ROBERT BURNS.

SCOTLAND Owns no name of which it has greater reason to be proud than that of Robert Burns. He had no pretensions, by birth, beyond that of being the son of a poor, but honest, man. His father, William Burns, or rather Burnes, was a native of the north of Scotland, and the son of a farmer; but was thrown, by early misfortunes, on the world at large. He shaped his course to Edinburgh, where he sought occupation as a gardener, wrought hard when he could get work, and passed through many difficulties. From Edinburgh, he wandered into the county of Ayr, where he engaged himself as a gardener to the laird of Fairly, and afterwards to Crawford of Doonside. Being, at length, desirous of settling in life, he took a perpetual lease of seven acres of land, situated about two miles from the town of Ayr, from Dr. Campbell, physician in Ayr, with the view of commencing nurseryman and public gardener; and having built a cottage of clay upon the spot with his own hands, married, in December, 1757, Agnes Brown. The first fruit of this marriage was the poet, Robert Burns, who was born on the 25th of January, 1759.

Before William Burns had made much progress in his nursery, his attention was withdrawn from it by an invitation from a Mr. Ferguson, who had recently become proprietor of the neighbouring estate of PART 1.]

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Doonholm, to engage as his gardener and overseer. Although he entered into the service of Mr. Ferguson, he continued to live in his own house, and on the acres, once intended for the nursery ground, kept two or three milch cows, the produce of which his wife managed. In this state of unambitious content, the industrious pair continued for six or seven years; and had no change taken place, young Robert must probably have marched off to be one of the little underlings about a farm house; but it was William Burns's dearest wish and prayer to have it in his power to keep his children under his own eye, until they could discern between good and evil; and, with the assistance of Mr. Ferguson, who behaved to him with generosity, he ventured, in the hope of increasing his means, to take a lease of a small farm on that gentleman's estate, called Mount Oliphant.

In his early years, young Robert was by no means a favorite with any body. He was noted for a retentive memory, a stubborn sturdy something in his disposition, and a contemplative, thoughtful, turn of mind. His ear was remarkably dull, and his voice untunable; it was long, indeed, before he could be got to distinguish one tune from another. The latent seeds of poetry, however, were taking deep root in his infant mind, and were, in no small degree, cherished by the fireside recitations of an old woman who resided in the family, remarkable for her credulity and superstition, and who was supposed to have the largest collection in the country of tales and songs, concerning fairies, witches, warlocks, apparitions, giants, dragons, and other agents of romantic fiction.

When in his sixth year, Robert was sent, with a younger brother, Gilbert, to school, and soon became an excellent English scholar; and by the time he was ten or eleven years of age, was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles. The teacher to whom he owed the chief part of his education was a very worthy and acute man, of the name of Murdoch, who took a degree of pains not very common with even the best of this invaluable class of men, to make his pupil acquainted with the meaning of every word he read; as the surest means of which, he was in the practice of making him turn verse into its natural prose order, to substitute synonymous expressions for poetical words, and to supply all the ellipses. From this excellent system of tuition, Robert became early remarkable for the fluency and correctness of his expression, and for the profit with which he read every book which came in his way. All, indeed, that may be called the machinery of thinking he had acquired; and this was ten times more than our self-taught countryman, Edmund Stone, the mathematician, used to think was necessary for the purpose, as may be recollected from his well-known answer to the Duke of Argyle, when asked, “How he had come by the knowledge of so many things?" "A servant taught me to read ten years since; does any one need to know more than the twenty-four letters, in order to learn every thing else that one wishes."

The passages of his school books, in which Burns took the greatest pleasure, shewed, at once, the bent of his mind. The Vision of Mirza, and Addison's hymn, beginning, How are thy Servants blest, O Lord! were his earliest favorites. One half stanza of the

latter was, in particular, music to his boyish ear, and will be instantly recognized by many, as having made a similar impression on them at school.

"For though on dreadful whirls we hung
High on the broken wave."

The first two books which he read in private, and which he used to say gave him more pleasure than any two books he ever read after, were The Life of Hannibal, and The History of Sir William Wallace.

In consequence of the distance of Mount Oliphant from school, William Burns found it necessary, soon after removing thither, to take his boys home, and became himself their future preceptor. A more zealous one they could not have had; nor, in as far as concerns the culture of the understanding, could they have probably had a better. He was both an intelligent and a well informed man, and was extremely studious to give his boys the benefit of all he knew. He used to converse familiarly with them on all subjects as if they had been men, and was at great pains, while they accompanied him in the labours of the farm, to lead the conversation to such subjects as might enlarge their stock of ideas, and confirm them in virtuous habits.

As soon as Robert had strength to work, he was employed laboriously on the farm. At twelve, he could hold the plough; at thirteen, he assisted in threshing the crop of corn; and at fifteen, he was his father's principal labourer, for the family had no hired servant, male or female.

The only exceptions to this course of early toil consisted of a few weeks in the summer of 1772, when

he was sent to the parish-school of Dalrymple, to improve in writing; and three weeks in the ensuing year which he spent at Ayr, with his old teacher, Mr. Murdoch, who, by that time, had been appointed master of the English school of that town, and with whose assistance he not only revised his English grammar, but acquired as much knowledge of the French, as to be able to read and understand any prose author in that language.

It was between his fifteenth and sixteenth year when Robert Burns first committed the sin of rhyme. It is a custom of the country to class the male and female reapers into pairs in the labours of the harvest. In his fifteenth autumn, his partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger than himself, who altogether unwittingly initiated him in that delicious passion which formed ever after the ruling influence of his life. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; and it was her favorite reel to which Burns attempted to give an embodied vehicle in rhyme. He was not so presumptuous as to imagine, that he could make verses like printed ones, composed by men who had learned Greek and Latin; but his girl sung a song which was said to have been composed by a small country laird's son, on one of his father's maids, with whom he was in love; and he saw no reason why he might not rhyme as well as he, for, excepting that the laird's son could smear sheep, and cast peats, his father living in the moorland, he had no more scholar-craft than Burns himself. It was thus, that with Burns love and poetry began together; and then rhyme and song became, in a manner, the spontaneous language of his heart.