BURNS,
a surname rendered for ever famous by its being that of the nation poet
of Scotland, for the origin of which see BURNES.
BURNS, ROBERT,
the most distinguished of the poets of Scotland, was born January 25,
1759, in a small clay-built cottage, about two miles from the town of
Ayr. His father, William Burnes, a man of superior understanding and
uncommon worth, was the son of a farmer in the county of Kincardine; and
owing to the reduced circumstances of his family, was obliged in the
nineteenth year of his age, with Robert his elder brother, to quit the
place of his nativity, to push his fortune in some other part of
Scotland. “On the top of a hill” says Dr. Irving, “in the vicinity of
their native hamlet, the two youthful adventurers separated from each
other, in an agony of mind which the uncertainty of their future destiny
could not fail to produce.” On leaving Kincardineshire, William Burnes
repaired to Edinburgh, and in the vicinity of that city was employed as
a gardener for several years. He afterwards removed to Ayrshire, where
he was engaged in a similar capacity by the laird of Fairly. In the
service of this gentleman he continued for two years, and was next
employed by Mr. Crawford of Doonside. From Dr. Campbell, a physician in
Ayr, he afterwards took a perpetual lease of seven acres of land, with
the intention of converting the ground into a public garden and nursery.
Here he erected with his own hands that little clay-built cottage in
which his poet-son was born, and to which, in after times, crowds of
enthusiastic “pilgrims from many lands” were to repair to do homage to
the genius of Scotland’s bard.
Portrait of
Robert Burns
In December 1757 William Burnes married Agnes Brown, who bore him six
children, and of these the poet was the eldest. Before he had reduced
his ground to a proper state of cultivation, he was engaged as overseer
and gardener to Mr. Ferguson, a gentleman who had purchased the estate
of Doonholm, and in consequence he seems to have abandoned his project
of commencing as a nurseryman.
In the sixth year of his age, at which time he could read tolerably
well, Robert was sent, with his younger brother Gilbert, to a private
school at Alloway Mill, about a mile distant from his father’s house.
His first teacher’s name was Campbell, but that gentleman, within the
space of a few months, having been appointed master of the workhouse at
Ayr, a young man of the name of John Murdoch was engaged by the poet’s
father and some other cottagers, to supply his place, boarding with each
family in turn. By Mr. Murdoch, who afterwards wrote an excellent
account of the early part of his life, he was instructed in English
grammar. Before he was nine years old, his propensity for reading was so
ardent that he perused with enthusiasm every book that came in his way.
His taste for poetry and romantic fiction was first inspired, as he
tells us himself, by the chimney-corner tales of an old woman in his
father’s family, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and
superstition, whose memory was plentifully stored with stories of the
marvellous. “She had, I suppose,” says Burns, writing in 1787, “the
largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils,
ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies,
elf-candles, dead-lights, raiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants,
enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the
latent seeds of poetry; but had so strong an effect on my imagination
that, to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp
look-out in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical
than I am in such matters, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy to
shake off these idle terrors.”
When about thirteen years of age, to improve his writing, his father
sent him to the parish school of Dalrymple, week about with his brother,
during a summer quarter. In 1772, Mr. Murdoch, being one of five
candidates, was appointed master of the English school at Ayr, and
during the following year Burns went to board and lodge at his house,
for farther instruction in the principles of grammar. In ten days after
he was called home, to assist his father with the harvest. In a short
time, however, he returned to Ayr, where he remained only another
fortnight, but during that period he commenced learning the French
language, under Mr. Murdoch. On his return home, he continued the study
of it, during his leisure hours, and made himself so proficient in it,
that he could read and understand any French author in prose. His
fondness for French phrases was shown by his frequently using them in
his letters at this period of his life. He next began the Latin with the
assistance of Mr. Robertson, school-master at Ayr, and attempted it at
home without the aid of a master, but found it so difficult to acquire
that he soon abandoned it. He subsequently spent a summer quarter at the
parish school of Kirkoswald, where he acquired some knowledge in
mensuration, surveying, dialling, &c., and this, with the brief interval
that he spent at Dalrymple, was all the school education he ever
received. In his letter to Dr. Moore he expresses himself as having, by
reading, about this period of his youth, the lives of Hannibal and of
Wallace, been excited towards a military life by the former, and been
filled with strong patriotic emotions by the latter. At an early period
he met with the works of Allan Ramsay, and the poems of Robert
Fergusson, written chiefly in the Scottish dialect, which tended to give
his genius a bias towards poetry, in which he soon surpassed them both.
But in knowledge of a different sort, the knowledge of human nature, he
soon became considerably initiated. At Kirkoswald, a intercourse with
parties following a contraband trade, an insight into the vices and
follies of mankind, and learned but too well to imitate and adopt them,
and what is worse to take pride in them. He formed an attachment with a
young girl of the village, of which he speaks as having greatly agitated
him at the time, but of which no permanent result appears afterwards. “I
returned home from Kirkoswald,” says he, “very considerably improved. My
reading was enlarged with the very important addition of Thomson’s and
Shenstone’s works. I had seen human nature in a new phasis, and I
engaged several of my schoolfellows to keep up a literary correspondence
with me. This improved me in composition. I had met with a collection of
letters by the wits of Queen Anne’s reign, and I pored over them most
devoutly. I kept copies of any of my own letters that pleased me, and a
comparison between them and the composition of most of my correspondents
flattered my vanity. I carried this whim so far that, though I had not
three farthings’ worth of business in the world, yet almost every post
brought me as many letters as if I had been a broad plodding son of the
daybook and ledger.”
In the year 1766 his father obtained from Mr. Ferguson a lease of the
farm of Mount Oliphant, in the parish of Ayr, that gentleman advancing
him at the same time one hundred pounds to stock it with. Here, after
the day’s labour was over, he instructed the family himself in
arithmetic and the principles of religion. At this place he continued to
struggle for the support of his family for the space of eleven years.
The soil of the farm was extremely barren, and this, with the loss of
cattle and other accidents, involved them in great poverty. The whole
family were in consequence obliged to toil early and late; and Robert,
the eldest, thrashed in the barn at thirteen years of age, and at
fifteen was the principal labourer on the farm. “This kind of life,” he
says, “the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a
galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth year, a little before which
period I first committed the sin of rhyme. You know our country custom
of coupling a man and woman together as partners in the labours of
harvest. In my fifteenth autumn, my partner was a bewitching creature a
year younger than myself. I did not know,” he adds afterwards, in
language which portrays a juvenile passion so truly that it may serve
for all emotions of a like nature in every human being, – “I did not
know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when
returning in the evening from our labours; why the tones of her voice
made my heartstrings thrill like an Aeolian harp; and, particularly, why
my pulse beat such a furious ratan, when I looked and fingered over her
little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her
other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; and it was her
favourite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in
rhyme.” A Miss E., to whom he seems to have been seriously devoted,
escaped immortality by jilting him. Her very name is unknown; but he
seems pretty soon to have got over the mortification to his feelings
caused by this event. The object of his most fervent attachment,
however, was mary Campbell, a simple Highland girl, who was dairymaid at
Colonel Montgomery’s house of Coilsfield. He intended to marry her, but
she died at Greenock, on her return from a visit to her relations in
Argyleshire. Their last parting on the banks of the Ayr is described in
beautiful language in his poem, beginning –
“Ye banks, and braes, and streams around
The castle of Montgomery.”
