DUMFRIES
When Burns removed from Ellisland to Dumfries, he took up his abode in a
small house of three apartments in the Wee Vennel. Here he stayed till
Whitsunday 1793, when the family removed to a detached house of two
storeys in the Mill Vennel. A mere closet nine feet square was the
poet's writing-room in this house, and it was in the bedroom adjoining
that he died.
The few years of his residence in Dumfries have been commonly regarded
as a period of poverty and intemperance. But his intemperance has always
been most religiously exaggerated, and we doubt not also that the
poverty of the family at this time has been made to appear worse than it
was. Burns had not a salary worthy of his great abilities, it is true,
but there is good reason to believe that the family lived in comparative
ease and comfort, and that there were luxuries in their home, which
neither father nor mother had known in their younger days. Burns liked
to see his Bonnie Jean neat and trim, and she went as braw as any wife
of the town. Though we know that he wrote painfully, towards the end of
his life, for the loan of paltry sums, we are to regard this as a sign
more of temporary embarrassment than of a continual struggle to make
ends meet. The word debt grated so harshly on Burns's ears that he
could not be at peace with himself so long as the pettiest account
remained unpaid; and if he had no ready money in his hands to meet it,
he must e'en borrow from a friend. His income, when he settled in
Dumfries, was 'down money L70 per annum,' and there were perquisites
which must have raised it to eighty or ninety. Though his hopes of
preferment were never realised, he tried his best on this slender income
'to make a happy fireside clime to weans and wife,' and in a sense
succeeded.
What he must have felt more keenly than anything else in leaving
Ellisland was, that in giving up farming he was making an open
confession of failure in his ideal of combining in himself the farmer,
the poet, and the exciseman. There was a stigma also attaching to the
name of gauger, that must often have been galling to the spirit of
Burns. The ordinary labourer utters the word with dry contempt, as if he
were speaking of a spy. But the thoughts of a wife and bairns had
already prevailed over prejudice; he realised the responsibilities of a
husband and father, and pocketed his pride. A great change it must have
been to come from the quiet and seclusion of Ellisland to settle down in
the midst of the busy life of an important burgh.
Life in provincial towns in Scotland in those days was simply frittered
away in the tittle-tattle of cross and causeway, and the insipid talk of
taverns. The most trifling incidents of everyday life were dissected and
discussed, and magnified into events of the first importance. Many
residents had no trade or profession whatever. Annuitants and retired
merchants built themselves houses, had their portraits painted in oil,
and thereafter strutted into an aristocracy. Without work, without
hobby, without healthy recreation, and cursed with inglorious leisure,
they simply dissipated time until they should pass into eternity. The
only amusement such lumpish creatures could have was to meet in some inn
or tavern, and swill themselves into a debauched joy of life. Dumfries,
when Burns came to it in 1791, was no better and no worse than its
neighbours; and we can readily imagine how eagerly such a man would be
welcomed by its pompously dull and leisured topers. Now might their
meetings be lightened with flashes of genius, and the lazy hours of
their long nights go fleeting by on the wings of wit and eloquence. Too
often in Dumfries was Burns wiled into the howffs and haunts of these
seasoned casks. They could stand heavy drinking; the poet could not. He
was too highly strung, and if he had consulted his own inclination would
rather have shunned than sought the company of men who met to quaff
their quantum of wine and sink into sottish sleep. For Burns was never a
drunkard, not even in Dumfries; though the contrary has been asserted so
often that it has all the honour that age and the respectability of
authority can give it. There was with him no animal craving for drink,
nor has he been convicted of solitary drinking; but he was intensely
convivial, and drank, as Professor Blackie put it, 'only as the carnal
seasoning of a rampant intellectuality.' There is no doubt that he came
to Dumfries a comparatively pure and sober man; and if he now began to
frequent the Globe Tavern, often to cast his pearls before swine, let it
be remembered that he was compelled frequently to meet there strangers
and tourists who had journeyed for the express purpose of meeting the
poet. Nowadays writers and professional men have their clubs, and in
general frequent them more regularly than Burns ever haunted the howffs
of Dumfries. But we have heard too much about 'the poet's moral course
after he settled in Dumfries being downward.' 'From the time of his
migration to Dumfries,' Principal Shairp soberly informs us, 'it would
appear that he was gradually dropped out of acquaintance by most of the
Dumfriesshire lairds, as he had long been by the parochial and other
ministers.' Poor lairds! Poor ministers! If they preferred their own
talk of crops and cattle and meaner things to the undoubted brilliancy
of Burns's conversation, surely their dulness and want of appreciation
is not to be laid to the charge of the poet. I doubt not had the poet
lived to a good old age he would have been gradually dropped out of
acquaintance by some who have not scrupled to write his biography.
