W. J. Dawson tells us in “The Makers of English Poetry” that
Burns was sick, poor and in debt. The last letter he ever wrote
was a pathetic appeal to his cousin to lend him ten pounds,
and save him from the terrors of a debtor’s dungeon. It would
not have been much to expect from that brilliant society of
wealth and culture in Edinburgh that some help might have been
forthcoming to soothe the dying hours of the man it had once
received with adulation. But no help came. There he lay,
wasted by fever, his dark hair threaded with untimely gray;
poor, penniless, overwhelmed with difficulties, but to the last
writing songs, which won him no remuneration then, but which are
now recognized as the choicest wealth of the nation which let
him die uncomforted.
(2180)
See UNREWARDED INVENTION.