The
address ‘To Mary in Heaven,’ written on the anniversary of her death, is
one of the most exquisite of his poems. In 1777 his father removed to
Lochlea, a farm in the parish of Tarbolton, where burns continued from
his 17th to his 24th year.
In the year 1780 he formed a kind of literary institution, called the
Bachelor’s Club, in a small public house in the village of Tarbolton,
consisting of himself, his brother Gilbert, and other young men of the
same condition of life, amongst whom David Sillar, who himself published
a volume of poems in the Scottish dialect, and who is also known from
two poetical epistles addressed to him by Burns, was afterwards
admitted. The laws and regulations were furnished by Burns, and the last
one in particular, drawn up by him, shows the characteristics of his
mind at that period. It declares that every member “must be a professed
lover of one or more of the female sex,” and that none “whose only will
is to heap up money” can be admitted into membership. This club, being
soon deprived of its most powerful member, was not long preserved from
dissolution; but he established a similar institution on his removal
shortly afterward to Mauchline, which still subsists, and appeared in
the list of subscribers to the first or Kilmarnock edition of his works.
Before leaving Tarbolton, he had become a free mason and attended two
lodges.
He and his brother Gilbert had for sometime held a small portion of land
from their father, on which they raised flax; in disposing of which
Burns formed the idea of commencing flax-dresser, and in 1781 he joined
a person in the town of Irvine, to learn the trade. About six months
thereafter the shop accidently took fire, while he and some of his
companions were ‘giving a welcome carousal to the new year,’ when the
whole stock was consumed, and he was left without a sixpence.
Unfortunately his associates at Irvine were not of a character
calculated to increase his reverence for virtue, or to strengthen in his
mind those pious lessons which had been early instilled into it by his
parents. Among other intimates he numbered a young sailor of a manly and
independent spirit, but whose laxity of moral principles exerted a very
deleterious effect upon his mind and conduct. “I had pride before,” he
says, “but he taught it to flow in proper channels. His knowledge of the
world was vastly superior to mine, and I was all attention to learn. He
was the only man I ever saw who was a greater fool than myself where
woman was the presiding star; but he spoke of illicit love with the
levity of a sailor, which hitherto I had regarded with horror. Here his
friendship did me a mischief, and the consequence was, that soon after I
resumed the plough, I wrote the ‘Poet’s Welcome’” – that is, the verses
entitled “Rob the Rhymer’s Welcome to his Bastard Child.’
Meantime, a misunderstanding had arisen between his father and his
landlord, respecting the conditions of the lease of the farm of Lochlea,
and the dispute was referred to artibrators, whose decision involved his
affairs in ruin, and he died soon afterwards on the 13th
February 1784.
For the benefit of the family, the two brothers, Robert and Gilbert, now
took the farm of Mossgiel, near Mauchline, belonging to the earl of
Loudon, on a sublease from Mr. Gavin Hamilton, writer in that town. This
farm consisted of a hundred and eighteen acres, and was rented at ninety
pounds a-year. Each member of the family gave his assistance towards the
stocking and management of the farm, and was allowed a proportion of the
produce in the form of stipulated wages. Robert’s amounted to the annual
sum of seven pounds, and such was his frugality at this period, that,
according to the statement of his brother Gilbert, his expenditure
never, during the four years of their residence at Mossgiel, was allowed
to exceed his income. “The four years,” says Mr. Lockhart, in his Life
of the poet, “during which Burns resided on this cold and ungrateful
farm of Mossgiel, were the most important of his life. It was then that
his genius developed its highest energies; on the works produced in
these years his fame was first established, and must ever continue
mainly to rest; it was then also that his personal character came out in
all its brightest lights, and in all but its darkest shadows; and
indeed, frm the commencement of this period, the history of the man may
be traced, step by step, in his own immortal writings. Burns now began
to know that nature had meant him for a poet; and diligently, though as
yet in secret, he laboured in what he felt to be his destined vocation.
Gilbert continued for some time to be his chief, often indeed his only
confidant; and anything more interesting and delightful than this
excellent man’s account of the manner in which the poems included in the
first of his brother’s publications were composed, is certainly not to
be found in the annals of literary history.”
While at Mossgiel he became acquainted with Jean Armour, who afterwards
became his wife. She was the daughter of a respectable man, a
master-mason in the village of Mauchline, and his first meeting with her
was characteristic. Burns was shooting by the river side, and Miss
Armour, described as then “a bonny lively lass of seventeen, with a
piercing black eye, a jimp waist, and a foot and ankle cast in the most
perfect mould,” was washing clothes in the Scottish fashion, and lilting
a Scottish song. The poet’s dog ran over the clothes in the green, and
the laughing damsel threw a stone at him. “If you liked me you would
like my dog,” said Burns; – and from this simple introduction an
intimacy took place which had an important effect on the future
happiness of both. Burns at this time is represented to have been “a
tall, course-featured young man, with a flashing eye, and great
colloquial powers, frank and affable, and a heart extremely susceptible
to tender emotions.” Such a youth was a dangerous lover for a simple
country maiden like Jean Armour, and she soon found herself in a state
which could no longer be concealed. At this time the circumstances of
the poet were not in a condition to permit of his marrying. The farming
speculation in which he and the rest of the family were engaged had
utterly failed, and he had resigned his share in the lease, which he
tells us was only nominally his. He was anxious, however, to afford the
only reparation in his power to Miss Armour, and agreed to make a legal
declaration of their having been privately married, and afterwards
embark for the West Indies to push his fortune. But to this, her father,
with whom she was a great favourite, would not agree. He had not
previously suspected her real situation, but on being informed of their
marriage, his distress was so great that he fainted. He desired his
daughter to cancel the marriage-lines with which Burns had presented
her, and in the anguish of her heart she obeyed. Burns, on his part,
“offered.” says his brother gilbert, “to stay at home and provide for
his wife and family by his daily labours. Even this offer they did not
approve of; for humble as Miss Armour’s station was, and great though
her imprudence had been, she still, in the eyes of her partial parents,
might look to a better connexion than that with my friendless and
unhappy brother, at that time without house of biding-place.” In the
distraction of his mind, he wished to leave the country as soon as he
could, and accordingly he entered into an agreement with a Dr. Douglas,
to go out to Jamaica as an assistant overseer, clerk, or bookkeeper on
his estate. He had not, however, sufficient money to defray the expenses
of the voyage, and the vessel in which Dr. Douglas was to procure a
passage for him was not expected to sail for some time. To procure a
little money to assist him before leaving his native land, he was
advised by Mr. Gavin Hamilton to publish his poems by subscription. This
was the crisis of his fate – the turning-point in his history. The
suggestion was immediately acted upon. Subscription-bills were issued,
and the printing of his poems commenced at Kilmarnock, his preparations
going on at the same time for his voyage to Jamaica, a voyage which was
never to take place. “I weighed my productions,” says Burns, “as
impartially as was in my power. I was pretty confident my poems would
meet with some applause; but at the worst, the roar of the Atlantic
would deafen the voice of censure, and the novelty of West Indian scenes
make me forget neglect. I threw off six hundred copies, of which I had
got subscriptions for about three hundred and fifty. My vanity was
highly gratified by the reception I met with from the public; and
besides I pocketed, all expenses deducted, nearly twenty pounds. This
sum came very seasonably, as I was thinking of indenting myself, for
want of money to procure my passage. As soon as I was master of nine
guineas, the price of wafting me to the torrid zone I took a steerage
passage in the first ship that was to sail from the Clyde.” He describes
himself as skulking at this time from covert to covert, under all the
terrors of a jail, as Jean Armour having become the mother of twins, her
father had sent the sheriff officers to apprehend him and force him to
find security for the maintenance of his twin children, and the parish
officers were also after him on the same grounds, so that he was
literally hunted like a partridge on the mountains. But the day-dawn was
at hand which was to scatter the clouds around his path, and light him
on his onward way to immortality.