Politics, it is admitted, may have formed the chief element in the
lairds' and ministers' aversion, but there is a hint that his irregular
life had as much to do with it. Is it to be seriously contended that
these men looked askance at Burns because of his occasional
convivialities? 'Madam,' he answered a lady who remonstrated with him on
this very subject, 'they would not thank me for my company if I did not
drink with them.' These lairds, perhaps even these ministers, could in
all probability stand their three bottles with the best, and were more
likely to drop the acquaintance of one who would not drink bottle for
bottle with them than of one who indulged to excess. It was considered a
breach of hospitality not to imbibe so long as the host ordained; and
in many cases glasses were supplied so constructed that they had to be
drained at every toast. 'Occasional hard drinking,' he confessed to Mrs.
Dunlop, 'is the devil to me; against this I have again and again set my
resolution, and have greatly succeeded. Taverns I have totally
abandoned; it is the private parties in the family way among the
hard-drinking gentlemen of this county that do me the mischief; but even
this I have more than half given over.' Most assuredly whatever these
men charged against Robert Burns it was not drunkenness. But he has been
accused of mixing with low company! That is something nearer the mark,
and goes far to explain the aversion of those stately Tories. But again,
what is meant by low company? Are we to believe that the poet made
associates of depraved and abandoned men? Not for a moment! This low
company was nothing more than men in the rank of life into which he had
been born; mechanics, tradesmen, farmers, ploughmen, who did not move in
the aristocratic circles of patrician lairds or ministers ordained to
preach the gospel to the poor. It was simply the old, old cry of
'associating with publicans and sinners.'
We do not defend nor seek to hide the poet's aberrations; he confessed
them remorselessly, and condemned himself. But we do raise our voice
against the exaggeration of occasional over-indulgence into confirmed
debauchery; and dare assert that Burns was as sober a man as the average
lairds and ministers who had the courage of their prejudices, and wrote
themselves down asses to all posterity.
But here again the work the poet managed to do is a sufficient disproof
of his irregular life. He was at this time, besides working hard at his
Excise business, writing ballads and songs, correcting for Creech the
two-volume edition of his poems, and managing somehow or other to find
time for a pretty voluminous correspondence. His hands were full and his
days completely occupied. He would not have been an Excise officer very
long had he been unable to attend to his duties. William Wallace, the
editor of _Chambers's Burns_, has studied very carefully this period of
the poet's life, and found that in those days of petty faultfinding he
has not once been reprimanded, either for drunkenness or for dereliction
of duty. There were spies and informers about who would not have left
the Excise Commissioners uninformed of the paltriest charge they could
have trumped up against Burns. Nor is there, when we look at his
literary work, any falling off in his powers as a poet. He sang as
sweetly, as purely, as magically as ever he did; and this man, who has
been branded as a blasphemer and a libertine, had nobly set himself to
purify the polluted stream of Scottish Song. He was still continuing his
contributions to Johnson's Museum, and now he had also begun to write
for Thomson's more ambitious work.
Some of the first of his Dumfriesshire songs owe their inspiration to a
hurried visit he paid to Mrs. Maclehose in Edinburgh before she sailed
to join her husband in the West Indies. The best of these are, perhaps,
_My Nannie's Awa'_ and _Ae Fond Kiss_. The fourth verse of the latter
was a favourite of Byron's, while Scott claims for it that it is worth a
thousand romances--
'Had we never loved so kindly,
Had we never loved so blindly!
Never met--or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.'
Another song of a different kind, _The Deil's awa wi' the Exciseman_,
had its origin in a raid upon a smuggling brig that had got into shallow
water in the Solway. The ship was armed and well manned; and while
Lewars, a brother-excisemen, posted to Dumfries for a guard of dragoons,
Burns, with a few men under him, watched to prevent landing or escape.
