Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/161

 ROBERT BURNS 113 died, and the family, who had kept well together, took a farm about eight miles distant from the old home, near Ayr. Here the young farmer-poet undertook to become a thorough and industrious husbandman. He turned his attention toward the literature of the farm ; he tried to bend his powerful though dreamy mind toward the prosaic and the practical. But the venture did not thrive ; some of the thousand-and-one casualties that are always besetting crops and crop-growers came his way, and the brave venture which he and his brother Gilbert had undertaken together, proved scant of success. He, however, may be said to have done the greatest work of his life upon that farm. It was while one day weeding the " kailyard," or garden, with his brother, that he first decided, after they had talked it carefully over, to be an au- thor, and to write verses that would " bear publishing." It is to be noticed that from this hour he became more methodical with his muse and seemed to work toward a purpose ; and that within a short time after this resolve he wrote most of the poems that have made his name immortal. In 1 786 it was definitely decided that the farm was not going " to pay," and that his efforts as an agriculturist had failed. But these were not the only troub- les that were gathering in the young poet's path. In 1 785 he became engaged to his " Highland Mary." If we may judge by his poems, this was the one among his numerous love affairs in which his heart was most deeply enthralled ; but there was another in which he was inextricably and fatally entangled. It was with a young girl, Jean Armour, to whom he seems to have been as sincerely attached as his headlong, susceptible nature would allow him to be to anyone. He made the best amends he could to " the bonnie lass " by giving her his written acknowledgment of marriage a process perfectly legal in Scotland, though ir- regular but her father still hoped for a more advantageous alliance for his daughter, and refused her to the poor poet ; a sentiment in which the daughter, to all appearances, heartily joined. It is interesting to think of this poverty-stricken family rejecting Burns, even after matters had gone thus far, on account of his lack of wealth, when he had at that very time, in his little desk, poems for which the world has since paid millions of pounds. But the future is often unseen, even by those highest in learning and deepest in wit ; and it is little wonder that the unsophisticated family were un- able to know even the pecuniary value of our young ploughman's brain. Discouraged and depressed the young poet resolved on emigrating to Ja maica, as book-keeper of a wealthy planter. In order to procure the money with which to pay the expenses of his journey, and no doubt partly in pursuance of the plan made that day in the garden, he decided to publish a small volume, by subscription, which he did, at Kilmarnock, in July, 1 786, having as the title-page of the book, " Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect ; by Robert Burns." It will be seen that he now dropped the fifth and sixth letters from the name inher- ited of his father, and the boy Burness became the man Burns. This book achieved immediate and unexpected success ; and having realized a few pounds from its profits, Burns set out for Greenock, where he was to take 8