CHAPTER VII.

BURNS A REVEALER OF PURE LOVE.

Many people yet believe that Burns was a universal and inconstant lover.

He really did not love many women. He loved deeply, but he had not a great

many really serious experiences of love. He loved Nellie Kirkpatrick when

he was fifteen, and Peggy Thomson when he was seventeen. He says his love

of Nellie made him a poet. There is no other experience that will kindle

the strongest element in a human soul during the adolescent period so

fully, and so permanently, as genuine love. Love will not make all young

people poets, but it will kindle with its most developing glow whatever is

the strongest natural power in each individual soul. Parents should foster

such love in young people during the adolescent period, instead of

ridiculing it, as is too often done. God may not mean that the love is to

be permanent, but there is no other agency that can be so productive at

the time of adolescence as love that is reverenced by parents who, by due

reverence, sympathy, and comradeship, help love to do its best work.

These two adolescent loves did their work in developing Burns, but they

were not loves of maturity. From seventeen till he was twenty-one he was

not really in love. Then he met, and deeply and reverently loved, Alison

Begbie. She was a servant girl of charm, sweetness, and dignity, in a home

not far from Lochlea farm. He wrote three poems to her: 'The Lass o'

Cessnock Banks,' 'Peggy Alison,' and 'Mary Morrison.' He reversed her name

for the second title, because it possessed neither the elements of metre

nor of rhyme. He gave his third poem to her the title 'Mary Morrison' to

make it conform to the same metre as 'Peggy Alison.' There was a Mary

Morrison who was nine years of age when Burns wrote 'Mary Morrison.' She

is buried in Mauchline Churchyard, and on her tombstone it is stated that

she was 'the Mary Morrison of Burns.' His brother Gilbert knew better. He

said the poem was written to the lady to whom 'Peggy Alison' was written.

It is impossible to believe that Burns would write 'Mary Morrison' to a

child only nine years old.

Burns wrote five love-letters to Alison Begbie. Beautiful and reverent

letters they were, too. In the fourth, he asked her to become his wife. In

Chapter III. it has been explained that he was too shy, even at

twenty-two, to ask the woman whom he loved to marry him when he was with

her. This does not indicate that he had a new love each week, as many yet

believe. Miss Begbie refused to marry him, and his reply should win him

the respect of every reasonable man or woman who reads it. It is the

dignified and reverent outpouring of a loving heart, held in control by a

well-balanced and considerate mind.

Although Burns had no lover from seventeen to twenty-one years of age, he

wrote love-songs during those years, but even his mother could not tell

the name of any young woman who kindled his muse during these four years.

Neither could the other members of his family.

He wrote one poem, 'My Nannie O,' during this period. He first wrote for

the first line:

Beyond the hills where Stinchar flows.

He did not like the word 'Stinchar,' so he changed it to 'Lugar,' a much

more euphonious word. He had no lover named 'Nannie.' Lugar and Stinchar

were several miles apart. He was really writing about love, not the love

of any one woman, during those four years; and he was writing about other

great subjects more than about love, mainly religious and ethical ideals.

From the age of twenty-two he was for three years without a lover. At

twenty-five he met Jean Armour, then eighteen. Jean spoke first to the

respectfully shy man. At the annual dance on Fair night in Mauchline,

Burns was one of the young men who were present. His dog, Luath, who loved

him, and whom he loved in return, traced his master upstairs to the dance

hall. Of course the dance was interrupted when Luath got on the floor and

found his master. Burns kindly led the dog out, and as he was going he

said, 'I wish I could find a lassie to loe me as well as my dog.' A short

time afterwards Burns was going along a street in Mauchline, and was

passing Jean Armour without speaking to her, because he had not been

introduced to her. She was at the village pump getting water to sprinkle

her clothes on the village green, and as he was passing her she asked,

'Hae you found a lassie yet to loe you as well as your dog?' Burns then

stopped and conversed with her. She was a handsome, bright young woman.

Their acquaintance soon developed a strong love between them, and resulted

in a test of the real manhood of the character of Burns. When he realised

that Jean was to become a mother, he did not hesitate as to his duty. He

gave her a legal certificate of marriage, signed by himself and regularly

witnessed, which was as valid as a marriage certificate of a clergyman or

a magistrate in Scottish law.

Jean's father compelled her to destroy, or let him destroy, the

certificate. This, and her father's threatened legal prosecution, nearly

upset the mind of Burns. He undoubtedly loved Jean Armour. In a letter

written at the time to David Brice, a friend in Glasgow, he wrote: 'Never

man loved, or rather adored, a woman more than I did her; and, to confess

a truth between you and me, I do still love her to distraction after

all.... May Almighty God forgive her ingratitude and perjury to me, as I

from my very soul forgive her; and may His grace be with her, and bless

her in all her future life.'

He had arranged to leave Scotland for Jamaica to escape from his mental

torture, when two things came into his life: Mary Campbell, and the

suggestion that he should publish his poems. The first filled his heart,

the second gave him the best tonic for his mind--deeply and joyously

interesting occupation.

Mary Campbell, 'Highland Mary,' he had met when she was a nursemaid in the

home of his friend Gavin Hamilton. Meeting her again, when she was a

servant in Montgomery Castle, he became acquainted with her, and they soon

loved each other. It is not remarkable that Burns should love Mary

Campbell, because she was a winsome, quiet, refined young woman, and his

heart was desolate at the loss of Jean Armour. He, at the time he made

love to Mary, had no hope of reconciliation with Jean. The greater his

love for Jean had been, and still was, the greater his need was for

another love to fill his heart, and he found a pure and satisfying lover

in Mary. Their love was deep and short, lasting only about two months. Two

busy months they were, as Burns was preparing his poems for the Kilmarnock

edition, till he and Mary agreed to be married. They parted for the last

time on 14th May 1785. The day was Sunday. They spent the afternoon in the

fine park of Montgomery Castle, through which the Fail River runs for a

mile and a half. In the evening they went out of the grounds about half a

mile to Failford, a little village at the junction of the Fail with the

Ayr. The Fail runs parallel to the Ayr, and in the opposite direction

after leaving the castle grounds, until it reaches Failford. There it

meets a solid rock formation, which compels it to turn squarely to the

right and flow into the Ayr, about three hundred yards away. At a narrow

place where the Fail had cut a passage through the soft rock on its way to

the Ayr, Burns and Highland Mary parted. He stood on one side of the river

and Mary on the other, and after they had exchanged Bibles, they made

their vows of intention to marry, he holding one side of an open Bible and

she the other side. Mary went home to prepare for her marriage, but a

relative in Greenock fell ill with malignant fever, and Mary went to nurse

him, and caught the fever herself and died.

The poems he wrote to her and about her made her a renowned character.

When in 1919 a shipbuilding company at Greenock, after a four years'

struggle, finally purchased the church and churchyard in which Mary was

buried, with the intention of removing the bodies to another place, the

British Parliament passed an Act providing that her monument must stand

forever over her grave, where it had always stood.[4] Though she held a

humble position, the beautiful poems of her lover gave her an honoured

place in the hearts of millions of people all over the world.

Burns did not go to Jamaica, although he had secured a berth on a ship to

take him to that beautiful island. Calls came to him just in time to

publish an edition of his poems in Edinburgh. He answered the calls,

startled and delighted Edinburgh society, published his poems, and met

Clarinda.

Mrs M'Lehose was a cultured and charming grass-widow. She had been courted

and married by a wealthy young man in Glasgow when she was only seventeen

years of age. Though a lady of the highest character, on the advice of

relatives and friends she left her husband. He then went to Jamaica.

Burns and Mrs M'Lehose mutually admired each other when they met, and

their friendship quickly developed into affection. Under the names of

Sylvander and Clarinda they conducted a love correspondence which will

probably always remain the finest love correspondence of the ages.

Clarinda was a religious and cultured woman; Burns was a religious and

cultured man, so their letters of love are on a high plane. Clarinda wrote

very good poems as well as good prose, and Burns wrote some of his best

poems to Clarinda. His parting song to Clarinda is, in the opinion of many

literary men, the greatest love-song of its kind ever written. Those who

study the Clarinda correspondence will find not only love, but many

interesting philosophical discussions regarding religion and human life.

Thus ends the record of his real loves, notwithstanding the outrageous

misstatements that his loves extended, according to one writer, to nearly

four hundred. He had just four deep and serious loves, not counting the

two deep and transforming affections of his adolescent period for Nellie

Kirkpatrick and Peggy Thomson. He loved four women: Alison Begbie, Jean

Armour, Mary Campbell, and Mrs M'Lehose. At the age of twenty-one he loved

Alison Begbie, and, when twenty-two, he asked her to marry him. She

declined his proposal. He was too shy to propose to her when he was with

her. Get this undoubted fact into your consciousness, and think about it

fairly and reasonably, and it will help you to get a truer vision of the

real Burns. Read the proposal and his subsequent letter on pages 51-55,

and your mind should form juster conceptions of Burns as a lover and as a

man. You will find it harder to be misled by the foolish or the malicious

misrepresentations that have too long passed as facts concerning him as a

lover.

From twenty-two to twenty-five he had no lover; then he loved and married

Jean Armour. No act of his prevented that marriage-contract remaining in

force. When her father forced the destruction of the contract, and much

against his will, and in defiance of the love of his heart, he found that

he had lost his wife beyond any reasonable hope of reconciliation and

reunion, and was therefore free to love another, he loved Mary Campbell,

and honourably proposed marriage to her. She accepted his offer, but died

soon after. He was untrue to no one when he took Clarinda into his heart.

Of course he could not ask her to marry him, as she was already married.