It was while impatiently waiting Lewars's return that he composed this
song. When the dragoons arrived Burns put himself at their head, and
wading, sword in hand, was the first to board the smuggler. The affair
might ultimately have led to his promotion had he not, next day at the
sale of the vessel's arms and stores in Dumfries, purchased four
carronades, which he sent, with a letter testifying his admiration and
respect, to the French Legislative Assembly. The carronades never
reached their destination, having been intercepted at Dover by the
Custom House authorities. It is a pity perhaps that Burns should have
testified his political leanings in so characteristic a way. It was the
impetuous act of a poet roused to enthusiasm, as were thousands of his
fellow-countrymen at the time, by what was thought to be the beginning
of universal brotherhood in France. But whatever may be said as to the
impulsive imprudence of the step, it is not to be condemned as a most
absurd and presumptuous breach of decorum. We were not at war with
France at this time; had not even begun to await developments with
critical suspicion. Talleyrand had not yet been slighted by our Queen,
and protestations of peace and friendship were passing between the two
Governments. Any subject of the king might at this time have written a
friendly letter or forwarded a token of goodwill to the French
Government, without being suspected of disloyalty. But by the time the
carronades had reached Dover the complexion of things had changed; and
yet even in those critical times Burns's action, though it may have
hindered promotion, does not appear to have been interpreted as 'a most
absurd and presumptuous breach of decorum.' That interpretation was left
for biographers made wise with the passions of war; and yet they have
not said in so many words, what they darkly insinuate, that the poet was
not a loyal British subject. His love of country is too surely
established. That, later, he thought the Ministry engaging in an unjust
and unrighteous war, may be frankly admitted. He was not alone in his
opinion; nor was he the only poet carried away with a wild enthusiasm of
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. Societies were then springing up all
over the country calling for redress of grievances and for greater
political freedom. Such societies were regarded by the Government of the
day as seditious, and their agitations as dangerous to the peace of the
country; and Burns, though he did not become a member of the Society of
the Friends of the People, was at one with them in their desire for
reform. It was known also that he 'gat the _Gazeteer_,' and that was
enough to mark him out as a disaffected person. No doubt he also talked
imprudently; for it was not the nature of this man to keep his
sentiments hidden in his heart, and to talk the language of expediency.
What he thought in private he advocated publicly in season and out of
season; and it was quite in the natural course of things that
information regarding his political opinions should be lodged against
him with the Board of Excise. His political conduct was made the subject
of official inquiry, and it would appear that for a time he was in
danger of dismissal from the service. This is a somewhat painful episode
in his life; and we find him in a letter to Mr. Graham of Fintry
repudiating the slanderous charges, yet confessing that the tender ties
of wife and children 'unnerve courage and wither resolution.' Mr.
Findlater, his superior, was of opinion that only a very mild reprimand
was administered, and the poet warned to be more prudent in his speech.
But what appeared mild to Mr. Findlater was galling to Burns. In his
letter to Erskine of Mar he says: 'One of our supervisors-general, a Mr.
Corbet, was instructed to inquire on the spot and to document me--that
my business was to act, _not to think_; and that whatever might be men
or measures it was for me to be _silent_ and _obedient_.'
We can hardly conceive a harsher sentence on one of Burns's temperament,
and we doubt not that the degradation of being thus gagged, and the
blasting of his hopes of promotion, were the cause of much of the
bitterness that we find bursting from him now more frequently than ever,
both in speech and writing. That remorse for misconduct irritated him
against himself and against the world, is true; but it is none the less
true that he must have chafed against the servility of an office that
forbade him the freedom of personal opinion. In the same letter he
unburdens his heart in a burst of eloquent and noble indignation.
'Burns was a poor man from birth, and an exciseman by necessity; but--I
_will_ say it--the sterling of his honest worth no poverty could debase;
his independent British mind oppression might bend, but could not
subdue.... I have three sons who, I see already, have brought into the
world souls ill-qualified to inhabit the bodies of slaves.... Does any
man tell me that my full efforts can be of no service, and that it does
not belong to my humble station to meddle with the concerns of a nation?
I can tell him that it is on such individuals as I that a nation has to
rest, both for the hand of support and the eye of intelligence.'
What the precise charges against him were, we are not informed. It is
alleged that he once, when the health of Pitt was being drunk,
interposed with the toast of 'A greater than Pitt--George Washington.'
There can be little fault found with the sentiment. It is given to poets
to project themselves into futurity, and declare the verdict of
posterity. But the occasion was ill-chosen, and he spoke with all a
poet's imprudence. In another company he aroused the martial fury of an
unreasoning captain by proposing the toast, 'May our success in the
present war be equal to the justice of our cause.' A very humanitarian
toast, one would think, but regarded as seditious by the fire-eating
captain, who had not the sense to see that there was more of sedition in
his resentment than in Burns's proposal. Yet the affair looked black
enough for a time, and the poet was afraid that even this story would be
carried to the ears of the commissioners, and his political opinions be
again misrepresented.
