a penny in his pocket and with his head full of poetical schemes. William Burness had early perceived his son's genius. "Something extraordinary," he was accustomed to say to his wife," will come of that boy, either for good or evil." It was not permitted to him, however, to witness the fulfillment of this prophecy. He died early in 1784. Though he left his money affairs in ruin, there are few students of Burns who fail to conceive a lasting respect for his father's character. The essential loveliness of his home life lives forever pictured by his son's pen in the "Cotter's Saturday Night "; and in "John Anderson, my Jo," there is every reason to believe that Robert has given us a true record of the love that from first to last Agnes Brown bore for William Burness. In these two poems we have an imperishable monument, creditable alike to parents and son, of the real nobility of Burns's father and mother.

The events which followed the death of William Burness are the most interesting in the poet's life. With his brother Gilbert he took a farm named Mossgiel, in the parish of Mauchline. From the stony fields of this domain he proceeded to extract, not indeed flax and oats, but an extraordinary crop of poetical sheaves. Here a daisy, which his plowshare destroyed, bloomed again in deathless song. Here a mouse, whose nest suffered the same fate, was raised to a similar immortality of fame. It was here, too, that the "Cotter's Saturday Night " was written. So rich, in short, in literary achievement was this period that 1785 has been called the Annus Mirabilis of Burns's career. Thanks to his pen and luckily for mankind, the very sheep and cattle of Mossgiel are better known to-day than the generals who fought in India and the statesmen who wrangled at Westminster during that generation.

Burns also began to write satire, and, what was more ominous, religious satire. He spoke familiarly of the deil and disrespectfully of the Rev. Mr. Moodie. He became known as the "king of gude fellows." He ran in debt. And, as was to be expected, he fell in love again. His new sweetheart was the belle of the parish. Her father was a highly-respected stone mason and a deacon in Mr. Moodie's church. Her name was Jean Armour.

The poet's suit was successful. The lovers plighted their troth.

The news was broken to Jean's father. To say that he was filled with rage and alarm is to put the matter mildly. Nor can we deny that, from his point of view, the course he took was justifiable. He was a respectable stone mason and a pillar of the church. Burns was bankrupt, frivolous, a poet, and an infidel. He had dared, among many other scandalous things, to pen this couplet as part of an epitaph: "If there's another world, he lives in bliss;

If there is none, he made the most of this."

For such a ne'er-do-well to think of marrying into a decent family was preposterous. Adam Armour forbade the union and took, or caused to be taken, such legal steps that the bard's personal liberty was in danger. Jean, like a well-conducted daughter, at this crisis obeyed her father and refused to see her lover.

Burns was equally sensible. He sought and found such solace as he could among his friends, fell in love with another girl, and decided to marry and go with her to America. The other girl was Mary Campbell, a servant in the household of Robert's landlord. I her sweet and pure nature he seems to have found just the balm that was needed to heal his cruelly lacerated spirit. In literature we shall scarcely find nobler verses than those which were inspired by his love for her. "To Highland Mary," "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton," and "To Mary in Heaven" are among the most perfect lyrics in any language.

The American scheme presented one difficulty. Burns had no money to pay for their passage. A friend suggested that he raise the necessary funds by publishing his poems. Accordingly, in August, 1786, there was issued from the press at Kilmarnock, a thin volume entitled "Poems: Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. By Robert Burns." It is to be observed that the name Burns was adopted by the poet as a sort of nom de plume; he now laid aside permanently the old form Burness. The opening piece was the " Twa Dogs." The volume also contained, in addition to a number of shorter poems, the "Jolly Beggars," the "Address to the Deil," and the "Cotter's Saturday Night." The book which Scotland considers the most priceless of all her possessions was thus, as Alexander Smith puts it, printed to rais ten pounds to carry the author into exile.

Burns himself had embarked in the undertaking with little enthu

siasm. He had written to a friend that the publication was the last foolish act he intended to commit. His misgivings proved groundless. The sale of the book was rapid. The poet soon had twenty pounds in his pocket. He had already obtained a place as overseer on a plantation in Jamaica. He now hastened to take passage in a ship that was nearly ready to sail from Greenock. To his friends he said farewell. To his country he addressed some touching lines. Looking upon himself as a man already dead to all that he had hitherto held dear, he composed what has been called his most sincere and touching effort at self-criticism, a " Bard's Epitaph."

But the departure of his ship was delayed from day to day. His fame began to spread. Ayrshire was soon ringing with his praise. The young farmer had fired a poetic shot that was destined to be heard round the world. It happened that Dugald Stewart, professor of metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh, was visiting that summer near Mauchline. The book fell into his hands. saw its merit, sent a copy of it to Edinburgh, and made the author's acquaintance. The result was that Burns was invited to go to Edinburgh and publish a second edition. Accordingly, in November, 1786, he left America and set out for the Scottish capital.