The first three women he loved after he reached the age of twenty-one

years were Alison Begbie, Jean Armour, and Mary Campbell. The first

refused his offer; he married the second, and was forced into freedom by

her father; the third accepted his offer of marriage, but died before they

could be married. The fourth woman whom he loved loved him, but could not

marry him, a fact recognised by both of them. There is not a shadow of

evidence of inconstancy or unfaithfulness on his part in the eight years

during which he loved the four women--the only four he did love after he

became a man.

It may be answered that Burns was not loyal to Jean Armour because he

loved Mary Campbell and Clarinda after he was married to Jean. Burns

absolutely believed that his marriage to Jean was annulled by the burning

of the marriage certificate. He would not have pledged matrimony with Mary

Campbell if he had known that Jean was still his wife. When Mary died, and

he found Jean's father was willing that he might again marry Jean, he did

marry her in Gavin Hamilton's home. In writing to Clarinda he forgot

himself for a moment and spoke disrespectfully of Jean, but his prompt and

honourable action in marrying her soon after showed him to be a true man.

It should ever be remembered that Burns was in no sense a fickle lover. To

each of the three women whom he loved, his love was reverent and true. He

had a reverent affection for Alison Begbie after she refused him; he loved

Jean Armour after she allowed their marriage-certificate to be destroyed;

and he loved Mary Campbell, not only till she died, but to the end of his

life. The fact that he sat out in the stackyard on Ellisland farm through

the long moonlit night, with tears flowing down his cheeks, on the third

anniversary of her death, and wrote 'To Mary in Heaven,' proves the depth

and permanency of his love.

In 'My Eppie Adair' he says:

By love and by beauty, by law and by duty,

I swear to be true to my Eppie Adair.

In these lines Burns truly defines his own type of love.

It is true that Miss Margaret Chalmers told the poet Campbell, after Burns

died, that he had asked her to marry him. His letters to her are letters

of deep friendship--reverent friendship--not love. It is true that the

last poem he ever wrote was written to Margaret Chalmers, and that in it

he said:

Full well thou knowest I love thee, dear.

But it must be remembered that Burns had been married to Jean and living

happily with her for eight years, so the love of this line was not the

love that is expected to lead to marriage, but an expression of reverent

affection. The whole tenor of this last poem of his life indicates that

he thought her feeling for him was cooling, and his deep affectionate

friendship urged him to plead with her for a continuance of their

long-existing and quite unusual relationship.

Many people will doubtless say, 'What about Chloris?' Chloris was his name

for Jean Lorimer, the daughter of a friend of his who dwelt near him when

he lived on Ellisland farm after his second marriage to Jean Armour.

Chloris was a sweet singer and player, who frequently visited Mrs Burns,

and who sang for Burns, sometimes, with Mrs Burns the grand old Scottish

airs that had long been sung to words that were not pure, and to which he

was writing new and pure words nearly every day. A number of these songs

were addressed to Chloris, but in a book of his poems presented to Miss

Lorimer he states clearly that the love he appeared to be expressing for

her was an assumed, or, as he called it, a 'fictitious,' and not a real

love.

When Burns had earned five hundred pounds by the sale of the Edinburgh

edition of his poems, he decided 'that he had the responsibility for the

temporal and possibly the eternal welfare of a dearly loved

fellow-creature;' so again giving proof of his honest manhood and

recognising his plain duty, he married Jean Armour a second time, in the

home of his dear friend Gavin Hamilton. Of the first three women whom he

loved one refused him, one died after their sacred engagement, and the

third he married twice. The fourth and last woman that he loved could not

marry.

Any one of the first three would have made him a good wife, but no one

could have been more considerate or more faithful than the one he married.

Could any reasonable man believe that if Burns had really loved other

women, as he loved Alison Begbie, Jean Armour, Mary Campbell, and Mrs

M'Lehose, the names of the other women would not have been known by the

world? He never tried to hide his love. He wrote songs of love with other

names attached to them, used for variety. In a letter to a friend he

regretted the use of 'Chloris' in several of his Ellisland and Dumfries

poems, and to her directly he said they were 'fictitious' or assumed

expressions of love. Notwithstanding the foolish or malicious statements

that Burns had many lovers, he had but four real loves. One would have

been his limit if the first had accepted him and lived as long as he did.

It has been said that 'the love of Burns was the love of the flesh.' It

is worth while to examine the love-songs of Burns to learn what elements

of thought and feeling dominated his mind and heart. He wrote two hundred

and fifty love-songs, and only three or four contain indelicate

references; even these were not considered improper in his time.

What were the themes of his love-songs? What were the symbols that he used

to typify love? There is no beauty or delight in Nature on earth or sky

that he did not use as a symbol of true love. He saw God through Nature as

few men ever saw Him, and he therefore naturally used the beauty and

sweetness and glory of Nature to help to reveal the beauty and sweetness

and glory of love, the element of the Divine that thrilled him with the

deepest joy and the highest reverence.

In his first poem, written when he was fifteen, describing his

fourteen-year-old sweetheart, he says:

A bonnie lass, I will confess,

Is pleasant to the e'e;

But without some better qualities,

She's no a lass for me.

* * * *

But it's innocence and modesty

That polishes the dart.

'Tis this in Nelly pleases me,

'Tis this enchants my soul;

For absolutely in my breast

She reigns without control.

Of Peggy Thomson, his second love, he wrote:

Not vernal showers to budding flowers,

Not autumn to the farmer,

So dear can be as thou to me,

My fair, my lovely charmer.

Of Alison Begbie he wrote in 'The Lass o' Cessnock Banks':

But it's not her air, her form, her face,

Tho' matching beauty's fabled queen;

'Tis the mind that shines in ev'ry grace,

And chiefly in her rogueish een.

In 'Young Peggy Blooms' he describes her:

Young Peggy blooms our bonniest lass,

Her blush is like the morning,

The rosy dawn, the springing grass

With early gems adorning.

Her eyes outshine the radiant beams

That gild the passing shower,

And glitter o'er the crystal streams,

And cheer each fresh'ning flower.

In 'Will Ye Go to the Indies, My Mary?' he says:

O sweet grows the lime and the orange,

And the apple o' the pine;

But a' the charms o' the Indies

Can never equal thine.

The following are emblems of beauty in the 'Lass o' Ballochmyle':

On every blade the pearls hang.

Her look was like the morning's eye,

Her air like Nature's vernal smile.

Fair is the morn in flowery May,

And sweet is night in autumn mild.

Describing 'My Nannie O' he says:

Her face is fair, her heart is true;

As spotless as she's bonnie, O;

The opening gowan, wat wi' dew, daisy

Nae purer is than Nannie O.

In 'The Birks [birches] of Aberfeldy' he speaks to his lover of 'Summer

blinking on flowery braes' and 'Playing o'er the crystal streamlets;' and

the 'Blythe singing o' the little birdies' and 'The braes o'erhung wi'

fragrant woods' and 'The hoary cliffs crowned wi' flowers;' and 'The

streamlet pouring over a waterfall.' Love and Nature were united in his

heart.

In 'Blythe was She' he describes the lady by saying she was like beautiful

things:

Her looks were like a flower in May.

Her smile was like a simmer morn;

Her bonnie face it was as meek

As any lamb upon a lea;

and the 'ev'ning sun.'

Her step was

As light's a bird upon a thorn.

He wrote 'O' a' the Airts the Wind can Blaw' about Jean Armour after they

were married, while he was building their home on Ellisland. He says in

this exquisite song:

By day and night my fancy's flight

Is ever wi' my Jean.

I see her in the dewy flowers,

I see her sweet and fair;

I hear her in the tunefu' birds,

I hear her charm the air:

There's not a bonnie flower that springs

By fountain, shaw, or green; woodland

There's not a bonnie bird that sings,

But minds me o' my Jean.

To Jean he wrote again:

It is na, Jean, thy bonnie face,

Nor shape that I admire;

Although thy beauty and thy grace

Might weel awake desire.

Something in ilka part o' thee

To praise, to love, I find;

But dear as is thy form to me,

Still dearer is thy mind.

In 'Delia--an Ode,' he uses the 'fair face of orient day,' and 'the tints

of the opening rose' to suggest her beauty, and 'the lark's wild warbled

lay' and the 'sweet sound of the tinkling rill' to suggest the sweetness

of her voice.

In 'I Gaed a Waefu' Gate Yestreen' he says:

She talked, she smiled, my heart she wiled;

She charmed my _soul_, I wist na how.

It was the soul of Burns that responded to love. Neither Alison Begbie nor

Mary Campbell excelled in beauty, and no one acquainted with their high

character could have had the temerity to suggest that love for them was

'the love of the flesh.' His beautiful poems to Jean Armour place his love

for her on a high plane. He was a man of strong passion, but passion was

not the source of his love.

In 'Aye sae Bonnie, Blythe and Gay' he says:

She's aye sae neat, sae trim, sae light, the graces round her hover,

Ae look deprived me o' my heart, and I became her lover

'Ilka bird sang o' its love' he makes Miss Kennedy say in 'The Banks o'

Doon.' As the birds ever sang love to Burns, he naturally makes them sing

love to all hearts.

In 'The Bonnie Wee Thing' he gives high qualifications for love kindling:

Wit, and grace, and love, and beauty

In ae constellation shine;

To adore thee is my duty,

Goddess o' this soul o' mine.

In 'The Charms of Lovely Davies' he says:

Each eye it cheers when she appears,

Like Phoebus in the morning,

When past the shower, and ev'ry flower

The garden is adorning.

The last three poems from which quotations have been made were written

about two ladies whose lovers had been untrue to them: the first about

Miss Kennedy, a member of one of the leading Ayrshire families; the other

two about Miss Davies, a relative of the Glenriddell family.

