# The Poetical Works of Robert Burns/Biographical Preface

BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE.
Robert Burns was born about two miles to the south of Ayr, in the neighborhood of Alloway Kirk and the Bridge of Doon, on the 25th January, 1759. The cottage, a clay one, had been constructed by his father, and a week after the poet's birth it gave way in a violent wind, and mother and child were carried at midnight to the shelter of a neighbor's dwelling.
When Burns became famous he wore, more however for ornament than use—like the second jacket of a hussar—a certain vague Jacobitism. Both in his verses and his letters he makes allusion to the constancy with which his ancestors followed the banner of the Stuarts, and to the misfortunes which their loyalty brought upon them. The family was a Kincardineshire one,—in which county, indeed, it can be traced pretty far back by inscriptions in churchyards, documents appertaining to leases, and the like,—and the poet's grandfather and uncles were out, it is said, in the Rebellion of 1715. When the title and estates of the Earl Marischal were forfeited on account of the uprising, Burns's grandfather seems to have been brought into trouble. He lost his farm, and his son came southward in search of employment. The poet's father, who spelt his name Burnes or Burness, and who was suspected of having a share in the Rebellion of 1745, came into the neighborhood of Edinburgh, where he obtained employment as a gardener. Afterwards he went into Ayrshire, where, becoming overseer to Mr. Ferguson of Doonholm, and leasing a few acres of land, he erected a house and brought home his wife, Agnes Brown, in December, 1757. Robert was the firstborn. Brain, hypochondria, and general superiority he inherited from his father; from his mother he drew his lyrical gift, his wit, his mirth. She had a fine complexion, bright dark eyes, cheerful spirits, and a memory stored with song and ballad—a love for which Robert drew in with her milk.
In 1766 William Burness removed to the farm of Mount Oliphant in the parish of Ayr; but the soil was sour and bitter, and on the death of Mr. Ferguson, to whom Mount Oliphant belonged, the management of the estate fell into the hands of a factor, of whom all the world has heard. Disputes arose between the official and the tenant. Harsh letters were read by the fireside at Mount Oliphant, and were remembered years afterwards, bitterly enough, by at least one of the listeners. Burness left his farm after an occupancy of six years, and removed to Lochlea, a larger and better one, in the parish of Torbolton. Here, however, an unfortunate difference arose between tenant and landlord as to the conditions of lease. Arbiters were chosen, and a decision was given in favor of the proprietor. This misfortune seems to have broken the spirit of Burness. He died of consumption on the 13th February, 1784, weary enough of his long strife with poverty and ungenial soils, but not before he had learned to take pride in the abilities of his eldest son, and to tremble for his passions.
Burness was an admirable specimen of the Scottish yeoman, or small farmer, of the last century; for peasant he never was, nor did he come of a race of peasants. In his whole mental build and training, he was superior to the people by whom he was surrounded. He had forefathers he could look back to; he had family traditions which ​he kept sacred. Hard-headed, industrious, religious, somewhat austere, he ruled his household with a despotism which affection and respect on the part of the ruled made light and easy. To the blood of the Burnesses a love of knowledge was native, as valor, in the old times, was native to the blood of the Douglases. The poet's grandfather built a school at Clockenhill in Kincardine, the first known in that part of the country. Burness was of the same strain, and he resolved that his sons should have every educational advantage his means could allow. To secure this he was willing to rise early and drudge late. Accordingly, Robert, when six years old, was sent to a school at Alloway Mill, and on the removal of the teacher a few months afterwards to another post, Burness, in conjunction with a few of his neighbors, engaged Mr. John Murdoch, boarding him in their houses by turns, and paying him a small sum of money quarterly. Mr. Murdock entered upon his duties, and had Robert and Gilbert for pupils. Under him they acquired reading, spelling, and writing; they were drilled in English grammar, taught to turn verse into prose, to substitute synonymous expressions for poetical words, and to supply ellipses. He also attempted to teach them a little church music, but with no great success. He seems to have taken to the boys, and to have been pleased with their industry and intelligence. Gilbert was his favorite on account of his gay spirits and frolicksome look. Robert was by comparison taciturn—distinctly stupid in the matter of psalmody—and his countenance was swarthy, serious, and grave.