He

His progress thither was a sort of triumphal march, marked by signal fires and much hearty Scotch hospitality. He entered Edinburgh November 28. For a few days he wandered about from Holyrood to the Castle. He found the house where the poet Ramsay had lived, and he knelt, with feelings wherein pity struggled with indignation, at the neglected grave of Fergusson. Then he began to swim into the ken of Edinburgh. A friend introduced him to Lord Glencairn. By Glencairn he was presented to Creech, the leading publisher of Scotland. Within a fortnight of his arrival there appeared in the "Lounger "a review of his poems by Henry Mackenzie, author of the "Man of Feeling," after the Bible Burns's favorite book. In this review the Ayrshire Plowboy was hailed as one of the greatest poets of the world. On December 20 the attention of Edinburgh was again called to his existence by the publication in the "Caledonian Mercury" of "An Address to a Haggis."

Soon Burns found himself the lion of the hour. Edinburgh was

then the home of a brilliant coterie of scholars and writers. Among these men Burns moved like the moon among the stars. Nor were his triumphs confined to what may be called intellectual circles. The leaders of society, especially the Duchess of Gordon and Lord Glencairn, strove to do him honor. Young Francis Jeffrey stared at him in the street. Young Walter Scott met him at a dinner party; remembered the source of a quotation which all the other guests had forgotten; was rewarded by a smile and a kind word; and ever afterwards remembered the poet's great black eyes.

To this happy picture there is, however, another side. Burns moved amid these scenes with a heavy heart. His Highland Mary was no more. What he might have made his life had she lived we do not know, but she was gone and he looked about him with sad and cynical eyes. He was in the society of the great but not of it. His grand vacation was drawing to a close. With unavailing wrath he pictured himself again milking cows and mowing wheat, while fools, whose ancestors had been lucky enough not to get hanged in the days of Robert Bruce, remained to simper at the smiles of Lady Gordon and yawn while Henry Erskine convulsed the learned with his wit. His diary at this time has been described as a very pool of Marah.

Meantime the printing of his second volume was far advanced. It appeared April 21, 1787. Three thousand copies were struck off. The list of subscribers covered thirty-eight pages. One nobleman took forty copies and another forty-two. No such patronage had been given to literary effort since Pope's day. Burns's profits came to £500.

The first use to which he put this wealth must be set down as a credit to his manhood. He sent nearly forty per cent. of it to his mother and to his brother Gilbert, who were still struggling on the farm at Mossgiel. He then made three tours, one along the southern border of Scotland, one to the western highlands to visit his Mary's grave, and a third to Stirling, Inverness, Dundee, and Aberdeen. In June he was at Mauchline.

When the mother who had seen him go forth an unknown and penniless outcast held him in her arms the most famous man in Scotland she could say nothing except: "O Robbie!" The people of Mauchline received him cordially, and Adam Armour now ex

pressed a willingness to have him for a son-in-law. Jean was also gracious; but Burns was disgusted with their servility and soon returned to Edinburgh.

Here he did three noteworthy things. He closed a lease for the farm of Ellisland, near Dumfries; he obtained an appointment to the excise waiting list; and he engaged in a correspondence with Mrs. McLehose, a lady who had the knack of writing capital letters. The most important outcome of this affair was the song, " Ae Fond Kiss," the second stanza of which, according to Sir Walter Scott, contains the essence of a thousand love songs. Mrs. McLehose appears to have been a sensible woman, and the whole story of her relations with Burns is probably contained in the first couplet of the song:

"Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;

Ae fareweel, alas! forever."

At all events they parted, Burns going back to Mauchline and to Jean, who, late in April, 1788, became Mrs. Burns.

The enterprise at Ellisland promised well. For a year the poet was happy there.

His poetical activity, which had lapsed in Edinburgh, began to revive at Ellisland. He had become interested in a scheme for collecting and publishing the best of the airs sung popularly in Scotland. The words of many of these were crude and unspeakably vulgar. Burns took upon himself the task of supplanting them with verses of his own. His success was so complete that the old words are now for the most part forever lost. The effect on the refinement of the Scotch people has been incalculable. The social uplift which the poet's genius produced probably entitles him to a place among the regenerators of human morals side by side with John Knox. At Ellisland, too, in 1790, Burns did what has been called the best day's work done in Scotland since Bannockburn. He wrote Tam O'Shanter."

Unfortunately, the farm at Ellisland did not pay. The soil was poor. On seeing it for the first time one of Burns's friends had cried: "Mr. Burns, you have made a poet's, not a farmer's, choice." His poetic fame, indeed, constituted a formidable if not an insuperable obstacle to his agricultural prosperity. His work was continually interrupted by visitors. From his financial troubles he took refuge