Page:Life of Robert Burns, the Ayrshire Bard.pdf/15

Rh good deal broken in upon, he discharged his duties with faithfulness and accuracy. Towards the close of 1790 he was employed as acting supervisor. During part of that year his youngest child lingered through an illness, of which every week promised to be the last, and when she was in the end cut off, the nerves of the poet, who had unceasingly watched her with the fondest solicitude, were entirely shattered. A cold which he subsequently caught, completed the measure of his ill health, and from this period may be dated the commencement of that gradual decay which terminated in his death. Of this approaching event he was perfectly sensible, and many of his letters at this time breathe the tenderest strains of resignation and piety. One of these is as follows:― "Are you deep in the language of consolation? I have exhausted in reflection every topic of comfort. A heart at ease would have been charmed with my sentiments and reasonings; but as to myself, I was like Judas Iscariot preaching the gospel; he might melt and mould the hearts of those around him, but his own kept its native incorrigibility.―Still there are two great pillars that bear us up, amid the wreck of misfortune and misery. The is composed of the different modifications of a certain noble, stubborn