -Damn’d—making one guinea do the business -of three’—his twenty pounds from the Kilmarnock -volume cannot have lasted long, and if there were -any gifts except the Earl of Eglinton’s ten guineas -and the same sum from Patrick Miller he nowhere -mentions them. If Burns dissipated heavily he managed -somehow to do it without heavy expenditure, -an art few people have ever learned.</p> - -<p>The possibility that he received funds from Gilbert -even after the deed of assignment must be ruled -out. The flow of funds in fact was the other way. The -supposedly careful and efficient Gilbert was in constant -difficulties at Mossgiel. Robert sent him ten -pounds from Edinburgh in the spring of 1787; during -the following winter he authorized John Ballantine -to pay over to Gilbert about thirty pounds of -subscription money then in Ballantine’s hands. And -this was only the beginning. The letter to Gavin -Hamilton already quoted indicates that Gilbert -was so far in arrears with his rent in March, 1788, -that Hamilton wanted Burns to sign some sort of a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span> -note for him. This Burns refused to do, because he -had already lent Gilbert £200—nearly half his receipts -from the Edinburgh edition. Whether the -previous payments were counted as part of this loan -or not is uncertain; probably they were not, for after -the poet’s death John Syme declared that Gilbert -owed £300, though the legal accounting sets the -figure at £200. It seems likely therefore that Gilbert -regarded the earlier payments as gifts, and that the -sum which Gilbert at last repaid to his brother’s -family represented the final loan in 1788. As part of -the interest on the loan Burns arranged that Gilbert -should pay his mother an annuity of £5 a year and -should continue to care for Betty Paton’s daughter. -The result was that Gilbert made no cash payment -during Burns’s life, and never was able to pay off the -principal until he undertook to re-edit the <i>Poems</i> in -1820. Burns had given most substantial proof of his -loyalty to his family and in doing so had destroyed -his only hope of success in his own venture at Ellisland.</p> - -<p>Gilbert and his mother and sisters were not -the whole of Burns’s responsibilities. His younger -brother William was approaching manhood and -turned naturally for support to the celebrity of the -family. He appears to have been an amiable but ineffective -youth. He had served at least part of an -apprenticeship as a saddler, and in the autumn of -1787 Burns made some fruitless efforts to find him a -job in Edinburgh. A year or so later William set out -to look for employment and held jobs briefly in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span> -Longtown, in Newcastle, and finally in London, -where he died of typhus and where his funeral was -arranged by John Murdoch and paid for by Burns. -Burns’s letters to this brother during his year of wandering -consist in about equal proportion of exhortations -to brace up and be a man and of enumerations -of gifts—shoes and shirts and waistcoats and above -all money. Burns’s position as family capitalist was -no sinecure.</p> - -<p>While he was struggling with Creech and trying -to keep Mossgiel afloat, Burns was constantly harried -by the problem of his own future. The only two -possibilities he could see were a farm of his own or -a post in the Excise, and for a long time there seemed -little chance of achieving either. He had no intention -of trying again for public aid through his writing. -One subscription might be regarded as a public -tribute; a repetition would look like begging. Besides, -his common sense told him that a second subscription -would have little hope of success unless it -came at a long interval after the first and for work -of a different character. He had not exhausted his -talents, but he had exhausted his novelty. For the -rest of his life he steadfastly refused to accept payment -for anything he wrote and actually gave away -poems which make up two-thirds of the bulk of his -collected works. His sole payment for ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ -was a dozen copies of the proof-sheets; his payment -for Creech’s second edition in 1793—which -included ‘Tam’ and a score of other new poems—was -twenty presentation copies grudgingly allowed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span> -him. His fondness for making gestures of gallant -but unwise generosity can hardly be better illustrated -than by his dealings with Creech over this -edition. The publisher wrote to him in 1791, proposing -a reissue of the work and asking Burns to contribute -some new poems to it, but without suggesting -payment for them. Burns told Cunningham that -he had taken a damned revenge of Creech by ignoring -his letter. Yet a few months later he relented, -and after reminding Creech that the new poems -were his own absolute property, turned them over -to him without asking any payment except the -twenty gift copies. Such a gesture might have -shamed some publishers, but Creech merely accepted -it as his right. In the same spirit Burns hotly -resented George Thomson’s payment of £5 for his -contributions to the first number of the <i>Select Scotish -Airs</i>, and Thomson, like Creech, felt no compunction -at accepting the poet’s quixotic generosity.</p> - -<p>On at least two occasions, moreover, Burns was -offered pay for journalistic writing in party newspapers. -The origin, extent, and duration of his relations -with Peter Stuart of the London <i>Star</i> are all -obscure, but it is plain that Stuart as a zealous Whig -tried to get Burns as a regular contributor. The poet -refused. When he struck off a satirical skit he was -willing to give it to Stuart, but the only pay he accepted -was a free subscription to the paper. Thus he -managed to acquire the reputation, injurious to his -hopes in government employ, of being a partisan -writer without any reward except notoriety. Again<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span> -in 1794 Patrick Miller, Jr., his landlord’s son who -had been put into Parliament at the age of twenty-one, -persuaded James Perry of the London <i>Chronicle</i> -to offer Burns what for those days was a fair salary -if he would come to London and devote his talents -to the press. Again Burns refused. He realized -well enough that the prosperity of a newspaper was -often short-lived and he feared to jeopardize his -children’s future by exchanging an assured though -meagre income for the chances of the journalistic -profession. Besides, the writer in a partisan paper in -1794 was risking jail as well as economic insecurity, -as the sedition trials then in progress had proclaimed -to all the kingdom.</p> - -<p>But if he was not to support himself by writing -how was he to support himself? That question hammered -in his mind from the time he abandoned the -Jamaica project until the early spring of 1788. Even -before he went to Edinburgh he had thought of the -Excise. But he found his Edinburgh patrons cold to -all hints. These gentlemen reasoned simply. Burns -was the ploughman poet: ergo, he should continue -to plough. The only definite gesture made towards -getting him government work was Mrs. Dunlop’s. -She offered an introduction to Adam Smith in the -hope that Smith might help him to a job in the customs, -but the philosopher had left for London the -day before Burns presented his letter. Moreover -Smith no longer took an interest in much except his -own health, and if Burns sought later to renew his -application nothing came of it. His most favourable<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span> -opportunity to cultivate the acquaintance of high -officials was lost when he allowed William Nicol to -drag him away from Blair Athole, where Robert -Graham of Fintry, Commissioner of Excise, was one -of the guests, and where Henry Dundas was shortly -to appear.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile an offer of another sort was being -pressed upon him. He had been in Edinburgh only -a few weeks when the prosperous and enthusiastic -Patrick Miller sought his acquaintance. Miller, after -a varied career, at sea and as a banker, had retired -from business with a comfortable fortune and was -devoting himself to miscellaneous experiments. He -was the sort of capitalist who is a godsend to struggling -inventors, for his enthusiastic imagination -enabled him both to visualize the inventor’s aims -and to overlook all the practical details and delays -which intervene between a project and its fulfilment. -His strongest enthusiasm at the moment was the -improvement of navigation, but his interests also included -agriculture. Not long before Burns came to -Edinburgh Miller had bought the run-down estate -of Dalswinton near Dumfries, and it was Ellisland, -one of the farms on this estate, which he urged -upon Burns.</p> - -<p>The poet was afraid of it from the start, and for -good reason. Miller, he said, was no judge of land, -and what Miller thought was an advantageous offer -might ruin his tenant. Had Burns been gifted with -second-sight he could not have prophesied more -accurately. Yet the difficulty he always found in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span> -saying ‘No’ to people whose intentions were friendly -combined with his own inclinations to keep him -from refusing Miller’s offer outright. Farming was -the business he knew best, and a farmer’s life he held -was the best of lives—if one could live by it—but -Mount Oliphant, Lochlie, and Mossgiel had been -a triple lesson on the fate of the tenant who undertook -a lease without capital enough to stock a farm -profitably. Even if the Dalswinton farm were all -that Miller thought it, Burns doubted if his literary -profits would suffice to give him a start. However, -he agreed to look at Ellisland when he reached -Dumfries at the end of his Border tour. When he -did so he could scarcely have been in the mood for -a really critical examination. The savage hospitality -he had experienced for the past three weeks had -left him jaded and depressed, and the annoyance of -being greeted at Dumfries by Meg Cameron’s letter -would not sharpen his critical faculties. Even so he -could see at a glance that the soil was exhausted and -would require long and careful nursing. In fact the -only thing to be said for Miller’s offer was that, -recognizing the run-down condition of the property, -he was offering it at a low rental for the first three -years. Fifty pounds per annum for a farm of more -than a hundred acres contrasted favourably with the -prices in East Lothian, where landlords were asking -as much as thirty shillings an acre. Burns went home -to Mossgiel without having made up his mind; if -discussion with the cautious Gilbert contributed to -any decision it was a negative one. Ellisland was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span> -too big a risk. He returned to Edinburgh in the fall -with his mind made up. He would renew his efforts -to secure an Excise commission and would bank the -profits of his poems as a reserve fund for the education -and security of his children.</p> - -<p>But Miller was not easily discouraged. He had -evidently decided that the poet as a tenant would -be an asset to Dalswinton. Accordingly he urged -Burns to go down again and have a more critical -look at the place. A severe cold which confined him -to the house enabled Burns again to evade committing -himself and not long afterwards came the -injury to his knee which laid him up for weeks and -involved him in the Clarinda affair. But meanwhile -his endeavours for an Excise commission were not -prospering. Glencairn disapproved; Mrs. Dunlop -disapproved; apparently everyone who might have -exerted the necessary influence disapproved. In -January Miss Nimmo sent him to a Mrs. Stewart -who was supposed to have influence with the commissioners. -The interview was not a success. Burns -came away from it boiling with helpless rage. He -had been questioned like a child about his most -private affairs and Mrs. Stewart had further improved -the occasion by rebuking him for the Jacobite -sentiments he had scratched on the window of -the inn at Stirling. If the quest for an Excise job -was to expose him to this sort of thing Burns was -ready to throw up the whole project.</p> - -<p>Just when the matter appeared most hopeless -his chance came from an unexpected quarter. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span> -surgeon who had treated his injured knee was Alexander -Wood, better known to his fellow-citizens as -Lang Sandy Wood, who after a wild youth had -become one of the most respectable characters, in -both senses of that word, in Edinburgh. Wood -learned of his patient’s desire and offered to do what -Glencairn and the others had refused or evaded—to -bring Burns’s case directly and personally before -the Board. The result was that before he left Edinburgh -Burns found himself, ‘without any mortifying -solicitation’ on his own part, equipped with the -official order for the six-weeks’ course of special instructions -which would entitle him to an Excise -commission. It came none too soon. One of the -rules of the service was that no man could enter it -who was in debt, who was more than thirty years -old, or who had more than three children. Burns’s -time for meeting these two latter qualifications was -getting very short indeed.</p> - -<p>But now that he saw an open road into the Excise -Burns’s mind veered round. Farming after all was a -more poetical occupation than ‘searching auld -wives’ barrels’. Miller was still urging Ellisland upon -him, and the possibility of failure there did not -look so black when he knew that if he did fail he -had the Excise to turn to. He agreed to revisit the -farm. No doubt he told himself, as he told Clarinda, -that he did so only out of courtesy to Miller, knowing -that the Excise must be his lot. His judgement -warned him that the farm would not do; his emotions -swayed him in its favour. In an effort to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span> -strengthen his judgement he invited his old friend, -John Tennant of Glenconner, to join the tour of -inspection. Glenconner’s mind would not be biased -by any poetic considerations. It did not occur to -Burns that even the most experienced of farmers, -looking at soil different from that he was accustomed -to, could scarcely gauge its productivity -rightly at the end of February. The rule-of-thumb -farming which Glenconner and most of his contemporaries -practised required the sight of growing -crops for correct judgement. Tennant looked the -place over and told Burns it was a bargain at Miller’s -price. The opinion astonished the poet, but he failed -to realize that it was merely a guess less accurate -than the opinion he himself had formed on seeing -the place the previous June. Burns frequently made -mistakes, but his worst ones were made when he -relied on other people’s judgement. In March he -signed Miller’s lease and committed himself to three -years of struggle and discouragement which swallowed -all the capital which had not already been -poured into the bottomless morass of Mossgiel.</p> - -<p>Legend has it that Burns was offered his choice of -two farms on the Dalswinton estate and selected -Ellisland because of its more attractive location—‘a -poet’s choice and not a farmer’s’. In fact Miller -offered no choice, and in drawing up the lease employed -all the usual legal technicalities with one or -two additions of his own. The rent was to be £50 -a year for the first three years and £70 thereafter, -and Miller’s zeal for improvements was to have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span> -scope even while the tenant was in possession. The -landlord reserved the right to take over the riverbank, -a twenty-yard-wide belt along the Friars -Carse boundary, and two acres of other land at his -own choice to plant with trees. He agreed, however, -to put money of his own into the place. It had not -even a farmhouse when Burns signed the lease, and -Miller undertook to provide adequate buildings. -The contractor’s delay in constructing these caused -further needless anxiety and actual loss to Burns.</p> - -<p>After the die was cast all Burns’s earlier doubts -about Ellisland and his own ability to handle it -returned with redoubled force. His first move was -to make sure of his Excise appointment by taking -the necessary six weeks of special instructions from -the officer at Mauchline, even though this delayed -his settlement until mid-June. Inasmuch as these six -weeks included also the emotional stress of the ending -of the Clarinda romance and his acknowledgement -of Jean as his wife, his nerves were overwrought -when he finally reached his farm. The -prospect there might have discouraged a more -phlegmatic man. The farmhouse was not even -started, and his only shelter was a leaky and chimneyless -labourer’s hovel. The sparse growth of the -crops planted by his predecessor confirmed the exhaustion -of the soil, and he was confronted as never -before with the need for executive skill. That aspect -of his nature which led him to remark that somehow -he could make himself pretty generally beloved -yet never could get the art of commanding respect<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span> -told heavily against him when he had both to keep -his own labourers at work and to bully or cajole the -contractor into finishing the farmhouse at the time -agreed upon. When he was not present the farmhands -lay down on the job; when he was present -they found it altogether too easy to engage him -in talk while the work suffered. The friendship -he formed with Thomas Boyd, the contractor, led -among other things to an acquaintance with -Thomas Telford, the great engineer, but it did not -lead to the speedy completion of his house. As late -as March, 1789, he was still pleading with Boyd to -get at least the shell of it finished. Moreover he was -too sympathetic with his workmen. The margin of -profit on such a farm was too small to permit indulgence -in humanitarian sentiments, but Burns knew -too much of the lives of the lower classes to have -the necessary hardness. Two letters to the owner of -the neighbouring farm with whom Burns had cooperated -in digging a drain do credit to his feelings -if not to his business capacity. The labourer who -undertook the job at seventeen pence a rood had -underestimated the time. In order to give him a -fair wage for his labour Burns added three-pence a -rood to the contract price for his share and asked -the neighbour to do the same—with what result is -not recorded.</p> - -<p>But there was a still deeper psychological hindrance -to success at Ellisland. Even had the soil -been productive, even had he secured a foreman -who could have kept his hands at work, the Burns<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span> -who undertook Ellisland was not the Burns of -Lochlie or even of Mossgiel. Though by no means -setting up as a gentleman farmer, he had become -conscious of having a position to maintain. Gilbert, -he thought, might be able to take over Ellisland and -succeed with it; ‘as he can with propriety do things -that I <i>now</i> cannot do.’ Physical debility was also -to be reckoned with, for he must have got out of -training during almost two years of exemption from -regular labour, and his weakened heart would prevent -his easily recovering his lost tone. But in fact -his mind was filled with other matters and metres. -That during his first summer he spent alternate -fortnights with Jean in Mauchline was a temporary -circumstance without relation to the success of the -farm thereafter, but that his work for Johnson’s -<i>Museum</i> was filling his mind was a fact less easily -discounted. In the middle of his first summer he had -a fiddler with him for at least two days playing -over a collection of Highland music in quest of lyric -tunes for Johnson. It was a prelude to his greatest -period of lyric creativeness, but it was not an augury -of success in managing a poor farm on limited -capital.</p> - -<p>The first season’s harvest offered little encouragement. -Wet weather and scanty labour made it difficult -to salvage whatever thin crop the fields had -produced. Before his lease was six months old Burns -was confiding to his friends that he was uncertain -of his farm’s doing well, but, as he told Ainslie, he -had his Excise commission in his pocket and did not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span> -care three skips of a cur dog for the gambols of -Fortune. The chance of obtaining the commission -had made him willing to undertake the farm; possession -added still another psychological handicap -to its successful conduct. Embittered youthful memories -of the humiliations of a tenant farmer had been -reinforced by the development of his poetic vocation -to clog whole-hearted effort. Now the existence -of his commission held always open a door of escape -from any threatened renewal of the old humiliation -and thereby unconsciously slowed still further the -endeavours which were his only safeguard. He was -defeated at Ellisland before he began.</p> - -<p>By the following spring he had begun to realize -his defeat. The farm and his family, including William, -were swallowing the remains of his capital so -rapidly that it was doubtful if he could hold on -without more income than the farm was likely to -yield. It occurred to him that he might use his -commission while he still held the farm. He had not -thought of this at first. The usual procedure for a -beginner was to be assigned to some district where -a place was vacant, there to serve several months’ -apprenticeship without pay. When pay commenced, -it had until recently been at the rate of £35 a year, -but about the time Burns obtained his commission -the initial stipend was raised to £50. Looking about -his own neighbourhood, Burns learned that the -officer in charge of the rural parishes to the north -of Dumfries was a certain Leonard Smith, who had -recently inherited money and was not distinguishing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span> -himself by activity in the service. Burns decided to -play politics.</p> - -<p>His commission had been obtained through -Robert Graham of Fintry, one of the chief Commissioners -for Scotland. Fintry had expressed personal -interest in the poet’s welfare in terms which must -have soothed his bristling pride, for Burns had already -addressed to him both a prose letter of thanks -and a poetic epistle in imitation of Pope. Though -Fintry never quite supplanted Lord Glencairn in -Burns’s esteem, he in fact became the poet’s second -patron and in the long run did more for him than -even the Earl had done. Graham’s first favour had -been the commission itself; his second was the appointment -to active duty. Before his first harvest -was over Burns coolly suggested that Smith might -be relieved from duty without serious loss to himself -and perhaps with a gain to the Service. On his visit -to Edinburgh in February, 1789, Burns pressed the -matter further. Graham promised to do what he -could, but pointed out that it was clean against -regulations to start a new man at full pay without a -probationary period. Nevertheless he undertook to -investigate Smith’s conduct and by midsummer had -found cause for removing him, had given Burns the -place, and had circumvented the rule against starting -a new man at full duty and on full pay. For one -who had always boasted his independence and had -spoken scornfully of the political quest for favours, -Burns had done a neat and successful job of wire-pulling.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span></p> - -<p>Having once got his appointment, however, Burns -had no intention of treating it as a sinecure. His district -covered twelve sparsely-settled parishes and his -tours of inspection required, to fulfil the letter of the -law, that he ride two hundred miles a week in all -weathers and all states of the uniformly bad roads. -This meant that he could give little of his time and -less of his strength to Ellisland. To provide for the -farm he endeavoured to increase his dairy stock, -which Jean could supervise in the intervals of having -babies and managing her household. The cattle, -too, might help in the slow task of rebuilding the -worn-out acres.</p> - -<p>But the strain of his new duties soon took physical -toll. In the late fall of 1789, after less than two -months of service, ‘a malignant squinancy and low -fever’ laid him up for six weeks. His handwriting -indicates that the illness was really serious; the letters -written during convalescence are in a hand almost -as weak and straggling as that of June and -July, 1796. Nevertheless he had proved his qualifications -for the job. An official report on various -subordinate officers in the Excise bears after Burns’s -name the notation ‘a poet—never tried—turns out -well.’ He had moreover established friendly relations -with his immediate superiors, Alexander Findlater, -the Supervisor, and John Mitchell, the Collector, of -the Dumfries district. With the latter, indeed, he -was already on terms approaching intimacy, sending -him gifts of new-laid eggs from Ellisland and -accompanying them at least once with a poetic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span> -epistle so broadly humorous that no editor has ever -printed it all. Both men testified to Burns’s fidelity -by defending his character after his death and—what -is far more significant—by reporting favourably -on him during his life.</p> - -<p>He was giving reason for favourable reports. His -predecessor had been so slack that Burns was able -to appear, at the first session of court after he began -duty, with an impressive array of cases of tax evasion. -In handling these he again displayed political -astuteness. The minor offenders, mostly poor men -who could ill afford a fine, he begged off with warnings -or suspended sentences. This almost compelled -the magistrates to fine the larger offenders for whom -he refused to intercede, and inasmuch as Excise -officers then, like American customs inspectors today, -received a percentage of these penalties, Burns -found his procedure remunerative in cash as well as -in official credit. He soon discovered, though, that -zeal had its drawbacks. Gentlemen of position, including -some of the magistrates themselves, had -their favourite smugglers or home-brewers, and -when Burns caught one of these he started all the -machinery of influence and political pressure so -familiar to Americans during the prohibition era. -Once he told Collector Mitchell, after a hard day’s -riding in rounding up witnesses in a case, that he -expected for his pains to be clapped in jail for annoying -the friends of half the gentlemen in the -county. The grosser temptations of bribery, however, -did not touch him. The various legends, deriving<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span> -from highly unreliable oral tradition, of his -leniency with small offenders mean no more, even -if literally true, than that Burns had learned the -common sense of his profession. A customs inspector -knows that his job is not to penalize every -tourist who has failed to declare a dozen handkerchiefs -but to catch the large-scale smuggler. The -same was true of the laws Burns had to enforce, -which imposed taxes on everything from whisky to -candles. Not but what he made ordinary human -distinctions between his public and his private capacities. -William Lorimer, father of ‘Chloris’, was -one of the poet’s intimate friends. He was also a -bootlegger whose ways were, ‘like the grace of G—, -past all comprehension’. Seemingly Lorimer maintained -a moderate legal stock for inspection purposes, -but once when he was absent and his wife -drunk something slipped in the working of the -gentlemen’s agreement, and Burns had to explain -to Supervisor Findlater. Another time he helped, -as revenue officer, in a series of raids on Dumfries -haberdashers who had been selling smuggled French -gloves. A few days later, as private citizen, he supplied -Maria Riddell with similar gloves from a still -unraided dealer’s stock. The problems and conditions -of law enforcement are among the few immutables -in human history.</p> - -<p>After two years’ experience Burns reaffirmed that -the Excise was after all the business for him. He -added, ‘I find no difficulty in being an honest man -in it; the work of itself, is easy; and it is a devilish<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span> -different affair, managing money matters where I -care not a damn whether the money is paid or not; -from the long faces made to a haughty Laird or still -more haughty Factor, when rents are demanded, -and money, alas, not to be had!’ His position as -tenant farmer was no longer an irritation; it was an -obsession. Ellisland, he told Gilbert, had undone his -enjoyment of himself. He looked forward with the -same desperate hope as his father’s at Mount Oliphant -to the ‘freedom in his lease’. The three-year -period of the £50 rental ended in 1791. After that, -if he chose to stay, Ellisland would cost £70 a year. -Naturally, his discouragement and defeat on the -farm had affected his relations with his landlord. -Miller’s kindness, he said, had been just such -another thing as Creech’s, and the fact that -Mrs. Miller had failed to appreciate one of his -poorer contributions to Johnson’s <i>Museum</i> did not -heighten his esteem for the family. He wanted no -more to do with landlords or anything that belonged -to them.</p> - -<p>His only good luck at Ellisland came at the end. -The surrender of the lease did not annoy Miller as -Burns had expected, for a purchaser was in the -market, and Miller was glad enough to dispose of -the farm which the Nith separated from the rest of -his estate. After sending Jean and the children to -Mauchline, Burns held an auction of his standing -crops and provided the lavish drinks expected by -auction-goers. One result was that the exhilarated -bidders ran up the prices nearly a guinea an acre<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span> -beyond the market rates; another was that house -and stable-yard were strewn with helplessly drunk -and retching neighbours. The sale brought ready -cash for the first time in two years, and Burns used -some of it to clear up a variety of small debts, including -the four pounds he owed his namesake, -Robert Burn of Edinburgh, for erecting Fergusson’s -tombstone. He also celebrated his manumission by -a brief visit to Edinburgh to say farewell to Clarinda -and to try to do something for sick and penniless -Jenny Clow.