Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

my ploughboy carcass, the two extremes | but I never expressly said I loved her. of which were often exposed to all the in- Indeed I did not know myself why I liked clemencies of all the seasons. They would so much to loiter behind with her, when give me stray volumes of books; among returning in the evening from our labours; them, even then, I could pick up some ob- why the tones of her voice made my heartservations; and one, whose heart I am strings thrill like an Eolian harp; and sure not even the Munny Begum scenes particularly why my pulse beat such a have tainted, helped me to a little French. furious ratan when I looked and fingered Parting with these my young friends and over her little hand to pick out the cruel benefactors as they occasionally went off nettle stings and thistles. Among her for the East or West Indies, was often other love-inspiring qualities, she sung to me a sore affliction; but I was soon sweetly; and it was her favourite reel, called to more serious evils. My father's to which I attempted giving an embodied generous master died; the farm proved a vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumpruinous bargain; and, to clench the mis-tuous as to imagine that I could make fortune, we fell into the hands of a factor, who sat for the picture I have drawn of one in my Tale of Twa Dogs. My father was advanced in life when he married; I was the eldest of seven children; and he worn out by early hardships, was unfit for labour. My father's spirit was soon irritated, but not easily broken. There was a freedom in his lease in two years more; and, to weather these two years, we retrenched our expenses. We lived very poorly: I was a dexterous ploughman, for my age; and the next eldest to me was a brother (Gilbert) who could drive the plough very well, and help me to thrash the corn. A novel writer might perhaps have viewed these scenes with some satisfaction; but so did not I; my indignation yet boils at the recollection of the s1 factor's insolent threatening letters, which used to set us all in tears.

"This kind of life-the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth year; a little before which period I first committed the sin of Rhyme. You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together as partners in the labours of harvest. In my fifteenth autumn my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language; but you know the Scottish idiom-she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she altogether, unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below! How she caught the contagion I cannot tell: you medical people talk much of infection from breathing the same air, the touch, &c.;

verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin; but my girl sung a song, which was said to be composed by a small country laird's son, on one of his father's maids, with whom he was in love! and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he; for, excepting that he could smear sheep, and cast peats, his father living in the moorlands, he had no more scholar-craft than myself.*

"Thus with me began love and poetry: which at times have been my only, and till within the last twelve months, have been my highest enjoyment. My father struggled on till he reached the freedom in his lease, when he entered on a larger farm, about ten miles farther in the country. The nature of the bargain he made was such as to throw a little ready money into his hands at the commencement of his lease, otherwise the affair would have been impracticable. For four years we lived comfortably here; but a difference commencing between him and his landlord as to terms, after three years tossing and whirling in the vortex of litigation, my father was just saved from the horrors of a jail by a consumption, which, after two years' promises, kindly stepped in, and carried him away, to where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.

"It is during the time that we lived on this farm, that my little story is most eventful. I was, at the beginning of this period, perhaps the most ungainly, awkward boy in the parish-no solitaire was less acquainted with the ways of the world. What I knew of ancient story was gathered from Salmon's and Guthrie's geographical grammars; and the

* See Appendix, No. II. Note A.

[ocr errors]

THE LIFE OF BURNS

[ocr errors]