Our information respecting the family circle at Mount Oliphant, more interesting now than that of any other contemporary Scottish family circle, is derived entirely from the reminiscences of the tutor, and of Gilbert and Robert themselves. And however we may value every trivial fact and hint, and attempt to make it a window of insight, these days, as they passed on, seemed dull and matter-of-fact enough to all concerned. Mr. Murdoch considered his pupils creditably diligent, but nowise remarkable. To Gilbert, these early years were made interesting when looked back upon in the light of his brother's glory. Of that period, Robert wrote a good deal at various times to various correspondents, when the world had become curious; but as in the case of all such writings, he unconsciously mixes the past with the present—looks back on his ninth year with the eyes of his thirtieth. He tells us that he was by no means a favorite with anybody; that though it cost the master some thrashings, "I made an excellent English scholar, and by the time I was ten or eleven years of age, I was a critic in substantives, verbs, and particles." Also we are told that in the family resided a certain old woman—Jenny Wilson by name, as research has discovered who had the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, etc., and that to the recital of these Robert gave attentive ear, unconsciously laying up material for future Tams-O-Shanter, and Addresses to the Deil. As for books, he had procured the Life of Hannibal, and the History of Sir William Wallace; the first of a classical turn, lent by Mr. Murdoch, the second, purely traditionary, the property of a neighboring blacksmith, constituting probably his entire secular library; and in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, he describes how the perusal of the latter moved him,—
"In those boyish days, I remember in particular being struck with that part of Wallace's story where these lines occur:
I chose a fine summer Sunday, the only day my line of life allowed, and walked half a dozen miles to pay my respects to the Leglen wood, with as much devout enthusiasm as ever pilgrim did to Loretto, and explored every den and dell where I could suppose my heroic countryman to have lodged."
When Mr. Murdock left Mount Oliphant, the education of the family fell on the father, who, when the boys came in from labor on the edge of the wintry twilight, lit his candle and taught them arithmetic. He also when engaged in work with his sons, directed the conversation to improving subjects. He got books for them from a book​society in Ayr; among which are named Derham's Physico- and Astro-Theology, and Ray's Wisdom of God. Stackhouse's History of the Bible was in the house, and from it Robert contrived to extract a considerable knowledge of ancient history. Mr. Murdoch sometimes visited the family, and brought books with him. On one occasion he read Titus Andronicus aloud at Mount Oliphant, and Robert's pure taste rose in a passionate revolt against its coarse cruelties and unspiritual horrors. When about fourteen years of age, he and his brother Gilbert were sent "week about during a summer quarter," to a parish-school two or three miles distant from the farm, to improve themselves in penmanship. Next year, about midsummer, Robert spent three weeks with his tutor Murdoch, who had established himself in Ayr. The first week was given to a careful revision of the English Grammar, the remaining fortnight was devoted to French, and on his return he brought with him the Adventures of Telemachus and a French Dictionary, and with these he used to work alone during his evenings. He also turned his attention to Latin, but does not seem to have made much progress therein, although in after life he could introduce a sentence or so of the ancient tongue to adorn his correspondence. By the time the family had left Mount Oliphant, he had torn the heart out of a good many books, among which were several theological works, some of a philosophical nature, a few novels, the Spectator, Shakspeare's, Pope's Homer, and above all, the Works of Allan Ramsay. These, with the Bible, a collection of English songs, and a collection of letters, were almost the only books he was acquainted with when he broke out in literature. No great library certainly, but he had a quick eye and ear, and all Ayrshire was an open page to him, filled with strange matter, which he only needed to read off into passionate love-song or blistering satire.