</p> - -<p>While things had been going so badly on the -farm his position in the Excise had been improving. -After less than a year and a half in his laborious -rural division he had wangled a transfer to a vacant -‘footwalk’, the ‘3d, or Tobacco, Division’, in Dumfries. -This meant lighter work, and enabled him to -dispense with his horse—not too soon, for his poor -worn-out mare had given him several nasty falls on -the bad roads, bruising him severely and once breaking -his arm. In town, though, he had small opportunity -for increasing his income through fines and -penalties as he had done in the rural division. When -at the end of 1791 he moved his family into Dumfries -the best quarters he could afford were a -crowded and uncomfortable half-of-a-house in the -Stinking Vennel, near the river. He was still receiving -only the minimum salary of £50 a year, and -though Jean said long afterwards that they did not -come empty-handed into Dumfries not much cash -can have remained after he had discharged his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span> -debts. As early as March, 1790, he had estimated -that he would be lucky if he did not lose more than -£100 out of an investment of little more than £200. -Such anticipatory estimates are oftener under the -mark than over it; one suspects that if Burns recovered -as much as £50 of the money he had put into -Ellisland, he was lucky.</p> - -<p>By comparison, his prospects in the Excise were -roseate. The Port Division in Dumfries, best paid of -the subordinate posts, was vacant, and Burns lobbied -for it with William Corbet, general supervisor -of Excise, as he had done with Graham of Fintry -for his first appointment. Corbet was an old friend -of Mrs. Dunlop’s, and her intercession was effectively -supplemented by a warm recommendation -from Findlater, the local supervisor. Burns got the -job early in 1792. The salary was £70 a year with -various perquisites worth another £20. It scarcely -represented luxurious living, but it was a better income -than most Scottish schoolmasters or even -ministers received in the eighteenth century, and -though ‘Robin’s temper was not cold and frugal’ he -managed to be fairly comfortable. After a year in the -Stinking Vennel he moved to a better house in what -was then called Mill Street and is now Burns -Street—the last of his numerous abodes.</p> - -<p>Even before he left Ellisland Burns’s name had -been placed on the list of those eligible for promotion -to the rank of Supervisor. This was the most -laborious of the Excise posts, for the supervisors did -most of the real work of collection and administration.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span> -They received salaries of from £200 to £400 -a year, but their duties filled most of their waking -hours. So long as he was merely Port Officer Burns -had time and energy for reading and song-writing. -He knew, however, that when in the course of -seniority he became a supervisor most of this would -cease. But he was already looking beyond. The next -rank above Supervisor was Collector, and the collectors -held well-paid sinecures. In theory at least -supervisors were appointed by merit, but collectorships -admittedly went by favour, and Burns began -to cultivate political friendships which might in the -future secure him the necessary influence.</p> - -<p>Not that he had any intention of soldiering on his -job and trusting to influence to lift him to a better -one. He was taking an intelligent interest in his -work and sought the attention of his superiors by -his understanding of their business. Thus he had -not been long in his Port Division before he wrote -to Provost Staig of Dumfries pointing out that the -town was losing revenue through failure to assess -a tax on imported ale, and backed his statement -with an estimate of the sums involved and some -shrewd advice as to the best method of getting his -chiefs to enforce their collection. A year or so later -he pointed out to Robert Graham that one of the -Dumfries divisions could be abolished and its duties -distributed among the other officers without overburdening -them. There cannot be many instances -on record of a government employee’s informing his -superiors that he was underworked. On this occasion<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span> -at least Burns took an unusual way of drawing attention -to himself. He was also once more suggesting -his own advancement at the expense of another man, -but admitted the fact and coupled his recommendation -with a plea that if the change were made the -present incumbent, burdened with an expensive -family, be provided for elsewhere.</p> - -<p>He would have been the last to claim that these -suggestions were free of any ulterior motive beside -the general one of making himself known as a -thoughtful and efficient officer. He had other and -more immediate purposes. Not long after showing -Provost Staig the revenue possibilities of the ‘twa -pennies’ tax on ale he had a petition to make to the -Burgh Council. When he first visited Dumfries in -1787 he had been made an honorary burgess; he -now wanted that nominal citizenship converted into -a real one so far at least as concerned the local -schools. The sons of burgesses were entitled to free -tuition at Dumfries Academy, and the chance of -getting his boys into a first-rate school was not to be -neglected. His petition set forth in detail the help he -had given to the local revenues. This may not have -been the reason why the Council at once granted -his application, but it certainly did not hamper it. -Similarly his letters to Graham were frankly motivated -by a desire to get a post as acting supervisor -at the earliest possible moment and thereby to secure -not only some small immediate increase in income but -the experience and reputation which would count -in his favour when a permanent position opened.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span></p> - -<p>These were reasonable and legitimate efforts to -gain prestige. He indulged in others more ticklish -and, in the perspective of history, more futile. Burns -lacked the right temperament for cultivating politicians, -but he could not help trying. He was once -introduced, for instance, to that very shady character, -the Duke of Queensberry, whom previously -he had rated with some justice as a complete scoundrel. -At their meeting the Duke proved affable, and -hearing that Burns had written a song about the -notorious ‘Whistle’ drinking bout mentioned that he -would like a copy. Burns sent it to him with a flattering -letter, no doubt hoping that at some future -date the Duke’s influence might be useful. There -was nothing particularly dangerous in this, for the -Duke’s rank made him a public character irrespective -of what party was in power. But when Burns -undertook to meddle in parliamentary contests he -was playing with fire. He had of course no vote himself, -but he wrote ballads in support of Whig candidates -and continued to do so until a few months -before his death. From the viewpoint of 1792 something -might have been said for this as good strategy, -regardless of the poet’s actual sympathies. Except -for the brief Rockingham ministry at the end of the -American War the Tories had been in power for -nearly a generation and a reversal was overdue. -When and if the Whigs came in a man who had supported -them in their time of adversity would be entitled -to special favours. Neither Burns nor anyone -else in Britain could foresee Napoleon and realize<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span> -that Pitt’s ministry, which had already been on the -verge of disaster over the Regency Bill, would, -thanks to the Frenchman, remain in office until after -Burns and most of his parliamentary friends were in -their graves. As things turned out, silence would -have been the better part for Burns, but he had no -gift for silence.</p> - -<p>In the same year moreover in which Burns secured -his Port Division the effects of the upheaval -in France were stirring both Burns and Scotland. -The cries of Liberty and Equality and Fraternity -were echoed in the North and enlisted as in England -a motley collection of supporters who ranged -from poetic idealists, like Burns and Wordsworth, -through professional agitators like Thomas Paine -and Horne Tooke to unprincipled rabble. Burns’s -first public gesture of sympathy with the French -Revolution came as a by-product of the most exciting -episode in his career as an Excise officer. In -the early spring of 1792 a smuggling schooner -named the <i>Rosamond</i> was caught in the Solway. The -ship was heavily armed and thanks to the active -co-operation of the coastwise folks, who staved in -all their rowboats to keep the Excise officers from -using them, she landed her cargo. The <i>Rosamond</i>, -however, remained aground on the tidal flats and -when an armed force of dragoons and Excise officers—Burns -among them—waded out to attack her -the crew fled after scuttling the ship. Salvaged and -towed into the Nith the <i>Rosamond</i> with all her gear -was confiscated and sold at auction. Her armament<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span> -included four carronades which Burns bought for -£4 and dispatched as a gift to the French Convention. -Such at least is the traditional story, and every -detail of it, except the actual dispatch of the carronades, -is corroborated by documents found among -the Abbotsford papers. The tradition continues that -the guns never reached France, being seized by the -customs officials at Dover; but here again confirmation -is lacking. Legally there was nothing wrong in -Burns’s action. France and England were still officially -at peace, though their relations were steadily -growing tenser. Nevertheless, from the practical -viewpoint of a government employee with a dependent -family it was a gesture of almost criminal -recklessness. The government has never yet existed -which looked benevolently upon manifestations of -revolutionary sympathies among its servants, and -before many months had passed Burns had good -reason to be frightened.</p> - -<p>The autumn of 1792 saw England ready to join -the coalition against revolutionary France, though -war was not declared until February 1, 1793. To the -privileged classes in England the war had all the -characteristics of a crusade except the obligation to -take a personal share. The Revolution threatened -the very foundations of the aristocratic social system, -and the depth of the government’s fear is measured -by the violence alike of official denunciations of -France and of the suppression of dissenting opinion -at home. Charges of sedition were pressed not only -against avowed revolutionary sympathizers but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span> -against almost anyone who had advocated the -slightest modification of the existing order. It was -not surprising that Burns, always unguarded in -speech and action, should face investigation of his -conduct. The details of the charges and their outcome -belong in another chapter. For a time Burns -thought that all his hopes of advancement were -blasted, but the storm soon blew over, and even -before he advertised his loyalty by enlisting in the -Dumfries Volunteers he had good reason to anticipate -that promotion would come in due course.</p> - -<p>But though he escaped the storm of persecution he -did not escape the economic consequences of the -war. It had the usual and inevitable results of tight -money and rising prices; a wave of bankruptcies -swept over Scotland; the monthly lists of failures in -the <i>Scots Magazine</i> increased from an average of -half-a-dozen a month to forty-six in July, 1793, and -among the victims was Burns’s friend, Walter Auld -the saddler. The poet himself was not exempt. The -war cut off the greater part of the import trade and -with it much of the income and perquisites of Dumfries -Port Division. Burns had just begun to extend -his expenditures in keeping with his increased income. -The carronades and his better house were -only part of the expansion. He had backed a friend’s -note and had to pay it when the friend defaulted; -he had lent considerable sums to another friend, the -schoolmaster at Moffat, who was engaged in a long-drawn-out -wrangle with the Earl of Hopetoun, -patron of the school; there were other smaller loans<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span> -as well. Caught thus with ready cash exhausted, -income reduced, and prices rising, Burns found himself -once again in the grimly familiar position of -being unable to pay his landlord. That the landlord -was a gentleman and a personal friend who did not -dun for his money made the situation more painful. -In January, 1795, Burns had actually to borrow -three guineas from his friend, William Stewart, in -order to pay part of his rent. Nevertheless even in -these hard times he managed occasional expenditures -that came in the class of luxuries—a week’s -tour in Galloway with John Syme, the restoration -of a Jacobite relic in form of Lord Balmerino’s dirk, -even a miniature portrait of himself. He and his -family never lacked for the necessaries of life, and -though he was somewhat in debt the accounting of -his executors is proof that the amount never passed -reasonable bounds.</p> - -<p>As soon as the excitement over the sedition -charges subsided his prospects in the Excise brightened -steadily. Friends in Edinburgh were secretly -trying to get him transferred to a more lucrative -position, but even in Dumfries things looked hopeful. -At the end of December, 1794, Supervisor Findlater -fell ill, and Burns took over his duties. The -work lasted three months or more, and though it is -uncertain if Burns received any extra pay for his -labour he at least gained valuable experience and -competently handled his complex duties. The only -adverse criticism of his conduct related to a technical -irregularity in his final report, and this was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span> -the fault not of Burns himself but of one of his subordinates. -The passage of each year brought him -higher on the list of candidates for supervisor’s posts. -Had he lived another year or two he would automatically -have been appointed even if his Edinburgh -friends had failed in their efforts to hasten -the process.</p> - -<p>The prospect of promotion was becoming very -real—so real that during the very months when he -was acting as supervisor Burns devoted some of his -scanty leisure to composing a group of political -ballads. Patrick Heron of Heron—the same Heron -whose bank failure had once ruined half Ayrshire—was -the Whig candidate in a by-election at Kirkcudbright. -In return for the support of Burns’s pen -Heron asked if he could do anything for the poet. -Burns’s reply showed his mind at its coldest level of -realism. Nothing could be done, he said, for two or -three years, until he reached the head of the supervisors’ -list. Then a political friend could be of service -in getting him appointed in some agreeable part of -the kingdom and of still more service in hastening -his next step in rank. Collectorships went by favour, -and the time he must spend in the drudgery of a -supervisorship would therefore depend on the -amount of influence his friends could exert. The -letter is graphic proof of Burns’s open-eyed acceptance -of the system in which he worked; it is also -proof of his irrepressible lack of discretion. From the -viewpoint of mere self-interest he would have done -better to hold aloof from all political contests and,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span> -when the time came, to base his appeal for influence -upon his standing as a poet instead of identifying -himself with any party. But such calm calculation -was not in his nature.</p> - -<p>In any case his hopes were vain. His disease was -gaining on him; he experienced sharp twinges of -pain which he and his doctors called rheumatism, -but which were probably angina pectoris. In -June and again in December, 1795, he had serious -illnesses which left him weak and shaken. In -the face of his increasing weakness he had taken on -additional labour by enlisting in a volunteer company -organized in Dumfries in the early spring. -The manual of arms and frequent drills were dangerous -medicine for a diseased heart, and to this -physical labour Burns added active participation in -all the business affairs of the corps. His final breakdown -could not in any circumstances have been long -delayed, but the Dumfries Volunteers undoubtedly -hastened it.</p> - -<p>The winter of 1795-6 was a time of famine. Crops -had been bad; trade was dislocated by the war. -Nearly one-fourth of the inhabitants of Edinburgh -were being fed by charity, and flour was so scarce -that even those who could afford it were asked to -ration themselves to one loaf of bread per capita a -week. Conditions in the smaller towns were as bad -or worse; there were serious food riots in Dumfries -in February and March. With his health steadily -declining Burns was exposed to constant worry for -the welfare of his family. Excise officers who were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span> -unable over long periods to perform their duties -because of illness were reduced to half-pay, and as -matters stood in the spring of 1796 half-pay would -have meant almost starvation for his children. -That things did not come to this pass for Burns was -due to the generosity of Adam Stobbie, who handled -his work for him and refused compensation for the -service. This relieved some of his immediate anxiety, -but did little to answer the main question of what -would become of Jean and the children if he died.</p> - -<p>The problem of livelihood, never long absent -from his mind, occupied it during his last weeks almost -to the exclusion of other thoughts. The only -prescriptions the doctors could offer in his illness -involved expenditures he could not afford, and his -enlistment in the Volunteers now returned to plague -him. The tailor who had made his uniform began -to dun for payment, and to the poet’s fevered imagination -it seemed that his life was going to close as -his father’s had, under the shadow of a debtors’ -prison. He spent some of his last days of consciousness -in writing frantic letters begging the friends to -whom he had lent money to repay their loans and -asking others like George Thomson and James Burness -to advance him money. Thomson was the only -one who gave grudgingly. The others willingly and -promptly sent what he asked, but too late to lift -the cloud from his dying mind. His last articulate -words were an imprecation against the tailor who -had threatened him, and he died without the comfort -of knowing that his death would awaken the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span> -generosity he had never experienced in his life, and -that the admirers of his poetry would make it possible -for Jean to keep her home together and for his -children to be decently educated and launched on -respectable careers.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="VI">VI</h2> -</div> - -<p class="ph2">SONG</p> - - -<p>Burns never wrote a ‘Prelude, or Growth of a Poet’s -Mind’, and left only a few fragments of his projected -satire on ‘The Poet’s Progress’. Yet his letters and -journals, as well as the poems themselves, so definitely -describe his moods and methods of composition -that his poetic psychology can be studied almost -as fully as Wordsworth’s own.</p> - -<p>Conscious pleasure in poetry read or heard first -came to him in boyhood through one of Addison’s -hymns; mingled with martial and patriotic sentiment -he found it also in ‘The History of Sir William -Wallace’ and the Life of Hannibal. This latter, he -said, ‘gave my young ideas such a turn that I used to -strut in raptures up & down after the recruiting -drum and bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough to -be a soldier, while the story of Wallace poured a -Scotish prejudice in my veins which will boil along -there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest.’ -But this, like the similar thrills from all the odds and -ends of English poetry and Scottish song which came -his way, was commonplace boyish emotion. The -need and desire to write poetry of his own did not -awaken until his adolescent blood was warmed, in his -‘fifteenth autumn’, by the first consciousness of sexual -attraction in the company of Nelly Kilpatrick.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span></p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘I never expressly told her that I loved her.—Indeed I -did not well know myself, why I liked so much to loiter -behind with her, when returning in the evening from our -labors; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings -thrill like an Eolian harp; and particularly, why my pulse -beat such a furious ratann when I looked and fingered -over her hand, to pick out the nettle-stings and thistles.—Among -her other love-inspiring qualifications, she sung -sweetly, and ’twas her favorite reel to which I attempted -giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme.—I was not so -presumtive 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 -composed 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 ... -he had no more Scholarcraft than I had.’</p> -</div> - -<p>‘Thus’, Burns summed up, with a juxtaposition of -ideas never far separated in his mind, ‘with me began -Love and Poesy.’ In all respects save one the -episode was the commonest experience of calf-love. -But that one difference was decisive. When a girl -roused him to lyric fervour, Burns did not sit down -and merely string his emotions together in rime. -Another element went to make the song; an element -that ultimately would mean more, poetically, to -Burns than any girl—namely, a tune. His mind did -not work from emotion directly to words; it worked -from emotion to music, and the music brought the -words which expressed its mood. Herein Burns was -almost unique among modern poets. Fully to appreciate<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span> -his lyrics one must hear them sung to the airs -which evoked them. To read many of them in bare -print is like reading the libretto of an opera. Even in -his satires and epistles the process of composition was -usually the same, though another man’s poem, instead -of music, fired the train. Acquaintance with his -models is almost as illuminating as acquaintance -with his tunes.</p> - -<p>His first effort at song-writing led to a conscious -study of the poet’s craft. The elaborate criticism appended -to ‘Handsome Nell’ when Burns copied the -poem into his Commonplace Book is too obviously a -bravura piece to merit consideration; more noteworthy -is his account of how he studied his collection -of English songs: ‘I pored over them, verse by -verse; carefully noting the true tender or sublime -from affectation and fustian.—I am convinced I -owe much to this for my critic-craft such as it is.’ -But these were <i>English</i> songs, and their effect on his -early work shows mainly in such things as ‘My father -was a farmer’ and ‘Man was made to mourn’, -which latter in the Commonplace Book is entitled, -‘A Song: Tune, Peggy Bawn’. Even his most doleful -lines came to him in music.</p> - -<p>But lugubrious notes were not the only ones. It -was as inevitable that a young Scot should try his -hand at metrical paraphrases of the Psalms as that -a young Etonian of the same century should paraphrase -Horace. The results in both cases are equally -negligible. Youth has to repeat the stale patterns of -its predecessors before it can find its own. It was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span> -much more important that ‘I murder hate by field -or flood’ was written in the same way. This is an epigrammatic -song in the Restoration manner, and as -English in language as in style. But it was written to -a Scottish air, ‘Gillicrankie’. The innate Scottish culture -of the poet was beginning, as early as 1781, to -assimilate and adapt the alien materials of Restoration -England.</p> - -<p>Though Burns failed to act on Richard Brown’s -suggestion that he send some of his early verses to a -magazine, the idea stuck. The yeasty stirrings of a -still immature mind which had led him in 1780 to -plague his friends with pompous discourses on Pride -and Courage were slowly giving place to more personal -thinking on topics which he better understood. -His customary chronological vagueness in referring -to his early manhood makes it uncertain whether he -began his Commonplace Book before he discovered -the poems of Robert Fergusson, or after. The internal -evidence indicates the former. So does the elaborate -title-page:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘Observations, Hints, Songs, Scraps of Poetry, &c., by -Robt. Burness; a man who had little art in making -money, and still less in keeping it; but was, however, a -man of some sense, a great deal of honesty, and unbounded -good-will to every creature—rational or irrational. -As he was but little indebted to scholastic education, -and bred at a plough-tail, his performances must be -strongly tinctured with his unpolished, rustic way of life; -but, as I believe they are really <i>his own</i>, it may be some -entertainment to a curious observer of human-nature to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span> -see how a ploughman thinks and feels under the pressure -of Love, Ambition, Anxiety, Grief, with the like cares -and passions, which, however diversified by the modes -and manners of life, operate pretty much alike, I believe, -in all the Species.</p> -</div> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“There are numbers in the world who do not want -sense to make a figure, so much as an opinion of their -own abilities, to put them upon recording their observations, -and allowing them the same importance -which they do to those which appear in print.”—Shenstone.</p> -</div> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“Pleasing when youth is long expir’d to trace,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The forms our pencil, or our pen design’d.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Such was our youthful air, and shape, and face!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Such the soft image of our youthful mind.”</div> - <div class="verse indent14">Ibidem.’</div> -</div> -</div> -</div></div> - - -<p>Burns was already conscious of something more in -himself than there was in the average young peasant; -as an escape from worries over his own health -and the family’s future he was undertaking to leave -a record of himself to edify some hypothetical future -reader. Whatever tinge of humility there might be -on his title-page was, like the pretence at third-person -reporting, assumed. He meant to prove that a -peasant youth shared the feelings of his betters and -could rime and moralize to as good effect as they. -But the title-page, the quotations from Shenstone, -and the opening paragraph about Love all announce -a programme he soon abandoned. When he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span> -began the book he was still thinking in the terms of -his first letters about Pride and Courage; before he -ended it he was thinking in poetry.</p> - -<p>Though he might continue to assert that he rimed -for fun, the fact was that from the day in April, 1783, -when he commenced the Commonplace Book he -was composing for publication, though not necessarily -for print. His earliest verses were either the -expression of a personal emotion, social <i>jeux d’esprit</i>, -or conventional exercises in versification, with no -purpose beyond the momentary and personal one; -the ‘Observations, Scraps of Song, &c.’, were to be -his legacy to the world. Not by chance did the Commonplace -Book and its successor survive the general -destruction of his private papers when he supposed -himself on the eve of flight to Jamaica. Even though -by that time the best of his verse had escaped the -hazard of manuscript and was safely enshrined in -the good black print of the Kilmarnock volume, he -could not bring himself to destroy these records. It -was well that he saved them. The Commonplace -Book remains the sole record of what Burns was doing, -intellectually and poetically, between April, -1783, and October, 1785. Commencing with self-conscious -commentaries on life and on his own first -efforts at writing, it reveals before its close his steady -growth in artistic competence.</p> - -<p>Not that it resembles the notebooks of Keats and -Shelley, with their evidence of how poems grow in -the poet’s mind. Burns’s poems stayed in his mind -until they were mature. His poverty and his method<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span> -of composing to music combined to prevent his committing -half-formed ideas to paper. Paper was -scarce and expensive; often in his early days he -failed to write down his poems even when they were -complete. Sometimes he forgot them entirely; sometimes -he managed to reconstruct them long afterwards, -as he did when he recalled ‘The Mauchline -Wedding’ for Mrs. Dunlop’s amusement. One of the -few poems composed on paper is the disastrous -‘Elegy on the Death of Sir James Hunter Blair’, -which Burns drafted in his Border journal. Here he -was working with an English verse-form for which -no melody existed. It took him three different sittings -painfully to wring out the first seven stanzas. -Again in 1791 he reported that he had ‘these several -months been hammering at an Elegy’ on Miss Burnet -of Monboddo, but found elegy ‘so exhausted a -subject that any new idea on the business is not to be -expected’; the original manuscript of the ‘Lament -for James Earl of Glencairn’ reveals similar struggles. -When no tune sang itself in his head, composition -was labour and the results were wooden. The -‘Lament’, with a more lyric stanza and with stronger -personal feeling at its root, came nearer than the -others to success, but even it cannot be ranked -among the great elegies. Declining Cunningham’s -suggestion of a theme, he once said, ‘I have two or -three times in my life composed from the wish, -rather than from the impulse, but I never succeeded -to any purpose.’ In commemorating Lord Glencairn, -wish and impulse combined, yet even here he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span> -did not wholly succeed because the tune was lacking.