His volume of poems was published at Kilmarnick in 1786, under the title
of ‘Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect,’ and immediately took hold of
the national mind. “No sooner had the volume appeared,” says the Ettrick
Shepherd, in his characteristic memoir of Burns, “than old and young,
grave and gay, high and low, leaned and ignorant, were alike delighted,
agitated, and transported. Shepherds, ploughboys, and maid-servants
cheerfully gave the last savings of their penny fee, to purchase the
works of Robert Burns, and many protested that they would have given the
same sum to have seen the man who made them laugh, cry, or feel with
regard to all things, past, present, and to come, as he listed.” The
first impression being speedily disposed of, his friends advised him to
print a second, but his printer at Kilmarnock declined to risk another
edition, unless the poet advanced the price of the paper, which he was
altogether unable to do. In this emergency, Mr. Ballantyne, provost of
Ayr, generously offered to advance the requisite sum, but ere this,
Burns, harassed and impatient to be gone, had bidden farewell to his
friends, and sent off his chest by night, for fear of its being
arrested, to Greenock, intending himself to follow in a few days, for
the purpose of embarking for Jamaica. He had also composed the last song
he thought he should ever measure in Caledonia, ‘The gloomy night is
gathering fast,’ when his course was suddenly changed, and a bright but
all too brief gleam of prosperity shone out dazzlingly on the head and
the fortunes of Robert Burns. Before leaving Scotland, as he thought,
for ever, he sent a collection of his poems, including several that were
not published till many years afterwards, to Mrs. General Stewart of
Stair, from the possession of whose grandson they passed into a private
hand, and were made known to the public in 1852. The collection is
curious as showing how much the pieces were afterwards improved by
revision.
A friend had, in the meantime, been secretly exerting himself on his
behalf, and at the twelfth hour, ere its shadow had for ever passed from
the dial, his exertions were crowned with success. The Rev. Dr. Laurie,
minister of Loudon, who had been very kind to Burns, had sent a copy of
his poems to Dr. Blacklock of Edinburgh, the amiable blind poet and
divine, whom Dr. Johnson, in his visit to Scotland, eleven years before,
had “beheld with reverence.” that gentleman, in acknowledging the
volume, highly commended the poems, and concluded his letter with these
words: – “It has been told me by a gentleman to whom I showed the
performances, and who sought a copy with diligence and ardour, that the
whole impression is already exhausted. It were therefore much to be
wished, for the sake of the young man, that a second edition, more
numerous than the former, could immediately be printed, as it appears
certain that its intrinsic merit and the exertion of the author’s
friends might give it a more universal circulation than any thing of the
kind which has been published within my memory.” On receiving Dr.
Blacklock’s letter, Dr. Laurie immediately sent it off by express to
Gavin Hamilton, who himself rode after the bard, and delivered it into
his hand. Burns immediately set out for Edinburgh, where he arrived in
November 1786.
Some of his biographers, and amongst others Dr. Irving and Professor
Wilson, the latter in his admirable vindication of the poet, have stated
that his first journey to Edinburgh was performed on foot. But this is
not correct, as appears by a letter from Mr. Archibald Prentice, editor
of the Manchester Times, to the professor, dated March 8, 1841. The
father of that gentleman, a farmer in Covington Mains, and a subscriber
for twenty copies of the Kilmarnock edition of the poems, had been
introduced to the poet, and it was arranged, he says, “that Burns
should, on his journey to Edinburgh, make the farm-house at Covington
Mains his resting-place for the first night. All the farmers in the
parish had read with delight the poet’s then published works, and were
anxious to see him. They were all asked to meet him at a late dinner,
and the signal of his arrival was to be a white sheet attached to a
pitch-fork, and put on the top of a corn-stack in the barn-yard. The
parish is a beautiful amphitheatre, with the Clyde winding through it,
with Wellbrae Hill to the west, Tinto and the Culter Fells to the south,
and the pretty, green, conical hill, Quothquan Law, to the east. My
father’s stack-yard, lying in the centre, was seen from every farmhouse
in the parish. At length, Burns arrived, mounted on a ‘pownie,’ borrowed
of Mr. Dalrymple, near Ayr. Instantly the white flag was hoisted, and as
instantly were seen the farmers issuing from their houses and converging
to the point of meeting. A glorious evening, or rather night which
borrowed something from the morning, followed, and the conversation of
the poet confirmed and increased the admiration created by his writings.
On the following morning he breakfasted with a large party at the next
farm-house, tenanted by James Stodart, brother to the Stodarts, the
piano-forte-makers of London; took lunch, also with a large party, at
the Bank, in the parish of Carnwath, with John Stodart, my mother’s
father, brother to the late Robert Stodart, of Queen Street in your
ancient and magnificent town; and rode into Edinburgh that evening on
the ‘pownie,’ which he returned to the owner in a few days afterwards by
John Sampson, the brother of the immortalized ‘Tam.’ Mr. Sampson took
with him a letter to Mr. Reid, in which the poet expressed the great
pleasure he had experienced in meeting his friends at Covington.
“My father was exactly the sort of man to draw forth all the higher
powers of Burns’ mind. He combined physical with mental strength in an
extraordinary degree; had a great deal of practical knowledge; had read
and thought much; had a high relish for manly poetry; much benevolence;
much indignation at oppression, which nobody dared to exercise within
his reach; and no mean conversational powers. Such was the person to
appreciate Burns, ay, and to reverence the may who penned ‘The Cottar’s
Saturday Night.’ and, accordingly, though a strictly religious and moral
man himself, he always maintained that the virtues of the poet greatly
predominated over his faults. I once heard him exclaim, with hot wrath,
when somebody was quoting from an apologist, ‘What! Do they apologise
for him! One half of his good, and all his bad, divided among a score o’
them, would make them a’ better men.’
“When a lad of seventeen, in the year 1809, I resided for a short time
in Ayrshire, in the hospitable house of my father’s friend, Reid, and
surveyed, with a strange interest, such visitors as had known Burns. I
soon learned how to anticipate their representations of his character.
The men of strong minds and strong feelings were invariable in their
expressions of admiration; but the prosy, consequential bodies all
disliked him as exceedingly dictatorial.”
His name had reached Edinburgh before him, and he was now caressed by
all ranks. In the ninety-seventh number of the ‘Lounger,’ a weekly
periodical then published at Edinburgh, Mr. Henry Mackenzie inserted ‘An
account of Robert Burns, the Ayrshire ploughman, with extracts from his
poems,’ which tended still farther to extend his fame. In Ayrshire he
had known Mr. Dugald Stewart, professor of moral philosophy in the
university of Edinburgh, and had dined with him at his seat of Catrine,
and by Mr. Alexander Dalzell he had been introduced to the earl of
Glencairn, of whose generous friendship he always spoke in enthusiastic
terms. From Dr. Laurie he carried a letter of introduction to Dr.