In a letter to Miss Davies he said:

'Woman is the blood-royal of life; let there be slight degrees of

precedency among them, but let them all be sacred. Whether this last

sentiment be right or wrong, I am not accountable; it is an original

component feature of my mind.'

Burns was not in love with either Miss Kennedy or Miss Davies, but he

explains the writing of the songs to Miss Davies, in a letter enclosing

'Bonnie Wee Thing,' by saying, 'When I meet a person of my own heart I

positively can no more desist from rhyming on impulse than an AEolian harp

can refuse its tones to the streaming air.'

One of his most beautiful poems is 'The Posie,' which he planned to pull

for his 'Ain dear May.'

The primrose I will pu', the firstling o' the year,

And I will pu' the pink, the emblem o' my dear,

For she's the pink o' womankind, and blooms without a peer.

I'll pu' the budding rose, when Phoebus peeps in view,

For it's like a baumy kiss o' her sweet, bonnie mou';

The hyacinth's for constancy, wi' its unchanging blue.

The lily it is pure, and the lily it is fair,

And in her lovely bosom I'll place the lily there;

The daisy's for simplicity and unaffected air.

The woodbine I will pu', when the e'ening star is near,

And the diamond draps o' dew shall be her een sae clear;

The violet's for modesty, which weel she fa's to wear.

I'll tie the posie round wi' the silken band o' luve,

And I'll place it in her breast, and I'll swear by a' above

That to my latest draught o' life the band shall ne'er remove,

And this will be a posie to my ain dear May.

In 'Lovely Polly Stewart' he says:

O lovely Polly Stewart,

O charming Polly Stewart,

There's ne'er a flower that blooms in May

That's half so fair as thou art.

The flower it blaws, it fades, it fa's,

And art can ne'er renew it;

But worth and truth, eternal youth

Will gie to Polly Stewart.

In 'Thou Fair Eliza' he says:

Not the bee upon the blossom,

In the pride o' sinny noon;

Not the little sporting fairy,

All beneath the simmer moon;

Not the minstrel, in the moment

Fancy lightens in his e'e,

Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture,

That thy presence gies to me.

In 'My Bonie Bell' he writes:

The smiling spring comes in rejoicing,

The surly winter grimly flies;

Now crystal clear are the falling waters,

And bonie blue are the sunny skies.

Fresh o'er the mountains breaks forth the morning,

The evening gilds the ocean's swell;

All creatures joy in the sun's returning,

And I rejoice in my Bonie Bell.

'Sweet Afton' was suggested by the following: 'I charge you, O ye

daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not, nor awaken my love--my dove, my

undefiled! The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of

birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.'

In descriptive power and in fond and reverent love no poem of Burns, or

any other writer, surpasses Sweet Afton. Authorities have been divided in

regard to the person who was the Mary of Sweet Afton. Currie and Lockhart

declined to accept the statement of Gilbert Burns that it was Highland

Mary. Chambers and Douglas, the most illuminating and reliable of the

early biographers of Burns, agree with Gilbert. One of Mrs Dunlop's

daughters stated that she heard Burns himself say that Mary Campbell was

the woman whose name he used to represent the lover for whom he asked such

reverent consideration. He had no lover at any period of his life on the

Afton. He had but one lover named Mary, and she stirred him to a degree of

reverence that toned the music of his love to the end of his life. Mary

Campbell was alive to Burns in a truly realistic sense when he wrote the

sacred poem 'Sweet Afton.'

In 'O were my Love yon Lilac Fair' he assumes that his love might be

A lilac fair,

Wi' purpling blossoms in the spring,

And I a bird to shelter there,

When wearied on my little wing.

In the second verse he says:

O gin my love were yon red rose if

That grows upon the castle wa';

And I mysel' a drop o' dew,

Into her bonie breast to fa'!

Could imagination kindle more pure ideals to reveal love than these? In

'Bonie Jean--A Ballad' he gives two delightful pictures of love:

As in the bosom of the stream

The moonbeam dwells at dewy e'en;

So trembling, pure, was tender love

Within the breast of Bonie Jean.

* * * * *

The sun was sinking in the west,

The birds sang sweet in ilka grove; every

His cheek to hers he fondly laid,

And whispered thus his tale of love.

In 'Phillis the Fair' he writes:

While larks, with little wing, fann'd the pure air,

Tasting the breathing spring, forth did I fare;

Gay the sun's golden eye

Peep'd o'er the mountains high;

Such thy morn! did I cry, Phillis the fair.

In each bird's careless song glad did I share;

While yon wild-flow'rs among, chance led me there!

Sweet to the op'ning day,

Rosebuds bent the dewy spray;

Such thy bloom! did I say, Phillis the fair.

In 'By Allan Stream' he describes the glories of Nature, but gives them

second place to the joys of love:

The haunt o' spring's the primrose-brae,

The summer joys the flocks to follow;

How cheery thro' her short'ning day

Is autumn in her weeds o' yellow;

But can they melt the glowing heart,

Or chain the soul in speechless pleasure?

Or thro' each nerve the rapture dart,

Like meeting her, our bosom's treasure?

In 'Phillis, the Queen o' the Fair' he uses many beautiful things to

illustrate her charms:

The daisy amused my fond fancy,

So artless, so simple, so wild:

Thou emblem, said I, o' my Phillis--

For she is Simplicity's child.

The rosebud's the blush o' my charmer,

Her sweet, balmy lip when 'tis prest:

How fair and how pure is the lily!

But fairer and purer her breast.

Yon knot of gay flowers in the arbour,

They ne'er wi' my Phillis can vie:

Her breath is the breath of the woodbine,

Its dew-drop o' diamond her eye.

Her voice is the song o' the morning,

That wakes thro' the green-spreading grove,

When Phoebus peeps over the mountains

On music, and pleasure, and love.

But beauty, how frail and how fleeting!

The bloom of a fine summer's day;

While worth, in the mind o' my Phillis,

Will flourish without a decay.

In 'My Love is like a Red, Red Rose' he uses exquisite symbolism:

My luve is like a red, red rose

That's newly sprung in June;

My luve is like a melodie

That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a' the seas gang dry.

In the pastoral song, 'Behold, my Love, how Green the Groves,' he says in

the last verse:

These wild-wood flowers I've pu'd to deck

That spotless breast o' thine;

The courtier's gems may witness love,

But never love like mine.

In the dialogue song 'Philly and Willy,'

_He says_,

As songsters of the early spring

Are ilka day more sweet to hear, each

So ilka day to me mair dear

And charming is my Philly.

_She replies_,

As on the brier the budding rose

Still richer breathes and fairer blows,

So in my tender bosom grows

The love I bear my Willy.

In 'O Bonnie was yon Rosy Brier' he says:

O bonnie was yon rosy brier

That blooms so far frae haunt o' man;

And bonnie she, and ah, how dear!

It shaded frae the e'ening sun.

Yon rosebuds in the morning dew,

How pure amang the leaves sae green;

But purer was the lover's vow

They witnessed in their shade yestreen.

All in its rude and prickly bower,

That crimson rose, how sweet and fair.

But love is far a sweeter flower,

Amid life's thorny path o' care.

In 'A Health to Ane I Loe Dear'--one of his most perfect love-songs--he

says:

Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet,

And soft as their parting tear.

* * * * *

'Tis sweeter for thee despairing

Than aught in the world beside.

In 'My Peggy's Charms,' describing Miss Margaret Chalmers, Burns confines

himself mainly to her mental and spiritual charms. This was clearly a

distinctive characteristic of nearly the whole of his love-songs. No other

man ever wrote so many pure songs without suggestion of the flesh as did

Robert Burns.

My Peggy's face, my Peggy's form,

The frost of hermit age might warm;

My Peggy's worth, my Peggy's mind,

Might charm the first of human kind.

I love my Peggy's angel air,

Her face so truly, heavenly fair.

Her native grace, so void of art;

But I adore my Peggy's heart.

The tender thrill, the pitying tear,

The generous purpose, nobly dear;

The gentle look that rage disarms--

These are all immortal charms.

In his 'Epistle to Davie--A Brother Poet' Burns, after detailing the many

hardships and sorrows of the poor, forgets the hardships, and recalls his

blessings:

There's a' the pleasures o' the heart,

The lover and the frien';

Ye hae your Meg, your dearest part,

And I my darling Jean.

It warms me, it charms me,

To mention but her name;

It heats me, it beets me, kindles

And sets me a' on flame.

O all ye powers who rule above!

O Thou whose very self art love!

Thou know'st my words sincere!

The life-blood streaming through my heart,

Or my more dear immortal part

Is not more fondly dear!

When heart-corroding care and grief

Deprive my soul of rest,

Her dear idea brings relief

And solace to my breast.

Thou Being, All-Seeing,

O hear my fervent prayer;

Still take her, and make her

Thy most peculiar care.

Three years after the death of Highland Mary, Burns remained out in the

stackyard on Ellisland farm and composed 'To Mary in Heaven.' Nothing

could more strikingly prove the sincerity, the permanence, the purity, and

the sacredness of the white-souled love of Burns than this poem:

Thou ling'ring star, with less'ning ray,

That lov'st to greet the early morn,

Again thou usher'st in the day

My Mary from my soul was torn.

O Mary! dear departed shade!

Where is thy place of blissful rest?

See'st thou thy lover lowly laid?

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?

That sacred hour can I forget?

Can I forget that hallow'd grove

Where, by the winding Ayr, we met

To live one day of parting love?

Eternity can not efface

Those records dear of transports past;

Thy image at our last embrace;

Ah! little thought we 'twas our last!

Ayr, gurgling, kiss'd his pebbled shore,

O'erhung with wild-woods, thickening green;

The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar

Twined amorous round the raptured scene:

The flowers sprang wanton to be prest,

The birds sang love on every spray;

Till too, too soon, the glowing west,

Proclaimed the speed of winged day.