Another thing that came to disturb his peace of mind was his quarrel
with Mrs. Riddell of Woodley Park, where he had been made a welcome
guest ever since his advent to this district. That Burns, in the heat of
a fever of intoxication, had been guilty of a glaring act of impropriety
in the presence of the ladies seated in the drawing-room, we may gather
from the internal evidence of his letter written the following morning
'from the regions of hell, amid the horrors of the damned.' It would
appear that the gentlemen left in the dining-room had got ingloriously
drunk, and there and then proposed an indecorous raid on the
drawing-room. Whatever it might be they did, it was Burns who was made
to suffer the shame of the drunken plot. His letter of abject apology
remained unanswered, and the estrangement was only embittered by some
lampoons which he wrote afterwards on this accomplished lady. The affair
was bruited abroad, and the heinousness of the poet's offence vastly
exaggerated. Certain it is that he became deeply incensed against not
only the lady, but her husband as well, to whom he considered he owed no
apology whatever. Matters were only made worse by his unworthy verses,
and it was not till he was almost on the brink of the grave that he and
Mrs. Riddell met again, and the old friendship was re-established. The
lady not only forgot and forgave, but she was one of the first after the
poet's death to write generously and appreciatively of his character and
abilities.
That the quarrel with Mrs. Riddell was prattled about in Dumfries, and
led other families to drop the acquaintance of the poet, we are made
painfully aware; and in his correspondence now there is rancour,
bitterness, and remorse more pronounced and more settled than at any
other period of his life. He could not go abroad without being reminded
of the changed attitude of the world; he could not stay at home without
seeing his noble wife uncomplainingly nursing a child that was not hers.
He cursed himself for his sins and follies; he cursed the world for its
fickleness and want of sympathy. 'His wit,' says Heron, 'became more
gloomy and sarcastic, and his conversation and writings began to assume
a misanthropical tone, by which they had not been before in any eminent
degree distinguished. But with all his failings his was still that
exalted mind which had raised itself above the depression of its
original condition, with all the energy of the lion pawing to free his
hinder limbs from the yet encumbering earth.'
His health now began to give his friends serious concern. To Cunningham
he wrote, February 24, 1794: 'For these two months I have not been able
to lift a pen. My constitution and my frame were _ab origine_ blasted
with a deep, incurable taint of hypochondria, which poisons my
existence.' A little later he confesses: 'I have been in poor health. I
am afraid that I am about to suffer for the follies of my youth. My
medical friends threaten me with a flying gout, but I trust they are
mistaken.' His only comfort in those days was his correspondence with
Thomson and with Johnson. He kept pouring out song after song,
criticising, rewriting, changing what was foul and impure into songs of
the tenderest delicacy. He showed love in every mood, from the rapture
of pure passion in the _Lea Rig_, the maidenly abandon of _Whistle and
I'll come to you, my Lad_, to the humour of _Last May a Braw Wooer_ and
_Duncan Gray_, and the guileless devotion of _O wert thou in the Cauld
Blast_. But he sang of more than love. Turning from the coldness of the
high and mighty, who had once been his friends, he found consolation in
the naked dignity of manhood, and penned the hymn of humanity, _A Man's
a Man for a' that_. Perhaps he found his text in _Tristram Shandy_:
'Honours, like impressions upon coin, may give an ideal and local value
to a bit of base metal, but gold and silver pass all the world over with
no other recommendation than their own weight.' Something like this
occurs in Massinger's _Duke of Florence_, where it is said of princes
that
'They can give wealth and titles, but no virtues;
This is without their power.'
Gower also had written--
'A king can kill, a king can save;
A king can make a lord a knave,
And of a knave a lord also.'
But the poem is undoubtedly Burns's, and it is one he must have written
ere he passed away. _Scots wha hae_ is another of his Dumfries poems.