Blacklock, who had been the means of inducing him to visit Edinburgh. By
the exertions of such influential friends as these, he was speedily
introduced into the literary and fashionable circles of the metropolis,
and he did no discredit, but the contrary, to the society, in every way
so new to him, among which he was now, by a turn of fortune’s wheel, so
unexpectedly placed. But yesterday he was a homeless, skulking fugitive,
without a friend to become security for hi to the law, and cared for by
nobody except the sheriff and parish officers who were in search of him.
To-day, he had “troops of friends,” and was “the cynosure of all eyes,”
“the observed of all observers.” His deportment, in whatever company he
happened to find himself, was manly and becoming. His unfailing good
sense supplied all deficiencies of education, and his brilliant
conversational powers seem to have struck every person with whom he came
in contact with as much admiration as his poetry. Under the patronage of
the earl of Glencairn – the last who possessed the title, and who thus
shed a parting ray of light upon it to gild, as it were, its dying
honours, – Principal Robertson, Professor Dugald Stewart, Mr. Henry
Mackenzie, – all illustrious and unfading names, – and other persons of
influence and standing, a new edition of his poems was published in
April 1787. Amid all the adulation which he at this time received, he
ever maintained his native simplicity and independence of character. By
the earl of Glencairn he was introduced to the members of the Caledonian
Hunt, and in gratitude for their kindness, he dedicated to them the
second edition of his poems, in an address which must be familiar to
every reader of them. On this his first visit to Edinburgh, it appears
that he lodged with a writer’s apprentice named Richmond, sharing his
room and bed, in the house of Mrs. Carfrac, Baxter’s close, Lawnmarket,
at eighteen pence a week.
Mr. Dugald Stewart, who, as already stated, knew him in Ayrshire, before
the first fruits of the full measure of his fame burst upon him, in his
letter to Dr. Currie of Liverpool, the first biographer and editor of
Burns, says that “the attentions he received during his stay in
Edinburgh, from all ranks and descriptions of persons, were such as
would have turned any head but his own. I cannot say,” he continues,
“that I could perceive any unfavourable effect which they left on his
mind. He retained the same simplicity of manners and appearance which
had struck me so forcibly when I first saw him in the country; nor did
he seem to feel any additional self-importance from the number and rank
of his new acquaintance. His dress was perfectly suited to his station,
plain and unpretending, with a sufficient attention to neatness. If I
recollect right, he always wore boots (by this is meant top-boots, for
in those days Wellingtons and Hessians, the latter now extinct in
Britain at least, were unknown); and when on more than usual ceremony,
buckskin breeches.”
Being now enabled to see a little more of his own country, than his
limited means had hitherto permitted him to do, he resolved upon
visiting some of the pastoral and classic districts of Scotland.
Accordingly, leaving ‘the gay and festive scene’ of Edinburgh, on the
sixth of May, after being about six months in that city, he set out on a
tour to the south of Scotland, accompanied part of the way, by the late
Robert Ainslie, Esq., writer to the signet, one of the young men of
literary tastes whose acquaintance he had made shortly before. They
travelled on horseback. During this excursion he was introduced to
several men of eminence in their station, and among the rest to Mr.
Brydone, the traveller, to whom he carried a letter of introduction from
Mr. Henry Mackenzie, and the Rev. Dr. Somerville of Jedburgh, the
historian, whom he describes as “a man and a gentleman, but sadly
addicted to punning.” The love of fun is inherent in human nature, and
at a certain time of life is innocent and natural; just as at a
particular period of the circus performances, a clown, the humblest of
all actors, makes his appearance, with his commonplace jokes and
worn-out witticisms; and some such association as this must have been at
the foundation of Dr. Johnson’s celebrated saying, that ‘punning is the
lowest of all kinds of wit.’ At Jedburgh, Burns was presented with the
freedom of the town, an empty honour, but the only one which
corporations have it in their power to bestow. Since the passing of the
Burgh Reform Act in 1832, it has scarcely any meaning, but in Burns’
time it had immense significance.
Having crossed the border into Northumberland, he visited Alnwick
castle; the hermitage and old castle of Warksworth; Morpeth and
Newcastle. In the latter town he spent two days, and then proceeded to
the south-west by Hexham and Wadrue, to Carlisle. He then returned to
Scotland, taking Annan in his way; and thence through Dumfries and
Sanquhar to Mossgiel, where he arrived about the 8th of June,
1787, after an absence of about seven busy and eventful months. He
remained with his mother, his brothers and sisters, for a few days, and,
proceeding again to Edinburgh, immediately set out on a tour to the
Highlands. Returning to Mossgiel, he spent the month of July in the
society of his relatives. In August he again visited the metropolis, and
accompanied by Mr. Adair, afterwards Dr. Adair of Harrowgate, he the
same month set out on another short excursion to Clackmannanshire,
returning to Edinburgh by Kinross, Dunfermline and Queensferry. When
they reached Dunfermline, Burns hastened to the churchyard to pay his
devotions at the tomb of Robert the Bruce, for whose memory he had more
than common veneration. “He knelt and kissed the stone,” says the
Doctor, “with sacred fervour, and heartily (suus ut mos erat)
execrated the worse than Gothic neglect of the first of Scottish
heroes.” This neglect has been repaired. When the new parish church of
Dunfermline was erected in 1818, it was made to enclose the burial-place
of the kings who had been interred there, and on this occasion the tomb
of the Bruce was opened. The body of the hero was found reduced to a
skeleton. The lead in which it had been wrapped up was still entire, and
even some of a fine linen cloth, embroidered with gold, which had formed
his shroud. His bones having been placed in a new leaden coffin,
half-an-inch thick, seven feet long, two feet five inches broad, and two
feet in depth, into which was poured melted pitch to preserve them, he
was re-interred with much state and solemnity, by the Barons of the
Exchequer, many distinguished nobleman and gentlemen of the county being
present. The pulpit of the new church now marks the spot where all that
remains on earth of the patriot-monarch is deposited. In September of
the same year, the poet again set out from Edinburgh on a more extensive
tour to the Highlands, accompanied by Mr. Nicol, one of the masters of
the High School of that city, a man of congenial sentiments, and the
‘Willie’ of ‘We are na fou.’ At Athole house, Burns was hospitably
entertained by the ducal family. Of his behaviour during this visit,
Professor Walker, who was then an intimate of the duke’s family, gives
the following description. “My curiosity was great,” he says, “to see
how he would conduct himself in company so different from what he had
been accustomed to. His manner was unembarrassed, plain, and firm. He
appeared to have complete reliance on his own native good sense for
directing his behaviour. He seemed at once to perceive and appreciate
what was due to the company and to himself, and never forgot a proper
respect for the separate species of dignity belonging to each. He did
not arrogate conversation, but, when let into it, he spoke with ease,
propriety, and manliness. He tried to exert his abilities, because he
knew it was ability alone gave him a title to be there. The duke’s fine
young family attracted much of his admiration; he drank their healths as
[‘honest men and bonnie lasses,’ an idea which was much applauded by the
company.” At Athole-house he met for the first time Mr. Graham of Fintry,
to whom he was afterwards indebted for his office in the excise. He
afterwards visited the duke of Gordon at Gordon castle, from which he
was hurried away by the petulance and false pride of his companion Nicol,
who took offence at the poet’s visiting the castle without him.