Still o'er these scenes my mem'ry wakes,

And fondly broods with miser-care;

Time but th' impression stronger makes,

As streams their channels deeper wear.

My Mary, dear departed shade!

Where is thy place of blissful rest?

See'st thou thy lover lowly laid?

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?

The general themes of this sacred poem, written three years after Mary

Campbell's death, are the preponderating themes of his love-songs. No

love-songs ever written have so little of even embracing and kissing as

the love-songs of Burns, except the sonnets of Mrs Browning.

It is worthy of note that Mary Campbell was not a beauty--her attractions

were kindness, honesty, and unselfishness; yet, though happily married

himself, he loved her, three years after her death, as profoundly as when

they parted on the Fail, more than three years before he wrote the poem.

CHAPTER VIII.

BURNS A PHILOSOPHER.

The fine training by their father developed the minds of both Robert and

Gilbert Burns as original, independent thinkers, chiefly in regard to

religious, ethical, and social problems. Professor Dugald Stewart, of

Edinburgh University, expressed the opinion that 'the mind of Burns was so

strong and clear that he might have taken high rank as a thinker in any

department of human thought; probably attaining as high rank in any other

department as he achieved as a poet.' The quotations given from his

writings in the preceding pages prove that he was a philosopher of unusual

power in regard to Religion, Democracy, and Brotherhood.

Lockhart said, speaking of the ranking of Burns as a thinker, compared

with the best trained minds in Edinburgh: 'Even the stateliest of these

philosophers had enough to do to maintain the attitude of equality when

brought into contact with Burns's gigantic understanding.'

Many of his poems are ornamented and increased in value by flashes of

philosophic thought. His 'Epistle to a Young Friend' is a series of

philosophical statements for human guidance.

Ye'll find mankind an unco squad, strange

And muckle they may grieve ye, much

I'll no say men are villains a';

The real hardened wicked,

Wha hae nae check but human law,

Are to a few restricket; restricted

But, och! mankind are unco weak, very

An' little to be trusted;

If self the wavering balance shake

It's rarely right adjusted.

He takes a kindly view, that men as a whole are not so bad as pessimists

would have us believe; that there are comparatively few that have no

respect for the Divine Law, and are kept in check only by the fear of

human law; but mourns because most men yet think more of self than of

their neighbours, to whom they may be of service, and sees that, where our

relations with our fellow-men are not satisfactorily balanced, the

destroyer of harmony is universally selfishness in one form or another.

The fear o' Hell's a hangman's whip

To haud the wretch in order.

Even yet this is advanced philosophy, that fear, being a negative motive,

cannot kindle human power or lead men to higher growth. So far as it can

influence the human soul, its effect must be to depress it. Not only the

fear of hell, but fear of anything, is an agency of evil. Some day a

better word than fear will be used to express the proper attitude of human

souls towards God.

But where you feel your honour grip

Let that aye be your border.

What you think of yourself matters more to you than what others think of

you. Let honour and conscience be your guide, and go not beyond the limits

they prescribe. Stop at the slightest warning honour gives,

And resolutely keep its laws,

Uncaring consequences.

In regard to religious matters, he gave his young friend sage advice:

The great Creator to revere

Must sure become the creature;

But still the preaching cant forbear,

And ev'n the rigid feature.

The soul's attitude to the Creator is a determining factor in deciding its

happiness and growth. Reverence should not mean solemnity and awe.

Reverence based on dread blights the soul and dwarfs it. True reverence

reaches its highest when its source is joy; then it becomes productive of

character--constructively transforming character. The formalism of

'preaching cant' robs religion of its natural attractiveness, especially

to younger people; the 'rigid feature' turns those who would enjoy

religion from association with those who claim to be Christians, and yet,

especially when they speak about religion, look like melancholy and

miserable criminals whose final appeal for pardon has been refused.

Burns's philosophy would lift the shadows of frightfulness from religion

and let its joyousness be revealed.

An Atheist's laugh's a poor exchange

For Deity offended.

A correspondence fixed wi' heaven

Is sure a noble anchor.

To Burns, the relationship of the soul to God was of first importance. He

cared little for man's formalisms, but personal connection with a loving

Father he regarded as the supreme source of happiness. Only a reverent

and philosophic mind would think of prayer as 'a correspondence with

heaven.'

Burns holds a high rank as a profound philosopher of human life, of human

growth, and of human consciousness of the Divine, as the vital centre of

human power.

Burns was a philosopher in his recognition that productive work is

essential to human happiness and progress.

In 'The Twa Dogs' he makes Caesar say:

But human bodies are sic fools,

For a' their colleges and schools,

That when nae real ills perplex them,

They mak enow themselves to vex them;

An' ay the less they hae to sturt them, trouble

In like proportion less will hurt them.

* * * * *

But gentleman, and ladies warst,

Wi' ev'n-down want o' wark are curst.

Burns had real sympathy for the idle rich. He saw that idleness leads to

many evils, and that probably the worst evils, those that produce most

unhappiness, are those that result from neglecting to use, or misusing,

powers that, if wisely used, would produce comfort and happiness for

ourselves as well as for others. He believed that every man and woman

would be happier if engaged in some productive occupation, and that those

who do not use their hands to produce for themselves and their fellows are

'curst wi' want o' wark.'

This belief is based on an old and very profound philosophy, that is not

even yet understood as widely and as fully as it should be: the philosophy

first expounded by Plato, and afterwards by Goethe and Ruskin, that 'all

evil springs from unused, or misused, good.' Whatever element is highest

in our lives will degrade us most if misused. The best in the lives of the

idle sours and causes deterioration instead of development of character,

and breeds discontent and unhappiness, so that days are 'insipid, dull and

tasteless,' and nights are 'unquiet, lang and restless.'

Burns showed that he understood this revealing philosophy in 'The Vision.'

In this great poem he assumes that Coila, the genius of Kyle, his native

district in Ayrshire, appeared to him in a vision, and revealed a clear

understanding of the epoch events of his past life and their influence on

his development, and gave him advice to guide him for the future. In one

verse he says:

I saw thy pulse's maddening play

Wild send thee pleasure's devious way,

Misled by fancy's meteor-ray,

By passion driven;

But yet the light that led astray

Was light from heaven.

He was attacked and criticised severely for the statement contained in the

last two lines. The statement is but philosophic truth that his critics

did not understand. Fancy and passion are elements of power given from

heaven. Properly used they become important elements in human happiness

and development. Improperly used they produce unhappiness and degradation.

Burns understood clearly the philosophic basis of modern education, the

importance of developing the individuality, or selfhood, or special power

of each child. The poem he wrote to his friend Robert Graham of Fintry,

beginning:

When Nature her great masterpiece designed

And framed her last, best work, the human mind,

Her eye intent on all the mazy plan,

She formed of various parts the various man,

is a philosophical description of how Nature produced various types of

men, giving to each mind special powers and aptitudes. The thought of the

poem is the basis of all modern educational thought: the value of the

individuality of each child, and the importance of developing it.

He expresses very beautifully the philosophy of the ephemeral nature of

certain forms of pleasure in eight lines of 'Tam o' Shanter':

But pleasures are like poppies spread,

You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;

Or as the snowfall in the river,

A moment white, then melts forever;

Or like the borealis race,

That flit e'er you can point their place;

Or like the rainbow's lovely form,

Evanishing amid the storm.

Burns understood the philosophy of the simple life in the development of

character and happiness.

In 'The Cotter's Saturday Night,' after dilating on the glories of simple,

reverent religion, as compared with 'Religion's Pride,'

In all the pomp of method and of art,

When men display to congregations wide

Devotion's every grace except the heart,

he prays for the young people of Scotland--

Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content;

And O! may Heaven their simple lives prevent

From luxury's contagion, weak and vile!

Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,

A virtuous populace may rise the while,

And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle.

He understood the value of simplicity in life as well as in religion, and

expressed it in admirable form.

'The Address to the Unco Guid' has a kindly philosophic sympathy running

like a stream of light through it; the profound sympathy of the Master who

searched for the one stray lamb, and who suggested that he who was without

sin should cast the first stone. The last verse especially contains a

sublime human philosophy, that if studied till understood, and then

practised, would work a greatly needed change in the attitude of the rest

of humanity towards the so-called wayward. It is one of the strange

anomalies of life that, generally, professing Christian women have in the

past been the last to come with Christian sympathy of an affectionate, and

sisterly, and respectful quality to take an erring sister in their arms to

try to prove that she still possessed their esteem, and to rekindle faith

in her heart.

His poem to Mrs Dunlop on 'New Year's Day, 1790;' 'A Man's a Man for a'

That;' 'A Winter Night;' 'Sketch in Verse;' and 'Verses written in

Friar's Carse Hermitage,' all show him to have been a philosophic student

of human nature.

A few quotations from letters to his friends will show his philosophical

attitude to general matters, as the quotations from his letters showed the

clearness and trueness of his philosophy regarding religion, democracy,

and brotherhood.

Burns saw man's duty to his fellows and to himself in this life.

In a letter to Robert Ainslie, Edinburgh, 1788, he wrote: 'I have no

objection to prefer prodigality to avarice, in some few instances; but I

appeal to your observation, if you have not met, and often met, with the

same disingenuousness, the same hollow-hearted insincerity, and

disintegrative depravity of principle, in the hackneyed victims of

profusion, as in the unfeeling children of parsimony. I have every

possible reverence for the much-talked-of world beyond the grave, and I

wish that which piety believes, and virtue deserves, may be all matter of

fact. But in all things belonging to, and terminating in, the present

scene of existence, man has serious business on hand. Whether a man shall

shake hands with welcome in the distinguished elevation of respect, or

shrink from contempt in the abject corner of insignificance; whether he

shall wanton under the tropic of plenty, or at least enjoy himself in the

comfortable latitudes of easy convenience, or starve in the arctic circle

of poverty; whether he shall rise in the manly consciousness of a

self-approving mind, or sink beneath a galling load of regret and

remorse--these are alternatives of the last moment.'

