Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 03.djvu/792

* BURNS. 706 BURNS. nursery gardener, and afterwards the occupant of a small fami, had to struggle all his life with poverty and misfortune, hut made every exertion to give his children a good education : and the boy was able to enjoy a considerable amount of instruction and miscellaneous reading in spite of his poverty. Among the books placed in his way were the Specfalor, Locke's Kss/n/, and Pope's Iliad. He learned French and some Latin; and he knew Allan Ramsay and the popular songs of Scotland. In his seventeenth jear he wrote his first poem, adressed to Xelly fKilpatrick, by whose side he had worked in the fields. In 1777 he was sent to study suneying in the house of his uncle, Samuel Brown, at Bal- lochneil. Here he fell into the company of some 'jovial smugglers,' and began to realize the force of the traditional association of wine, woman, and song. His father was now trying another farm at I.ochlea, near Tarbolton, to which the young poet returned, probably feeling himself not a little of a man of the world. In 1780 he was one of the founders of a 'Bachelor's Club' at Tarbolton, at whose meetings such weighty topics as the relative merits of love and friendship were gravely discussed. The love affairs which have provoked so much ethical controversy continually beset him. The gen- erally lax" morality of " the Scotch peasantry at the period may partly account for. if not excuse, his failings in this direction. He was for a while seriously smitten by the charms of a farm- er's daughter "named KUison Begbie, who is sup- posed to be the original of his !Mary Jlorison; but she prudently declined an alliance, and in the summer of 1781 he went to Irvine to join a relative of his mother's in a flax-dressing busi- ness ; but a convivial celebration of the next new year's advent ended in the burning down of the shop. Returning to Lochlea, he lived quietly and temperately after this reverse: and after his father's death, in 1784, he and his brother Gilbert settled on a small farm, which they had taken in the previous autunm at Jlossgiel, near Jlauchline. Here he became acquainted with several educated men and wrote some of his finest poems, such as "The Jolly Beggars," "The Cot- tar's Saturday Night," and the lines "To a Mouse." He "had already begun to think of publication, his brother having assured him that his "Epistle to Davie" would 'bear being printed,' when the perplexing consequences of his love affair with Jean Armour (to whom he had given, under pressure, a written certificate that she was his wife, but who had been induced to repudiate him) determined him to emigrate. He accordingly published a volume of poems in July, 1780, with a view to making his passage- money to Jamaica. Meantime, from May to I October of the same year (while still able to protest on June that he loved Jean to dis- traction), he develo])ed a passionate attachment to Mary Campbell, >ho died of a fever, and was commemorated by some of his most pathetic poems, "To Mary in Heaven" and "Higliland Mary." The success of his little vulumc and negotiations for a second edition decided him to stay in Scotland, and finally in November drew him to Edinburgh. Here he was received with enthusiasm in good society, and made a favorable impression by the 'dignified plainness and simplicity' of which Scott, who then sawhiui. speaks. From the second edition of his poems (April, 1787) he received in the end about £.500. While waiting for payment he traveled agreeably in various company, and renewed his old relations with .Jean Armour, to whom h& was legally married in August, 1788. Before this, in March, he had been appointed to a place in the excise, and had taken the lease of a farm at Ellisland, near Dumfries. The farm not pay- ing too well, Burns took up his duties as excise- man, and discharged them vigorously, though not with excessive sternness. Here he wrok; "Tam o' Shanter" in a single day for Grose, the anti- quarian, in whose Antiquities of ticotland (1791) it was first published. In December, 1701, having given up his farm, he settled in Dumfries on a salary of £70 a year. Some un- guarded political e.xi)ressions drew upon him the suspicion of the Government, and he came near losing his post. Possibly embittered by what he felt to be injustice, he allowed his habit.s of dis- sipation to grow on m, to the detriment of both his reputation and his health. .ll the while, however, his poetical activity continued, though he indignantly refused offers of a regu- lar salary for contributions to the London Utar and Morninij Clironirle. Broken in health and spirits, he died .July 21, 1796. Burns was of about the average height and of heavy build, with features inclined to eoar.se- ness. According to Scott, the portraits (of which the most trustworthy is that by Xasmyth. 1787) have unduly refined them. His face became singularly animated and expressive in conversa- tion, and numerous observers have conunented on the extraordinary glow of his fine eyes. "I never saw such another eye," says Scott, "in any human head." His character has perhaps, been sutticiently indicated above : but if regret- tably weak in certain directions, it had very respectable elements — an honorable pride, a sense of duty toward his relatives, and a real desire to act a manly and not a heartless part. His poetry was nearly always written on the spur of the moment — the resjjonse of the feel- ings to the immediate circumstances. Its charm and power lie in the justness of the feelings ex- pressed, and in the truthfulness and freshness hich it derives direct from life. Seldom have such manliness, tenderness, and passion beto united as in the songs of Burns. He is weak only when, acting on bad advice, like David in Saul's armor, he tries to write -in the conven- tional English instead of the simple, natural Scottish dialect. He had no slight infiuence in preinu-ing the way for that outburst of the natural in English poetry, whose epoch-making date, the publication of the Li/rical lidllmls. falls only two years after his death. The liuiidrcdth anniversaries of his birth and death wire cele- brated with immense enthusiasm, not onlv in Scotland, but throughout the English-speaking world. For editions of Burns consult: Chambers, with Life and Letters, revised by Wallace (4 vols., Ediiil)urgh, 180(i) ; Douglas, with Life and es- timate iiy Xichol (7 vols., Edinburgh, 1896); lienlev and Henderson, centenarv edition (4 vols., Edinburgh, 1800-97); and for his life. Lock- hart (latest edition, Edinburgh, 1800); Shairp, in "English Men of Letters .Series" ( London, 1879) ; .-Vngellier, Robert Hums, sa vie ct ses ccucrcs (Paris, 189;i) ; and Higgins (London,