Returning to Edinburgh, Burns spent the greater part of the ensuing
winter there, and again entered into the society and dissipation of the
metropolis. On the last day of December he attending a meeting to
celebrate the birthday of Prince Charles Edward, the lineal descendant
and unfortunate representative of Scotland’s ill-fated race of kings,
the Stuarts; and on this occasion he produced an ode, breathing Jacobite
sentiments throughout. Prince Charles died the following year, and thus
for ever put an end to the hopes of his adherents. Among the most
pleasing incidents of his life in Edinburgh was his tracing out the
grave of his predecessor, Fergusson, in the Canongate churchyard, over
whose ashes he erected a humble monument. During his residence in
Edinburgh at this time he resided with Mr. Cruickshanks, then one of the
masters of the High School, who lived in St. James’ Square, New Town,
and was in the habit of visiting in General’s Entry, Potterrow, Mrs.
M’Lehose, the wife of a gentleman in the West Indies, to whom his
‘Letters to Clarinda’ are addressed. He was for some time at this period
lame, from a fracture or dislocation of his knee, and was attended by
Mr. Alexander Wood, the celebrated surgeon.
The copyright of his poems he had sold to Mr. Creech for a hundred
pounds, but his friends suggested a subscription for an edition for the
benefit of the author, ere the bookseller’s right should commence. This
was immediately set on foot, the subscription copy being six shillings.
After settling accounts with his bookseller, in the summer of 1788, he
returned to Ayrshire with nearly five hundred pounds, where he found his
brother Gilbert, who still possessed the farm of Mossgiel, struggling to
support their widowed mother, three sisters, and a brother. He
immediately advanced them two hundred pounds, and with the remainder he
took and stocked the farm of Ellisland, about six miles above Dumfries,
on the banks of the Nith. The relatives of his “bonny Jean” were not now
so averse to their union as before, and they were soon regularly
married. Previous to this event she had again become the mother of
twins, he being the father. It was in 1788 that Burns entered upon the
possession of Ellisland, and this was perhaps for a few months the
happiest period of his life. But the occupation of a farmer speedily
lost all charm for him. He wanted something more stirring and active,
and on the recommendation of Mr. Graham of Fintry, he was appointed, on
his own application, an officer of excise for the district in which his
farm was situated. “His farm,” says one of his biographers, “was, after
this, in a great measure abandoned to servants, while he betook himself
to the duties of his new appointment. He might, indeed, still be seen in
the spring, directing his plough, a labour in which he excelled; or with
a white sheet containing his seed corn slung across his shoulders,
striding with measured steps, along his turned-up furrows, and
scattering the grain on the earth. But his farm no longer occupied the
principal part of his care or his thoughts. It was not at Ellisland that
he was now in general to be found. Mounted on horseback this high-minded
poet was pursuing the defaulters of the revenue, among the hills and
vales of Nithsdale, his roving eye wandering over the charms of nature,
and muttering his wayward fancies as he moved along.” In hae a guid
braid sword,’ we are to understand him literally. In the summer of 1791
two gentlemen who came to visit him, found him accoutred in warlike
trim. On his head he wore a cap made of a fox’s skin; and from a belt
which served to confine the wandering of a loose great oat, depended an
enormous claymore. In this garb he stood on a rock that projects into
the Nith, and amused himself with angling. After having occupied his
farm about three years and a half, he found himself obliged to resign it
to his landlord, Mr. Miller of Dalswinton. About the end of 1791 he
removed with his family to Dumfries, where on a salary of seventy pounds
per annum, being all his income as an exciseman, he spent the remainder
of his life.
His fame was now widely circulated over the three kingdoms. His name and
his songs had become dear to every Scottish heart, and his company was
eagerly courted by all who could appreciate genius. Unfortunately, Burns
had not the firmness to resist the many temptations to dissipation which
were thrown in his way, or the moral courage to refuse the constant
invitations which were sent to him; consequently, he was led into habits
of excess, which injured his constitution, and, in the intervals between
his fits of intemperance, caused him to suffer the bitterest pangs of
remorse. At this period many of his most beautiful pieces were written,
especially the best of his songs, which were contributed to an Edinburgh
publication called ‘Johnson’s Musical Museum,’ and afterwards to a
larger work, the well known ‘Collection of Original Scottish Airs,’
edited and published by Mr. George Thomson. To the former work his
contributions amounted to no less than two hundred and twenty-eight. On
this point the late Captain Charles Gray, R.M., author of ‘Lays and
Lyrics,’ in one of a series of papers which he contributed to the
Glasgow Citizen on the lyric poetry of Scotland, has the following
remarks: “None of his numerous biographers hitherto has done him justice
as to the amount of his contributions to the ‘Scots Musical Museum.’
Currie hints, cautiously, that Burns ‘contributed songs liberally
to “Johnson’s Musical Museum.”’ Lockhart, who is always equal to the
task when dealing with the higher part of our bard’s biography, fails
when putting together the lighter parts of his materials. That he wished
to do every justice to the character of Burns, as a man and a poet, is
unquestionable; but he lacked the necessary research. the drudgery
overcame his diligence; – hence his account of what Burns did for the
Museum, is very vague and unsatisfactory. Cromek, perhaps the most
ardent admirer of the genius of our poet that ever was born south of the
Tweed, says, ‘Burns contributed, gratuitously, no less than one hundred
and eighty-four original, altered, and collected songs;’ and Allan
Cunningham states, that he ‘had seen one hundred and eighty transcribed
by his own hand for the Museum.’ It will be observed, that these
statements are far below the mark, as Mr. Stenhouse, from whom our
information is gleaned, had a far better opportunity of ascertaining the
truth (the whole of the materials composing the Museum having passed
through his hands) than either Cromek or Cunningham; and we learn from
him that Burns contributed no less than two hundred and twenty-eight
songs to that work, as has been already stated; and we take credit to
ourselves for being the first to claim for him the merit of his
collecting and preserving above fifty Scottish melodies. This labour of
love alone would have entitled burns to the thanks and gratitude of his
countrymen, had he done nothing else; but it was lost in the refulgent
blaze of his native genius, which shed a light on our national song that
shall endure as long as our simple Doric is understood. In the lapse of
ages even the lyrics of Burns may become obsolete, but other bards shall
arise, animated with his spirit, and reproduce them, of possible, in
more than their original beauty and splendour. We hold our national
melodies to be imperishable. As no one can trace their origin, it would
be equally futile to predict their end. Their essence is more divine
than the language to which they are wedded. They can only expire with
the lilt of the linnet, and the lay of the laverock – with the rich and
mellow strains of the mavis, and the bold and thrilling notes of the
blackbird. More than one author of the present day has asserted that the
peasant muse of Scotland died with Robert Nicholl. Such an assertion is
arrant nonsense. But granted that she
‘--------died a cadger pownie’s death,
At some dyke-back,’
is
Nature unable to reproduce another great original mind, in the pastoral
ranks, when ages shall have changed the phases of society? Why should
people of liberal minds give way to such narrow fancies? The peasant
muse of Scotland is ‘not dead, but sleepeth.’ she will start up in
another garb, and make the ‘heights and lowes,’ the ‘streams and burnies’
of the land of cakes as vocal as when erst the Bard of Coila
‘Follow’d his plough upon the mountain side.’