13

ideas I had formed of modern manners, of bookish knowledge, a certain wild logiliterature, and criticism, I got from the cal talent, and a strength of thought, Spectator. These with Pope's Works, something like the rudiments of good some plays of Shakspeare, Tull and Dick- sense; and it will not seem surprising son on Agriculture, The Pantheon, Locke's that I was generally a welcome guest Essay on the Human Understanding, Stack-where I visited, or any great wonder house's History of the Bible, Justice's Brit- that, always where two or three met toish Gardener's Directory, Bayle's Lec-gether, there was I among them. But far tures, Allan Ramsay's Works, Taylor's beyond all other impulses of my heart, was un penchant a l'adorable moitie du Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, A Select Collection of English Songs, and Her- genre humain. My heart was completely vey's Meditations, had formed the whole tinder, and was eternally lighted up by of my reading. The collection of Songs some goddess or other; and as in every I pored over them other warfare in this world, my fortune was my vade mecum. driving my cart, or walking to labour, was various, sometimes I was received song by song, verse by verse: carefully with favour, and sometimes I was mortinoting the true tender, or sublime, from fied with a repulse. At the plough, scythe, affectation and fustian. I am convinced or reaping hook, I feared no competitor, I owe to this practice much of my critic and thus I set absolute want at defiance; and as I never cared farther for my lacraft, such as it is. bours than while I was in actual exercise, "In my seventeenth year, to give my I spent the evenings in the way after my manners a brush, I went to a country own heart. A country lad seldom carries on a love-adventure without an assisting dancing school. My father had an unaccountable antipathy against these meet- confidant. I possessed a curiosity, zeal, ings; and my going was, what to this and intrepid dexterity, that recommended moment I repent, in opposition to his me as a proper second on these occasions; wishes. My father, as I said before, was and I dare say, I felt as much pleasure in subject to strong passions; from that in- being in the secret of half the loves of the stance of disobedience in me he took a parish of Tarbolton, as ever did statesman sort of dislike to me, which I believe was in knowing the intrigues of half the courts one cause of the dissipation which mark- of Europe. The very goose feather in my ed my succeeding years. I say dissipa- hand seems to know instinctively the well tion, comparatively with the strictness worn path of my imagination, the favourand sobriety, and regularity of presbyte-ite theme of my song: and is with diffirían country life; for though the Will o' culty restrained from giving you a couple Wisp meteors of thoughtless whim were of paragraphs on the love-adventures of almost the sole lights of my path, yet ear- my compeers, the humble inmates of the ly ingrained piety and virtue kept me for farm-house, and cottage; but the grave several years afterwards within the line sons of science, ambition, or avarice, bapof innocence. The great misfortune of tize these things by the name of Follies. my life was to want an aim. I had felt To the sons and daughters of labour and early some stirrings of ambition, but they poverty, they are matters of the most sewere the blind gropings of Homer's Cy-rious nature; to them, the ardent hope, I saw the stolen interview, the tender farewell, clop round the walls of his cave. my father's situation entailed on me per- are the greatest and most delicious parts petual labour. The only two openings by of their enjoyments. which I could enter the temple of Fortune, was the gate of niggardly economy, or the path of little chicaning bargainmaking. The first is so contracted an aperture, I never could squeeze myself into it; the last I always hated-there was contamination in the very entrance! Thus abandoned of aim or view in life, with a strong appetite for sociability, as well from native hilarity as from a pride of observation and remark; a constitutional melancholy or hypochondriasm that made me fly from solitude; add to these incentives to social life, my reputation for

"Another circumstance in my life which manners, was that I spent my nineteenth made some alterations in my mind and summer on a smuggling coast, a good distance from home at a noted school, to learn mensuration, surveying, dialling, &c. in which I made a pretty good progress. But I made a greater progress in the knowledge of mankind. The contraband trade was at that time very successful, and it sometimes happened to me to fall in with those who carried it on. Scenes of swaggering, riot and roaring

dissipation were till this time new to me; a dozen or more pieces on hand; I took but I was no enemy to social life. Here, up one or other, as it suited the momentthough I learnt to fill my glass, and to ary tone of the mind, and dismissed the mix without fear in a drunken squabble, work as it bordered on fatigue. My pasyet I went on with a high hand with my sions, when once lighted up, raged like so geometry, till the sun entered Virgo, a many devils, till they got vent in rhyme; month which is always a carnival in my and then the conning over my verses, like bosom, when a charming filette who lived a spell, soothed all into quiet! None of next door to the school, overset my tri- the rhymes of those days are in print, exgonometry, and set me off at a tangent cept Winter, a Dirge, the eldest of my from the sphere of my studies. I, how-printed pieces; The Death of Poor Maiever, struggled on with my sines and co- | lie, John Barleycorn, and songs first, sesines for a few days more; but stepping cond, and third. Song second was the into the garden one charming noon to ebullition of that passion which ended the take the sun's altitude, tnere I met my forementioned school-business. angel,

"Like Proserpine gathering flowers, Herself a fairer flower.

"It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining week I staid, I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her; and the two last nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless.

"My twenty-third year was to me an important era. Partly through whim, and partly that I wished to set about doing something in life, I joined a flax-dresser in a neighbouring town (Irvine) to learn his trade. This was an unlucky affair. My ***; and to finish the whole, as we were giving a welcome carousal to the new year, the shop took fire, and burnt to ashes; and I was left like a truc poet, not worth a sixpence.

"I was obliged to give up this scheme; "I returned home very considerably the clouds of misfortune were gathering improved. My reading was enlarged with thick round my father's head; and what the very important addition of Thomson's was worst of all he was visibly far gone and Shenstone's Works; I had seen hu-in a consumption; and to crown my man nature in a new phasis; and I engaged several of my school-fellows to keep up a literary correspondence with me. This improved me in composition. I had met with a collection of letters by the wits of Queen Anne's reign, and I pored over them most devoutly; I kept copies of any of my own letters that pleased me; and a comparison between them and the composition of most of my correspondents, flattered my vanity. I carried this whim so far, that though I had not three farthings' worth of business in the world, yet almost every post brought me as many letters as if I had been a broad plodding son of day-book and ledger.