</p> - -<p>Poetic expression with Burns was not, as with -Wordsworth, the fruit of emotion recollected in -tranquillity; it was the fruit of emotion expressing -itself to music. Though as he grew older the emotion -no longer needed to be so strongly personal as when -he wrote his earliest songs, the dependence on music -became correspondingly greater. How he composed -in his later years he told George Thomson in the autumn -of 1793:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘Until I am compleat master of a tune, in my own singing -(such as it is) I never can compose for it.—My way is: -I consider the poetic Sentiment, correspondent to my -idea of the musical expression; then chuse my theme; -begin one stanza; when that is composed, which is generally -the most difficult part of the business, I walk out, -sit down now & then, look out for objects in Nature -around me that are in unison or harmony with the cogitations -of my fancy & workings of my bosom; humming -every now & then the air with the verses I have framed: -when I feel my Muse beginning to jade, I retire to the -solitary fireside of my study, & there commit my effusions -to paper; swinging, at intervals, on the hind-legs of my -elbow-chair, by way of calling forth my own critical -strictures, as my pen goes on.—</p> - -<p>Seriously, this, at home, is almost invariably my -way.—What damn’d Egotism!’</p> -</div> - -<p>Though it would probably be impossible to overstress -Robert Fergusson’s influence on Burns’s development, -the elder poet’s primary service was to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span> -clarify and confirm ideas already present but as yet -inarticulate in Burns’s mind. He knew what he liked, -and what his own poetic impulses were; the discovery -of Fergusson enabled him to define both his -method and his objective. To realize how much he -matured intellectually between the beginning of the -Commonplace Book in 1783 and its conclusion in -1785, one need merely read the strutting, self-conscious, -and essentially empty criticism of ‘expletive -phrases’ of ‘too serious sentiment’, and ‘flimsy -strain’ which he appended to ‘Handsome Nell’, or -the pseudo-devotional passage about the grand end -of human life being ‘to cultivate an intercourse with -that Being to whom we owe life’. These things of -1783 are juvenilia. The following, written in September, -1785, is adult:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘There is a certain irregularity in the Old Scotch Songs, -a redundancy of syllables with respect to that exactness -of accent and measure that the English Poetry requires, -but which glides in, most melodiously with the respective -tunes to which they are set. For instance, the fine old -song of “The Mill Mill O,” to give it a plain prosaic -reading, it halts prodigiously out of measure; on the other -hand, the song set to the same tune in Bremner’s collection -of Scotch Songs which begins “To Fanny fair could -I impart,” &c., it is most exact measure, and yet, let -them both be sung before a real critic, one above the -biasses of prejudice, but a thorough Judge of Nature, how -flat and spiritless will the last appear, how trite, and -lamely methodical, compared with the wild-warbling -cadence, the heart-moving melody of the first. This particularly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span> -is the case with all those airs which end with a -hypermetrical syllable. There is a degree of wild irregularity -in many of the compositions and fragments which -are daily sung to them by my compeers, the common -people—a certain happy arrangement of Old Scotch -syllables, and yet, very frequently, nothing, not even <i>like</i> -rhyme, or sameness of jingle at the ends of the lines. This -has made me sometimes imagine that perhaps, it might -be possible for a Scotch Poet, with a nice, judicious ear, -to set compositions to many of our most favorite airs ... -independent of rhyme altogether....’</p> -</div> - -<p>With nothing except mother-wit and a sure ear to -guide him, Burns had reached conclusions regarding -poetic rhythm at complete variance with the critical -theories of his century and beyond the practice of -even nineteenth-century orthodoxy. He had recognized -that the real charm of folk-poetry lies in the -fact that it is musical rather than regular. In an age -when the essence of poetry was thought to abide in -the accurately counted syllables of the heroic couplet -such an opinion would have seemed not merely -heresy but sheer insanity. Compared with it, Coleridge’s -supposed innovation of hypermetrical syllables -in <i>Christabel</i> is timid conventionality. Blake -alone among Burns’s contemporaries had bolder -theories of rhythm, and his work, which the Scotsman -never saw, had to wait more than half a century -for recognition. Burns later expended much -time and ink in trying to persuade George Thomson -that a song could be poetry even if all its lines did -not count up the same number of syllables, but he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span> -was never optimistic enough to offer that silly body -a lyric which dispensed with rime.</p> - -<p>So, too, in regard to the physiology and psychology -of composition, Burns, before he ever published -a line, had reached closer to fundamentals than an -academician like Hugh Blair could ever go. Like -Milton he had recognized from his own experience -that there is in many poets a seasonal rhythm of -creativeness. In himself it usually began in August, -and continued for several months. That month, he -said in his autobiography, was always a carnival in -his bosom; in 1793 he told Thomson, ‘Autumn is -my propitious season. I make more verses in it, than -all the year else,’ and at the beginning of the next -summer he repeated the assertion: ‘Now, & for six -or seven months <i>I shall be quite in song</i>.’ In other -words, it took all the scanty sunshine of the Scottish -summer to bring him physically to that level of well-being -at which creation was possible.</p> - -<p>The psychology of composition, moreover, which -he explained in prose in 1793 he had defined in poetry -in the epistle to William Simpson of Ochiltree, -composed in May, 1785, and published in the Kilmarnock -volume. It is surprisingly like A. E. Housman’s, -who recorded that some of his best poems -came to him spontaneously while walking on Hampstead -Heath and thinking of nothing in particular, -after drinking a pint of beer at luncheon. Burns’s -formula is precisely similar:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">The Muse, nae Poet ever fand her,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Till by himself he learn’d to wander</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Adown some trottin burn’s meander,</div> - <div class="verse indent7">An’ no think lang.</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>In these circumstances, when his emotional pressure -was high enough, lines and stanzas would come unsought -to his mind, and it was to this experience he -referred when he repeatedly called himself ‘a Bard -of Nature’s making’. Burns knew as well as Housman -did that this spontaneous birth was only the beginning -and not the end of composition. Gilbert reported -the process without realizing its significance:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘Robert often composed without any regular plan. -When anything made a strong impression on his mind, -so as to rouse it to any poetic exertion, he would give -way to the impulse, and embody the thought in rhyme. -If he hit on two or three stanzas to please him, he would -then think of proper introductory, connecting, and concluding -stanzas; hence the middle of a poem was often -first produced.’</p> -</div> - -<p>It suited with the role of inspired ploughman which -Burns assumed among the Edinburgh gentry to give -the impression that the finished poem also was spontaneous, -but he knew better. His poetry was often -born under the open sky, with the physical rhythm -of his farm-work supplying the muscular accompaniment -he later sought in strolls on the banks of Nith, -but it was matured and revised by concentrated -study of the implications of his theme. As the piper -has to walk his measure, so Burns’s body moved to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span> -the rhythm of the tune which was in his mind, and the -rhythm brought the words which expressed his mood.</p> - -<p>It was only Scots music that saved Burns in the -end from complete subjection to the false elegance -of his century. Though he was better read than most -of his ‘patrons’ ever realized, he had the self-educated -man’s diffidence in the face of established -reputations. His ear, so quick to distinguish ‘the true -tender or sublime’ from ‘affectation or fustian’ in -a lyric, failed him in the reading of more pretentious -works. ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ is shot full of -verbal echoes of English poets; what is worse, it -echoes their sentiments, in such a passage as Stanza -X, to an extent which divorces the thought from all -the realities of peasant life. He never acquired the -degree of sophistication which would have enabled -him to use the current English conventions freely -and originally, yet he was too sophisticated to use -old folk conventions when they were not reinforced -by music. Thus he never—with the possible exception -of ‘John Barleycorn’—wrote a serious ballad. -His political verses, and above all such an uproarious -parody as ‘The Ballad of Grizzel Grimme’, -show that he had all the ballad conventions at his -tongue’s end; he had collected numerous old ballad -texts, of which Dr. Currie named more than a dozen -to Sir Walter Scott, though without thinking it worth -while to preserve them; yet he could employ the -ballad only in satire or burlesque. Thanks to music, -he was able in all seriousness to sing a song in the old -folk style, but he could not tell a story.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span></p> - -<p>Even his Scottish vocabulary was more literary -and derivative than his contemporaries realized. It -was not so much a direct transcript of Ayrshire -speech as it was a generalized vernacular pieced -together from Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, -and the anonymous folk lyrists and ballad writers. -He was genuinely interested in the variations of -dialect—on his Border tour, for instance, he jotted -down definitions of local words which were new to -him—but his poetic use of it was chiefly due to its -pithiness, its humour, and, above all, its flexibility. -This was what he had in mind when he admitted to -Robert Anderson ‘the advantages he enjoyed ... -from the <i>copia verborum</i>, the command of phraseology, -which the knowledge and use of the English and -Scottish dialects afforded him’. He habitually alternated -between Scottish and English spellings of the -same word, as the exigencies of rime and measure -required, thereby achieving a more flexible expression -than was possible in either dialect by itself. His -vernacular writing, in short, was nearer to Lowell’s -New England speech or Kipling’s Cockney than it -was to Gawain Douglas’s or William Dunbar’s -single-minded expression in his native tongue. Even -Robert Fergusson’s dialect, with its strong infusion -of Fifeshire elements, is closer than Burns’s to being -a direct transcript from life.</p> - -<p>In one sense the poems in the Kilmarnock volume -which were written under Robert Fergusson’s influence -are a divergence from Burns’s deepest impulses, -even though his method of composing them<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span> -was fundamentally the same as in his song-writing. -Instead of a tune to which he could set his own -words Fergusson supplied a pattern or a theme to be -adapted to his own experience. The parallels between -‘The Plane-stanes and the Causey’ and ‘The -Brigs of Ayr’, between ‘The Daft Days’ and ‘Hallowe’en’ -or ‘The Holy Fair’, between ‘Caller -Oysters’ and ‘Scotch Drink’ or ‘To a Haggis’ are too -obvious and have been too often mentioned to need -reiteration. Burns borrowed, but he did not copy; -even borrowed phraseology he made his own. His -imitations almost invariably surpassed their originals -both in poetic fire and in the epigrammatic -quality essential for quotability. Yet in these forms -of verse he showed no inventiveness. His own phrase -that Fergusson had roused him to <i>emulating</i> vigour is -literally true. That Fergusson’s impetus failed to -sweep Burns on to discover similar themes of his own -reveals him as after all on foreign ground. Nevertheless, -by demonstrating that poetry could still be -written in the vernacular, Fergusson had done inestimable -service. Beyond that his influence brought -Burns to a dead end. The unhappy young lawyer’s -clerk had no music in his soul.</p> - -<p>Allan Ramsay rather than Fergusson showed the -way to the sort of poetry without musical setting in -which Burns found his genuine freedom and inspiration. -The imitations of Fergusson end with the lines -‘To a Haggis’, written in December, 1786; Ramsay -supplied the models for the vernacular epistles -which Burns never wholly ceased to write until a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</span> -few months before his death. And between the poetic -epistle as Burns wrote it and the dramatic monologue -in which he also excelled there is little basic -difference. The writer of a poetic epistle is usually -dramatizing himself. Like the professional humorist, -he assumes a role which is a projection or exaggeration -of one phase of his own temperament, but -which is not really himself as the working-day world -knows him. For Burns to pass from such self-dramatization -as marks the epistles to Lapraik, Simpson, -Rankine, and Smith to the pure drama of ‘The Auld -Farmer’ or even ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’ involved -merely an extension of imaginative scope and not a -different technique.</p> - -<p>To put it another way, Burns could either talk or -he could sing. When he was not writing to music he -was at his best only when he was speaking, either -for himself as personified bard or humorous spectator, -or as he identified his own personality with another’s. -Nothing in the poems composed in 1786 -more clearly shows his maturing artistic powers -than does the dramatic character of ‘The Auld -Farmer’ and ‘Holy Willie’ when contrasted with the -lyrics of ‘The Jolly Beggars’, composed the year before. -In these last, magnificent as they are, the -reader can seldom forget that it is Burns who is -speaking through the mouths of the vagabonds. The -lyrics are only half dramatic, and perhaps it was -realization of this that made the poet in 1793 tell -George Thomson that none of the songs pleased -him except the last—in which Burns himself is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</span> -speaking as the ‘Bard of no regard’. In ‘Holy Willie’ -and ‘The Auld Farmer’, on the other hand, the poet -has identified himself with the character whom he -is portraying as completely as Browning ever did -with Fra Lippo Lippi or the Duke of Ferrara.</p> - -<p>Less than adequate notice has been taken of the -fact that Burns had mastered the art of the dramatic -lyric and the dramatic monologue more than half a -century before Browning gave the forms their -names. His own statement that all his early lyrics -had a personal basis has both led biographers on -wild-goose chases after autobiographical elements -in songs which possess none, and has been used to -give false emphasis to many poems really based on -personal experience. Such interpretations ignore -the very foundation of creative art. That the impulse -to write a lyric comes from personal emotion does -not mean that the finished poem is literal history. -Keats’s love for Fanny Brawne helped to make ‘The -Eve of St. Agnes’ what it is, but not even Mr. Middleton -Murry has been fatuous enough to call -Madeline a portrait of Fanny. Rose Aylmer was not -necessarily as perfect as Landor’s elegy upon her; -William Douglas may have had no real intention of -laying him down and dying for Annie Laurie. Yet -the whole Highland Mary legend, for instance, rests -on precisely this sort of treatment of a handful of -Burns’s songs, in obstinate disregard of the plain -fact that the woman who inspires a love-lyric no -more needs to be herself a lyric woman than the -model for the Victory of Samothrace needed to be a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span> -woman with wings. Everyone has recognized Burns’s -unsuccess in his effort to dramatize himself for Clarinda’s -benefit as the pure man of sentiment; his true -achievement could be better understood by recognition -of his success in dramatizing his real self in -many of his best ‘personal’ poems. From the ‘Mary -Morison’ of his youth to the ‘O wert thou in the -cauld blast’ of his last illness, his best songs display -not Burns himself but a dramatic projection of one -aspect of his mind.</p> - -<p>Commentators from Henry Mackenzie onward -have regretted that Burns never carried out his plans -for writing a drama. Yet his triumph in the dramatic -monologue is the best reason for believing -that the attempt would have failed. His numerous -references to the drama and dramatic writing never -so much as hint that Burns had grasped the elements -of theatrical technique. For him a play was merely -a vehicle for declamatory speeches and the expression -of ‘sentiments’ which would make neat quotations; -a cobbling together of purple patches and of -scattered episodes supposed to depict ‘originality of -character’. If it ever occurred to him that a good -play is a unified structure in which a single impression -is built up through a series of artfully contrived -climaxes, he never put the idea on paper. But even -had he understood the technique he had not the -right psychological approach for dramatic writing, -any more than Browning had. The true dramatist -stands apart from his characters and develops them -from without; the writer of dramatic monologues<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</span> -identifies himself for the moment with another individual -and develops the character from within. -The two temperaments are seldom united in one -man, and Burns in turning away even from the pastoral -drama which Mackenzie had urged him to -undertake was once again instinctively following the -bent of his own genius. In the light of what he accomplished -in his chosen forms, Mackenzie’s suggestion -was almost as inept as John Moore’s proposal -that he try something like Virgil’s Eclogues.</p> - -<p>Before he went to Edinburgh Burns had explored -his own capacities, but had not yet realized more -than half of them. Fergusson had shown him how to -write satires and descriptions in the vernacular; -Ramsay had revealed the possibilities of the poetic -epistle. But his interest in the folk-songs of which the -words and melodies haunted him, still seemed a -rustic or even childish survival. So far as he knew, -it was like taking nursery rimes seriously as poetry. -Though he must have been aware that scholars of -repute were beginning to collect old ballads, he had -not yet discovered that they were turning also to -the words and music of folk-songs. In this respect at -least, his Edinburgh sojourn was of incalculable -benefit. Apparently he never met David Herd, the -greatest collector among his contemporaries, but -he soon became acquainted with Herd’s published -work and learned that even some university professors -esteemed such things. Sending a couple of -songs, ‘the composition of two Ayrshire Mechanics’, -to the Rev. William Greenfield a few weeks after<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span> -arriving in the city, he hailed that eloquent but incontinent -clergyman as ‘Professor of the Belles -lettres de la Nature’; in the following summer he -told William Tytler that he had once a great many -fragments of traditional literature, but as he had no -idea that anybody cared for them, he had forgotten -them. And his next remark showed that he already -possessed the essential qualification of the collector: -‘I invariably hold it sacriledge to add anything of -my own to help out with the shatter’d wrecks of -these venerable old compositions; but they have -many various readings.’ Yet not even then, not even -though the singing of old melodies was one of the -commonest amusements both in Edinburgh drawing -rooms and at convivial meetings at taverns, did -he realize immediately the task and the opportunity -before him.</p> - -<p>The convivial meetings at first meant much more -to him than the drawing-rooms. The jolly gentlemen -who made up the Crochallan Fencibles had -probably as a group little interest in pure poetry, -but they had a very lively interest in brisk songs. -If the songs happened to be improper, that was no -handicap among a club which included Charles -Hay and William Smellie and Robert Cleghorn, -and to whom Alexander Cunningham used to sing -‘charmingly’ one of the most indecent of Irish ditties. -Burns’s memory was already well stored with such -gems, and in this congenial company he added to -his stock, enriched old songs with new stanzas of his -own, and occasionally composed original verses of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span> -the same type, as he had often done at Mauchline. -As a means of enhancing the pleasures of male -company over a bowl of punch such song-writing -amused him and delighted the Fencibles.</p> - -<p>Not until after his Edinburgh <i>Poems</i> were off the -press did it begin to dawn upon him that he might -also win new fame in the drawing-room and—what -meant much more to him—do a patriotic service to -Scotland. In the last weeks of April, 1787, he made -the acquaintance of an engraver named James -Johnson, who was just bringing out the first volume -of a work which he called <i>The Scots Musical Museum</i>. -Johnson was known to Smellie, Dunbar, and others -of Burns’s friends, but he cannot have been in the -inner circle of the Crochallans, or Burns would have -met him sooner. He was almost illiterate—his picturesquely -bad spelling is notable even for the eighteenth -century—but he was an enthusiast for the collection -and preservation of the traditional music -and songs of his country. He had invented a process -for printing music by stamping the notes on pewter -plates instead of the steel or copper engraving then -generally employed. Though the result was a mean -and smudgy page, the process was much cheaper -than the old one and encouraged Johnson to try his -hand at publishing. His enthusiasm, however, far -exceeded his knowledge. He had had difficulty in -gathering the hundred songs which made up his -first volume, and had even eked it out with a few -English pieces. His meeting with Burns not only remade -the <i>Museum</i>, but, poetically considered, was the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</span> -most important event of the poet’s life in the capital.</p> - -<p>Writing to Johnson on the eve of his Border tour -Burns regretted that they had not met sooner: ‘I -have met with few people whose company & conversation -gave me more pleasure, because I have -met with few whose sentiments are so congenial to -my own.’ But though he contributed a song or two -to the collection, the idea that he might take an -active part in the work was still far from his mind. -The fantastic Earl of Buchan, as early as February, -had advised Burns to ‘fire [his] Muse at Scottish -story and Scottish scene.’ Burns had replied, in language -even more inflated than the Earl’s: ‘I wish for -nothing more than to make a leisurely Pilgrimage -through my native country; to sit & muse on those -once hard-contended fields where Caledonia, rejoicing, -saw her bloody lion borne through broken -ranks to victory and fame; and catching the inspiration -to pour the deathless Names in Song.’ Unfortunately, -added the poet, he had instead to go back to -working for his living. Nevertheless, the Border tour -offered a chance to fulfil part of the Earl’s suggestion—according -to Burns’s real tastes, if not the -Earl’s. His greatest pleasures on the journey were -not the civic receptions and the elaborate hospitality -of the gentry, but the sight of Gala Water, Leader -Haughs and Yarrow, the Bush aboon Traquair, -Elibanks and Elibraes, and other spots celebrated in -song. It made no difference whether the song was -singable before ladies or before Crochallans, so long -as it was Scottish, and old.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</span></p> - -<p>The Highland tours added so effectively to his -stock that in 1793 he was able to say that he had -made pilgrimages to every spot commemorated in -Scottish song except Lochaber and the Braes of Ballenden. -Presumably on his passages through Edinburgh -in August and September he talked with -Johnson, but not until late October, after his return -from Ochtertyre, did he really begin to put his -energies into the work. Johnson obviously had solicited -his help, and the poet’s first move was to -write to all his friends who possessed words or music -which might be usable. Nor did he confine himself -to his own circle of acquaintance. Learning to his -chagrin that he had unwittingly passed near the -home of the Rev. John Skinner without calling to pay -his respects to the author of ‘Tullochgorum’ and -‘John o’ Badenyon’, he seized the opportunity given -by receipt of a poetic epistle from Skinner to beg the -venerable clergyman’s support for Johnson’s enterprise. -He soon started also to fit words of his own to -fine melodies which either lacked them or had unsuitable -ones—at first with a personal motive, in -order to publish the complimentary verses he had -written to Margaret Chalmers and Charlotte Hamilton, -but soon with no purpose except that of supplying -his favourite music with words which could be -sung. Moreover, he commenced to gather all available -publications of Scottish songs and song music. -How thoroughly he went into this search is revealed -by his quiet remark to George Thomson five years -later: ‘Let me have a list of your airs, with the first<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</span> -line of the verses you intend for them.... I say, the -first line of the verses, because if they are verses that -have appeared in any of our Collections of songs, I -know them & can have recourse to them.’ He had in -fact ranged so widely in the old song books that even -yet his editors have been unable to identify the originals -of some of the songs he altered and adapted for -the <i>Museum</i>, and later on for Thomson’s <i>Select Collection</i>. -But though in 1787 he realized better than -Johnson did the magnitude of the task and the opportunity -before them, he was still unaware of its -true scope. He conjectured that there would be -three volumes of a hundred songs each. The completed -work filled six.</p> - -<p>From October, 1787, onwards Burns was in fact -though not in name the chief editor of the <i>Museum</i>. -He collected words and music, wrote prefaces for the -successive volumes, and helped to enlist the aid of a -competent musician, Stephen Clarke, organist of -the Episcopal chapel in Edinburgh, in harmonizing -the airs. Johnson willingly submitted to the poet’s -leadership, which he needed. The surviving correspondence -shows Burns carrying on a struggle -which nothing except his enthusiasm for the work -could at times have made endurable. Johnson required -constant supervision even in such elementary -matters as spelling; Clarke’s carelessness and indolence -were maddening. The work sold slowly and -Johnson, under the pressure of other affairs, inclined -to procrastinate. ‘Why,’ Burns asked in 1793, and -the passage is typical of many, ‘did you not send me<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</span> -those tunes & verses that Clarke & you cannot -make out? Let me have them as soon as possible, -that, while he is at hand, I may settle the matter -with him.’ Clarke, ‘with his usual indolence’, was -worse. More than once he mislaid or lost whole -sheafs of songs which had been entrusted to him. -‘“The Lochmaben harper”’, said the poet in 1795, -‘I fear I shall never recover; & it is a famous old -song.—The rest are, I doubt, irrecoverable.—I -think it hard that, after so much trouble in gathering -these tunes, they should be lost in this trifling -way.—Clarke has been shamefully careless.’ Yet -Burns’s enthusiasm kept him going, however negligent -or incompetent the partners on whom he had -to depend. The time-table of the work is sufficient -proof of his influence. Volume II, prepared while -he was in Edinburgh, was ready six months after -Volume I; the next two volumes, for which the -poet’s contributions had to be made by correspondence, -took two years each. Volume V was prepared -while Burns was working also for George Thomson; -it was four years on the stocks. The final volume, -prepared by Johnson’s unaided efforts, took six -years, even though he had still on hand a considerable -quantity of Burns’s verse for which space had -been lacking in the earlier numbers.</p> - -<p>Burns’s preface to the second volume, published -in February, 1788, in the very midst of the Clarinda -imbroglio, shows how completely, in the fifteen -months since his first arrival in Edinburgh, the poet -had awakened to the literary importance of folk-song.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</span> -‘Ignorance and Prejudice’, he wrote, ‘may -perhaps affect to sneer at the simplicity of the poetry -or music of some of these pieces; but their having -been for ages the favourites of Nature’s Judges—the -Common People, was to the Editor a sufficient test -of their merit....’ He was no longer apologetic for -his interest in popular literature. If the highbrows -could not appreciate it, so much the worse for the -highbrows. He was determined, moreover, that no -poet of the people should lack recognition if it were -possible to give it. ‘Wherever the old words could -be recovered, they have been preserved; both as -generally suiting better the genius of the tunes, -and to preserve the productions of those earlier -Sons of the Scottish Muses, some of whose names -deserved a better fate than has befallen them—“Buried -’mong the wreck of things which were.” -Of our more modern Songs, the Editor has inserted -the Authors’ names as far as he could -ascertain them.’ The passage is almost a direct -transcript, even to the hackneyed quotation from -Blair’s <i>Grave</i>, of what Burns had written in the Commonplace -Book two and a half years before, when -he added that it had given him ‘many a heart-ake’ -to reflect that the names of such glorious old Bards -were clean forgotten. No more of them should be -forgotten if he could do anything to prevent it. The -‘communal’ theory of ballad-composition still slumbered -in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land; Burns was sure that -somewhere at the source of every old song was an -individual poet of like passions with himself, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</span> -such as he himself might still be but for the accident -of print.</p> - -<p>His one exception to the rule of publishing authors’ -names was his own contributions. He told -Mrs. Dunlop that the songs signed ‘R’, ‘B’, or ‘X’ -were his own, and those signed ‘Z’ were old songs he -had altered or enlarged. But no one can go through -the volumes with this simple key and identify all of -Burns’s contributions. His own negligence and -Johnson’s omitted his initials from numerous songs -unquestionably his own, and the verses signed ‘Z’ -have puzzled the ingenuity of editors ever since. -Burns admitted that ‘of a good many of them, little -more than the Chorus is ancient; tho’ there is no -reason for telling every body this piece of intelligence.’ -Sometimes his own annotations or the survival -of earlier texts show the extent of his contributions, -ranging from eking out a too-brief song with -an extra stanza of his own to composing a whole -lyric to fit a fragment of traditional chorus. Public -opinion unanimously credits Burns with ‘Auld Lang -Syne’, yet he never claimed it. He declared that it -‘had never been in print, nor even in manuscript’, -until he took it down from an old man’s singing. -Three different times, for people as unlike as -Mrs. Dunlop, Robert Riddell, and George Thomson, -he wrote out the words without even an indirect -claim to their authorship. Nevertheless, no trace of -the song in anything like Burns’s form has ever been -found in earlier records, and the public has refused -to believe that a poem of such appeal could have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</span> -been current without being noticed. On the other -hand, every stanza of ‘A Red Red Rose’ has been -traced to some older poem; yet Burns’s skill in selecting -the one good image in a mass of commonplace -and weaving his cento of borrowings into a -single compact and vivid lyric makes the song his -own, as <i>Macbeth</i> is Shakespeare’s and not Holinshed’s.</p> - -<p>In such lyrics as these and scores of others Burns -had achieved a sort of dramatic impersonation -which far surpassed even the best of his earlier -monologues and dramatic lyrics. Guided always by -the spirit of the music, he had so identified himself -with the thoughts and feelings of the anonymous -and half-articulate folk poets whose songs he was -rescuing from oblivion that the most critical eye -cannot be certain where their work ends and Burns’s -begins. Again and again he took fragments of old -work and not only reunited them into coherent -wholes but gave the restored poem the lyric elevation -its original author had felt but could not express. -Emerson said that an institution was the -lengthened shadow of a single man: Scottish song -as the world knows it today is the lengthened shadow -of Robert Burns. What he did not actually write is -so coloured by his influence that it could not exist -without him. With the exception of Lady Nairne’s, -his was the last poetry written in the old folk tradition. -The romantic sentimentality which tinges -Burns’s songs at their weakest, overspreads many of -Lady Nairne’s; Scott’s masterpiece, ‘Bonnie Dundee’,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</span> -is glorious, but it is not a folk-song. Most of -what has been written since 1800 is merely imitation -Burns.</p> - -<p>The <i>Museum</i> was Burns’s opportunity to combine -his poetic inclinations with his fervent patriotism. -But it was more than that. By enlisting the poet’s -help in his enterprise, Johnson unwittingly furnished -him the means of sustaining his creative life amid his -toil as farmer and Exciseman. After 1788 extended -composition was probably impossible for Burns. He -could scarcely hope to be revisited by the almost -continuous excitement under which he wrote the -greater part of his first volume, and without emotional -excitement he could not create. He had -plenty of leisure for writing during his Edinburgh -days, but the urge was lacking. His whole sojourn -there produced less poetry than a single month at -the beginning of 1786. Removal to Ellisland, with -all the strain of its ‘uncouth cares and anxieties’, -brought his creativeness to a still lower ebb. Repeatedly -he complained that the Muses had deserted -him; during his first two years on the farm the -‘Lines in Friars Carse Hermitage’ were almost his -only serious attempt at non-musical composition, -and in the revision of the poem he wavered between -versions in a manner wholly unlike the vigour -of 1786. The frequency, indeed, with which he circulated -both versions among his friends suggests at -times a bankrupt’s clinging to the last relic of his -prosperity. But thanks to the <i>Museum</i> he had work -to do which could be shaped to music as he followed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</span> -his business, and be committed to paper in his -snatches of free time.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile, under Burns’s leadership, the whole -plan of the <i>Museum</i> had been altered. The original -scheme had been merely to collect the existing songs. -For this task—at least for all the songs that were -printable—Johnson’s first estimate of two volumes -was not a serious understatement. Burns, ransacking -the collections of instrumental music, and stealing -time from his farm work to listen to a fiddler playing -over the pieces that had interested him, discovered, -however, that Scottish music was teeming with good -tunes to which no words had ever been set. The reels -and strathspeys which fiddlers and pipers played as -dance tunes had just as much lilting charm as the -airs of traditional songs. His plan now was nothing -more nor less than supplying words to every cottage -melody which was capable of vocal interpretation. -He was also making musical experiments in tempo, -finding that gay tunes played in slow time might be -transformed into ‘the very language of pathos’. The -name ‘Museum’ was growing steadily more inappropriate; -the work was becoming an experimental -laboratory in both poetry and music. Probably -Burns never fully defined, even to himself, the scope -of the ambitious project he did not live to achieve, -but the more than three hundred songs he left are -evidence that if anyone could have achieved it, he -could.</p> - -<p>Not that all these songs are masterpieces. Burns -had no illusions on that score. His contention was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</span> -always that the music was the important thing, and -that a good air might better have mediocre words -than none at all. Nevertheless when he was composing -Scottish words to tunes of his own choice the -percentage of the commonplace was small and the -range of themes extraordinarily large. The critics -who read autobiography into every love poem pass -lightly over the fact that in some of the best love -lyrics, such as ‘Tam Glen’, ‘An’ O for ane-and-twenty, -Tam’, and ‘Whistle and I’ll come to you, -my lad’, the speaker is a woman, and that such -wholly dramatic lyrics as ‘M’Pherson’s Farewell’ -and ‘John Anderson’ have a more sustained intensity -of emotion than the admittedly autobiographic -‘Ae fond kiss’. When Burns’s lyrics were commonplace -it was usually because he was composing them -to tunes not of his own choice; above all when such -assigned composition demanded English words. -Music which worked downward from the intellectual -to the emotional centres could never give the -same creative release as when the engagement of -the emotions came first. Such was the case with the -last of his major poetic projects—supplying lyrics -for George Thomson’s <i>Select Collection of Scotish Airs</i>—but -before turning to that work something must be -said of the last and finest of the poems which he did -not write to music.</p> - -<p>‘Tam o’ Shanter’ is not only Burns’s greatest single -poem but one of the finest short poetic narratives -in all literature. It is the only one of Burns’s works of -which it may truly be asserted that he opened a new<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</span> -field wherein he never had the chance to reveal the -full range of his powers. In the satire and the epistle, -as in the lyric, he had abundantly displayed both his -strength and his limitations. In the versified folk-tale -‘Tam’ stands alone; it is, as he said, his ‘standard -performance in the Poetical line’. Though he -was doubtless right in concluding that it showed ‘a -force of genius & a finishing polish that I despair of -ever excelling’, he might in happier circumstances -have equalled it. But here, as in the satires and epistles, -his inspiration came from without, and the -stimulus was never repeated.</p> - -<p>The story of its composition is too familiar to need -rehearsing in detail. In 1789 Francis Grose the antiquary -arrived at Friars Carse in the course of a collecting -tour. He had successfully published an elaborately -illustrated work on the antiquities of England -and Wales, and was now gathering material for -a companion volume on Scotland. The fat and jovial -captain, whose encyclopædic knowledge ranged -from ancient arms and armour, costume, and ecclesiastical -and military architecture, to the ribald -slang of his day, was as unlike Sir Walter Scott’s -bookish Jonathan Oldbuck as any man could well -be. Beside his vast erudition and ardent spirit the -amateurish antiquarianism of Robert Riddell faded -away. Grose was one of the most stimulating men -Burns ever met, and the friendship which sprang up -between them had the double basis of community -of interest and congeniality of spirit. Burns saw in -Grose’s projected book an opportunity to glorify<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</span> -his own birthplace, and suggested that the ruins of -Alloway Kirk were a good subject for an illustration. -Grose, no doubt mentally comparing the -scrubby little church with the glories of Melrose and -Arbroath, hesitated. Alloway had neither grandeur -of architecture nor richness of historical association. -The latter, however, might be supplied. Burns had -been telling some of the tales of the supernatural -which he had heard in his boyhood, and Grose -agreed to include the picture of Alloway if Burns -would furnish a witch-legend to accompany it. Thus -casually his greatest poem was born.</p> - -<p>Burns’s qualifications for writing this tale of witchcraft -were analogous to his qualifications for writing -folk-songs. In each instance he belonged by education -to a world where such things were no longer -alive. But his childhood and youth had been spent -among people to whom they were still real. Intellectually -he had no more belief in witchcraft than -Benjamin Franklin had, but he knew the minds of -the people who did believe. Hence the blend of -broad humour and real terror which makes the -poem unique. To an Elizabethan audience there -was nothing humorous about the witches in <i>Macbeth</i>; -they were real beings inspiring fear and hatred. -To Washington Irving or Charles Dickens a tale of -the supernatural was purely an excursion into the -Land of Make-Believe. It is only when a belief is -fading but not yet dead that it can be handled with -the mixture of humour and conviction which Burns -used. Ghost stories suffered the same fate about a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</span> -century later, as scepticism regarding personal immortality -became more widely prevalent. And ‘Tam -o’ Shanter’ is as perfect in structure as it is unique in -tone. Custom cannot stale it. To read it or hear it -read for the hundredth time is still to be swept along -by the rush of the narrative and to realize more -clearly the artistry which balances each increasingly -wild episode with its introductory paragraph of humorous -philosophizing. A few of its early readers, -Mrs. Dunlop among them, thought the poem scandalously -indecent; to the rest it was an artless effusion -of the Heaven-taught ploughman. If any early -reader realized that besides being a merry tale it was -a consummate work of art the opinion was not committed -to print. In 1791 literary art still connoted -eighteenth-century ‘elegance’.</p> - -<p>Could Burns have had more of the society of a man -like Grose, had even young Walter Scott of Edinburgh, -who in the intervals of his legal studies was -already steeping himself in the ballads and legends -of the Border, thought it worth while occasionally to -ride as far as Dumfries to visit the man whom he had -once seen in an Edinburgh drawing-room, the -world might have more poems like ‘Tam o’ Shanter’. -But there was no one in Dumfries to provide -the necessary stimulus. Robert Riddell took much -but had little to give; his sister-in-law Maria belonged -too much to the world of fashion to have any -enthusiasm for folk-tales; John Syme’s taste ran -more to satirical epigrams than to narrative poetry. -And these three represented the best intellectual<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</span> -companionship Dumfries had to offer. As for Edinburgh, -the influences dominating the literary life of -Scotland at the end of the century were better represented -by George Thomson than by Francis Grose.</p> - -<p>In September, 1792, Burns received a letter from -a friend of Alexander Cunningham’s, asking aid in -a poetical and musical venture. George Thomson, -clerk to the Board of Trustees in Edinburgh, was -two years the poet’s senior and possessed all the elegance -of taste which Burns’s education had protected -him from. Thomson enjoyed Scottish music -in his ultra-refined way, but was irked by the crudity -of the traditional songs. Baldly stated, his proposal -was to collect a hundred of the best Scottish melodies, -to get a professional musician to dress them in -all the frills necessary for concert performance, and -to provide them with tidy English lyrics which -would disguise their provincial origin. In writing to -Burns, however, he did not express himself so -bluntly. After explaining that Ignaz Joseph Pleyel, -‘the most agreeable composer living’, had been engaged -to arrange the music, he continued:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘To render this work perfect, we are desirous to have -the poetry improved wherever it seems unworthy of the -music; and that it is so, in many instances, is allowed by -everyone conversant with our musical collections. The -editors of these seem in general to have depended on the -music proving an excuse for the verses; and hence some -charming melodies are united to mere nonsense and doggerel, -while others are accompanied with rhymes so loose -and indelicate as cannot be sung in decent company. To<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</span> -remove this reproach would be an easy task to the author -of “The Cotter’s Saturday Night”.... It is superfluous -to assure you that I have no intention to displace any -of the sterling old Songs: those only will be removed -which appear quite silly or absolutely indecent....’</p> -</div> - -<p>The publication, in short, was to be a sort of Golden -Treasury of Scots music, and Burns’s share in the -work was to be ‘writing twenty or twenty-five songs, -suitable to the particular melodies’ which Thomson -selected. The editor said nothing, in this first letter, -about his preference for English words.</p> - -<p>No literary salesman ever received more enthusiastic -response than Thomson got from Burns. The -poet promised whole-hearted co-operation, but he -had detected enough of Thomson’s temperament to -make certain reservations. In order of importance -they were these. His share in the work was to be a -patriotic labour of love, and he would accept no -compensation. For the time being at least his participation -was to be anonymous—perhaps because -he did not wish his official superiors to think he was -neglecting his Excise duties; perhaps because he -feared that Johnson might conclude that he was deserting -the <i>Museum</i>. He was not to be asked to compose -unless he could do so spontaneously, and -Thomson was to have free editorial authority to take -or reject his contributions. Finally, ‘If you are for -<i>English</i> verses, there is, on my part, an end of the -matter.—Whether in the simplicity of <i>the Ballad</i>, or -the pathos of <i>the Song</i>, I can only hope to please myself -in being allowed at least a sprinkling of our<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</span> -native tongue.’ English verses were precisely what -Thomson <i>was</i> for, ‘because the English becomes -every year more and more the language of Scotland,’ -but he hastened to disavow any wish to confine -the poet to English—preferring to wait and -argue it out later, poem by poem.</p> - -<p>Greater enthusiasm, knowledge, and art were -never enlisted under more incompetent leadership -than in Burns’s alliance with Thomson. It did not -take the poet long to discover that the elaborate -plan which Thomson had outlined in his first letters -was really as vague as an Edinburgh fog. The editor -had not yet decided on the list of airs he intended -to include; he had not succeeded in getting the co-operation -of the English poetaster, John Wolcot -(‘Peter Pindar’), to write English songs; Pleyel, who -was supposed to be handling the music, soon departed -on a visit to Germany and found his return route to -Britain closed by the armies of the French and the -Allies. James Beattie was to have been asked to furnish -an introductory essay on Scottish song, but -Beattie was old and ill and not really interested in -the subject. In consequence of all this, Burns, who -had begun on the understanding that he was to -furnish only a few lyrics, shortly found himself saddled -with the entire burden of the literary end of the -work. Even so his position, though laborious, would -not have been difficult had Thomson been merely -muddle-headed. But as soon as the editor had furnished -the list of the twenty-five airs he meant to include -in the first number of his collection, and Burns<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</span> -had sent in his first group of lyrics, Thomson revealed -himself as a literary tinker. He was constantly -proposing amendments in phraseology—which always -meant substituting banal English expressions -for racy Scots ones. At times his niggling criticism -was too much even for Burns’s enthusiasm and good -nature. One letter, for instance, began with the -abrupt outburst, ‘That unlucky song “O poortith -cauld,” &c. must stand as it stands—I won’t put my -hand to it again.’ In later years Thomson, to sustain -his pose as whole-hearted admirer of all Burns’s -work, carefully inked over that sentence in the manuscript. -But he was guilty of worse than that. Burns, -as always, was steeping himself in the rhythms of the -airs to which he was composing; Thomson had to -display his own musical knowledge by suggesting -that the proffered song be set to another tune. The -fact that to Burns the words and the tune were always -inseparable never penetrated his mind.</p> - -<p>Occasionally Burns came forward with a lyric -written to an air not on Thomson’s list, and at such -times the editor’s taste and tact were most fully displayed. -For instance, Lady Elizabeth Heron, wife of -Patrick Heron, from whom Burns hoped for political -favours, had composed a little tune called ‘Banks of -Cree’ and asked Burns to supply it with words. -Burns told the lady he would like her permission to -publish the song, and sent the words to Thomson, -saying that ‘the air I fear is not worth your while,’ -but evidently hoping that Thomson would ask for -it. Thomson instead proposed setting the words to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</span> -an air on his own list, ‘Young Jockey was the blithest -lad’. Burns replied sharply: ‘My English song, “Here -is the glen & here the bower” cannot go to this air; it -was written on purpose for an original air composed -by Mrs. Heron of Heron.’ But after the poet’s death -Thomson erased the vetoing phrase and published -the words to the tune, ‘The Flowers of Edinburgh’, -thereby leaving Burns under the imputation of having -lied to Lady Elizabeth in promising to publish -her music.</p> - -<p>Another time Burns found himself haunted by the -old lilt of ‘Hey tutti taitie’, which a wholly unreliable -tradition declared to have been Bruce’s march -to Bannockburn. At the end of August, 1793, his -impotent fury over the Edinburgh sedition trials, -combined with his enthusiasm at the news of the -French levy <i>en masse</i> for the repulse of the Allied invasion, -found an outlet in composing ‘Scots wha -hae’ to this air. Historically the song is an anachronism. -The ideas underlying it are those of Rousseau -and Thomas Jefferson and not of the feudal Middle -Ages; its very language is Scoticized English rather -than the true vernacular—Sir James Murray -pointed out, for instance, that in real Scots the -opening phrase would be ‘Scots that has’. The song -owes its enduring popularity largely to the perfect -union of the words with the music they were composed -to. But when Burns sent it to Thomson, that -worthy thought the music vulgar, and suggested -that lengthening the fourth line of each stanza would -fit the words to another tune, ‘Lewis Gordon’, which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</span> -he liked better. This time Burns yielded, accepted -the silly changes, and thereafter circulated the song -always in the weakened version. Thomson published -it in this form after the poet’s death, but the appearance -of the original version in Currie’s edition -showed the music-loving public the immense superiority -of Burns’s first thought. Thomson bowed to -public opinion, and consigned his ‘improvements’ to -the oblivion they deserved.</p> - -<p>In most instances, however, the public had no -chance of checking up on Thomson’s disregard of -Burns’s wishes, and by destroying his own end of the -correspondence, after furnishing Dr. Currie with -some carefully edited extracts from it, the editor -sought to cover up the extent of his nagging criticisms. -Inasmuch as his vandalism stopped short of -destroying Burns’s letters the ultimate publication -of their complete texts exposed the nature of his -fault-finding almost as clearly as if he had preserved -his own originals. He nevertheless inked out a number -of passages in which Burns was too outspoken in -comment on his taste, or seemed to deny his claim -to the copyright of the poet’s contributions. Thomson -was intensely jealous of Johnson’s <i>Museum</i>, disliked -Johnson personally, and resented Burns’s continuing -to help the rival work. Again and again in -the letters Burns would say that if a song did not -suit, Thomson was to return it, and Burns would -send it to the <i>Museum</i>. To keep the material out of -Johnson’s hands, Thomson never definitely rejected -anything. He carefully docketed the letter in which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</span> -Burns said that he had given Johnson no permanent -copyright in his songs, but inked over passages -which indicated that Burns was contributing to the -<i>Select Collection</i> on precisely the same terms as to the -<i>Museum</i>.</p> - -<p>When Burns’s health was failing in the spring of -1796 Thomson sought to frighten him by a report -that a pirated edition of the songs was being -planned, and enclosed for the poet’s signature a legal -document assigning him the whole copyright. -Burns, ill though he was, and careless as he had always -been of his literary property, refused to sign, -and sent instead ‘a Certificate, which, though a little -different from Mr McKnight’s model, I suppose -will amply answer the purpose,’ adding that ‘when -your Publication is finished, I intend publishing a -Collection, on a cheap plan, of all the songs I have -written for you, the Museum, &c.—at least of all -the songs of which I wish to be called the Author.’ -This was tantamount to telling Thomson that he -had a claim on the first serial rights only, and though -Thomson later published two different texts of what -he alleged was Burns’s deed of assignment, he never -produced the original holograph, and it was not preserved -among his papers. In after years Thomson -tried the same trick on Sir Walter Scott and Sir -Alexander Boswell. He had succeeded in making -Burns’s executors believe that he owned the copyrights -and was generously waiving them for the benefit -of the subscription edition, but Scott and Boswell -were lawyers and saw to it that where their own<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</span> -work was concerned he got no more than the serial -rights.</p> - -<p>Burns ought to have treated Thomson as Beethoven -did in 1813, when the editor demanded changes -in the airs which the great musician had undertaken -to harmonize:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘I regret that I am unable to oblige you. I am not accustomed -to tinker my compositions. I have never done -so, being convinced that every partial modification alters -the whole character of the composition. I am grieved -that you are out of pocket through this, but you cannot -lay the blame on me, for it was your business to make -me more fully acquainted with the taste of your country -and the meagre abilities of your performers.’</p> -</div> - -<p>But such blunt truth-telling was more than Burns -was ever capable of to a man who claimed taste and -education. He said what he thought about his songs, -but said it gently and deferentially, and left them in -Thomson’s hand to be mangled or misapplied.</p> - -<p>To go into such detail of Thomson’s misdoings -would be pointless had he been merely a thick-headed -and thick-skinned editor who failed to appreciate -what Burns was doing for him. But Thomson -was much more than that. He represented the -whole Anglicizing tendency of the Scottish gentry -and bourgeoisie who were seeking to destroy the -language and individuality of their country. ‘Now -let me declare off from your taste.—“Toddlin hame” -is a song that to my taste is an exquisite production -of genius.—That very Stanza you dislike</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“My kimmer & I lay down to sleep”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</span></p> -<p>is to me a piece of charming native humour.—What -pleases me, as simple & naive, disgusts you as ludicrous -& low.—’ So said Burns in one of the passages -which Thomson tried to obliterate. But Thomson’s -opinions were shared by most of his educated countrymen, -including some of Burns’s most intimate -friends. Where earlier criticism of the poet’s vernacular -work had failed to break down his Scotticism by -the very absurdity of such suggestions as imitating -Virgil, Thomson tried to accomplish it by the more -insidious means of minor verbal changes which individually -seemed to amount to little but which in -their cumulative effect would emasculate the poetry. -It is generally recognized that Burns’s contributions -to the <i>Select Collection</i> include a much larger -percentage of the conventional and the commonplace -than does his work for the <i>Museum</i>; the marvel -is that in the circumstances he achieved so much -that was not second-rate. He was composing to order, -frequently sending off by return of post the -lines to a particular tune which Thomson had asked -for, and his efforts were constantly hampered by -his consciousness that certain themes and methods -would never please the silly editor’s taste. It was no -wonder that many times he had to induce a synthetic -emotional thrill in himself—either by putting -himself through a course of admiration for a handsome -woman, or by the help of a bowl of punch—in -order to be able to compose at all.</p> - -<p>His power of poetic response to music and emotion -nevertheless did not fail with his failing health.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</span> -A few weeks before his death he asked Jessie Lewars, -sister of one of his best friends among the Excise officers -of Dumfries, to play him her favourite tune. -She responded with the roguish little air, ‘The robin -cam to the wren’s nest, and keekit in, and keekit in’. -Burns, humming the tune to himself and altering -the tempo, produced almost extemporaneously the -beautiful ‘O wert thou in the cauld blast’. From his -earliest lyric to his latest, music was the catalyst -which transformed emotion into poetry. Yet for -more than a century after his death the dominating -influence of music on his art went almost unrecognized; -and George Thomson, the man who of all -others among Burns’s contemporaries had had the -best opportunity to realize the nature and the -power of his lyric expression, wrote an obituary -which, besides inaugurating the legend of mental -and moral deterioration in the last years at Dumfries, -summed up its author’s appreciation of the -wit, critical acumen, and real erudition of Burns’s -letters by saying that probably the poet ‘was not -qualified to fill a superior station’ to the humble one -he held in the Excise. Of all the Holy Willies who -eyed Burns askance during his life and after his -death, he would probably, had he realized his true -character, have despised Thomson most. The others -were merely trying to blacken Burns’s own character. -Thomson was trying to destroy the vitality of -Scottish song.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="VII">VII</h2> -</div> - -<p class="ph2">THE SCOT</p> - - -<p>Not merely in his struggle for livelihood and in the -poetic art which immortalized him was Burns a -Scot of the Scots. He was equally so in his religion, -his politics, and, above all, his patriotism. Only in -this last was he untypical of his generation. Yet such -statements are misleadingly simple. All they can -safely mean is that Burns, like all men in all ages, -was influenced in thought and conduct by the environment -in which he lived. Nevertheless, in a -nation so small and self-contained as Scotland in -the eighteenth century the pressure of environment -was felt to a degree unrealized in larger and more -cosmopolitan communities. In England during -Burns’s manhood the social and literary worlds of -Burke and Sheridan and Horace Walpole, of Cowper, -of John Wesley, of Godwin, of Blake, touched -each other only lightly and tangentially; in the rising -generation of Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Lamb, -and Byron the separations would be even wider. -Scotland by comparison was all of a piece. Even her -greatest philosophers, Adam Smith and David -Hume, even the much-travelled and Anglophile -Boswell, retained their national stamp.