Burns’ promotion in the excise was prevented by the imprudence of speech
in which he expressed himself in approval of the principles of the first
French revolution, and the freedom with which he declaimed concerning
the urgent necessity of a radical reform in the parliamentary
representation and government of this country. He even went so far as to
send four carronades, which he had purchased at the condemnation and
sale of a smuggler brig, he had assisted in capturing in the Solway
Firth in February 1792, as a present to the French convention. Both the
present and the letter which accompanied it were intercepted at the
custom-house of Dover, the guns retained, and the letter transmitted to
the Board of Excise in Scotland. The Board of Excise in consequence,
deemed it expedient to appoint a superior officer to investigate his
conduct. In an eloquent letter addressed to one of their number, he
exculpated himself with becoming dignity from the charges which had been
preferred against him; and the officer who had been commissioned to
institute a formal inquiry, could discover no substantial grounds of
accusation. Mr. Graham of Fintry, in whom he had always found a steady
and zealous friend, was ready on this emergency to secure him from the
threatened consequences of his imprudence; but the board, although they
suffered him to retain his office, sent him an intimation that his
advancement must now be determined by his future behaviour. a report
having gone abroad that he had been dismissed from the excise, some
gentlemen proposed a subscription for the relief of his supposed
necessities. This benevolent offer he at once declined, and in the
letter which conveyed his acknowledgments, he took occasion to allude to
the reports which had been industriously circulated to his prejudice.
“The partiality of my countrymen,” he says in a lofty spirit of
indignation, “has brought me forward as a man of genius, and has given
me a character to support. In the poet I have avowed manly and
independent sentiments, which I hope have been found in the man. Reasons
of no less weight than the support of a wife and children have pointed
out my present occupation as the only eligible line of life within my
reach. Still my honest fame is my dearest concern, and a thousand times
have I trembled at the idea of the degrading epithets that malice or
misrepresentation may affix to my name. Often in blasting anticipation
have I listened to some future hackney scribbler, with the heavy malice
of savage stupidity, exultingly asserting that Burns, notwithstanding
the fanfaronade of independence to be found in his works, and
after having been held up to public view, and to public estimation, as a
man of some genius, yet, quite destitute of resources within himself to
support his borrowed dignity, dwindled into a paltry exciseman, and
slunk out the rest of his insignificant existence in the meanest
pursuits, and among the lowest of mankind. In your illustrious hands,
sir, permit me to lodge my strong disavowal of such slanderous
falsehoods. Burns was a poor man from his birth, and an exciseman by
necessity; but In will say it, the sterling of his honest worth
poverty could not debase, and his independent British spirit oppression
might bend but could not subdue.”
In 1795 Burns entered the ranks of the Dumfries Volunteers. During this
year Mr. Perry of the Morning Chronicle, offered him fifty pounds
a-hear for a poem weekly for that paper, which would have been a
handsome addition to his income, but from the peculiar feeling he
entertained of the sacredness of poetry, probably fancying that if he
became, what he so much dreaded, “the hireling of a party,” his muse
would refuse to give her aid, he foolishly declined the proposal. His
health was now much impaired, and in the autumn of that year he lost his
only daughter, which made a deep impression upon him. Soon afterwards he
was seized with a rheumatic fever. Before he had completely recovered,
he had the imprudence to join a convivial circle, and on his return from
it, he caught a cold which brought back the fever with redoubled
severity. He tried the effect of sea-bathing, but with no durable
success. This illness was the cause of his premature death, which took
place July 21, 1796. On the 26th of the same month, his
remains were interred with military honours by the Dumfries Volunteers,
in the South churchyard of Dumfries; and the ceremony was rendered the
more imposing, by the presence of at least ten thousand individuals of
all ranks, who had collect from all parts of the country. He left a
widow and four sons. On the day of his interment Mrs. Burns was
delivered of a fifth son, named Maxwell, who died in his infancy, An
edition of his works, in 4 vols, 8vo, with a Life, was published by Dr.
Currie of Liverpool in 1800, for the benefit of his widow and family.
Innumerable other editions of his poems have since appeared.
In 1828 Mr. Lockhart published his Life of Burns; and a complete edition
of his Poems and Letters, in eight volumes, with a Life by Mr. Allan
Cunningham prefixed, appeared in London in 1834. Besides these, an
edition of Burns’ Works with a Life and Notes by the Ettrick Shepherd
and the late William Motherwell, and illustrations, was published by
Messrs. A. Fullarton and Co. in 1836.
Burns is the most popular poet that Scotland ever produced. With his
poems, all, from the highest to the lowest of his countrymen, are
familiar. His principal characteristics as a lyrical poet were his
sensibility and his truth; and though he undoubtedly possessed more
feeling than imagination, the range and variety of his powers were
really wonderful; of which ‘The Cottar’s Saturday Night,’ ‘Scots wha hae,’
‘Holy Willie’s Prayer,’ ‘Tam o’Shanter,’ ‘Death and Dr. Hornbook,’ and
‘The Beggar’s Cantata,’ all differing in style and sentiment, but all
unsurpassed in their way, are striking examples. His humour in
delineating Scottish character and manners has never been equalled; and
the language of his country will be perpetuated in his verses long after
it has ceased to be spoken, even by the common people, to whom it is now
almost entirely confined. His songs may be divided into two classes, the
tender, humorous, and pathetic, and the social and heroic. Those of the
first class are the most numerous. Burns was peculiarly sensible to
those impressions which produce tender emotions in the mind, and which
are ever awakening sympathies of the pleasing or the painful. to the
beauties of nature he was tremblingly alive, but to the grander and more
magnificent scenes his muse seems to have paid little devotion,
although, from the emotions with which he was inspired by the wildness
of a tempest howling over a mountain, or raving through the trees of a
forest, it might have been expected that his songs would have more
frequently depicted the grand or sublime in scenery. “There is scarcely
any earthly object,” said Burns, “gives me more – I do not know if I
should call it pleasure – but something which exalts me, something which
enraptures me – than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood or high
plantation, in a cloudy winter day, and hear the stormy wind howling
among the trees, and raving over the plain. It is my best season for
devotion to Him who, in the pompous language of the Hebrew bard, ‘Walks
on the wings of the wind.’”
Such scenes and objects, however, are not the legitimate subjects for
lyric poetry; they are themes for a loftier muse, for a more sustained
effort; such as the sublime ethics of Milton, the descriptive ‘Childe’
of Byron, or the more beautiful didactic ‘Pleasures’ of Campbell and
Rogers.
In delineating all the emotions and operations of love Burns
particularly excelled. With a master’s pen he painted its kindling,
exciting, and ever changing caprices, as well as its deeper steadier and
more settled sentiments, and displayed its predominating influence over
all other considerations where it had taken full possession of the
heart. that sickly cast of love which scarcely ever permits a natural
sentiment to fall from its lips was not to be found in a single heroine
of Burns; all his females were natural, sincere, and unaffected, and the
glorious stores of the forest, the field, and the mountain were
plundered of their beauties to adorn them. Their purity was seen in the
opening gowan, wet with the dew, and their modesty beamed in the eye of
the violet; their breath breathed in the scented flower of the
hawthorne, and their smile “illumed the dark prospects of life, as
aurora gilded with brightness the sky of the morning.” All nature
acknowledged subserviency to her own bard for his images; and her sweet
and simple graces were gathered with an eager hand to embellish her
fairest creations. Diamond eyes, ruby lips, and ivory teeth, with all
their polish and brightness, were tawdry and tinsel similes of art,
which found no favour in his sight. He was the bard of nature, and he
breathed nothing but nature. He surveyed her fields with the enthusiasm
of devotion, and unfolded their harms in every varied and vivifying hue.