"My life flowed on much in the same course till my twenty-third year. Vive l'amour, et vive la bagatelle, were my sole principles of action. The addition of two more authors to my library gave me great pleasure; Sterne and M'Kenzie -Tristram Shandy and The Man of Feeling-were my bosom favourites. Poesy was still a darling walk for my mind; but it was only indulged in according to the humour of the hour. I had usually half

distresses, a belle fille whom I adored, and who had pledged her soul to meet me in the field of matrimony, jilted me, with peculiar circumstances of mortification. The finishing evil that brought up the rear of this infernal file, was my constitutional melancholy, being increased to such a degree, that for three months I was in a state of mind scarcely to be envied by the hopeless wretches who have got their mittiinus-Depart from me, ye accursed!

"From this adventure I learned something of a town life; but the principal thing which gave my mind a turn, was a friendship I formed with a young fellow, a very noble character, but a hapless son of misfortune. He was the son of a simple mechanic; but a great man in the neighbourhood taking him under his patronage, gave him a genteel education, with a view of bettering his situation in life. The patron dying just as he was ready to launch out into the world, the poor fellow in despair went to sea; where after a variety of good and ill fortune, a little before I was acquainted with him,

"His mind was fraught with independence, magnanimity, and every manly virtue. I loved and admired him to a degree of enthusiasm, and of course strove to imitate him. In some measure I succeeded; I had pride before, but he taught it to flow in proper channels. His knowledge of the world was vastly superior to mine, and I was all attention to learn. He was the only man I ever saw who was a greater fool than myself, where woman was the presiding star; but he spoke of illicit love with the levity of a sailor, which hitherto I had regarded with horror. Here his friendship did me a mischief; and the consequence was that soon after I resumed the plough, I wrote the Poet's Welcome. My reading only increased, while in this town, by two stray volumes of Pamela, and one of Ferdinand Count Fathom, which gave me some idea of novels. Rhyme, except some religious pieces that are in print, I had given up; but meeting with Ferguson's Scottish Poems, I strung anew my wildly sounding lyre with emulating vigour. When my father died, his all went among the hellhounds that prowl in the kennel of justice; but we made a shift to collect a little money in the family amongst us, with which, to keep us together, my brother and I took a neighbouring farm. My brother wanted my hair-brained imagination, as well as my social and amorous madness; but, in good sense, and every sober qualification, he was far my superior.

he had been set on shore by an American | bourhood as a maker of rhymes. The privateer, on the wild coast of Connaught, first of my poetic offspring that saw the stripped of every thing. I cannot quit this light, was a burlesque lamentation on a poor fellow's story without adding, that quarrel between two reverend Calvinists, he is at this time master of a large West- both of them dramatis persone in my Indiaman belonging to the Thames. Holy fair. I had a notion myself, that the piece had some merit; but to prevent the worst, I gave a copy of it to a friend who was very fond of such things, and told him that I could not guess who was the author of it, but that I thought it pretty clever. With a certain description of the clergy, as well as laity, it met with a roar of applause. Holy Willie's Prayer next made its appearance, and alarmed the kirk-session so much, that they held several meetings to look over their spiritual artillery, if haply any of it might be pointed against profane rhymers. Unluckily for me, my wanderings led me on another side, within point-blank shot of their heaviest metal. This is the unfortunate story that gave rise to my printed poem, The Lament. This was a most melancholy affair, which I cannot yet bear to reflect on, and had very nearly given me one or two of the principal qualifications for a place among those who have lost the chart, and mistaken the reckoning of Rationality.* I gave up my part of the farm to my brother; in truth it was only nominally mine; and made what little preparation was in my power for Jamaica. But before leaving my native country for ever, I resolved to publish my poems. I weighed my productions as impartially as was in my power; I thought they had merit; and it was a delicious idea that I should be called a clever fellow, even though it should never reach my earsa poor negro driver;-or perhaps a victim to that inhospitable clime, and gone to the world of spirits! I can truly say, that pauvre inconnu as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high an idea of myself and of my works as I have at this moment, when the public has decided in their favour. It ever was my opinion, that the mistakes and blunders, both in a rational and religious point of view, of which we see thousands daily guilty, are owing to their ignorance of themselves. To know myself had been all along my constant study. I weighed myself alone; I balanced myself with others; I watched every means of information, to see how much ground I occupied as a man and as a poet; I studied assiduously Nature's design in my formation-where the lights