</p> - -<p>Though in their final form Burns’s religious ideas -differed little, if at all, from the sentimental ‘common<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</span> -sense’ deism of England and France, the -process by which he reached them was Scottish. -The rigidity of the doctrines to which he was subjected -in his youth determined the vigour of his reaction -from them. As David Hume would scarcely -have been so militantly sceptical if he had been -reared in a milder faith, so Burns might have been -less sentimental. His earliest teachings, it is true, -did not stress the more rigorous themes in Scottish -Calvinism. The preaching of Dr. William Dalrymple -of Ayr, whose church the Burnes family attended -during the years at Alloway and Mount -Oliphant, was notably mild and gentle; William -Burnes’s own little ‘Manual of Religious Belief’, -though it gave a reasonably orthodox definition of -the Fall of Man, was silent on such doctrinal points -as predestination and the Four-Fold State. Undoubtedly, -therefore, the Old Light tenets of Daddy -Auld of Mauchline made a deeper impression on -Burns’s eighteen-year-old mind than they would -have done had he been exposed to them from infancy. -Yet Burns had encountered <i>The Man of Feeling</i> -before he left Mount Oliphant; the doctrines of -sentiment and deism were in the air he breathed; -his emotional nature would have brought him to -them sooner or later, regardless of other stimuli. -The most that can be attributed to Auld is a little -hastening and intensifying of the process of revolt.</p> - -<p>Despite his constant citing of Young’s exhortation, -‘On Reason build Resolve’, Burns’s approach -to life and ideas was always emotional and not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</span> -intellectual. When he described himself in 1786 as -having little of divinity ‘except a pretty large portion -of honour and an enthusiastic, incoherent -Benevolence,’ his self-analysis had his customary -accuracy. To him, as to the New England Unitarians -and to a man like Mark Twain, escape from -the orthodoxy of his youth had come as a relief and -not as a loss. Calvinism had erected a system of -thought as rigidly deductive as the science of geometry. -Starting from certain ‘self-evident’ axioms like -the omnipotence and omniscience of God, the fall -of man, and the literal authority of the Scriptures, -it had created a religious philosophy from which all -emotion except fear had been removed. Through -the sin of Adam all men had earned damnation, but -the inscrutable mercy or caprice of God would -choose a remnant minority for salvation—for His -merit, not theirs. Human faith and human righteousness -were filthy rags.</p> - -<p>This cold determinism outraged Burns’s sense of -fairness and justice, as it outraged Channing’s and -Emerson’s and Holmes’s. It seemed to him that the -New Lights were ‘squaring Religion by the rules of -Common Sense, and attempting to give a decent -character to Almighty God and a rational account -of his proceedings with the Sons of Men.’ But in -investing their deity with human benevolence and -loving-kindness, the New Lights were also, again -like the New England Unitarians, more or less unwittingly -surrendering the supernatural sanctions -of religion and assimilating their ideas to those of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</span> -the Deists. God was the ‘Great First Cause, least -understood’; Christ tended to sink from Godhead to -merely an inspired human teacher; personal immortality -became a pious hope instead of a divine promise. -If man were indeed immortal, the surest passport -to salvation was righteous living rather than -adherence to a particular creed. And the guide to -righteous living was the still small voice of conscience, -the Moral Sense which Francis Hutcheson -had taught was an innate human faculty.</p> - -<p>In his attitude towards these doctrines, Burns was -a man of his century and a Scot of his century. The -rigidity of the Kirk, so unlike the comfortable looseness -of Anglican theology, left him no place within -its pale, even though he never openly severed his -connexion. As a youth he had, along with most of -his countrymen, read popular works of divinity like -Boston’s <i>Four-Fold State</i>, Fisher’s <i>Marrow of Modern -Divinity</i>, and Cole <i>On God’s Sovereignty</i>. In 1791, when -his rural neighbours of the Monkland Friendly Society -insisted on adding these and other books to -their co-operative library, Burns obediently ordered -them from Peter Hill, and lumped them all together -as ‘damned trash’. Though he told James Candlish -in 1787 that after having ‘in the pride of despising -old women’s stories, ventured in “the daring path -Spinoza trod”; ... experience of the weakness, not -the strength, of human powers, made me glad to -grasp at revealed religion,’ it was not the revelation -of the Kirk. Not even his infatuation for Clarinda, -though it made him momentarily qualify his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</span> -admiration for Milton’s Satan, could compel him to -bow the knee to Calvin. ‘Mine’, he told her when -she undertook to preach orthodoxy to him, ‘is the -Religion of the bosom.—I hate the very idea of controversial -divinity; as I firmly believe, that every -honest, upright man, of whatever sect, will be accepted -of the Deity.—If your verses, as you seem to -hint, contain censure, except you want an occasion -to break with me, don’t send them.... “Reverence -thyself” is a sacred maxim, and I wish to -cherish it.’</p> - -<p>His fullest statement approximating to orthodoxy -was written to Mrs. Dunlop in 1789:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘I have just heard Mr Kirkpatrick preach a sermon. -He is a man famous for his benevolence, and I revere -him; but from such ideas of my Creator, good Lord, -deliver me! Religion ... is surely a simple business, -as it equally concerns the ignorant and the learned, the -poor and the rich. That there is an incomprehensible -Great Being, to whom I owe my existence; and that He -must be intimately acquainted with the operations and -progress of the internal machinery, and consequent outward -deportment, of this creature which He has made; -these are, I think self-evident propositions. That there -is a real and eternal distinction between virtue and vice, -and, consequently, that I am an accountable creature; -that from the seeming nature of the human mind, as well -as from the evident imperfection, nay, positive injustice, -in the administration of affairs both in the natural and -moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene of justice -beyond the grave; must, I think, be allowed by every<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</span> -one who will give himself a moment’s reflection. I will go -farther, and affirm, that from the sublimity, excellence, -and purity of His doctrine and precepts, unparalleled by -all the aggregated wisdom and learning of many preceding -ages, though, <i>to appearance</i>, He Himself was the obscurest -and most illiterate of our species—therefore Jesus -Christ was from God....’</p> -</div> - -<p>Another time he told the same lady, ‘We can no -more live without Religion, than we can live without -air; but give me the Religion of Sentiment & -Reason.—You know John Hildebroad’s famous -epitaph—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“Here lies poor old John Hildebroad,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Have mercy on his soul, Lord God,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">As he would do, were he Lord God,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And thou wert poor John Hildebroad.”—</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>This speaks more to my heart, & has more of the -genuine spirit of Religion in it, than is to be found -in whole wagon-loads of Divinity.’ This was the -same mood in which he had told Clarinda, ‘My -creed is pretty nearly expressed in the last clause of -Jamie Deans’s grace, an honest weaver in Ayrshire; -“Lord, grant that we may lead a gude life! for a -gude life maks a gude end; at least it helps weel!”’ -Reason and Sentiment, but with the sentiment -much more powerful than the reason, these were -the dominant forces in Burns’s religious attitude.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless Burns was more courageous than -many of his contemporaries in accepting the logical -consequences of belief in universal benevolence. No<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</span> -man knew more clearly the warfare between flesh -and spirit, but he was convinced that both were the -gifts of God. The lines which so shocked Wordsworth,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">‘But yet the light that led astray</div> - <div class="verse indent8">Was light from Heaven’,</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>are his frankest summary of his experience. Whatever -sufferings his passions had brought upon him, -the passions in themselves were noble. Asceticism -had no appeal for him. He took life as God made -it, and saw that it was good.</p> - -<p>Taken by themselves, his utterances to Clarinda -and Mrs. Dunlop might not be above suspicion. -Burns had every motive for wishing favourably to -impress both women, and might have feigned an -interest which he did not feel, or at least have overstated -his belief and understated his doubts. But -here, as in his feelings towards his children, what -he said when he may have been on dress-parade is -confirmed by his letters to his intimates. In 1788 -he wrote to Robert Muir, then dying of tuberculosis:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘... An honest man has nothing to fear.—If we lie -down in the grave, the whole man a piece of broken machinery, -to moulder with the clods of the valley—be it so; -at least there is an end of pain, care, woes and wants: if -that part of us called Mind, does survive the apparent -destruction of the man—away with old-wife prejudices -and tales!... A man, conscious of having acted an -honest part among his fellow-creatures; even granting -that he may have been the sport, at times, of passions<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</span> -and instincts; he goes to a great unknown Being who -could have no other end in giving him existence but to -make him happy; who gave him those passions and instincts, -and well knows their force.’</p> -</div> - -<p>In the same tone he said six years later to Alexander -Cunningham that the two great pillars which bear -us up, ‘amid the wreck of misfortune and misery’, -are the ‘certain noble, stubborn something ... -known by the names of courage, fortitude, magnanimity’ -and ‘those feelings and sentiments which, -however the sceptic may deny them or the enthusiast -disfigure them, are yet, I am convinced, original -and component parts of the human soul; those -<i>senses of the mind</i> ... which connect us with, and -link us to, those awful obscure realities—an all-powerful -and equally beneficient God, and a world -to come, beyond death and the grave.’</p> - -<p>The countryman of Francis Hutcheson could -scarcely have indicated more clearly his obligations -to the Glasgow philosopher. Burns’s ‘senses of the -mind’ are merely Hutcheson’s Moral Sense a little -expanded. Like Channing and Emerson, having -rejected the authority of the church, and with it -the supernatural sanctions of Christian doctrine, -Burns fell back on the authority of intuition to support -concepts which he was unwilling to abandon. -The idea of the deity, and His relations with mankind, -which is embodied in these passages, he never -deviated from; what seemed to many of his readers -shocking irreverence was aimed at intolerance and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</span> -hypocrisy, and not at religion. But he was not able -in all moods to convince himself of personal immortality.</p> - -<p>At times he tried to argue himself into belief:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘The most cordial believers in a Future State have -ever been the Unfortunate.—This of itself; if God is -Good, which is, I think, the most intuitive truth in Nature, -... is a very strong proof of the reality of its -existence....’</p> -</div> - -<p>and he went on to reason that since the ideas of -‘<span class="allsmcap">OUGHT</span>, and <span class="allsmcap">OUGHT NOT</span>’ are ‘first principles or -component parts of the Human Mind’ and are -synonymous in our thinking with virtue and vice, -the soul <i>must</i> be immortal because, ‘except our Existence -<i>here</i>, have a reference to an Existence <i>hereafter</i>, -Virtue & Vice are words without meaning.’ Thus -he argued to Mrs. Dunlop, who had just told him -that her daughter, Mrs. Henri, was widowed after a -few months of marriage. But not long before he had -said to Cunningham,</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘All my fears & cares are of this world: if there is another, -an honest man has nothing to fear from it.—I hate a man -that wishes to be a Deist, but I fear, every fair, unprejudiced -Enquirer must in some degree be a Sceptic.—It -is not that there are any very staggering arguments -against the Immortality of Man; but, that like Electricity, -Phlogiston, &c. the subject is so involved in darkness -that we want Data to go upon.—One thing frightens me -much: that we are to live forever, seems too good news -to be true....’</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</span></p> - -<p>An emotional man deprived of any authority except -emotion on which he could rely, Burns’s religious -views are of a piece with his politics and his -patriotism. To get at the underlying emotions is to -explain what appear to be glaring contradictions in -thought. John Ramsay of Ochtertyre found Burns’s -politics ‘abundantly motley’, for the poet managed -to combine strong sympathy for the exiled House of -Stuart with liberal if not republican views on contemporary -affairs. To Ramsay this seemed like being -simultaneously Catholic and Protestant, whereas it -was only putting into words the unexpressed philosophy -that had swayed the popular mind of Scotland -for close on a century. Burns admired Lord Balmerino, -noblest of the victims of the ’45; he also -admired John Wilkes. Between a devoted Jacobite -like Balmerino and a radical Whig like Wilkes, -there was only one point in common: both were -anti-Hanoverian. That one point reconciles Burns’s -divergent opinions. The Stuarts embodied the ideal -of Scotland as an independent nation; even though -from the accession of James to the death of Anne -they had governed Scotland from London they still -commanded the loyalty of their old kingdom. But -the Georges were, as Burns said, ‘an obscure, beef-witted, -insolent race of foreigners whom a mere -conjuncture of circumstances kickt up into prominence -and power.’ His phrase summarizes in vigorous -prose the spirit of the ribald satirical songs by -which Scotland had avenged herself for the humiliations -following the rebellions of 1715 and 1745.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</span> -Burns was far from maintaining that the Stuarts -were perfect, or that the Revolution of 1688 lacked -justification; what he did maintain was that the -Hanoverian system was not perfect either.</p> - -<p>On the Fifth of November, 1788, Burns attended -a special service of thanksgiving held at Dunscore -Kirk to celebrate the centenary of the Revolution. -The Rev. Mr. Kirkpatrick’s remarks about ‘the -bloody and tyrannical House of Stuart’ sent the -poet home to write an open letter to his friend -David Ramsay, editor of the Edinburgh <i>Evening -Courant</i>, in which he mingled unveiled satire with -a sense of historical perspective hardly to be looked -for in an ‘unlettered ploughman’. He went to -church, he said, to give thanks for ‘the consequent -blessings of the Glorious Revolution. To that auspicious -event we owe no less than our liberties religious -and civil—to it we are likewise indebted for -the present Royal Family, the ruling features of -whose administration have ever been, mildness to -the subject, and tenderness of his rights.’ But, he -continues, cannot we give thanks for our present -blessings ‘without, at the same time, cursing a few -ruined powerless exiles, who only harboured ideas, -and made attempts, that most of us would have -done, had we been in their situation?’ ‘Were the -royal contemporaries of the Stuarts more mildly -attentive to the rights of man? Might not the -epithets of “bloody and tyrannical” be with at least -equal justice, applied to the house of Tudor, of -York, or any other of their predecessors?’ In short,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</span> -the Stuarts were only fighting for prerogatives -which former monarchs of England and contemporary -monarchs of France enjoyed unchallenged, -and the poet disclaims ability to determine whether -their overthrow ‘was owing to the wisdom of leading -individuals, or to the justling of party.’ And -then comes the sting:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘Man, Mr. Printer, is a strange, weak inconsistent -being.—Who would believe, Sir, that in this our Augustan -age of liberality and refinement, ... a certain -people, under our national protection, should complain, -not against a Monarch and a few favourite advisers, but -against our whole legislative body, of the very same imposition -and oppression, the Romish religion not excepted, -and almost in the very same terms as our forefathers did -against the family of Stuart! I will not, I cannot, enter -into the merits of the cause; but I dare say, the American -Congress, in 1776, will be allowed to have been as able -and enlightened, and, a whole empire will say, as honest, -as the English Convention in 1688; and that the fourth -of July will be as sacred to their posterity as the fifth of -November is to us.’</p> -</div> - -<p>The concluding sentence of that peroration is -paraphrased from a speech John Wilkes had delivered -in the House of Commons ten years before. -Manifestly Burns followed, closely and sympathetically, -the utterances of the English radicals and reformers; -it is well known that ‘A Man’s a Man’ is -‘two or three pretty good prose thoughts inverted -into rhyme’ from the writings of a former Excise<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</span> -officer named Thomas Paine. Like most European -liberals, Burns admired the leaders of the American -Revolution—one of the toasts which gave offence in -Dumfries is said to have been his proposal of the -health of George Washington as ‘a better man’ than -William Pitt—and his admiration would be intensified -by obvious parallels between the grievances of -the Americans and the Scots. His Jacobite sympathies -were wholly emotional, and in part conditioned -by the fact that the Jacobites had written -all the good songs. One suspects that he would just -as readily have taken the Catholic view of the -Reformation if Scottish Catholics had embalmed -their lost cause in poetry. When he looked at current -affairs, his reason backed his feelings. Politically, -Scotland had almost as much to complain of -as the American colonies had had. In some respects, -indeed, she had more. American towns had been -free to manage their local affairs by a system of -representative government; in Scotland the municipalities, -like the country’s representation in Parliament, -were self-perpetuating oligarchies. Burns, -in common with thousands of men of higher rank, -had no vote even in the government of his own -burgh. Yet his dislike of the system and his contempt -for most of its leaders would probably have expressed -itself only in occasional satires had it not -been for the outbreak of the French Revolution.</p> - -<p>A movement for reform of both burgh and parliamentary -government was under way in Scotland. -George Dempster, one of the few men of independent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</span> -mind among the Scottish representatives at -Westminster, advocated such measures of reform as -would allow ‘the industrious farmer and manufacturer -[to] share at least in a privilege now engrossed -by the great lord, the drunken laird, and the drunkener -baillie.’ Country gentlemen of unimpeachable -character took up the agitation, and Burns’s letters -to men like William Robertson of Lude, John -Francis Erskine of Mar, and Richard Oswald of -Auchencruive, show that he looked to such leadership -as the hope of the country. When his conduct -was under inquiry Burns declared that he had, as a -government employee, taken no active part, either -personally or as an author, in the movement for reform, -but that as a man he ‘would say that there -existed a system of corruption between the Executive -Power & the Representative part of the Legislature, -which boded no good to our glorious Constitution; -& which every patriotic Briton must wish -to see amended.’</p> - -<p>The early stages of the French Revolution roused -the enthusiasm of the more liberal-minded men of -all classes in Scotland. A dinner in Edinburgh to -celebrate the second anniversary of the fall of the -Bastille was attended by a group of university students -which included John Allen, stepson of the -poet’s friend Robert Cleghorn, by numerous country -gentlemen like his friend Robert Riddell and -his acquaintance Alexander Fergusson of Craigdarroch, -and by Lord Daer. It seemed to men like -Craigdarroch and Daer that the popular interest<span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</span> -in the principles of the Revolution might be harnessed -for the benefit of Scotland in speeding measures -for burgh and parliamentary reform. Actually -the brief alliance with French sympathizers delayed -reform for forty years. All the vested interests of -Great Britain rallied to support Burke’s condemnation -of the revolutionary principles, and the counter-attack -swept away every attempt to alter in the -slightest degree the existing scheme of things.</p> - -<p>The full weight of the counter-attack was not -felt at once. Indeed, it was a Scotsman, James Mackintosh, -who published the fullest and best-reasoned -of the numerous replies to Burke. Besides seeking to -confute Burke, Mackintosh tried to rally his countrymen -to the cause of reform by citing their medieval -reputation as lovers of liberty who would die -rather than surrender their freedom. Certain passages -in Mackintosh were probably as directly responsible -for the composition of ‘Scots wha hae’ as -<i>The Rights of Man</i> was for ‘A Man’s a Man’. But -as the Revolution swept on with increasing bloodshed -to the execution of Louis XVI and as mobs in -various parts of Scotland, including Edinburgh itself, -celebrated King George’s birthday by burning -Henry Dundas in effigy, the authorities became -panicky. Scotland felt the heaviest force of their -fright. Long latent memories of the ’45 revived at -Whitehall, and to the dread of Scotland as a focal -point for rebellion was added the practical detail -that repressive measures could be better organized -there than in England. England had a few constituencies,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</span> -like London and Westminster, in which -enough people were enfranchised to give a really -popular vote, and a few members of Parliament -whom neither fear nor bribes could silence. Scotland -had neither. Hence the counter-revolutionary -reign of terror struck first and hardest at Scotland.</p> - -<p>Early in 1793 several leaders of the Friends of the -People, a society organized to agitate for parliamentary -reform, were arrested on charges of treason. -Lord Daer was a member of the society, too, but -the authorities, doubtless afraid that not even a -packed jury could be trusted to convict the son of a -popular earl, made no move to seize him. They -contented themselves with lesser, but still conspicuous, -victims, and before the series of trials—conducted -with such disregard of justice as in Henry -Cockburn’s opinion had not been seen in Britain -since Jeffreys’s Bloody Assizes—was over Thomas -Muir, Thomas Palmer, and several other reform -leaders had been condemned to long terms of penal -transportation. All opposition was crushed in Scotland -for a generation. Henry Erskine, the one man -who dared to raise his voice in defence of justice and -common sense, paid for his temerity by being voted -out of his office as Dean of the Faculty of Advocates. -One of the last of Burns’s satirical ballads -commemorates the event, in which a young man -just admitted to the bar, Walter Scott by name, -voted with the majority to punish Erskine for having -the courage of his convictions.</p> - -<p>Such was the background against which Burns<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</span> -undertook to display himself as a Friend of the -People. He never, so far as can be learned, actually -joined any of the reforming organizations, but it -was not in Burns’s nature to conceal his opinions. -From the time when he appeared in Edinburgh -drawing-rooms wearing a waistcoat of Foxite blue -and buff, and inscribed on a window-pane at Stirling -verses about the successors to the Stuarts being -‘an idiot race, to honor lost’, he was marked as a -character who would bear watching. The wonder is -not so much that he came near to losing his job in -the Excise as that he ever succeeded in getting it. -If William Corbet and Graham of Fintry had not -been the generous and friendly souls they were, the -poet’s service career would have ended in 1793, and -he might even have shared the fate of Muir and -Palmer.</p> - -<p>To note some of Burns’s words and deeds during -1791 and 1792, and realize that for every reckless -phrase that reached paper there were doubtless a -score uttered over the punchbowl, is to marvel at -the poet’s escape. His phrase about the House of -Hanover, already quoted, was written in the privacy -of Robert Riddell’s library, but it is hard to -believe that he did not say equally sharp things in -more public places. His most intimate friends in -Dumfries were avowed sympathizers with the Revolution. -Dr. James Maxwell had witnessed the execution -of the king, cherished the handkerchief he -had dipped in the royal blood, and was well enough -known to the authorities to have his revolutionary<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</span> -connexions violently denounced by Burke on the -floor of the House of Commons. John Lewars was -tainted with ‘D-m-cratic heresy’; Syme, after enrolling, -like Burns, in the Dumfries Volunteers, became -heartily disgusted with the whole wretched -business; Maria Riddell was a parlour revolutionist -who on her visits to London associated ‘with a very -pleasant set of Sans-culottes’. Throughout 1792 -Burns had let slip few opportunities of proclaiming -his own sympathies. In the spring he bought the -<i>Rosamond’s</i> carronades and dispatched them as a -present to the French Convention; in the autumn, -when Maria Riddell asked him to suggest a programme -for a benefit night in Dumfries theatre, -he chose from the repertory of the local company -Mrs. Centlivre’s <i>The Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret</i> -because it contained some platitudinous lines about -British liberty which could be given political significance -by well-timed applause. Either on this occasion -or another the crowd carried the matter further -than Burns had anticipated.</p> - -<p>When ‘God Save the King’ was called for, a group -in the pit which included some of Burns’s friends -shouted for ‘Ça Ira’ instead. The ensuing clamour -came to the verge of a free-for-all fight. In his defence -Burns avowed that he never opened his lips -‘to hiss, or huzza, that, or any other Political tune -whatever’ because he looked on himself ‘as far too -obscure a man to have any weight in quelling a -Riot; at the same time as a character of higher respectability, -than to yell in the howlings of a rabble.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</span> -In other words, by sitting still and not applauding -the national anthem he made himself just as conspicuous -as if he had joined in the call for ‘Ça Ira’. -He was anything but the obscure individual he -claimed to be, and it was apparently his public conduct -on this occasion that led to his being reported -to his superiors as a disaffected person.</p> - -<p>Seemingly the idea that his opinions might get -him into trouble had never occurred to Burns. The -threat of an official investigation threw him into a -humiliating panic, and must also have alarmed his -friends in the higher ranks of the Excise. It is difficult -otherwise to account for Supervisor Corbet’s -coming in person to Dumfries to look into the -charges. An accusation brought against a minor -officer in the service was scarcely in ordinary routine -a serious enough affair to call in one of the highest -officials; the inference is that Corbet was rightly -fearful of the results if Burns were investigated by an -unfriendly agent. Accordingly the Supervisor examined -the poet across a dinner-table in company with -Findlater and Syme, and in that mellow atmosphere -found no ground for the charges ‘save some witty -sayings’. But even so, Corbet, in the name of the -Board, had to admonish Burns—so the poet reported -to Erskine of Mar—‘that <i>my</i> business was to -<i>act</i>, not to think; & that whatever might be Men or -Measures, it was for me to be silent and obedient.’</p> - -<p>The hair-splitting particularity of Burns’s defence -of his conduct is in itself proof of the real basis of the -charges against him. He revered the King, he declared,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</span> -in his public capacity as ‘the sacred Keystone -of our Royal Arch Constitution’, but George’s -‘private worth, it is altogether impossible that such a -man as I can appreciate.’ (On the report of the -King’s first admitted insanity in 1788 he had said, -‘I am not sure whether he is not a gainer, by how -much a Madman is a more respectable character -than a Fool.’) He had joined no party for revolution -or reform; his contributions to the radical <i>Edinburgh -Gazetteer</i> had been only a couple of non-political -verses. But he did not mention that in subscribing -to the <i>Gazetteer</i> he had urged its editor, William -Johnston, to ‘lay bare, with undaunted heart & -steady hand, that horrid mass of corruption called -Politics & State-Craft!’ and to ‘dare to draw in their -native colours these “Calm, thinking Villains whom -no faith can fix”—whatever be the Shibboleth of -their pretended Party.’ Oddly enough, the <i>Rosamond’s</i> -carronades had not been brought up against -him. Hence he naturally did not mention them, but -he took occasion to avow that though he had been -an enthusiastic votary of France at the beginning, -he had changed his sentiments since the Revolution -had embarked on a career of bloodshed and military -aggression.</p> - -<p>Here Burns was making a Galileo recantation. -On the same day on which he thus denied to Robert -Graham that he any longer supported the Revolution -he was using French in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop -and adding that he hoped it was correct, for ‘much -would it go against my soul, to mar anything belonging<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</span> -to that gallant people: though my real sentiments -of them shall be confined alone to my letters -to you.’ Despite her repeated warnings to drop the -subject, he continued to talk about his devotion to -Liberty, his friendship with Dr. Maxwell, and his -approval of ‘the delivering over a perjured Blockhead -& an unprincipled Prostitute to the hands of -the hangman’ until the offended lady broke off the -correspondence. Seething, as he had said of his feeling -in 1788, with the impotent ‘madness of an enraged -Scorpion shut up in a thumb-phial’, Burns -had to express himself to someone. He had lied -about his sentiments, and though the lie was to save -his family rather than himself, its taste was bitter in -his mouth. Nor was he helped by the realization -that all Scotland was equally cowed and that if he -had not made his recantation he would have shared -the fate of four other citizens of Dumfries who were -imprisoned for drinking seditious toasts. Once before -he had challenged authority in the shape of the temporal -power of the Kirk, and had come off not unscathed -but undefeated. Now he had challenged -much less openly the State, and had learned the difference -in strength between a vital institution and a -moribund one. The realization of defeat shook his -self-confidence as nothing else had ever done, and -helped to drive him to such unmanly conduct as -that which followed his quarrel with Maria Riddell. -He who had refused to sell his songs for money -had sold his independence for bread. That it was -his children’s bread and not his own might salve<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</span> -his conscience, but it could not heal his pride.</p> - -<p>The Man of Feeling had bruised himself against -a harsher reality than anything Harley had found -in London or Bedlam; the idealist in politics had -learned the substance of which politicians are made. -Brimming with New Light theories about the Moral -Sense, convinced by primitivists like Rousseau that -‘mankind are by nature benevolent creatures’ whom -mere stress of hunger and poverty makes selfish, -Burns had come naked to battle against the forces -of alarmed conservatism and privilege. Like thousands -of others he had taken seriously the slogans of -‘Liberty’ and ‘the Rights of Man’, and had seen in -the French Revolution the signs that the world’s -great age was beginning anew. His disillusionment -went deeper than mere realization of his own unsafe -position as a government employee. He was -watching the ancient forces of selfishness and aggression -capture the movement from which he had -hoped so much. His enlistment in the Dumfries -Volunteers was not wholly from dread of further -jeopardizing his livelihood by holding aloof. He still -believed in the principles of the Revolution, but -that belief did not commit him to endorsement of -its practices, and so, like many another pacifist, he -found himself, still hating war, nevertheless engaged -in supporting it.</p> - -<p>Though he dared no longer give direct utterance -to revolutionary sympathies, he could, and did, express -his detestation of war in a song like ‘Logan -Braes’, and couple the ideas of his generation with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</span> -the patriotic tradition of medieval Scotland. The -low estate of contemporary Scottish liberty threw -into more glorious relief the traditions of Bannockburn -and the lost cause of the Stuarts. His patriotism -accepted without question the legend that ‘Hey -tutti taitie’ had been Bruce’s battle-march, as it -accepted the romantic interpretation of Mary -Queen of Scots. Burns might call himself an unprejudiced -inquirer and a sceptic, but his nature -had no kinship with the cool remorseless scepticism -of a man like David Hume. Hume’s was the keenest -Scottish mind of his century; Burns, at least in the -height of his rebellion against the Kirk, might have -been expected to find the philosopher congenial. But -Burns could endure destructive criticism only of -things he hated. Hume did not confine his scepticism -to religion, and when he brought his devastating -intellect to bear on the romantic traditions of -his country Burns turned away in anger. He might -endorse Hume’s demolition of the supernatural -sanctions of the church, but he was disquieted by -the application of the same scepticism to the belief -in immortality, and infuriated when it was turned -upon Queen Mary. Hume was mentally akin to -Voltaire and Samuel Butler; Burns to Rousseau and -Dickens.</p> - -<p>In repudiating Hume’s treatment of Mary, Burns -was unconsciously illustrating the force of Johnson’s -ruthless dictum, which even the loyal Sir Walter -Scott could not wholly deny, that ‘a Scotchman -must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</span> -Scotland better than truth: He will always love it -better than inquiry; and if falsehood flatters his -vanity, will not be very diligent to detect it.’ Few -men have lived more honest than Burns. He would -not willingly lie, nor endorse a lie; but if offered -choice between a romantic story which appealed to -his patriotism and an unromantic one which did -not, his choice was never in doubt. His own followers, -in their hostility to anything like dispassionate -investigation of the picturesque legends surrounding -him, continue to illustrate the same attitude. Nor, -indeed, have the Burnsians monopolized this aversion -to inquiry. It remained for an Irishman and an -American to set forth the true details of the life of -Allan Ramsay, and for another American to write -the only complete and scholarly study of Henry -Mackenzie and his times.</p> - -<p>Many Scotsmen besides Burns shared his passionate -defence of Queen Mary; not so many shared -his general patriotism. Here Burns, very Scot of very -Scot, belonged to a generation which had passed, -though he prepared the way for one to come. He -had much in common with Claverhouse, Lochiel, -or Fletcher of Saltoun; nothing in common with -Bute, Wedderburn, or Henry Dundas. In so far as -the patriotism of Sir John Sinclair sought the improvement -of his country by collecting and tabulating -her resources, Burns was with him, but when -Sinclair tried to eradicate the national speech he -struck at something Burns held precious. True, -Burns was like his contemporaries in snatching at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</span> -everything that seemed like proof that the Scots -could equal or surpass the English at their own -games. He applauded the <i>Mirror</i> and the <i>Lounger</i> -because they looked like successful rivals of the -<i>Tatler</i> and <i>Spectator</i>; he admired Thomson and -Beattie and Blair the more because even the English -had to admit that these men wrote well in the -southern tongue. But he deeply resented the willingness -of his countrymen to sink their national -identity in the Union.</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>‘Alas! have I often said to myself,’ he wrote to -Mrs. Dunlop in 1790, ‘what are all the boasted advantages -which my country reaps from the union, that can counterbalance -the annihilation of her Independance, and -even her very name! I often repeat that couplet of my -favorite poet, Goldsmith—</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">“——States of native liberty possest,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tho’ very poor, may yet be very blest.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Nothing can reconcile me to the common terms, “English -ambassador, English court,” &c. And I am out of all -patience to see that equivocal character, Hastings, impeached -by “the Commons of England.” Tell me, my -friend, is this weak prejudice?’</p> -</div> - -<p>Men like Boswell and Sinclair would have answered -without hesitation that it was. The Union -had admitted Scotland to as much share as she -could grasp of the wealth of the British Empire; -commerce and industry were increasing year by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</span> -year; the poor relation was beginning to live like -the prosperous branch of the family. For such profits, -the change of name from ‘Scotland’ to ‘North -Britain’ seemed a small price. To those who shared -in the new prosperity, the suggestion of a nationalist -movement would have seemed rank folly or even -downright treason. So long as the prosperity continued, -indeed, the ‘practical men’ had the overwhelming -majority of their countrymen with them. -The emergence of Scottish nationalism as a political -force to be reckoned with had to await the collapse -of Scottish industry which followed the World War. -With the loss of material prosperity, the Scots have -begun to question the value of the system which -transfers to Westminster the control of their local -affairs. Scottish poverty and Scottish pride are -seemingly interdependent. Removal of the one will -make the nation more willing to swallow the other.</p> - -<p>Even if Burns had shared the material prosperity -resulting from the Union, instead of helping, as -tenant of rack-rented land, to pay for it, his feelings -would have been the same. In every fibre of his -being he shared the spirit of those Scots who, in -contradiction of every proverbial association of -pawky caution with their race, have been among -the greatest soldiers, explorers, and idealists of -modern history. Montrose and Livingstone, Admiral -Duncan and Mungo Park, expressed in action -the national traits which he expressed in song. His -calling, consciously accepted, was that of national -poet; his other activities merely the ‘sweat, that the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</span> -base machine might have its oil’. He refused payment -for his songs, because the task of supplying words to -national melodies was a patriotic service, embalming -and treasuring up these relics of his country’s -spirit to a life beyond life.</p> - -<p>Without Burns’s share in the work of gathering -old Jacobite songs, for instance, and composing new -ones, it may be questioned if such a halo of romance -would have surrounded, in the next generation, the -Rebellions of 1715 and 1745; without that halo, -Sir Walter Scott would have been less readily attracted -to them; without Sir Walter, the romantic -vision of Scottish history would never have conquered -the world. No Scottish writer of the eighteenth -century, except Burns, passed on the torch of -national pride. Without him, the fact that Hume -and Boswell were Scotsmen, that Thomson was born -on Tweed instead of Thames, would mean no more -to the ordinary reader than does the fact that Swift -was born in Ireland or Wordsworth in Cumberland. -Without him, Ramsay and Fergusson would be forgotten -minor poets who wrote in a difficult and obsolete -dialect. He gathered together in his own work -all that was vital in the work of his predecessors, infused -it with the fire of his own personality, and sent -it out again to keep Scotland alive.</p> - -<p>Burns came at the last moment when a national -poet could succeed in his task. A few decades later, -and the vernacular would have sunk too low for -preservation. Even as it was, he could only embalm -it and not renew it as poetic speech. Except for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</span> -Lady Nairne’s, scarcely any vernacular poetry written -in Scotland since 1800 deserves higher ranking -than the <i>Barrack-Room Ballads</i>. As a poetic influence, -Burns’s work was weak. As a national influence, its -force is not yet spent. He revealed the richness and -colour of Scottish life, and in revealing it gave direction -and vitality to the long and noble line of novelists -which began with Sir Walter Scott and John Galt, -and continued through Stevenson to John Buchan -and the late Neil Munro. Through these men the -Scotland which was no longer, politically, a nation -became more enduring than anything which -depends on rulers and boundaries—a nation of the -mind and heart, a home of lost causes, of impossible -loyalties, of high romance and simple faith. It is not -Scott’s kings and ladies and nobles who keep his -books alive; it is people like Edie Ochiltree, Jeanie -Deans, Meg Dods, and Dandie Dinmont—in other -words, the characters who are part and parcel of the -world which Burns depicted and glorified. Steenie -Steenson, like Thrawn Janet and Tod Lapraik, carries -on the great tradition of Tam o’ Shanter. Without -Burns the Scottish novel as we know it would -never have been; without the Scottish novel, the -literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries -would be as much the poorer as seventeenth-century -poetry would be without the Cavaliers.</p> - -<p>In tracing the continuing tradition of sentiment -from Henry Mackenzie through Burns himself to -‘Ian Maclaren’ and Sir James Barrie, Professor -Thompson made perforce a grave omission. The difference<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</span> -between the dynamic romanticism of England -at the beginning of the last century—the romanticism -of the young Wordsworth and of Shelley—and -the insipid prettiness of the same movement -in America at the same time, lies in the invigorating -power of the French Revolution. By giving a fighting -edge to romance, the Revolution raised it above -mere fancifulness and sentimentality. His patriotism -did the same thing for the influence of Burns. Without -it he might today be only a minor Man of Feeling. -Even as it is, he is neglected and misunderstood. -The strength, the humour, the fighting edge are -there, but few people care to find them.</p> - -<p>He saved Scotland; himself he could not save. -Five years after his death a group of admirers in -Greenock organized a Burns Club, and Paisley and -Kilmarnock quickly followed suit. The fashion -spread through Scotland, and among Scotsmen in the -rest of the English-speaking world, bringing in its -train the erection of more, and worse, statues and -monuments than have been reared to the memory of -any other British individual with the possible exception -of Albert, Prince Consort. Soon the movement -acquired the characteristics of a minor religious cult, -complete with ritual meals and a thriving traffic in -relics, genuine or spurious, of its hero.</p> - -<p>In itself this establishment as hero of a national -cult might be harmless. After all, if any writer was -to fill the role, Burns was the inevitable candidate, -for he alone of the great Scottish writers was truly -a man of the people. Not the existence of the cult,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</span> -but the direction it took, is the tragedy of Burns. The -sentimentality which lies, like the soft core of an -over-ripe pear, at the heart of writers like ‘Ian Maclaren’, -Sir James Barrie, and A. A. Milne, is widespread -in Scotland. In the Burns cult this softness -yearns to the answering softness of ‘The Cotter’s -Saturday Night’, ‘To a Mouse’, and ‘To a Mountain -Daisy’, extols its hero as the Bard of Humanity and -Democracy, and rejoices in the bathos of Clarinda -and Highland Mary. Meanwhile the ribald magnificence -of ‘Holy Willie’ and ‘The Jolly Beggars’ is neglected, -the homely realism of satires, epistles, and -dramatic monologues goes unread. Worst of all, the -splendid treasury of more than three hundred songs, -Burns’s most truly patriotic work, lies almost untouched -on the shelves. Radio and concert stage -alike ignore them. And choice of the few that are -known to the public at large runs true to the same -form as with the longer poems. Probably a hundred -people know ‘Sweet Afton’ for one who knows -‘M’Pherson’s Farewell’ or ‘Rantin’ Rovin’ Robin’.</p> - -<p>The flattery of being a national hero would delight -Burns. If his followers were only mealy-mouthed -where he was outspoken, they would -merely amuse him. He would not mind if they slobbered -over his sins, for the unco guid were old acquaintance -of his. But at the thought of his worshippers -exalting his weakest work and ignoring his best, -his very soul would scunner. The real Burns was -not the dropper of tears over ploughed-under weeds -but the man who brought in the neighbours for a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</span> -kirn-night and kissed the lasses after every dance; -the man who sat by farmers’ ingles and on ale-house -benches listening to the racy earthy talk of his people -and storing his mind with folk sayings and old songs. -He was not ashamed of being a Scottish peasant, -the heir of all the picturesque and frequently bawdy -tradition of Scots folk literature. Neither was the -man who wrote, ‘But yet the light that led astray -Was light from Heaven’, ashamed of his human nature. -But his worshippers are ashamed of the best -part of his nature and his work. And nobody else -reads him at all.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak" id="INDEX">INDEX</h2> -</div> - - -<ul class="index"> -<li class="ifrst">Abbotsford, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li> -<li class="indx"><i>Aberdeen Almanac</i>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> -<li class="indx">Aberfoyle, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> -<li class="indx">Adam, Alexander, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Addison, Joseph, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Adventures of John Cheap the Chapman, The</i>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Adventures of Telemachus</i> (Fénelon), <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘Ae fond kiss,’ <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Agriculture in Scotland, <a href="#Page_10">10-16</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Agriculture, Professorship of, Edinburgh, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Aiken, Robert, <a href="#Page_93">93-96</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ainslie, Robert, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112-115</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Albert, Prince Consort, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Allen, John, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Alloway, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36-41</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Alloway Kirk, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Almack, William, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘A Man’s a Man,’ <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> - -<li class="indx">American Colonies. <i>See</i> <a href="#Page_321">United States</a></li> - -<li class="indx">American Revolution, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Anderson, Robert, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Anne, Queen, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘An’ O for ane-and-twenty, Tam,’ <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Antigua, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Arbroath, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Archers, Royal Company of, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Argyll, John, Duke of, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Armour, James, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142-143</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Armour, Mrs. James, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Armour, Jean. <i>See</i> <a href="#Page_310">Burns, Jean Armour</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Army, Burns’s opinions of, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Arnot, John, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Arran, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Athole, Jane Cathcart, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_116">116-117</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Athole, John, Duke of, <a href="#Page_116">116-117</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Auchencruive, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Auld Brig, Ayr, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Auld Farmer’s New Year’s Morning Salutation, The</i>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Auld Lang Syne</i>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Auld, Walter, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Auld, William, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Austen, Jane, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Aylmer, Rose, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ayr, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ayr, Brigs of, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ayr, Presbytery of, <a href="#Page_92">92-93</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Baker, —, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ballads, <a href="#Page_25">25-27</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43-44</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ballantine, John, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93-96</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ballenden, Braes of, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Balmerino, Arthur Elphinstone, Baron, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Banks of Cree</i>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bannockburn, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Barncailzie, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Barrack-Room Ballads</i>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</span></li> - -<li class="indx">Barrie, Sir James Matthew, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bayard, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beattie, James, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bede, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beethoven, Ludwig von, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Begbie, Alison, <a href="#Page_69">69-70</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Begg, Isabella Burns, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Bell</i>, West-Indiaman, <a href="#Page_192">192-193</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Benson, Anna Dorothea, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Beugo, John, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bible, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Black Bull Inn, Glasgow, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Blacklock, Thomas, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Blair, Athole, <a href="#Page_116">116-117</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Blair, Hugh, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Blair, Sir James Hunter, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Blair, Robert, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Blake, William, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bloody Assizes, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Bonnie Dundee</i>, <a href="#Page_261">261-262</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Border tour, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Boston, Thomas, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Boswell, Sir Alexander, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Boswell, Euphemia, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Boswell, James, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Boyd, Thomas, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Brawne, Fanny, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Braxfield, Robert M’Queen, Lord, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bremner, Robert, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Brigs of Ayr, The</i>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Broadsides, Scottish, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Brontë, Emily, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Brown, Richard, <a href="#Page_80">80-83</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137-138</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Brown, Samuel, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Browning, Robert, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Brow Well, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184-187</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bruce, King Robert the, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Brussels, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Buchan, David Stuart Erskine, Earl of, <a href="#Page_100">100-101</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Buchan, John, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burke, Edmund, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burn, Robert, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burnes, Agnes Broun (mother of the poet), <a href="#Page_37">37-38</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135-136</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138-139</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burnes, Robert (grandfather of the poet), <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burnes, Robert (uncle of the poet), <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burnes, William (father of the poet), <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36-39</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42-43</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49-50</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71-73</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85-88</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burness, James, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burnet, Elizabeth, of Manboddo, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burns, Agnes (sister of the poet), <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burns, Elizabeth Paton (daughter of the poet), <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138-139</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burns, Elizabeth Riddell (daughter of the poet), <a href="#Page_183">183-184</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burns, Gilbert (brother of the poet), <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202-203</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burns, Isabella (sister of the poet). <i>See</i> <a href="#Page_310">Begg, Isabella Burns</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burns, Jean Armour, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91-92</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114-115</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139-144</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146-148</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167-170</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172-176</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192-193</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</span></li> - -<li class="indx">Burns, John (brother of the poet), <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burns, Robert, <i>Poems</i>. See <a href="#Page_318"><i>Poems</i>, Burns’s</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burns, Robert, the poet, <i>passim</i>. Specific references are to be found in association with other persons, topics, or places.</li> - -<li class="indx">Burns, Robert (son of the poet), <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burns, William (brother of the poet), <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203-204</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burns, William Nicol (son of the poet), <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burns Clubs, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306-308</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Burton, Robert, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Bush aboon Traquair, The</i>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Bute, John Stuart, Earl of, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Butler, Samuel, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Byron, George Noel Gordon, Lord, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Cadell and Davies, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Caedmon, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Ça Ira</i>, <a href="#Page_295">295-296</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Caledonian Hunt, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Caller Oysters</i>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Calton Hill, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Calvin, John, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Calvinism, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16-23</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279-287</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cameron, Meg, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Campbell, Mary, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144-149</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Canada, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Candlish, James, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cape Club, Edinburgh, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Caroline lyrics, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Carronades, Burns’s purchase of, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Carswell, Catherine, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Catalan, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Catrine House, <a href="#Page_96">96-97</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cawdor Castle, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Centlivre, Susannah, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Chalmers, Margaret, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160-161</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Channing, William Eilery, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Chapbooks, Scottish, <a href="#Page_45">45-46</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Chapman, George, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Chatterton, Thomas, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Chaucer, Geoffrey, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Chesterton, G. K., <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Children, Burns’s feelings toward, <a href="#Page_150">150-153</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Chloris. <i>See</i> <a href="#Page_316">Lorimer, Jean.