The opening of spring, the luxuriance of summer, the golden plenty of
autumn, and the majesty of a Caledonian winter spread their riches
before him. His eye kindled at the contemplation of their individual
enjoyments; his benevolence sought to make others participators of his
joy; his mind burned to give utterance to his feelings, whilst poetry
flowed spontaneously from his lips, and the music of his country waited
on his call to follow his breathings wherever he went. To use his own
expressive works, he tuned “his wild artless notes, and sung the loves,
the joys, the rural scenes, and rural pleasures, of his native soil, in
his native tongue;” and in the nature, simplicity, and truth of his lays
consist their marvellous power and beauty.
Of his personal appearance perhaps the most truthful as well as most
graphic description is by Sir Walter Scott, who was once in his company
in 1786-7. Scott, who was then a lad of seventeen, just removed from the
High School to a desk in his father’s office, was invited by his friend
and companion, the son of Dr. Ferguson, to accompany him to his
father’s house on an evening when Burns was to be there. The two
youngsters entered the room, sat down unnoticed by their seniors, and
looked on and listened in modest silence. Burns, when he came in, seemed
a little out of his element, and, instead of mingling at once with the
company, kept going about the room, looking at the pictures on the
walls. One print particularly arrested his attention. It represented a
soldier lying dead among the snow, his dog on one side, and a woman with
a child in her arms on the other. Underneath the print were some lines
of verse descriptive of the subject, which Burns read aloud with a voice
faltering with emotion. a little while after, turning to the company and
pointing to the print, he asked if any one could tell him who was the
author of the lines. No one chanced to know, excepting Scott, who
remembered that they were from an obscure poem of Langhorne’s. The
information, whispered by Scott to some one near, was repeated to Burns,
who, after asking a little more about the matter, rewarded his young
informant with a look of kindly interest, and the words, (Sir Adam
Ferguson reports them.) “You’ll be a man yet, sir.” “His person,” says
Scott, in reference to this interview, “was strong and robust; his
manners rustic, not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness and
simplicity, which received part of its effect, perhaps, from one’s
knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His features are represented in
Mr. Nasmyth’s picture, but to me it conveys the idea that they are
diminished, as if seen in perspective. I think his countenance was more
massive than it looks in any of the portraits. I would have taken the
poet, had I not known what he was, for a very sagacious country farmer
of the old Scottish school – i.e. none of your modern agriculturists,
who keep labourers for their drudgery, but the douce gudeman who
held his own plough. There was a strong expression of sense and
shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the
poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast,
and glowed (I say, literally glowed) when he spoke with feeling
or interest. In never saw such another eye in a human head, though In
have seen the most distinguished men in my time. His conversation
expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest presumption.
Among the men who were the most learned of their time and country, he
expressed himself with perfect firmness, but without the least intrusive
forwardness; and when he differed in opinion, he did not hesitate to
express it firmly, yet at the same time with modesty. In do not remember
any part of his conversation distinctly enough to be quoted, nor did In
ever see him again, except in the street, where he did not recognise me,
as In could not expect he should. He was much caressed in Edinburgh, but
(considering what literary emoluments have been since his day) the
efforts made for his relief were extremely trifling. I remember on this
occasion I mention, I thought Burns’ acquaintance with English poetry
was rather limited, and also, that having twenty times the abilities of
Allan Ramsay and of Fergusson, he talked of them with too much humility
as his models; there was doubtless national predilection in his
estimate.”
Somewhere about the very day on which the interview above referred to
happened, Francis Jeffrey, then a lad of thirteen, was going up the High
Street of Edinburgh, and staring diligently about him, was attracted by
the appearance of a man whom he saw standing on the pavement. He was
taking a good and attentive view of the object of his curiosity, when
some one idling at a shop-door tapped him on the shoulder, and said,
“Ay, laddie, ye may weel look at that man! That’s Robert Burns.”
Of Burns’ family, it may be mentioned that Robert, the eldest son of the
poet, was for twenty-nine years in the Legacy department of the Stamp
office, Somerset House, London, and afterwards he for some years resided
at Dumfries, on a retiring allowance. He married in London, but his wife
died before his return to Scotland They had one daughter, Eliza Burns,
who, under the patronage of her uncle William, went out to India, where
she married an Irishman, the surgeon of a regiment. Her husband returned
home in bad health, and died in Ireland, leaving an only daughter.
William Nicol Burns, the second son, and James Glencairn Burns, the
youngest, both entered the East India Company’s service, from which they
both retired, the first as colonel, and his brother as
lieutenant-colonel. The former married in India, but returned a widower,
without children. The latter married twice, but was also left a widower,
and the father of two daughters. Another of his sons died in 1803. The
centenary of Robert Burns was held throughout the civilized world in
January 1859, with great enthusiasm, and an account of the proceedings
on the occasion was soon after published in an imperial 8vo volume by
Messrs. A. Fullarton & Co.
Robert Burns, the poet’s eldest son, besides being an excellent linguist
and an accomplished musician, was also himself a poet of no mean merit.
The following little Scottish song written by him, is not unworthy of
his gifted sire:
PRETTY MEG, MY DEARIE.
“As In gaed up the side o’Nith,
Ae simmer morning early,
Wi’ gowden locks on dewy leas,
The broom was waving fairly;
Aloft unseen in cloudless sky,
The lark was singing clearly,
When wadin’ through the broom I spied
My pretty Meg, my dearie:
Like dawin’ light frae stormy night,
To sailor sad and weary,
Sae sweet to me the glint to see,
O’ pretty Meg, my dearie.
Her lips were like a half-seen rose,
When day is breaking paly;
Her een, beneath her snawy brow,
Like raindrops frae a lily, –
Like twa young bluebells fill’d with dew,
They glanc’d baith bright and clearly;
Aboon them shone, o’ bonnie brown,
The locks o’ Meg, my dearie.
Of a’ the flowers in sunny bowers,
That bloom’d that morn sae cheerie,
The fairest flower that happy hour,
Was pretty Meg, my dearie!
I took her by the sma’ white hand, –
My heart sprang in my bosom, –
Upon her face sat maiden grace,
Like sunshine on a blossom.
How lovely seem’d the morning hymn,
Of ilka birdie near me;
But sweeter far the angel voice,
O’ pretty Meg, my dearie.
While summer light shall bless my sight,
Or bonnie broom shall cheer me;
I’ll ne’er forget the morn I met
My pretty Meg, my dearie!”
“The meeting described in the song,” says the author, “is no fiction,
neither is the heroine a fictitious personage, – her name is Margaret
Fullarton. If the song has no other merit, it at least gives her
portrait with faithful exactness. She is besides of a shape which is
elegance and symmetry personified. She is now (1850), and has long been,
the wife of Mr. Ross, gardener at Mount Annan, and has a family of
beautiful children. Many years ago, on a summer Sunday morning, myself
and Mr. Smith took a walk up the left bank of the Nith. When we came
opposite to Ellisland, we took off our shoes and stockings, and waded
the water; when we had passed Ellisland, on our way to Friar’s Carse, we
met Miss Fullarton ‘wadin’ through the broom to meet us, under the exact
circumstances described in the song. The tune is a composition of Neil
Gow. He calls it in his collection “Mrs. Wemyss of Cuttlehill’s
Strathspey.’ Every bar speaks the rough and spirited accent of the music
of the banks of the Spey.”