Mr. Syme gives a highly-coloured and one-sided view of the poet riding
in a storm between Gatehouse and Kenmure, where we are assured he
composed this ode. Carlyle accepts Syme's authority, and adds:
'Doubtless this stern hymn was singing itself, as he formed it, through
the soul of Burns; but to the external ear it should be sung with the
throat of the whirlwind.' Burns gives an account of the writing of the
poem, which it is difficult to reconcile with Mr. Syme's sensational
details. It matters not, however, when or how it was written; we have it
now, one of the most martial and rousing odes ever penned. Not only has
it gripped the heart of Scotsmen, but it has taken the ear of the world;
its fire and vigour have inspired soldiers in the day of battle, and
consoled them in the hour of death. We are not forgetful of the fact
that Mrs. Hemans, who wrote some creditable verse, and the placid
Wordsworth, discussed this ode, and agreed that it was little else than
the rhodomontade of a schoolboy. It is a pity that such authorities
should have missed the charm of _Scots wha hae_. More than likely they
made up for the loss in a solitary appreciation of _Betty Foy_ or _The
Pilgrim Fathers_.
Another martial ode, composed in 1795, was called forth by the immediate
dangers of the time. The country was roused by the fear of foreign
invasion, and Burns, who had enrolled himself in the ranks of the
Dumfriesshire Volunteers, penned the patriotic song, _Does Haughty Gaul
Invasion threat?_ This song itself might have reinstalled him in public
favour, and dispelled all doubt as to his loyalty, had he cared again to
court the society of those who had dropped him from the list of their
acquaintance. But Burns had grown indifferent to any favour save the
favour of his Muse; besides, he was now shattered in health, and
assailed with gloomy forebodings of an early death. For himself he would
have faced death manfully, but again it was the thought of wife and
bairns that unmanned him.
Not content with supplying Thomson with songs, he wrote letters full of
hints and suggestions anent songs and song-making, and now and then he
gave a glimpse of himself at work. We see him sitting under the shade of
an old thorn crooning to himself until he gets a verse to suit the
measure he has in his mind; looking round for objects in nature that are
in unison and harmony with the cogitations of his fancy; humming every
now and then the air with the verses; retiring to his study to commit
his effusions to paper, and while he swings at intervals on the hind
legs of his elbow-chair, criticising what he has written. A common walk
of his when he was in the poetical vein was to the ruins of Lincluden
Abbey, whither he was often accompanied by his eldest boy; sometimes
towards Martingdon ford, on the north side of the Nith. When he returned
home with a set of verses, he listened attentively to his wife singing
them, and if she happened to find a word that was harsh in sound, a
smoother one was immediately substituted; but he would on no account
ever sacrifice sense to sound.
During the earlier part of this year Burns had taken his full share in
the political contest that was going on, and fought for Heron of Heron,
the Whig candidate, with electioneering ballads, not to be claimed as
great poems nor meant to be so ranked, but marked with all his
incisiveness of wit and satire, and with his extraordinary deftness of
portraiture. Heron was the successful candidate, and his poetical
supporter again began to indulge in dreams of promotion: 'a life of
literary leisure with a decent competency was the summit of his wishes.'
But his dreams were not to be realised.
In September his favourite child and only daughter, Elizabeth, died at
Mauchline, and he was prostrated with grief. He had also taken very much
to heart the inexplicable silence of his old friend, and for many years
constant correspondent, Mrs. Dunlop. To both these griefs he alludes in
a letter to her, dated January 31, 1796: 'These many months you have
been two packets in my debt. What sin of ignorance I have committed
against so highly valued a friend I am utterly at a loss to guess. Alas!
madam, I can ill afford at this time to be deprived of any of the small
remnant of my pleasures. I have lately drunk deep of the cup of
affliction. The autumn robbed me of my only daughter and darling child,
and that at a distance, too, and so rapidly as to put it out of my power
to pay my last duties to her. I had scarcely begun to recover from that
shock when I became myself the victim of a severe rheumatic fever, and
long the die spun doubtful, until, after many weeks of a sickbed, it
seems to have turned up life.'
There was an evident decline in the poet's appearance, Dr. Currie tells
us, for upwards of a year before his death, and he himself was sensible
that his constitution was sinking. During almost the whole of the winter
of 1795-96 he had been confined to the house. Then follows the
unsubstantiated story which has done duty for Shakspeare and many other
poets. 'He dined at a tavern, returned home about three o'clock in a
very cold morning, benumbed and intoxicated. This was followed by an
attack of rheumatism.' It is difficult to kill a charitable myth,
especially one that is so agreeable to the levelling instincts of
ordinary humanity, and of such sweet consolation to the weaker brethren.