Since the time of Burns men and women, both in the churches and out of

them, have learned to set more store on the importance of living truly on

the earth, and have ceased to a large extent to think only of a life to

come after death. Men and women are now trying in increasing numbers to

make it more heavenly here.

Burns taught a sound philosophy of contentment as a basis for happiness.

He wrote to Mr Ainslie in 1789: 'You need not doubt that I find several

very unpleasant and disagreeable circumstances in my business [that of a

gauger], but I am tired with and disgusted at the language of complaint at

the evils of life. Human existence in the most favourable situations does

not abound with pleasures, and has its inconveniences and ills;

capricious, foolish man mistakes these inconveniences and ills, as if they

were the peculiar property of his own particular situation; and hence

that eternal fickleness, that love of change, which has ruined, and daily

does ruin, many a fine fellow, as well as many a blockhead; and is almost

without exception a constant source of disappointment and misery. So far

from being dissatisfied with my present lot, I earnestly pray the Great

Disposer of events that it may never be worse, and I think I can lay my

hand on my heart and say "I shall be content."'

Good, sound philosophy of contentment! Not the contentment that does not

try to improve life's conditions, but the wise contentment that recognises

the best in present conditions, instead of foolishly resenting what it

cannot change.

Burns taught the philosophy of good citizenship.

In 1789 he wrote to Mr Ainslie: 'If the relations we stand in to King,

country, kindred, and friends be anything but the visionary fancies of

dreaming metaphysicians; if religion, virtue, magnanimity, generosity,

humanity, and justice be aught but empty sounds; then the man who may be

said to live only for others, for the beloved, honourable female whose

tender, faithful embrace endears life, and for the helpless little

innocents who are to be the men and women, the worshippers of his God,

the subjects of his King, and the support, nay the very vital existence,

of his country in the ensuing age, is the type of truest manhood.'

This quotation from a letter written to a warm, personal friend from whom

he was not seeking any favours gives an insight into a rational mind loyal

to God, loyal to his king, loyal to his country, and lovingly loyal to his

wife and family.

In a letter to the Right Rev. Dr Geddes, a Roman Catholic Bishop resident

in Edinburgh, a very kind friend to Burns, he wrote, 1789: 'I am conscious

that wherever I am, you do me the honour to interest yourself in my

welfare. It gives me pleasure to inform you that I am here at last [at

Ellisland], stationary in the serious business of life, and have now not

only the retired leisure, but the hearty inclination to attend to those

great and important questions: What I am? Where I am? For what I am

destined? Thus with a rational aim and method in life, you may easily

guess, my reverend and much honoured friend, that my characteristical

trade is not forgotten; I am, if possible, more than ever an enthusiast to

the Muses. I am determined to study Man and Nature, and in that view,

incessantly to try if the ripening and corrections of years can enable me

to produce something worth preserving.'

Bishop Gillis, a Roman Catholic Bishop who lived more than sixty years

after the death of Burns, said, in reference to the letter from which this

quotation was made: 'If any man, after perusing this letter, will still

say that the mind of Burns was beyond the reach of religious influence,

or, in other words, that he was a scoffer at revelation, that man need not

be reasoned with, as his own mind must be hopelessly beyond the reach of

argument.'

In a letter to his friend Cunningham he wrote, 1789: 'What strange beings

we are! Since we have a portion of conscious existence equally capable of

enjoying pleasure, happiness, and rapture, or of suffering pain,

wretchedness, and misery, it is surely worthy of inquiry whether there be

not such a thing as a science of life; whether method, economy, and

fertility of expedients be not applicable to enjoyment, and whether there

be not a want of dexterity in pleasure which renders our little scantling

of happiness still less; and a profuseness and intoxication in bliss which

leads to satiety, disgust, and self-abhorrence.

'There is not a doubt but that health, talents, character, decent

competency, respectable friends, are real, substantial blessings; and yet

do we not daily see those who enjoy many, or all, of these good things,

and _notwithstanding_ contrive to be as unhappy as others to whose lot few

of them have fallen? I believe one great source of this mistake or

misconduct is owing to a certain stimulus, with us called ambition, which

goads us up the hill of life--not as we ascend other eminences, for the

laudable curiosity of viewing an extended landscape, but rather for the

dishonest pride of looking down on others of our fellow-creatures,

seemingly diminutive in other stations, &c.'

His philosophy clearly recognised the evils of unduly centring our minds

and hearts on pleasure, and thus not only robbing ourselves of

development, and humanity of the advantage of the many things we might do

in our overtime devoted to pleasure, but destroying our interest in the

things that were intended to give us happiness.

He also recognised fully the evils of selfish ambition which aims at

attaining higher positions than others; which climbs, not to get into

purer air to see more widely our true relationships to our fellow-men, but

for the degrading satisfaction of being able to look down with a

hardening pride that separates humanity into groups instead of uniting all

men in brotherhood. A man whose heart and mind are engrossed by base

material aims cannot grow truly, and he loses the advantages that should

have come to him from the elements of blessing he possesses by misusing

them for selfish ends.

In another letter he wrote: 'All my fears and 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 inquirer

must in some degree be a sceptic. It is not that there are any very

staggering arguments against the immortality of man, but, like

electricity, phlogiston, &c., the subject is so involved in darkness that

we want data to go upon.'

His philosophy left him no fears for what comes after death. He had deep

faith in the justice of God. 'I believe,' he said, 'that God perfectly

understands the being He has made.' Believing this, and believing also

that God is just, he feared not the future. Burns, as he said to Mrs

Dunlop, was 'in his idle moments sometimes a little sceptical.' But they

were only moments. He knew there were problems he could not solve, and so,

as he wrote to Dr Candlish, 'he was glad to grasp revealed religion.' A

thoughtful man requires more faith in revealed religion than a man who

does not really think, but only thinks he is thinking, when other people's

thoughts are running through his head. Burns needed strong faith, and he

had it even about religious matters he could not explain. 'The necessities

of my own heart,' as he wrote to Mrs Dunlop, 'gave the lie to my cold

philosophisings.' His 'Ode to Mrs Dunlop on New Year's Day, 1790,' said:

The voice of Nature loudly cries,

And many a message from the skies,

That something in us never dies.

He accepted by faith the 'messages from the skies,' and in his soul

harmonised the messages with the 'Voice of Nature,' even though his

philosophic mind searched for proof of problems he could not solve.

In a letter to Peter Hill, 1790, he wrote: 'Mankind are by nature

benevolent creatures, except in a few scoundrelly instances. I do not

think that avarice for the good things we chance to have is born with us;

but we are placed here among so much nakedness and hunger and poverty and

want, that we are under a damning necessity of studying selfishness in

order that we may EXIST. Still there are in every age a few souls that all

the wants and woes of life cannot debase into selfishness, or even give

the necessary alloy of caution and prudence. If ever I am in danger of

vanity, it is when I contemplate myself on this side of my disposition and

character. God knows I am no saint; I have a whole host of follies and

sins to answer for, but if I could (and I believe I do, as far as I can),

I would 'wipe away all tears from all eyes.'

Burns was not self-righteous. He moralises in this quotation not as one of

the 'unco guid,' but as a man on what he thought was one of life's most

perplexing problems, poverty. He saw the problem more keenly than most men

see it yet. It was not the poverty of Burns himself that, as Carlyle

believed, made him write and work for freedom and justice for the

labouring-classes. It is quite true, however, that one of his reasons for

pleading for democracy was the poverty among the peasantry of his time. He

saw the injustice of conditions, and admitted in his poem to Davie, a

brother poet, that

It's hardly in a body's power

To keep at times from being sour,

To see how things are shared.

Burns recommended the philosophy of right, not expediency in public as

well as private matters.

He wrote a letter to Mrs Dunlop in 1790, in which he said: 'I believe, in

my conscience, such ideas as, "my country; her independence; her honour;

the illustrious names that mark the history of my native land," &c.--I

believe these, among your _men of the world_; men who, in fact, guide, for

the most part, and govern our world, are looked on as so many

modifications of wrong-headedness. They knew the use of bawling out such

terms to rouse or lead the Rabble; but for their own private use, with

almost all the _able statesmen_ that ever existed, or now exist, when they

talk of right and wrong, they only mean proper and improper; and their

measure of conduct is not what they ought, but _what they dare_. For the

truth of this, I shall not ransack the history of nations, but appeal to

one of the ablest judges of men, and himself one of the ablest men that

ever lived--the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield. In fact a man that could

thoroughly control his vices, whenever they interfered with his interest,

and who could completely put on the appearance of every virtue as often as

it suited his purposes, is, on the Stanhopian plan, _the perfect man_, a

man to lead nations. But are great abilities, complete without a flaw, and

polished without a blemish, the standard of human excellence? This is

certainly not the staunch opinion of _men of the world_; but I call on

honour, virtue, and worth to give the Stygian doctrine a loud negative!

However, this must be allowed, that, if you abstract from man the idea of

an existence beyond the grave, then the true measure of human conduct is

_proper and improper_; virtue and vice, as dispositions of the heart, are,

in that case, of scarcely the same import and value to the world at large

as harmony and discord in the modifications of sound; and a delicate sense

of honour, like a nice ear for music, though it may sometimes give the

possessor an ecstasy unknown to the coarser organs of the herd, yet,

considering the harsh gratings and inharmonic jars in this ill-tuned state

of being, it is odds but the individual would be as happy, and certainly

would be as much respected by the true judges of society, as it would then

stand, without either a good ear or a good heart....