</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Christabel</i>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Chronicle</i>, London, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Clarinda. <i>See</i> <a href="#Page_316">M’Lehose, Agnes.</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Clarke, Samuel, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Clarke, Stephen, <a href="#Page_257">257-258</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Class-consciousness, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_52">52-53</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Claverhouse, John Graham of, Viscount Dundee, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cleghorn, Robert, <a href="#Page_109">109-111</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Clint, Henry, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Clochnahill, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Clow, Jenny, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170-171</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Clydesdale, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cockburn, Alison, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cockburn, Henry, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cockney dialect, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Coila, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cole, Elisha, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Comical Sayings of Paddy from Cork, The</i>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘Coming thro’ the rye,’ <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Commonplace Book, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_236">236-239</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242-244</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Composition, Burns’s methods of, <a href="#Page_241">241-246</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Connaught, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Constable, Archibald, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</span></li> - -<li class="indx">Copyrights, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_199">199-201</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Corbet, William, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Corri, Domenico, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Cotter’s Saturday Night, The</i>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Court of Equity, The</i>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Court of Session, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cowper, William, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Craig, Lord, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Craigdarroch, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Crane, Ichabod, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Creech, William, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197-201</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204-205</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Criffel, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Crochallan Fencibles, <a href="#Page_104">104-109</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cromek, Robert Hartley, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cullen, William, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Cunningham, Alexander, <a href="#Page_107">107-109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133-134</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Currie, James, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘Cutty stool,’ <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Daer, Basil William, Lord, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Daft Days, The</i>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dalrymple, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dalrymple, William, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dalswinton, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207-212</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dalyell, Sir John Graham, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dalziel, Alexander, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Darien Expedition, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Davidson, Betty, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Davies, Deborah Duff, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Deans, Jamie, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Deans, Jeanie, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Death and Dr. Hornbook</i>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Death, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Deists, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Democracy, Scottish, <a href="#Page_32">32-33</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dempster, George, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dickens, Charles, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dinmont, Dandie, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dods, —, <a href="#Page_127">127-128</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dods, Meg, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Don, Lady Harriet, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Doonholm, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Douglas and Heron Bank, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Douglas, Charles, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Douglas, Gawain, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Douglas, Lady Mary, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Douglas, Tragedy of</i>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Douglas, William, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dover, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Drama, Burns and the, <a href="#Page_251">251-252</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Drama, in Edinburgh, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dramatic lyric, Burns’s use of, <a href="#Page_250">250-251</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dramatic monologue, Burns’s use of, <a href="#Page_250">250-251</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Drummond, William, of Hawthornden, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dryden, John, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dumfries, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124-134</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221-233</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294-297</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dumfries Academy, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dumfries Burgh Council, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dumfries Public Library, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dumfries Theatre, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295-296</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dumfries Volunteers, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dunbar, William (the poet), <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dunbar, William (Edinburgh), <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Duncan, Adam, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dundas, Henry, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dundas, Robert, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dunlop, Andrew, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dunlop, Frances Anna Wallace, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153-160</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282-283</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297-298</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</span></li> - -<li class="indx">Dunlop House, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dunlop, Keith, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dunlop, Rachel, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dunlop, Thomas, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dunnottar, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dunscore, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Dunse, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Durham, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">East India Company, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li> - -<li class="indx">East Lothian, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Easy Club, Edinburgh, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Eclogues, Virgil’s, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Edinburgh, <a href="#Page_7">7-10</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99-119</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162-172</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195-202</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209-210</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291-293</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Edinburgh High School, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Edinburgh University, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Eglinton, Archibald Montgomerie, Earl of, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Eglinton, Countess of, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Eglinton Wood, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Elegies</i> (Shenstone), <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Elegy on the Death of Sir James Hunter Blair</i>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Elibanks and Elibraes</i>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Elizabethan lyrics, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Elliot, Jean, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ellisland, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113-115</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119-122</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207-222</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Emerson, Ralph Waldo, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Epistle to John Rankine</i>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Erskine, Andrew, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Erskine, Henry, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Erskine, John Francis, of Mar, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Esopus to Maria</i>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Evening Courant</i>, Edinburgh, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Eve of St. Agnes, The</i>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Excise, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129-130</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, -<a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206-207</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209-210</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214-233</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Faculty of Advocates, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Falstaff, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Farington, Joseph, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Farming, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210-222</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fénelon, François, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Ferdinand Count Fathom</i>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fergusson, Alexander, of Craigdarroch, <a href="#Page_121">121-122</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fergusson, Robert, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241-242</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247-248</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fergusson, William, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ferrara, Duke of, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fifeshire, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> - -<li class="indx">’Fifteen, Rebellion of, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Findlater, Alexander, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129-130</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fisher, Edward, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Flax-dressing, Burns and, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79-84</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fletcher, Andrew, of Saltoun, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Flowers of Edinburgh, The</i>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Flowers of the Forest, The</i>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Folk-songs, Scottish, <a href="#Page_26">26-28</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43-44</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252-263</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fornicators’ Court, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li> - -<li class="indx">’Forty-five, Rebellion of, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Four-Fold State</i> (Thomas Boston), <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Fox, Charles James, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Franklin, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Freemasonry, <a href="#Page_67">67-68</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> - -<li class="indx">French, Burns’s knowledge of, <a href="#Page_51">51-52</a></li> - -<li class="indx">French Convention, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> - -<li class="indx">French Revolution, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159-160</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226-228</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290-299</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</span></li> - -<li class="indx">Friars Carse, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Friars Carse Hermitage, Written in</i>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Friends of the People, <a href="#Page_293">293-294</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Gala Water</i>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Galileo, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Galloway, Burns’s tour in, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Galloway, John Stewart, Earl of, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Galt, John, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Gazetteer</i>, Edinburgh, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Gentlemen’s Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> - -<li class="indx">George III, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296-297</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Geographical Grammar</i> (Guthrie), <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Gillicrankie</i>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Glasgow, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Glasgow University, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Glenbervie, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Glencairn, Elizabeth M’Quire, Countess of, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Glencairn, James, Earl of, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98-101</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195-197</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Glenconner, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Globe Inn, Dumfries, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>God Save the King</i>, <a href="#Page_295">295-296</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Godwin, William, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Goldielea, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Goldsmith, Oliver, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gordon Castle, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gordon, Jane, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gow, Neil, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Graham, Dugal, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45-46</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Graham, Robert, of Fintry, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Grave, The</i> (Blair), <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gray, James, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Gray, Thomas, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greenfield, William, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Greenock, <a href="#Page_192">192-193</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Grieve, James, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Grizzel Grimme, Ballad of</i>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Grose, Francis, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176-177</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Guthrie, William, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Guy Mannering</i>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Halleaths, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Hallowe’en</i>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hamilton, Charlotte, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hamilton, Gavin, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87-88</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92-93</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hamilton, John, of Sundrum, <a href="#Page_85">85-86</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hamilton, William, of Gilbertfield, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Hamlet</i>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hampstead Heath, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Handsome Nell</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hannibal, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hanover, House of, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287-289</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Hardyknute</i>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Harry, Blind, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hastings, Warren, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hay, Charles (Lord Newton), <a href="#Page_106">106-107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hay, Lewis, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Health, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83-84</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184-187</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231-233</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Helenore</i> (Alexander Ross), <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Henley, William Ernest, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Henri, Susan Dunlop, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Henry VIII</i>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Henryson, Robert, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Herald’s Office, Edinburgh, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Herd, David, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘Here is the glen and here the bower,’ <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Heron, Lady Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_271">271-272</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Heron, Patrick, of Heron, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Hey, Johnie Cope</i>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Hey tutti taitie</i>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Highland clans, suppression of, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Highland Lassie</i>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</span></li> - -<li class="indx">Highland Mary. <i>See</i> <a href="#Page_311">Campbell, Mary</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Highland tours, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_116">116-118</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hildebroad, John, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hill, Peter, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>History of Sir William Wallace, The</i>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>History of the Bible</i> (Stackhouse), <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hogg, James, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Holinshed, Raphael, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Holmes, Oliver Wendell, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Holy Fair, The</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Holy Willie’s Prayer</i>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Home, John, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Homer, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hopetoun, James Hope, Earl of, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Horace, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Housman, A. E., <a href="#Page_244">244-245</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘How are Thy servants blest’ (Addison), <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hume, David, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Humphry, James, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hutcheson, Francis, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Hyslop, William, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Immortality, Burns’s views on, <a href="#Page_284">284-286</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘I murder hate,’ <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> - -<li class="indx">India, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Inquisition, Spanish, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Irvine, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79-84</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Irving, Washington, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘I’ve seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling,’ <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Jacobitism, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287-290</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jamaica, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191-193</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> - -<li class="indx">James I, of Scotland, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> - -<li class="indx">James VI, of Scotland, I of England, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jefferson, Thomas, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jeffrey, Francis, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Jeffreys, George, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Jocky and Maggie’s Courtship</i>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>John Anderson</i>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>John Barleycorn</i>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>John o’ Badenyon</i>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Johnson, James, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254-264</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Johnson, Samuel, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Johnston, William, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Jolly Beggars, The</i>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Journalism, Burns and, <a href="#Page_205">205-206</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Junius</i>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Kames, Henry Home, Lord, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Keats, John, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kemp, John, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kilmarnock, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193-194</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kilpatrick, Nellie, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234-235</a></li> - -<li class="indx">King’s Arms, Dumfries, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kinmonth, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kipling, Rudyard, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kirk, Scottish, <a href="#Page_16">16-23</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kirkcudbright, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kirkoswald, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55-60</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kirkpatrick, Joseph, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Kiwanis Club, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Knox, John, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Lake District, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lamb, Charles, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn</i>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Landor, Walter Savage, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lapraik, John, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lapraik, Tod, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Laurie, Annie, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Laurie, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_121">121-122</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</span></li> - -<li class="indx">Lawrie, George, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lawrie, Mrs. George, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Leader Haughs and Yarrow</i>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Leeward Islands, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lewars, Jessie, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lewars, John, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Lewis Gordon</i>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Letters, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_60">60-61</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Letters Moral and Entertaining</i> (E. Rowe), <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Linlithgow, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lippo Lippi, Fra, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lisbon, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Little, Jenny, <a href="#Page_158">158-159</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Livingstone, David, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lochaber, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lochiel, Donald Cameron of, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lochlie, <a href="#Page_62">62-63</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72-73</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84-88</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lochmaben, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Lochmaben Harper, The</i>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Locke, John, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lockerbie, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lockhart, John Gibson, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Logan Braes</i>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lomond, Loch, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> - -<li class="indx">London, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Longtown, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lorimer, Jean, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lorimer, William, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Loudoun, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Louis XVI, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Lounger, The</i>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Lowell, James Russell, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Loyal Natives Club, Dumfries, <a href="#Page_126">126-127</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">M’Auley, John, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Macbeth</i>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mackenzie, Henry, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mackenzie, John, <a href="#Page_90">90-92</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mackenzie, S. (Dumfries), <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mackintosh, James, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li> - -<li class="indx">McKnight, —, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘Maclaren, Ian.’ <i>See</i> <a href="#Page_321">Watson, John</a></li> - -<li class="indx">M’Lehose, Agnes, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160-172</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> - -<li class="indx">M’Lehose, James, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li> - -<li class="indx">M’Lure, David, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85-88</a></li> - -<li class="indx">M’Murdo, John, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Macpherson, James, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>M’Pherson’s Farewell</i>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mallet, David, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Man of Feeling, The</i>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Man Was Made to Mourn</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Manners, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_102">102-104</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153-157</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Manual of Religious Belief</i> (William Burnes), <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Marie Antoinette, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Marischal, George Keith, 10th Earl of, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Marriage, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_168">168-176</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Marrow of Modern Divinity, The</i>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Marxism, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Mary Morison</i>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mary, Queen of Scots, <a href="#Page_300">300-301</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Masons. <i>See</i> <a href="#Page_313">Freemasonry</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Massachusetts, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Masson, Arthur, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41-42</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mathieson, W. L., quoted, <a href="#Page_18">18-19</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mauchline, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Mauchline Wedding, The</i>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Maule, Ramsay, of Panmure, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Maxwell, James, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</span></li> - -<li class="indx">Maxwell, Robert, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Melrose, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Merry Muses of Caledonia, The</i>, <a href="#Page_111">111-112</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253-254</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Mill, Mill O, The</i>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mill Street, Dumfries, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Millan, —, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Miller, Eliza, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Miller, Patrick, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207-212</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Miller, Mrs. Patrick, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Miller, Patrick, Jr., <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Milne, A. A., <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Milton, John, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Minstrel, The</i> (Beattie), <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Mirror, The</i>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mississippi Bubble, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mitchell, John, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Moderates. <i>See</i> <a href="#Page_317">New Lights</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Moffat, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Monboddo, James Burnet, Lord, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Monkland Friendly Society, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Monody on a Lady Famed for her Caprice</i>, <a href="#Page_181">181-182</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Montgomerie, Margaret, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Montrose, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Montrose, James Graham, Marquis of, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Moodie, Alexander, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Moore, John, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Morison, Mary, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mossgiel, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73-74</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87-88</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mound, Edinburgh, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mount Oliphant, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54-56</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61-62</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Muir, Robert, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Muir, Thomas, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Muir, Mrs. William, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Mundell, James, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Munro, Neil, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Murdoch, John, <a href="#Page_34">34-35</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39-43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51-55</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Murray, Sir James, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Murray, John, of Broughton, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Murry, John Middleton, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Music, Scottish, <a href="#Page_26">26-28</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120-121</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Music, influence on Burns, <a href="#Page_236">236-237</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240-244</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘My father was a farmer,’ <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘My Love is like a red red rose,’ <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Nairne, Margaret Mercer Elphinstone, Baroness, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Nancy</i>, West-Indiaman, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Napoleon, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nationalism, Scottish, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> - -<li class="indx">New Brig, Ayr, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Newcastle, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> - -<li class="indx">New England, <a href="#Page_16">16-17</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> - -<li class="indx">New Lights, <a href="#Page_21">21-23</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66-67</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75-78</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280-287</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Newton, Charles Hay, Lord. <i>See</i> <a href="#Page_314">Hay</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nicol, William, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115-119</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Night Thoughts</i> (Young), <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nimmo, Erskine, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Nith, River, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Niven, William, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Norval, Charles, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Observations on the Scottish Dialect</i> (Sinclair), <a href="#Page_29">29-30</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ochiltree, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ochiltree, Edie, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ochtertyre, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘Of a’ the airts,’ <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Oldbuck, Jonathan, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Old Lights, <a href="#Page_21">21-23</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66-67</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75-78</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279-287</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>On God’s Sovereignty</i>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>On the Death of Lord President Dundas</i>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘O poortith cauld,’ <a href="#Page_271">271</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</span></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Ordination, The</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Orr, Thomas, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Ossian</i> (Macpherson), <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Oswald, James, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Oswald, Mary Ramsay, of Auchencruive, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Oswald, Richard, of Auchencruive, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘O wat ye wha that lo’es me,’ <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘O wert thou in the cauld blast,’ <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Paine, Thomas, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Paisley, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Palmer, Thomas Fyshe, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Pamela</i>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Pantheon, The</i> (Tooke), <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Park, Anne, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Park, Mungo, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Parliament, <a href="#Page_3">3-4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5-6</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290-294</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Parnell, Charles Stuart, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Paton, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138-139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Patriotism, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287-306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Patronage, Kirk, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pattison, Alexander, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Peacock, —, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Peggy Bawn</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Percy, Thomas, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Perry, James, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Philosophy of Natural History</i> (Smellie), <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘Pindar, Peter.’ <i>See</i> <a href="#Page_321">Wolcot, John</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pinkerton, John, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pitt, William, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Plane-stanes and the Causey, The</i>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pleyel, Ignaz Joseph, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Poems</i>, Burns’s, Kilmarnock ed., <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193-196</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247-249</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Poems</i>, Burns’s, 1st Edinburgh ed., <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195-201</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Poems</i>, Burns’s, 2nd Edinburgh ed., <a href="#Page_204">204-205</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Poems</i>, Burns’s, Gilbert Burns’s ed., <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Poet’s Progress, The</i>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Poet’s Welcome to his Bastart Wean, A</i>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Politics, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225-226</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230-231</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287-299</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Poosie Nansie, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Pope, Alexander, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Port Antonio, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Potterrow, Edinburgh, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Prayer in the Prospect of Death</i>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Preaching, Scottish, <a href="#Page_19">19-20</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Prelude</i> (Wordsworth), <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Prestonpans, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Prior, Matthew, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Princes Street, Edinburgh, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Provençal, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Psalms</i>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Puritanism, <a href="#Page_16">16-17</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Queensberry, William Douglas, Duke of, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Raeburn, Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ramsay, Allan, <a href="#Page_23">23-25</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248-249</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ramsay, David, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ramsay, John, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rankine, Anne, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rankine, John, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Rantin’ Rovin’ Robin</i>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘Rape of the Sabines, The,’ <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180-181</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Reformation, Scottish, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Regency Bill, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Reid, Alexander, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Religion, <a href="#Page_59">59</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</span></li> - -<li class="indx">Religion, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_278">278-287</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Reliques of Ancient English Poetry</i> (Percy), <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Revolution of 1688, <a href="#Page_288">288-289</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Riccarton, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Richardson, Samuel, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Richmond, John, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89-90</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Riddell, Elizabeth Kennedy (Mrs. Robert), <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Riddell, Jean Fergusson, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Riddell, Maria Banks Woodley, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122-123</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176-187</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Riddell, Robert, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120-124</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Riddell, Walter, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176-177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Rights of Man, The</i>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Robertson, William, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Robertson, William, of Lude, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rochester, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rockingham, Charles Watson-Wentworth, Marquis of, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rodger, Hugh, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Rosamond</i>, schooner, <a href="#Page_226">226-227</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ross, Alexander, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rossetti, Christina, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rotary Club, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rousseau, Jean Jacques, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Rowe, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Russell, John, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Ryedale, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Sabbath, Scottish, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li> - -<li class="indx">St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li> - -<li class="indx">St. James’s Lodge, Tarbolton, <a href="#Page_67">67-68</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li> - -<li class="indx">St. Kitts, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li> - -<li class="indx">St. Mary’s Isle, <a href="#Page_131">131-132</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Samothrace, Victory of, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sanitation, <a href="#Page_9">9-13</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Satan, Milton’s, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Savannah-la-Mar, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Schetki, Theodor, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Schoolmistress, The</i> (Shenstone), <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Schools, Scottish, <a href="#Page_38">38-42</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Scotch Drink</i>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Scotland and the Union</i> (W. L. Mathieson), quoted, <a href="#Page_18">18-19</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Scots language, <a href="#Page_23">23-31</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Scots Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Scots Musical Museum, The</i>, <a href="#Page_120">120-121</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254-264</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273-274</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘Scots wha hae,’ <a href="#Page_272">272-273</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Scott, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Scottish National Gallery, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Seasons, The</i> (Thomson), <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sedition trials, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Select Collection of Scotish Airs</i> (Thomson), <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268-277</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Selkirk, Dunbar Douglas, Earl of, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131-132</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sentimentality, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Sentimental Tommy</i>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Shadow of the Glen, The</i> (Synge), <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Shakespeare, William, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34-35</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sharpe, Charles Kirkpatrick, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Shaw, George Bernard, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Shelley, Percy Bysshe, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Shenstone, William, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, <a href="#Page_278">278</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</span></li> - -<li class="indx">Sheridan, Thomas, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sidney, Sir Philip, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sillar, David, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Simpson, William, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sinclair, Sir John, <a href="#Page_29">29-30</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Six Excellent New Songs</i>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Skinner, John, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Smellie, William, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105-106</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177-178</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Smith, Adam, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Smith, James, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89-90</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Smith, Leonard, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Smollett, Tobias, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Smuggling, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Snyder, Franklyn Bliss, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Solway, <a href="#Page_184">184-187</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Sorrows of Werther, The</i>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Souter Johnie, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li> - -<li class="indx">South Sea Bubble, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Southey, Robert, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Sow’s Tail to Geordie, The</i>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Spectator, The</i>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Spenser, Edmund, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Spenserian stanza, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Spinoza, Baruch, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stackhouse, Thomas, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Staig, David, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Star</i>, London, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Steenson, Steenie, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Sterne, Laurence, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stevenson, Robert Louis, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stewart, Catherine Gordon, of Stair, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stewart, Dugald, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96-97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stewart, Mrs. —, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stewart, William, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stinking Vennel, Dumfries, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stirling, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stobbie, Adam, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stuart, House of, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287-289</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Stuart, Peter, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Surgeoner, Jenny, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Sweet Afton</i>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Swift, Jonathan, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Syme, John, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125-134</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Synge, John Millington, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst"><i>Tam Glen</i>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Tam o’ Shanter</i>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264-268</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tarbolton, <a href="#Page_62">62-67</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tarbolton Bachelors’ Club, <a href="#Page_63">63-66</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tarbolton Mill, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Tatler, The</i>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Taylor, John, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Tea-Table Miscellany</i> (Ramsay), <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Telford, Thomas, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tennant, John, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘The last time I cam o’er the moor,’ <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘The robin cam to the wren’s nest,’ <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Thompson, Harold William, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Thomson, George, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133-134</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268-277</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Thomson, James, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Thomson, Peggy, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘Thou Lingering Star,’ <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Thrawn Janet</i>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tinwald House, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Titus Andronicus</i>, <a href="#Page_34">34-35</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>To a Haggis</i>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>To a Mountain Daisy</i>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>To a Mouse</i>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Toddlin hame</i>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘To Fanny fair could I impart,’ <a href="#Page_242">242</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tooke, Andrew, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tooke, John Horne, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tories, <a href="#Page_225">225-226</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</span></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Treatise on Solitude</i> (Zimmermann), <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tudor, House of, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Tullochgorum</i>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Twa Dogs, The</i>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Twa Herds, The</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92-93</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Twain, Mark, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Tytler, William, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Union, Act of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302-303</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Unitarianism, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> - -<li class="indx">United States, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Urbani, Pietro, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Versailles, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Vicar of Wakefield, The</i>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Virgil, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Vocabulary, Burns’s, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Voltaire, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Wallace, Lady Antonia, of Craigie, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wallace, Lady Eglintoune Maxwell, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Wallace, Sir William, History of</i> (Blind Harry), <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wallace, Sir William, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Walpole, Horace, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wardlaw, Lady Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42-43</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Washington, George, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Watson, John, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wedderburn, Alexander, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wesley, John, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> - -<li class="indx">West Indies, <a href="#Page_7">7</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Westminster, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘When Princes and Prelates,’ <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Whigs, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225-226</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230-231</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Whistle, The</i>, <a href="#Page_121">121-122</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘Whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad,’ <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Whitefoord, Sir John, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wig Club, Edinburgh, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wigglesworth, Michael, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wilkes, John, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wilson, John (‘Dr. Hornbook’), <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wilson, John (Kilmarnock), <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wolcot, John, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wolsey, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Women, Burns’s views on, <a href="#Page_149">149-150</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Women, education of, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135-136</a></li> - -<li class="indx"><i>Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret</i>, The, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wood, Alexander, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Woodley Park, <a href="#Page_122">122-123</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178-179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> - -<li class="indx">Wordsworth, William, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li> - -<li class="indx">World War, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Young, Edward, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> - -<li class="indx">‘Young Jocky was the blithest lad,’ <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> - -<li class="indx">York, House of, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> - - -<li class="ifrst">Zimmermann, Johann Georg von, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> -</ul> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="transnote"> -<h2>Transcriber’s note</h2> - -<p>Spelling within quotations has been retained as published. Minor punctuation -errors have been changed without notice. The following -Printer errors have been changed.</p> - -<table class="autotable"> -<tr> -<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Page_8">8</a>:</td> -<td class="tdl">“ridge which parallelled it”</td> -<td class="tdl">“ridge which paralleled it”</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Page_65">65</a>:</td> -<td class="tdl">“described Tarbolton townfolk”</td> -<td class="tdl">“described Tarbolton townsfolk”</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Page_164">164</a>:</td> -<td class="tdl">“was promising lifelong”</td> -<td class="tdl">“was promising life-long”</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Page_166">166</a>:</td> -<td class="tdl">“The artificial and hot-house”</td> -<td class="tdl">“The artificial and hothouse”</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Page_180">180</a>:</td> -<td class="tdl">“burlesque of the espisode”</td> -<td class="tdl">“burlesque of the episode”</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Page_249">249</a>:</td> -<td class="tdl">“as the workingday world”</td> -<td class="tdl">“as the working-day world”</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Page_312">312</a>:</td> -<td class="tdl">“Crane, Icabod”</td> -<td class="tdl">“Crane, Ichabod”</td> -</tr> -<tr> -<td class="tdl">Page <a href="#Page_316">316</a>:</td> -<td class="tdl">“Masons. <i>See</i> Freemasons”</td> -<td class="tdl">“Masons. <i>See</i> Freemasonry”</td> -</tr> -</table> - -<p>All other inconsistencies are as in the original.</p> -</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIDE AND PASSION: ROBERT BURNS, 1759-1796 ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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