In his sixteenth year the family removed from Mount Oliphant to Lochlea. Here Robert and Gilbert were employed regularly on the farm, and received from their father 7l. per annum of wages. Up till now, Burns had led a solitary self-contained life, with no companionship save his own thoughts and what books he could procure, with no acquaintances save his father, his brother, and Mr. Murdoch. This seclusion was now about to cease. In his seventeenth year, "to give his manners a finish" he went to a country dancing school,—an important step in life for any young fellow, a specially important step for a youth of his years, heart, brain, and passion. In the Torbolton dancing school the outer world with its fascinations burst upon him. It was like attaining majority and freedom. It was like coming up to London from the provinces. Here he first felt the sweets of society, and could assure himself of the truthfulness of his innate sense of superiority. At the dancing school, he encountered other young rustics laudably ambitious of "brushing up their manners," and, what was of more consequence, he encountered their partners also. This was his first season, and he was as gay as a young man of fortune who had entered on his first London one. His days were spent in hard work, but the evenings were his own, and these he seems to have spent almost entirely in sweethearting on his own account, or on that of others. His brother tells us that he was almost constantly in love. His innamoratas were the freckled beauties who milked cows and hoed potatoes; but his passionate imagination attired them with the most wonderful graces. He was Antony, and he found a Cleopatra—for whom the world were well lost—in every harvest-field. For some years onward he did not read much; indeed, his fruitful reading, with the exception of Fergusson's Poems, of which hereafter, was accomplished by the time he was seventeen; his leisure being occupied in making love to rustic maids, where his big black eyes could come into play. Perhaps, on the whole, looking to poetic outcome, he could not have employed himself to better purpose.
He was now rapidly getting perilous cargo on board. The Torbolton dancing school introduced him to unlimited sweethearting, and his nineteenth summer, which he spent in the study of mensuration, at the school at Kirkoswald, made him acquainted with the interior of taverns, and with "scenes of swaggering riot." He also made the acquaintance of certain smugglers who frequented that bare and deeply-coved coast, and seems to have been attracted by their lawless ways and speeches. It is characteristic, that in ​the midst of his studies, he was upset by the charms of a country girl who lived next door to the school. While taking the sun's altitude, he observed her walking in the adjoining garden, and Love put Trigonometry to flight. During his stay at Kirkoswald, he had read Shenstone and Thomson, and on his return home he maintained a literary correspondence with his schoolfellows, and pleased his vanity with the thought that he could turn a sentence with greater skill and neatness than any one of them.
For some time it had been Burns's habit to take a small portion of land from his father for the purpose of raising flax; and, as he had now some idea of settling in life, it struck him that if he could add to his farmer-craft the accomplishment of flax-dressing, it might not be unprofitable. He accordingly went to live with a relation of his mother's in Irvine—Peacock by name—who followed that business, and with him for some time he worked with diligence and success. But, while welcoming the New Year morning after a bacchanalian fashion, the premises took fire, and his schemes were laid waste. Just at this time, too—to complete his discomfiture—he had been jilted by a sweetheart, "who had pledged her soul to meet him in the field of matrimony." In almost all the foul weather which Burns encountered, a woman may be discovered flitting through it like a stormy petrel. His residence at Irvine was a loss, in a worldly point of view, but there he ripened rapidly, both spiritually and poetically. At Irvine, as at Kirkoswald, he made the acquaintance of persons engaged in contraband traffic, and he tells us that a chief friend of his "spoke of illicit love with the levity of a sailor—which, hitherto, I had regarded with horror. There his friendship did me a mischief." About this time, too, John Rankine—to whom he afterwards addressed several of his epistles—introduced him to St. Mary's Lodge, in Torbolton, and he became an enthusiastic Freemason. Of his mental states and intellectual progress, we are furnished with numerous hints. He was a member of a debating club at Torbolton, and the question for Hallowe'en still exists in his handwriting. It is as follows: "Suppose a young man, bred a farmer, but without any fortune, has it in his power to marry either of two women, the one a girl of large fortune, but neither handsome in person, nor agreeable in conversation, but who can manage