'Mackenzie has been called "the Addison of the Scots," and, in my opinion,

Addison would not be hurt at the comparison. If he has not Addison's

exquisite humour, he as certainly outdoes him in the tender and the

pathetic. His _Man of Feeling_--but I am not counsel-learned in the laws

of criticism--I estimate as the first performance of the kind I ever saw.

From what book, moral or even pious, will the susceptible young mind

receive impressions more congenial to humanity and kindness, generosity

and benevolence--in short, more of all that ennobles the soul to herself,

or endears her to others, than from the simple, affecting tale of poor

Harley?

'Still, with all my admiration of Mackenzie's writings, I do not know if

they are the fittest reading for a young man who is about to set out, as

the phrase is, to make his way into life. Do you not think, Madam, that

among the few favoured of heaven in the structure of their minds (for such

there certainly are) there may be a purity, a tenderness, a dignity, and

elegance of soul, which are of no use, nay, in some degree absolutely

disqualifying, for the truly important business of making a man's way into

life?'

Burns understood the underlying philosophy of sensitiveness.

In a letter to Miss Craik, 1790, he wrote: 'There is not among the

martyrologies ever penned so rueful a narrative as the lives of the poets.

In the comparative view of wretches, the criterion is not what they are

doomed to suffer, but how they are formed to bear. Take a being of our

kind, give him a stronger imagination and a more delicate sensibility,

which between them will ever engender a more ungovernable set of passions

than are the usual lot of man; implant in him an irresistible impulse to

some idle vagary, such as arranging wild flowers in fantastical nosegays,

tracing the grasshopper to his haunt by his chirping song, watching the

frisks of the little minnows in the sunny pool, or hunting after the

intrigues of wanton butterflies--in short, send him adrift after some

pursuit which shall eternally mislead him from the paths of lucre, and yet

curse him with a keener relish than any man living for the pleasures that

lucre can purchase; lastly, fill up the measure of his woes by bestowing

on him a spurning sense of his own dignity, and you have created a wight

nearly as miserable as a poet. To you, Madam, I need not recount the fairy

pleasures the Muse bestows to counterbalance this catalogue of evils.

Bewitching poesy is like bewitching woman: she has in all ages been

accused of misleading mankind from the counsels of wisdom and the paths of

prudence, involving them in difficulties, baiting them with poverty,

branding them with infamy, and plunging them in the whirling vortex of

ruin; yet, where is the man but must own that all our happiness on earth

is not worth the name--that even the holy hermit's solitary prospect of

paradisaical bliss is but the glitter of a northern sun rising over a

frozen region, compared with the many pleasures, the nameless raptures

that we owe to the lovely Queen of the heart of Man!'

He based the last two lines in his 'Poem on Sensibility' on this

philosophy:

Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure,

Thrill the deepest notes of woe.

His 'Parting Song to Clarinda' reveals in the four lines, said by Sir

Walter Scott 'to contain the essence of a thousand love-tales,' how

deepest love may bring darkest sorrow:

Had we never loved sae kindly,

Had we never loved sae blindly,

Never met--or never parted,

We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

In a letter to Crawford Tait, Esq., Edinburgh, 1790, requesting a

sympathetic interest on behalf of a young man from Ayrshire, he says: 'I

shall give you my friend's character in two words: as to his head, he has

talents enough, and more than enough, for common life; as to his heart,

when Nature had kneaded the kindly clay that composes it, she said, "I can

no more."

'You, my good Sir, were born under kinder stars; but your fraternal

sympathy, I well know, can enter into the feelings of the young man who

goes into life with the laudable ambition to _do_ something, and to _be_

something among his fellow-creatures; but whom the consciousness of

friendless obscurity presses to the earth, and wounds to the soul!

'Even the fairest of his virtues are against him. That independent spirit,

and that ingenuous modesty--qualities inseparable from a noble mind--are,

with the million, circumstances not a little disqualifying. What pleasure

is in the power of the fortunate and the happy, by their notice and

patronage, to brighten the countenance and glad the heart of such

depressed youth! I am not so angry with mankind for their deaf economy of

the purse--the goods of this world cannot be divided without being

lessened--but why be a niggard of that which bestows bliss on a

fellow-creature, yet takes nothing from our own means of enjoyment? We

wrap ourselves up in the cloak of our better-fortune and turn away our

eyes, lest the wants and woes of our brother-mortals should disturb the

selfish apathy of our souls.'

Burns was a deep character student, and he was able to adjust the balance

fairly when weighing the characteristics that count for success in public

life, in business, and in private life. He always recommended honesty, and

always admired that independent spirit and that ingenuous modesty

inseparable from a noble mind. Much as he admired them, however, he

clearly understood that these admirable qualities might prevent the

perfect development of a soul if they made a man morbidly sensitive, or

interfered in any way with his faith in himself.

Speaking of 'independence and sensibility,' the same qualities he

discussed in the letter quoted (to Mr Crawford Tait), he says in a letter

to Peter Hill, Edinburgh, 1791, addressing poverty: 'By thee the man of

sentiment, whose heart flows with independence, and melts with

sensibility, inly pines under the neglect or writhes in bitterness of soul

under the contumely of arrogant, unfeeling wealth.'

Burns taught the just philosophy of gratitude to God.

In a letter to Dr Moore, of London, he wrote, 1791: 'Whatsoever is not

detrimental to society, and is of positive enjoyment, is of God, the

Giver of all good things, and ought to be received and enjoyed by His

creatures with thankful delight.'

We cannot yet estimate the philosophic vision of Burns. It will grow

clearer as century follows century. Carlyle said of him: 'We see that in

this man was the gentleness, the trembling pity of a woman, with the deep

earnestness, the force, and passionate ardour of a hero. Tears lie in him,

and a consuming fire, as lightning lurks in the drop of the summer

clouds.'

So much for his heart; what says Carlyle about his mind?

'Burns never studied philosophy.... Nevertheless, sufficient indication,

if no proof sufficient, remains for us in his works; we discern the brawny

movements of a gigantic though untutored strength; and can understand how,

in conversation, his quick, sure insight into men and things may, as aught

else about him, have amazed the best thinkers of his time and country.

'But, unless we mistake, the intellectual gift of Burns is fine as well as

strong. The more delicate relations of things could not well have escaped

his eye, for they were intimately present to his heart. The logic of the

senate and the forum is indispensable, but not all-sufficient; nay,

perhaps the highest truth is that which will most certainly elude it, for

this logic works by words, and "the highest," it has been said, "cannot be

expressed in words." We are not without tokens of an openness for this

higher truth also, a keen though uncultivated sense for it having existed

in Burns. Mr Stewart, it will be remembered, wondered that Burns had

formed some distinct conception of the doctrine of Association. We rather

think that far subtler things than the doctrine of Association had from of

old been familiar to him.'

Carlyle's last statement is correct. He admits the great essential truth

that Burns was a subtle philosopher. What a pity that such a man as

Carlyle should have thought it necessary to say that Burns 'never studied

philosophy.' The statement is incorrect, but, if it had been correct, why

make it? and why call his mental strength 'untutored,' and his 'keen sense

of the highest philosophy' 'uncultivated'?

Did any other philosopher of the time of Burns in the universities reveal

a more profound philosophy of human life, and make so many applications of

it, as Robert Burns revealed in the quotations in this chapter, and in

the chapters on Democracy, Brotherhood, and Love?

Burns was a philosopher, an independent thinker, whose thought is more

highly appreciated now than it was in the time of Carlyle.

In a letter to Mrs Graham, 1791, he wrote: 'I was born a poor dog; and

however I may occasionally pick a better bone than I used to do, I know I

must live and die poor. But I will indulge the flattering faith that my

poetry will considerably outlive my poverty; and without any fustian

affectation of spirit, I can promise and affirm that it must be no

ordinary craving of the latter that shall ever make me do anything

injurious to the honest fame of the former. Whatever may be my

failings--for failings are a part of human nature--may they ever be those

of a generous heart and an independent mind.'

Speaking of the moral character of Burns, Carlyle is wise and just. He

says: 'We are far from regarding him as guilty before the world, as

guiltier than the average; nay, from doubting that he is less guilty than

one of ten thousand tried at a tribunal far more rigid than that where the

Plebiscite of common civic reputations are pronounced, he has seemed to us

less worthy of blame than of pity and wonder. But the world is habitually

unjust in its judgments of such men; unjust on many grounds, of which

this one may be stated as the substance; it decides, like a court of law,

by dead statutes; and not positively, but negatively, less on what is done

right than on what is or is not done wrong.... What Burns did under his

circumstances, and what he forbore to do, alike fill us with astonishment

at the natural strength and worth of his character.'

Burns was naturally a student gifted with a great mind. His splendid mind

was trained to act logically by his remarkable father, and quickened and

illuminated by his great teacher John Murdoch. He was a great philosopher,

not merely because he read Locke's 'Essay on the Human Understanding' when

a boy, but because during his short life he read with joyous interest many

books of a philosophical character, and what is of infinitely greater

importance, he interpreted all he read with an independent mind, and

related all truth as he understood it to human life. He could discuss even

the principles of Spinoza, and 'venture into the daring path Spinoza

trod.' Yet, as he told Dr Candlish, of Edinburgh, he merely 'ventured in'

to test Spinoza's philosophy, which he soon found to be inadequate to the

true development of the human soul, and therefore he 'was glad to grasp

revealed religion.' Not merely as a great poetic genius, but as a profound

philosophic teacher of religion, democracy, and brotherhood--the most

essentially vital elements related to the highest development of the souls

of men and women--will the real Robert Burns become known as he is more

justly and more deeply studied.

