Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/288

310 not come frequently, and sit beside me; you cannot imagine how comfortable it would be; you might fetch your seam, and sew beside me." To this, no answer was returned: an interval of silence was filled up by sobs and tears. "What ails ye?" inquired the dying poet; "wherefore sorrow for me, sirs? I am very well cared for here—I do assure you, I want for nothing—but it is cold it is very cold. You know, I told you, it would come to this at last yes, I told you so. Oh, do not go yet, mother—I hope to be soon—oh, do not go yet—do not leave me!" The keeper, however, whispered that it was time to depart, and this was the last time that Fergusson saw these beloved relatives.

Mr Sommers thus describes his last interview with the poet, which took place in company with Dr John Aitken, another friend of the unfortunate maniac. "We got immediate access to the cell, and found Robert lying with his clothes on, stretched upon a bed of loose uncovered straw. The moment he heard my voice, he arose, got me in his arms, and wept. The doctor felt his pulse, and declared it to be favourable. I asked the keeper to allow him to accompany us into an adjoining back-court, by way of taking the air. He consented. Robert took hold of me by the arm, placing me on his right, and the doctor on his left, and in this form we walked backward and forward along the court, conversing for nearly an hour; in the course of which, many questions were asked both by the doctor and myself, to which he returned most satisfactory answers ; but he seemed very anxious to obtain his liberty. Having passed two hours with him on this visit, we found it necessary to take our leave, the doctor assuring him that he would soon be restored to his friends, and that I would visit him again in a day or two. He calmly and without a murmur walked with us to the cell; and, upon parting, reminded the doctor of his promise to get him soon at liberty, and of mine to see him next day. Neither of us, however, had an opportunity of accomplishing our promise; for in a few days thereafter I received an intimation from the keeper that Robert Fergusson had breathed his last."

Before this period, Mrs Fergusson had been enabled by a remittance from her son Henry, to make some preparations for receiving the poor maniac back into her own house, where superior accommodations, and the tenderness of a mother's and a sister's love, might have been expected to produce some favourable effect But it came too late: misery had already secured her victim. "In the solitude of his cell," says Mr Peterkin, "amid the terrors of the night, 'without a hand to help or an eye to pity,' the poet expired. His dying couch was a mat of straw ; the last sounds that pealed upon his ear were the howlings of insanity. No tongue whispered peace ; and even a consoling tear of sympathy mingled not with those of contrition and hope, which, in charity, I trust, illumined his closing eye."

Robert Fergusson died on the 16th of October, 1774, aged one day less than twenty-four years. His body was interred in the Canongate church-yard, where his grave remained quite undistinguished, until his successor, and (as he was pleased to acknowledge), his imitator, Robert Burns, appeared in Edinburgh. When Burns came to the grave of Fergusson, he uncovered his head, and, with his characteristic enthusiasm, kneeling down, embraced the venerated clay. He afterwards obtained permission from the magistrates to erect a monument to Fergusson, which he inscribed with the following stanza:—