Of course there are variants of the story, with a stair and sleep and
snow brought in as sensational, if improbable, accessories; but such
stories as these all good men refuse to believe, unless they are
compelled to do so by the conclusive evidence of direct authority; and
that, in this case, is altogether awanting. All evidence that has been
forthcoming has gone directly against it, and the story may be accepted
as a myth. The fact is that brains have been ransacked to find reason
for the poet's early death,--as if the goings and comings of death could
be scientifically calculated in biography,--and the last years of his
'irregular life' are blamed: Dumfries is set apart as the chief sinner.
No doubt his life was irregular there; his duties were irregular; his
hours were irregular. But Burns in his thirty-six years, had lived a
full life, putting as much into one year as the ordinary sons of men put
into two. He had had threatenings of rheumatism and heart disease when
he was an overworked lad at Lochlea; and now his constitution was
breaking up from the rate at which he had lived. Excess of work more
than excess of drink brought him to an early grave. During his few
years' stay at Dumfries he had written over two hundred poems, songs,
etc., many of them of the highest excellence, and most of them now
household possessions. Besides his official duties, we know also that he
took a great interest in his home and in the education of his children.
Mr. Gray, master of the High School of Dumfries, who knew the poet
intimately, wrote a long and interesting letter to Gilbert Burns, in
which he mentions particularly the attention he paid to his children's
education. 'He was a kind and attentive father, and took great delight
in spending his evenings in the cultivation of the minds of his
children. Their education was the grand object of his life; and he did
not, like most parents, think it sufficient to send them to public
schools; he was their private instructor; and even at that early age
bestowed great pains in training their minds to habits of thought and
reflection, and in keeping them pure from every form of vice. This he
considered a sacred duty, and never to his last illness relaxed in his
diligence.'
Throughout the winter of 1795 and spring of 1796, he could only keep up
an irregular correspondence with Thomson. 'Alas!' he wrote in April, 'I
fear it will be long ere I tune my lyre again. I have only known
existence by the pressure of the heavy hand of sickness, and counted
time by the repercussion of pain. I close my eyes in misery and open
them without hope.' Yet it was literally on his deathbed that he
composed the exquisite song, _O wert thou in the Cauld Blast_, in honour
of Jessie Lewars, who waited on him so faithfully. In June he wrote: 'I
begin to fear the worst. As to my individual self I am tranquil, and
would despise myself if I were not; but Burns's poor widow and half a
dozen of his dear little ones--helpless orphans!--there, I am weaker
than a woman's tear.'
From Brow, whither he had gone to try the effect of sea-bathing, he
wrote several letters all in the same strain, one to Cunningham; a
pathetic one to Mrs. Dunlop, regretting her continued silence; and
letters begging a temporary loan to James Burness, Montrose, and to
George Thomson, whom he had been supplying with songs without fee or
reward. Thomson at once forwarded the amount asked--five pounds! To his
wife, who had not been able to accompany him, he wrote: 'My dearest
love, I delayed writing until I could tell you what effect sea-bathing
was likely to produce. It would be injustice to deny it has eased my
pain.... I will see you on Sunday.'
During his stay at Brow he met again Mrs. Riddell, and she has left in a
letter her impression of his appearance at that time. 'The stamp of
death was imprinted on his features. He seemed already touching the
brink of eternity.... He spoke of his death with firmness as well as
feeling as an event likely to happen very soon.... 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.... The conversation was kept up with great evenness and
animation on his side. I had seldom seen his mind greater or more
collected.'
When he returned from Brow he was worse than when he went away, and
those who saw him tottering to his door knew that they had looked their
last on the poet. The question in Dumfries for a day or two was, 'How is
Burns now?' And the question was not long in being answered. He knew he
was dying, but neither his humour nor his wit left him. 'John,' he said
to one of his brother volunteers, 'don't let the awkward squad fire over
me.'
He lingered on for a day or two, his wife hourly expecting to be
confined and unable to attend to him, and Jessie Lewars taking her
place, a constant and devoted nurse. On the fourth day after his return,
July 21, he sank into delirium, and his children were summoned to the
bedside of their dying father, who quietly and gradually sank to rest.
His last words showed that his mind was still disturbed by the thought
of the small debt that had caused him so much annoyance. 'And thus he
passed,' says Carlyle, 'not softly, yet speedily, into that still
country where the hailstorms and fire-showers do not reach, and the
heaviest laden wayfarer at length lays down his load.'