CHAPTER IX.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF BURNS.

BORN 1759--DIED 1796.

_6 Years Old._

At six years of age he was sent to a school in a little home near Alloway

Mill for a few months. Then the school was closed, and William Burns, his

father, and a few neighbours engaged a remarkably fine teacher named John

Murdoch to teach their children.

_7 Years Old._

When Burns was seven years old his father moved to Mount Oliphant farm,

about two miles from Alloway. Robert continued to attend Murdoch's school.

_8 Years Old._

He continued to attend Murdoch's school.

_9 Years Old._

Murdoch, his beloved teacher, left Alloway. He had not only been the

teacher of Burns, but had lent the boy books, among them being _The Life

of Hannibal_. Burns said this book 'was the earliest I recollect taking

any pleasure in.' Murdoch presented him with an English grammar and a book

translated from the French, named _The School for Love_. His imagination

during this period was kindled by many legends, ghost stories, tales, and

songs told and sung by an old lady, Betty Davidson, who lived in the

family home.

_10 Years Old._

Read and studied with his father, discussing freely the merits of the

books read.

_11 Years Old._

He studied, and continued to study with enthusiasm, English grammar, and

had become an unusually excellent scholar for his age in English. His

father regularly taught his family after Murdoch left Alloway. A deep and

lasting impression was made on Robert's mind during this year by a

_Collection of Letters_, written by the leading authors of Queen Anne's

reign.

_12 Years Old._

Worked on the farm, and read with his father at night. Wrote many letters

to imaginary correspondents.

_13 Years Old._

He was sent for a few weeks to a school in Dalrymple to learn penmanship.

John Murdoch was appointed teacher in the High School at Ayr. He became

again a visitor to the Burns' home, in which he was a most welcome guest.

He presented Pope's works to Robert. During this year Burns continued an

imaginary correspondence with many people, and began to form a style

moulded by the Letters of the great prose-writers of Queen Anne's time.

_14 Years Old._

Boarded with Murdoch in Ayr for a few weeks, to devote himself to a deeper

study of English. Studied French a little, and gave a little attention to

Latin. The best influence of his brief period with Murdoch was the

kindling of his vision with higher ideals of life, his relationship to his

fellow-men, and his duty to God.

_15 Years Old._

Began to take his place as an independent thinker with men, and surprised

them by his wide knowledge and his unusual powers of expression and

impression. Took his share in reaping the grain on the farm, and fell in

love with his harvest mate, Nellie Kirkpatrick, who bound and shocked, or

stooked, what he reaped. She was a good-looking girl of fourteen, who sang

well. Burns said her love made him a poet. He composed his first poem,

'Handsome Nell,' as a tribute to her. His love for her undoubtedly kindled

him at the centre of his power, as a true love that is respectfully

treated by parents always does for a youth during the adolescent period.

_16 Years Old._

He laboured hard on the farm, but was worried by his father's poverty, by

the poorness of the soil of Mount Oliphant farm, and especially by the

harsh and over-bearing manner in which his father was treated by the

landlord's agent. Hard labour and possibly insufficient nourishment for a

youth growing rapidly, coupled with his humiliation at the conduct of the

agent, and his sorrowful sympathy, affected his health. He became

depressed and moody, and suffered from headaches and palpitation of the

heart. He had become acquainted with a few respectable women in Ayr, one

of whom lent him the _Spectator_ and Pope's _Homer_. These he read and

digested with a growing interest, and used with rapidly developing power.

_17 Years Old._

Was sent to the school of Hugh Rodger at Kirkoswald to learn mathematics,

especially mensuration and surveying. He enjoyed the work and made rapid

progress. He formed a friendship with William Niven, who went to the same

school; and in order to develop his powers as an independent thinker and a

public speaker, he and Willie organised a debating society of two, which

met in formal debate once a week. This developed his intellectual powers

more than the study of mathematics. His school-days in Kirkoswald came to

a sudden ending when he met Peggy Thomson, who lived next to the school.

His second adolescent love came unexpectedly, and with great force. He

says Peggy Thomson's charms 'Overset his trigonometry, and set him off at

a tangent from his studies.' He tried to study, but at the end of the week

gave it all up and went home.

His schoolmaster learned about the debates between him and Willie Niven,

and determined to put an end to such waste of time from the study of

mathematics. He charged Niven one day with the crime of debating, and

demanded the subject for the next debate. Willie told him the subject for

to-morrow was, 'Resolved that a great general is of more use to the world

than a good merchant.' 'Nonsense,' thundered the teacher; 'everybody ought

to know that a general is of far more importance to the world than a

merchant.' Burns promptly said to the teacher, 'You take the general's

side, and I will take the merchant's side, and let us see.'

Burns spoke with such wide information, such fine reasoning and such

splendid eloquence, that he soon had the boys cheering him wildly. This

annoyed the master, and he became so angry that he dismissed the school

for the day.

Even at the early age of seventeen he had few rivals as a public speaker

and debater. He took lessons in a dancing-school at Tarbolton, when he

returned from Kirkoswald, to improve his social manners. During this year

he read Thomson's works, Shenstone's works, a _Select Collection of

English Songs_, Allan Ramsay's works, Hervey's _Meditations_, and some of

Shakespeare's plays.

_18 Years Old._

The family moved to Lochlea farm, about four miles from Mauchline. Up to

this time he had been an awkward and bashful youth. He began now to be

more at ease with the opposite sex after he had been introduced to them.

He had no real lover, however, between 17 and 21.

_19 Years Old._

About this time he made a plan for a tragedy. He never finished it, and

preserved only a fragment, beginning, 'All devil as I am.'

_20 Years Old._

A year of work, reading, and visions that were but the bases of higher

visions yet to come.

_21 Years Old._

He, with his brother Gilbert and five other young men, founded a debating

club in an upstairs room of a private house in Tarbolton. He read

persistently; held a book in his left hand at meals; and usually carried a

book with him while walking. About this time he began to be known as a

critic of the preaching and practices of the 'Auld Licht' preachers, and

enjoyed shocking those who were, in his judgment, not vital, but only

professing, Christians, who did nothing to prove the genuineness of their

religion. In this year his heart was kindled by the first love of his

manhood.

_22 Years Old._

He read Sterne's works, Macpherson's Ossian, and Mackenzie's _The Man of

the World_ and _Man of Feeling_. He said 'he valued the last book more

than any other book, except the Bible.' His mind turned to religious

subjects very definitely at this period. He developed a deep and reverent

affection for Alison Begbie, who was a servant on a farm not far from

Lochlea farm. The farm was on Cessnock Water. He wrote three poems to her:

'The Lass of Cessnock Banks,' 'Peggy Alison,' and 'Mary Morrison.' His

letters to her reveal the two great dominant elements in his mind and

heart at that time: a deep and respectful love, and some of the highest

ideals of vital religion.

In this year love again stirred him to write poetry. He said it became 'a

darling walk for his mind.' 'Winter--a Dirge' belongs to this period.

_23 Years Old._

This was an eventful year. Alison Begbie had declined his offer of

marriage. Had she married him and lived he would have had but one love

after maturity. He ventured into business in Irvine. He says his partner

'was a scoundrel of the first water, who made money by the mystery of

thieving.' Their shop was burned, and he found himself not worth a

sixpence. He read two novels, _Pamela_, and _Ferdinand, Count Fathom_, and

_Fergusson's Poems_, which filled him with a deeper determination to write

poetry. He wrote several religious poems this year.

_24 Years Old._

He became a Freemason in Tarbolton, and devoted a good deal of time to the

order. He did not write much poetry. His mind was occupied by religious

matters, and he had an impression that his life was not going to last very

long. This idea haunted him for two or three years after his maturity. He

contemplated death as a rest, but he continued to store his mind and think

independently. Dr Mackenzie, who attended his father on his death-bed

towards the end of the year, wrote, 'that on his first visit he found

Gilbert and his father friendly and cordial, but Robert silent and

uncompanionable, till he began discussing a medical subject, when Robert

promptly joined in the discussion, and showed an unexpected and remarkable

understanding of the subject.' During this year he wrote 'My Father was a

Farmer' and 'The Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie.'

_25 Years Old._

His father died in February, leaving the family very poor. Robert and

Gilbert rented Mossgiel farm, about two miles from Mauchline, and the

family moved there. Robert determined to be a scientific farmer. He read

the best books he could get on agriculture; but bad seed, bad weather, and

late harvest left the brothers only half an average crop. He continued to

work on the farm, but evidently began to realise more clearly the kindling

call to poetry as the special work of his life. During the next twelve

years he produced a continuous out-pouring of wonderful poems, although

about half of the twelve years he worked as a farmer on Mossgiel and

Ellisland farms, and most of the rest of the time worked hard as a gauger,

riding two hundred miles each week in the performance of his duties. In

this year he wrote 'The Rigs of Barley,' composed in August; 'My Nannie

O,' 'Green Grow the Rashes,' 'Man was Made to Mourn,' 'The Twa Herds,' and

the 'Epitaph on My Ever Honoured Father.' In this year he met Jean

Armour, and soon loved her.

_26 Years Old._

He wrote many poems during this year, the most important being 'Epistle to

Davie, a Brother Poet,' 'Holy Willie's Prayer,' 'Death and Doctor

Hornbook,' three long 'Epistles to John Lapraik,' 'Epistle to William

Simpson,' 'Epistle to John Goldie,' 'Rantin', Rovin' Robin,' 'Epistle to

Rev. John M'Math,' 'Second Epistle to Davie,' 'Farewell to Ballochmyle,'

'Hallowe'en,' 'To a Mouse,' 'The Jolly Beggars,' 'The Cotter's Saturday

Night,' 'Address to the Deil,' and 'The Auld Farmer's New-Year Morning

Salutation to his Auld Mare Maggie.'