the household affairs of a farm well enough; the other of them a girl every way agreeable in person, conversation, and behavior, but without any fortune: which of them shall he choose?" Not a bad subject for a collection of clever rustics to sharpen their wits upon! We may surmise that Burns found himself as much superior in debate to his companions at the Bachelor's Club as he had previously found himself superior to his Kirkoswald correspondents in letter-writing. The question for the Hallowe'en discussion is interesting mainly in so far as it indicates what kind of discussions were being at that time conducted in his own brain; and also how habitually, then and afterwards, his thinking grew out of his personal condition and surroundings. A question of this kind interested him more than whether, for instance, Cromwell deserved well of his country. Neither now nor afterwards did he trouble himself much about far-removed things. He cared for no other land than Caledonia. He did not sing of Helen's beauty, but of the beauty of the country girl he loved. His poems were as much the product of his own farm and its immediate neighborhood, as were the clothes and shoes he wore, the oats and turnips he grew. Another aspect of him may be found in the letter addressed to his father three days before the Irvine flax-shop went on fire. It is infected with a magnificent hypochondriasis. It is written as by a Bolingbroke—by a man who had played for a mighty stake, and who, when defeated, could smile gloomily and turn fortune's slipperiness into parables. And all the while the dark philosophy and the rolling periods flowed from the pen of a country lad, whose lodgings are understood to have cost a shilling per week, and "whose meal was nearly out, but who was going to borrow till he got more." One other circumstance attending his Irvine life deserves notice—his falling in with a copy of Fergusson's Poems. For some time previously he had not written much, but Fergusson stirred him with emulation, and on his removal to Mossgiel, shortly afterwards, he in a single winter poured forth more immortal verse—measured by mere quantity—than almost any poet in the same space of time, either before his day or after.
Three months before the death of the elder Burness, Robert and Gilbert rented the ​farm of Mossgiel in the parish of Mauchline. The farm consisted of 119 acres, and its rent was 90l. After the father's death the whole family removed thither. Burns was now twenty-four years of age, and come to his full strength of limb, brain, and passion. As a young farmer on his own account, he mixed more freely than hitherto in the society of the country-side, and in a more independent fashion. He had the black eyes which Sir Walter saw afterwards in Edinburgh and remembered to have "glowed." He had wit, which convulsed the Masonic meetings, and a rough-and-ready sarcasm with which he flayed his foes. Besides all this, his companionship at Irvine had borne its fruits. He had become the father of an illegitimate child, had been rebuked for his transgression before the congregation, and had, in revenge, written witty and wicked verses on the reprimand and its occasion, to his correspondent Ran- kine-verses which, to his credit be said, he did not give to the world. And when we note here that he came into fierce collision with at least one section of the clergy of his country, all the conditions have been indicated which went to make up Burns the man, and Burns the poet. - - Ayrshire was at this period a sort of theological bear-garden. The more important clergymen of the district were divided into New Lights and Auld Lights; they wrangled in Church Courts, they wrote and harangued against each other; and, as the adherents of the one party or the other made up almost the entire population, and as in such disputes Scotchmen take an extraordinary interest, the county was set very prettily by the ears. The Auld Light divines were strict Calvinists, laying great stress on the doctrine of Justification by Faith, and inclined generally to exercise spir- itual authority after a somewhat despotic fashion. The New Light divines were less dogmatic, less inclined to religious gloom and acerbity, and they possessed, on the whole, more literature and knowledge of the world. Burns became deeply interested in the theological warfare, and at once ranged himself on the liberal side. From his being a poet this was to have been expected, but various circumstances concurred in making his partisanship more than usually decided. The elder Burness was, in his ways of thinking, a New Light, and his religious notions he impressed carefully on his children - his son consequently, in taking up the ground he did, was acting in accord- ance with received ideas and with early training. Besides, Burns's most important friends at this period — Mr. Gavin Hamilton, from whom he held his farm on a sub- lease, and Mr. Aitken, to whom the Cotter's Saturday Night was dedicated - were in the thick of the contest on the New Light