BURNS,
JOHN, M.D.
author of ‘The Principles of Midwifery,’ was born in Glasgow in 1774.
His grandfather, Mr. John Burns, was a teacher of English in Glasgow,
and author of ‘Burns’ English Grammar,’ a popular school-book in the
west of Scotland in the early part of the eighteenth century; and his
father was the Rev. John Burns, D.D., for sixty-nine years minister of
the Barony parish of Glasgow. Dr. Burns died in 1839, and was known
previously to his death as the “Father of the Church of Scotland,”
having lived to the age of 96. At an early age John, who was his eldest
son, commenced the study of medicine; and was appointed surgeon’s clerk
to the Royal Infirmary of Glasgow, when that institution was first
opened for the reception of patients in 1792. At this time he applied
himself to the study of anatomy, especially to that department of it
styled relative or surgical anatomy. He afterwards gave instruction in
it to students, and was the first individual unconnected with any public
institution who professed to teach anatomy in Glasgow. His lecture-room
was at the north-west corner of Virginia street, behind the present
Union Bank of that city. In those days all subjects for dissection were
obtained by the students robbing the churchyards. Mr. Burns being
detected in something of this sort, the magistrates agreed to quash
proceedings against him, on condition that he gave up lecturing on
anatomy. This he agreed to do, but his younger brother, Allan, took up
the lectures on anatomy, while John began to lecture on midwifery. Their
lecture-room was a brick flat, built on the remains of the old Bridewell,
on the north side of College street. The brothers Burns were extremely
popular as lecturers; Allan was monotonous and unpleasing as a speaker,
but first-rate as a demonstrator. John was much more agreeable in
manner. His substance was excellent, his knowledge exact, and his views
practical, while his lectures were interspersed with jokes and
anecdotes, which quite captivated the students.
Hitherto the subject of this sketch was not known as a practitioner, and
when no lectures or dissections were in hand, he was to be found, day
after day, in Stirling’s Library, reading. On being asked on one
occasion, by an acquaintance, what became of his patients while he sat
there, he answered, “I have none!” Mr. Burns now came forward as a
medical author. His first work of any importance was the ‘Anatomy of the
Gravid Uterus,’ which appeared in 1799. This was followed in 1800 by two
volumes on ‘Inflammation,’ in which he first described a species of
cancer, now known by the name of fungus haemotodes. These two works were
followed by others on professional subjects, one of which, ‘The
Principles of Midwifery,’ has been translated into various European
languages, and has reached a tenth edition. At an early period of his
professional career, Mr. Burns became surgeon to the Royal Infirmary,
and distinguished himself by the nerve with which he operated. He
subsequently became the partner of Mr. Muir, and, after Mr. Muir’s
death, of Mr. Alexander Dunlop – a connection which brought him speedily
into excellent family practice. Nevertheless, he continued to lecture on
midwifery till 1815, when the Crown having instituted a professorship of
surgery in Glasgow university, he was appointed to that chair, in which
he remained till his death. Mr. Burns bred his son, Allan, to the
medical profession, and, relieved by his assistance, he graduated, and
having been appointed physician to the Royal Infirmary, was a good deal
employed as a consulting physician. In 1843, however, young Allan died
of the intermittent fever then prevalent, after which Dr. Burns gave up
his practice, but continued the duties of his professorship. In religion
Dr. Burns was an Episcopalian, having left the church of his fathers. He
lived in good style, and was of a cheerful disposition. In person he was
under the middle height, with grey flowing locks, and his dress was very
neat and antique. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of London and a
member of the French Institute. With a niece Dr. Burns was unfortunately
lost in the Orion steamer, on his return from Liverpool, when that
vessel struck a rock near Portpatrick, on 18th June 1850. His
eldest son John, a major in the army, was his heir.
There is a fine portrait of Dr. Burns, in the attitude of lecturing, by
Mr. Graham Gilbert, engraved by Mr. James Faed, from which the subjoined
is a woodcut:
Woodcut of
Dr. John Burns
Besides his valuable professional publications, he was the author of a
work on the evidences and principles of Christianity, which was at first
published anonymously; and it is related that his father, on reading it,
expressed himself much pleased, and said to his son, “Ah! John! In wish
you could have written such a book.”
The following are his works:
The Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus; with Practical Inferences relative to
Pregnancy and Labour. Glasg. 1799, 8vo.
Dissertations on Inflammation. 1. On the Laws of the Animal Economy. 2.
On the histories, causes, consequences and cure of Simple Inflammation.
3. On the Phagedenic and some other Species of Inflammation. 4. On the
Spongoid Inflammation. 5. On the Cancerous Inflammation. 6. On the
Scrofulous Inflammation. Glasg. 1800, 2 vols. 8vo.
Practical Observations on the Uterine Haemorrhage, with Remarks on the
Management of the Placenta. Lond. 1807, 8vo.
The Principles of Midwifery, including the Diseases of Women and
Children. Lond. 1809, 8vo. 2d edit. 1813, 8vo. 1817, 8vo. 1822, 8vo. 10th
edition, with Smellie’s Obstetric Plates. 1 vol. 1843.
Popular Directions for the Treatment of the Diseases of Women and
Children. Glasg. 1811, 8vo.
Principles of Christian Philosophy. 12mo. Lond., 1828.
Principles of Surgery. 2 vols. 8vo. 1838.
BURNS, ALLAN, a younger brother of the preceding, was born at
Glasgow, September 18, 1781. He was early sent to study for the medical
profession, and such was his proficiency, that at the age of sixteen he
was enabled to undertake the direction of the dissecting-rooms of his
brother. In 1804, having gone to London with the view of entering the
medical service of the army, he received and accepted of the offer of
director of a hew hospital, on the British plan, established at St.
Petersburg by the Empress Catherine, to whom he was recommended by his
excellency, Dr. Crichton; and accordingly proceeded to Russia, where he
did not remain above six months. On his leaving the Russian capital, in
January 1805, he received from the empress, in token of her good will, a
valuable diamond ring. In the winter after his return to Glasgow, he
began, in place of his brother, to give lectures on anatomy and surgery.
In 1809 he published ‘Observations on some of the most frequent and
important Diseases of the Heart,’ illustrated by cases. In 1812 appeared
his second publication, entitled ‘Observations on the Surgical Anatomy
of the Head and Neck,’ also illustrated by cases. Both of these works,
which embrace all his separate publications, are held in the highest
estimation by the profession. Early in 1810 his health began to decline,
and although he continued for two years longer to deliver lectures, it
was often amid great personal suffering. He died June 22, 1813.
The following are his works:
Observations on some of the most frequent and important Diseases of the
Heart; on Aneurism of the Thoracic Aorta; on Preternatural Pulsations in
the Epigastric Regions; and on the unusual origin and distribution of
some of the large Arteries of the Human Body. Illustrated by Cases. Edin.
1809, 8vo.
Observations on the Surgical Anatomy of the Head and Neck. Illustrated
by Cases and Engravings. Edin. 1812, 8vo.
An edition of his ‘Surgical Anatomy of the Head and Neck’ was published
in America, with a life of the author, and additional cases and
observations, by Granville Sharp Pattison, professor of Anatomy in the
university of Maryland.
Mr. Burns also contributed to the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal
an Essay on the Anatomy of the parts concerned in the operation for
Crural Hernia, and one on the operation of Lithotomy.
Entries for this name from the Dictionary of National Biography