_27 Years Old._

This was an eventful and productive year for Burns. Quickly following each

other came 'The Twa Dogs,' 'The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer,' 'The

Ordination,' 'Epistle to James Smith,' 'The Vision,' 'Address to the Unco

Guid,' 'The Holy Fair,' 'To a Mountain Daisy,' 'To Ruin,' 'Despondency: an

Ode,' 'Epistle to a Young Friend,' 'Nature's Law,' 'The Brigs of Ayr,' 'O

Thou Dread Power!' 'Farewell Song to the Banks of Ayr,' 'Lines on Meeting

Lord Daer,' 'Masonic Song,' 'Tam Samson's Elegy,' 'A Winter Night,' 'Yon

Wild Mossy Mountains,' 'Address to Edinburgh,' and 'Address to a Haggis,'

with love-songs and many minor pieces.

Burns had given Jean Armour a certificate of marriage, and he nearly lost

his mental balance when, at her father's order, she consented to have it

burned. Fortunately for him two things aided in preserving his balance:

the publication of the Kilmarnock edition of his poems, and his love for

Mary Campbell, 'Highland Mary.' No man ever needed a love, deep and true,

to save him more than Burns did. He believed Jean was lost to him for

ever. He was not a faithless but a needy lover when he found a responsive

heart in Highland Mary. They made their marriage vows on the Fail, Sunday,

14th May 1786. Mary went home to prepare for marriage, but caught a fever

and died. Burns went to Edinburgh later in the year to publish a second

edition of his poems, as the first edition had been so well received. In

Edinburgh he was the hero of the highest and most thoroughly educated

classes. He wrote several fine poems to Mary Campbell.

_28 Years Old._

Three thousand copies of his poems were published in April in Edinburgh,

netting him over five hundred pounds. He made two triumphal tours--the

Border Tour and the Highland Tour. As Mary Campbell was dead, his love was

kindled by Clarinda, Mrs M'Lehose, with whom he conducted an intensive

love correspondence, and to whom he wrote several beautiful love-songs. As

she was a married woman who was separated from her husband, Burns could

not marry her. In this year he wrote the 'Inscription for the Headstone of

Fergusson,' 'Epistle to Mrs Scott,' 'The Bonnie Moor Hen,' 'On the Death

of John M'Leod,' 'Elegy on the Death of James Hunter Blair,' 'The Humble

Petition of Bruar Water,' 'Lines on the Fall of Fyers,' 'Castle Gordon,'

'On Scaring Some Waterfowl,' 'A Rosebud by My Early Walk,' 'The Banks of

Devon,' 'The Young Highland Rover,' 'Birthday Ode,' and many short pieces

and love-songs, among them 'The Birks of Aberfeldy.'

_29 Years Old._

Rented Ellisland farm, on the Nith, near Dumfries. Married Jean Armour

(second marriage to her) in April, and left her in Mauchline till he

could build a home for her on Ellisland, which was ready in December.

Building his new home, stocking and managing the farm, and riding fifty

miles occasionally to his Jean, made his year so busy that he wrote little

poetry, but exquisite love-songs. The estate of Glenriddell, owned in the

time of Burns by Robert Riddell, bordered on Ellisland farm. Robert

Riddell was a fine type of Scottish gentleman, and Burns and he became

warm friends. Among the best poems of this year, not love-songs, are

'Verses written in Friar's Carse Hermitage,' 'Epistle to Robert Graham of

Fintry,' 'The Day Returns,' 'A Mother's Lament,' 'The Fall of the Leaf,'

'Auld Lang Syne,' 'The Poet's Progress,' 'Elegy on the Year 1788,' and

'Epistle to James Tennant.'

_30 Years Old._

Wrote many love-songs for Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, though busily

engaged in farming, and, in addition, a new Psalm for the Chapel of

Kilmarnock; a sketch in verse to Right Hon. C. J. Fox, 'The Wounded Hare,'

'The Banks of Nith,' 'John Anderson my Joe,' 'The Kirk of Scotland's

Alarm,' 'Caledonia,' 'The Battle of Sherramuir,' 'The Braes o'

Killiecrankie,' 'Farewell to the Highlands,' 'To Mary in Heaven,' 'Epistle

to Dr Blacklock,' and 'New Year's Day, 1790.'

_31 Years Old._

Found his farm 'a ruinous affair.' Accepted a position as an exciseman at

fifty pounds a year. Had to ride two hundred miles each week. Continued

writing love-songs for Johnson's Museum (without pay), and wrote in

addition, 'Tam o' Shanter,' 'Lament of Mary Queen of Scots,' and 'The

Banks of Doon.'

_32 Years Old._

Continued to write love-songs, among the most beautiful being 'Sweet

Afton' and 'Parting Song to Clarinda.' In addition, wrote 'Lament for

James, Earl of Glencairn,' 'On Glenriddell's Fox Breaking his Chain,'

'Poem on Pastoral Poetry,' 'Verses on the Destruction of the Woods near

Drumlanrig,' 'Second Epistle to Robert Graham of Fintry,' 'The Song of

Death,' and 'Poem on Sensibility.'

_33 Years Old._

Wrote many love-songs, among them 'The Lea Rig' and 'Highland Mary.' His

other poems were mainly election ballads. His love-songs were now written

mainly for Thomson's _National Songs and Melodies_. He still refused pay

for his songs.

_34 Years Old._

Still, notwithstanding his very busy life, he sent a continuous stream of

songs to Edinburgh. Other poems of the year were 'Sonnet Written on the

Author's Birthday,' 'Lord Gregory,' and 'Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled.'

In this year he moved to the house in which he died, and in which Jean

died thirty-eight years afterwards.

_35 Years Old._

In this year Burns, to supplement 'Scots, wha hae' (the greatest

bugle-song of freedom), wrote two grand poems on Liberty: 'The Ode to

Liberty' and 'The Tree of Liberty;' and 'Contented Wi' Little and Cantie

Wi' Mair.' In this year he declined an offer from the London _Morning

Chronicle_ to become a regular contributor to that paper.

_36 Years Old._

Love-songs, and election ballads in favour of his friend Mr Heron, were

his most numerous poems this year. In addition to other minor pieces he

wrote a fine poem to his friend, Alexander Cunningham, 'Does Haughty Gaul

Invasion Threat,' and the most triumphant combined interpretation of

democracy and brotherhood ever written, 'A Man's a Man for a' That.'

_37 Years Old._

Early in the year his health gave way, and he died, 21st July 1796. Though

apparently a strong man, it is reasonable to believe that he had a

constitutional tendency towards consumption. His father died from this

dread disease, and his grandmother (his mother's mother) died at

thirty-five from the same cause. Burns inherited his physical and

intellectual powers mainly from his mother. Both by heredity and

contagion, therefore, he was made susceptible to influences that develop

consumption. He continued to write poetry, chiefly love-songs, during his

illness. His last poem was written, nine days before his death, to Miss

Margaret Chalmers, for whom he had a reverent affection.

No reference has been made in this sketch of his development to the prose

written each year. Five hundred and thirty-four of his letters have been

published. They are written in a stately style, and most of them contain

philosophic discussions of religion, ethics, or democracy.

A shy, sensitive, retiring boy; a deep-thinking, persistently studying,

eloquent, still shy youth; a brilliant reasoner, a thinker ranking with

leaders in his neighbourhood, meeting each on equal terms, and easily

proving his superiority by his remarkable knowledge of each man's special

subject of study, and by his still more remarkable powers of independent

thinking and clear revelation of his thought in his young manhood, but

still at twenty-two too shy to propose to the first lover of his maturity;

always a reverent lover of Nature, whose mind saw God in beauty, in

dawn-gleam and eve-glow, in tree and flower, in river and mountain; he

studied, thought, and expressed his thoughts in exquisite poetry, and,

according to those who knew him best, in still richer and more captivating

conversation, until at twenty-seven he stood in the midst of the most

learned professors of Scotland and outclassed them all. No single

professor of the galaxy of culture in which he stood, modest and

dignified, could have spoken so wisely, so profoundly, so easily, and

with such graceful manner and charming eloquence on _so many subjects_ as

did Burns.

It is a marvel that grows greater the more we try to understand it, that a

boy who left school when he was nine years old, and, except for a few

weeks, did not go to school again; and who, from nine years of age to his

thirty-second year, was a steady farm-worker, with the exception of a

brief interval during which he was engaged publishing his poems; and was a

gauger from thirty-two to thirty-six, should have been able to write so

much immortal poetry and so much instructive prose in such a short time.

One of the most interesting of all the pictures of the lives of the

world's literary leaders is the picture of Robert Burns, after a day of

toil on the farm, walking from Mossgiel farm, when his evening meal was

over, two miles to his favourite seat in the woods on Ballochmyle estate,

and sitting there on the high bank of the Ayr in the long Scottish

gloaming, and often on in the moonlight, 'shut in with God,' revealing in

sublime form the visions that thrilled his soul. During the last few years

of his life he walked from his home to Lincluden Abbey ruins on his

favourite path beside the winding Nith to spend his gloaming hours alone,

and composed there some of his masterpieces.

Short was his life, but he lives on in the hearts of succeeding

generations. He lives on, too, in his permanent influence on religion,

freedom, and brotherhood.

THE END.

Edinburgh: Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited.

Footnotes:

[1] Dr Moore was the father of Sir John Moore, the British general who was

killed at Corunna in the Peninsular War.

[2] Her name was spelled Alison or Elison.

[3] One of John Murdoch's quotations used as a headline to be copied in

his copy-book.

[4] The lovers of Burns afterwards got permission to remove the monument

and remains of Highland Mary to a more suitable location.