side. Mr. Hamilton was engaged in per- sonal dispute with the Rev. Mr. Auld. - the clergyman who rebuked Burns and Mr. Aitken had the management of the case of Dr. MacGill who was cited before the local Church Courts, on a charge of heterodoxy. Hamilton and Aitken held a certain posi- tion in the county - they were full of talent, they were hospitable, they were witty in themselves, and could appreciate wit in others. They were of higher social rank than Burns's associates had hitherto been, they had formed a warm friendship for him, and it was not unnatural that he should become their ally, and serve their cause with what weapons he had. Besides, wit has ever been a foe to the Puritan. Cavaliers fight with song and jest, as well as with sword and spear, and sometimes more effectively. Hudibras and Worcester are flung into opposite scales, and make the balance even. From training and temperament, Burns was an enemy of the Auld Light section; con- scious of his powers, and burning to distinguish himself, he searched for an opportu- nity as anxiously as ever did Irishman for a head at Donnybrook, and when he found it, he struck, without too curiously inquiring into the rights and wrongs of the matter. At Masonic meetings, at the tables of his friends, at fairs, at gatherings round church- doors on Sundays, he argued, talked, joked, flung out sarcasms — - to be gathered up, repeated, and re-repeated-and maddened in every way the wild-boar of orthodoxy by the javelins of epigram. The satirical opportunity at length came, and Burns was not slow to take advantage of it. Two Auld Light divines, the Rev. John Russel, and the Rev. Alex. Moodie, quarrelled about their respective parochial boundaries, and the question came before the Presbytery for settlement. In the court-when Burns was present - the reverend gentlemen indulged in coarse personal altercation, ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/22 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/23 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/24 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/25 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/26 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/27 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/28 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/29 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/30 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/31 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/32 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/33 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/34 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/35 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/36 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/37 ​This—with the exception of the actual close - was the darkest period in Burns' life. In a short time the horizon cleared a little. The quarrel with Mrs. Riddel was healed, and in a short time books and poems were exchanged between them as of yore. He appears also to have had again some hope of obtaining a supervisorship—the mirage that haunted his closing years. Meanwhile political feeling had become less bitter; and, in 1795, he exhibited his friendliness to the institutions of the country by entering himself one of a corps of volunteers which was raised in Dumfries, and by composing the spirited patriotic song, Does haughty Gaul invasion threat? This song became at once popular; and it showed the nation that the heart of the writer was sound at the core, that he hated anarchy and tyranny alike, and wished to steer a prudent middle course. Better days were dawning; but by this time the hardships of his youth, his constant anxieties, his hoping against hope, and his continual passionate stress and tumult of soul, began to tell on a frame that was originally powerful. In a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, in the beginning of the year, we have, under his own hand, the first warning of failing strength. " What a transient business is life," he writes. "Very lately I was a boy; but t'other day I was a young man; and I already begin to feel the rigid fibre and stiffening joints of old age coming fast over my frame." In spite of breaking health, he attended his Excise duties, and the packets of songs were sent regularly from Dumfries to Edinburgh. In the songs there was no symptom of ache or pain; in these his natural vigor was in no wise abated. The dew still hung, diamond-like, upon the thorn. Love was still lord of all. On one occasion he went to a party at the Globe Tavern, where he waited late, and on his way home, heavy with liquor, he fell asleep in the open air. The result, in his weakened state of body, was disastrous. He was attacked by rheumatic fever, his appetite began to fail, his black eyes lost their lustre, his voice became tremulous and hollow. His friends hoped that, if he could endure the cold spring months, the summer warmth would revive him; but summer came and brought no recovery. He