"I entered on this farm with a full resolution, Come, go to, 1 will be wise! I read farming books; I calculated crops: I attended markets; and, in short, in spite of the devil, and the world, and the flesh, I believe I should have been a wise man ; but the first year, from unfortunately buying bad seed, the second, from a late harvest, we lost half our crops. This overset all my wisdom, and I returned, like the dog to his vomit, and the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.†

I now began to be known in the neigh

* Rob the Rhymer's Welcome to his Bastard Child i See Appendix, No. II. Note B

* An explanation of this will be found hereafter

and shades in my character were intend- | Miss W. Her very elegant and friendly letter I cannot answer at present, as my presence is requisite in Edinburgh, and I set out to-morrow."*

At the period of our poet's death, his brother, Gilbert Burns, was ignorant that he had himself written the foregoing narrative of his life while in Ayrshire; and having been applied to by Mrs. Dunlop for some memoirs of his brother, he com

ed. I was pretty confident my poems would meet with some applause; but, at the worst the roar of the Atlantic would deafen the voice of censure, and the novelty of West Indian scenes make me forget neglect. I threw off six hundred copies, of which I had got subscriptions for about three hundred and fifty.-My vanity was highly gratified by the reception I met with from the public; and besides I pocketed, all expenses deducted, nearly twenty pounds. This sum came very seasonably, as I was thinking of in-plied with her request in a letter, from denting myself, for want of money to procure my passage. As soon as I was master of nine guincas, the price of wafting me to the torrid zone, I took a steeragepassage in the first ship that was to sail from the Clyde; for,

"Hungry ruin had me in the wind."

"I had been for some days skulking from covert to covert, under all the terrors of a jail; as some ill-advised people had uncoupled the merciless pack of the law at my heels. I had taken the farewell of my few friends; my chest was on the road to Greenock; I had composed the last song I should ever measure in Caledonia, The gloomy night is gathering fast, when a letter from Dr. Blacklock, to a friend of mine, overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects to my poetic ambition. The Doctor belonged to a set of critics, for whose applause I had not dared to hope. His opinion that I would meet with encouragement in Edinburgh for a second edition, fired me so much, that away I posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a single letter of introduction. The baneful star which had so long shed its blasting influence in my zenith, for once made a revolution to the nadir; and a kind Providence placed me under the patronage of one of the noblest of men, the Earl of Glencairn. Oublie moi, Grand Dieu, si jamais je l'oublie !

"I need relate no farther. At Edinburgh I was in a new world; I mingled among many classes of men, but all of them new to me, and I was all attention to catch the characters and the manners living as they rise. Whether I have profited, time will show.

** **

* * *

which the following narrative is chiefly extracted. When Gilbert Burns afterwards saw the letter of our poet to Dr. Moore, he made some annotations upon it, which shall be noticed as we proceed.

Robert Burns was born on the 25th day of January, 1759, in a small house about two miles from the town of Ayr, and within a few hundred yards of Alloway church, which his poem of Tam o' Shanter has rendered immortal. The name which the poet and his brother modernized into Burns, was originally Burnes, or Burness. Their father, William Burnes, was the son of a farmer in Kincardineshire, and had received the education common in Scotland to persons in his condition of life; he could read and write, and had some knowledge of arithmetic. His family having fallen into reduced circumstances, he was compelled to leave his home in his nineteenth year, and turned his steps towards the south in quest of a livelihood. The same necessity attended his elder brother Robert. "I have often heard my father," says Gilbert Burns, in his letter to Mrs. Dunlop, " describe the anguish of mind he felt when they parted on the top of a hill on the confines of their native place, each going off his several way in search of new adventures, and scarcely knowing whither he went. My father undertook to act as a gardener,

*There are various copies of this letter in the author's hand-writing; and one of these, evidently corrected, is in the book in which he had copied several of his letters. This has been used for the press, with some omissions, and one slight alteration suggested by Gilbert Burns.

This house is on the right-hand side of the road from Ayr to Maybole, which forms a part of the road from Glasgow to Port-Patrick. When the poet's father afterwards removed to Tarbolton parish, he sold his leasehold right in this house, and a few acres of land adjoining, to the corporation of shoemakers in Ayr

"My most respectful compliments to It is now a country ale-house.

« AnteriorContinuar »