was now laid aside from his official work. During his illness he was attended by Miss Jessie Lewars, a sister of his friend Lewars—"a fellow of uncommon merit; indeed, by far the cleverest fellow I have met in this part of the world"—and her kindness the dying poet repaid by the only thing he was rich enough to give-a song of immortal sweetness. His letters at this time are full of his disease, his gloomy prospects, his straitened circumstances. In July he went to Brow, a sea-bathing village on the Solway, where Mrs. Riddel was then residing in weak health, and there the friends,—for all past bitternesses were now forgotten,- had an interview. "Well, Madam, have you any commands for the other world?" was Burns's greeting. He talked of his approaching decease calmly, like one who had grown so familiar with the idea that it had lost all its terror. His residence on the Solway was not productive of benefit: he was beyond all aid from sunshine and the saline breeze. On the 7th July, he wrote Mr. Cunningham, urging him to use his influence with the Commissioners of Excise to grant him his full salary. " If they do not grant it me," he concludes, "I must lay my account with an exit truly en pöete; if I die not of disease, I must perish with hunger." On the 10th July, he wrote his brother Gilbert; and Mrs. Dunlop, who had become unaccountably silent, two days after. On this same 12th July, he addressed the following letter to his cousin:—
"My dear Cousin,— When you offered me money assistance, little did I think I should want it so soon. A rascal of a haberdasher, to whom I owe a considerable bill, taking it into his bead that I am dying, has commenced a process against me, and will infallibly put my emaciated body into jail. Will you be so good as to accommodate me, and that by return of post, with ten pounds? Oh, James! did you know the pride of my heart, you would feel doubly for me! Alas! I am not used to beg. The worst of it is, my health was coming about finely. You know, and my physician assured me, that melancholy and low spirits are half my disease—guess, then, my horror since this business began. If I had it settled, I would be, I think, quite well, in manner. How shall I use the language to you ?—oh, do not disappoint me! but strong necessity's curst command. "Forgive me for once more mentioning by return of post-save me from the horrors of a jail. ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/39 ​Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/40 ​BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE.
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mare "Maggie" as he would to a comrade, who had shared with him his struggles, toils, and triumphs. The poetry of Burns flows into a wintry world, like a tepid gulf- stream—mitigating harsh climates, breathing genial days, carrying with it spring-time and the cuckoo's note.
Of his humor again — which is merely his love laughing and playing antics in very extravagance of its joy — what can be said, except that it is the freshest, most original, most delightful in the world? What a riot of fun in Tarn O' Shanter ; what strange co-mixture of mirth and awf ulness in Death and Dr. Hornbook ; what extravaganza in the Address to a Haggis ! To Burns's eye the world was dark enough, usually ; but on the gala-days and carnivals of his spirit Mirth rules the hour, ragged Poverty dances all the lighter for his empty pockets, Death himself grins as he is poked in the lean ribs. And if, as is said, from the sweetest wine you can extract the sourest vinegar, one can fancy into what deadly satire this love will congeal itself, when it becomes hate. Burns hates his foe — be it man or doctrine — as intensely as he loves his mistress. Holy Willie 's Prayer is a satirical crucifixion — slow, lingering, inexorable. He hated Hypocrisy, he tore its holy robe, and for the outrage Hypocrisy did not forgive him while he lived, nor has it yet learned to forgive him.
If we applaud the Roman Emperor who found Rome brick and left it marble, what shall we say of the man who found the songs of his country indelicate and left them pure — who made wholesome the air which the spirit and the affections breathe ? And Burns did this. He drove immodesty from love, and coarseness from humor. And not only did he purify existing Scottish song; he added to it all that it has of best and rarest. Since his day, no countryman of his, whatever may be his mood, need be visited by a sense of solitariness, or ache with a pent-up feeling. If he is glad, he will find a song as merry as himself ; if sad, he will find one that will sigh with his own woe. In Burns's songs, love finds an exquisite companionship ; independence a backer and second; conviviality a roaring table, and the best fellows round it; patriotism a deeper love of country, and a gayer scorn of death than even its own. And in so adding to, and purifying Scottish song, Burns has conferred the greatest benefit on his countrymen that it is in the power of a poet to confer.