BURNS. 



H7 



permanent provision from tlie extensive patronage 

 -v \\-iu\-ii ! >!. A ])ro vision wa, in- 



1 at l.ttt made for him; but it was a miserable 

 xciscrnan, an office which 



coiidfiniK-d him to the haunts of smugglers and the 

 f publicans. Burns humorously expressed 

 hid consolation for the lowncss of his corps and com- 

 s, by comparing it to the encouragement which 

 IK- had hca'd held out by a recruiting Serjeant to pome 

 young soldiers : " Cl'-ntlemen, you have enlisted in 

 the most blackguard corps in his majesty's service; if 

 tin-re is an honest man among you, he is sure to make 

 his fortune in the regiment." 



He now took a farm on the banks of the Nith, 

 built himself a house with his own hands, and settled 

 in conjugal union with his Jane. But here his unhap- 

 py distraction between two businesses, and the jour- 

 nies which he was obliged to take in his profession 

 as an exciseman, had so bad an effect on his farming 

 pursuits, that, at the end of three years and a half, 

 he found it convenient, if not necessary, to resign the 

 one. His office in the excise had originally produced 

 about fifty pounds per annum. Having acquitted 

 himself to the satisfaction of the board, he was ap- 

 pointed to a new district in Dumfriesshire, worth 

 about seventy pounds per annum ; and he settled in 

 Dumfries in 1791. Hitherto, although addicted to 

 excess in company, Burns had abstained from the ha- 

 bitual use of spirituous liquors ; but in Dumfries new 

 temptations presented themselves to " the sin that so 

 easily beset him." His life was embittered also by 

 the political persecution (for it can be called nothing 

 else,) which he suffered for expressing the indepen- 

 dent principles of a friend to liberty. Information 

 of some unguarded expressions, which he had used in 

 private conversation, was sent to the board of excise, 

 and he was prevented from being cast out of bread 

 and support, only by the interposition of his steady 

 friend Mr Grahame of Fintry. 



In the winter of 1795, his constitution, broken by 

 cares, irregularities, and passions, fell into premature 

 decline. The summer returned, but only to shine on 

 his sickness and his grave. In July his mind wander- 

 ed into delirium, unless roused by conversation ; and 

 in that month a fever, on the fourth day of its con- 

 tinuance, closed his life and suffering*, at 37 years of 



age- 

 Burns was, in his person, about five feet ten inchea 

 high, of a form that indicated strength as well as 

 agility ; his forehead was finely raised, indicating ex- 

 tensive capacity ; his eyes were large, dark, full of 

 ardour, and intelligence ; his character, though mar- 

 red by imprudence, was never contaminated by du- 

 plicity or meanness. 



As a poet, without accomplishing any work of 

 extensive or complicated design, he has exhibited all 

 the variety of poetical powers which can enter into 

 the greatest works, the conduct of a plan only except- 

 ed. The English reader is alive to the force and 

 feeling of many of his passages; but the Scottish 

 reader perceives also, that he is as much a master of 

 the ludicrous and familiar, as of the strong and pa- 

 thetic. His humour in delineating Scottish character 

 and manners, unfortunately for his name, depends 

 : ipon a language which is fast expiring \ but as long 



6 



as it remains intelligible, the gfliety and the unsoplus- 

 >d charm of Ins pictures from rustic life, will 

 be deeply felt by hi? countrymen, and will, in all pro- 

 bability, be studied by glossaries, as Chaucer's able 

 pictures of English life are now studied by the En- 

 glish scholar. As a poet, he is superior in force to 

 Ramsay; his humour is of a richer vein than that of 

 either Ramsay or Ferguson, both of whom, as he 

 himself informs us, he had frequently in his eye, but 

 rather with a view to kindle at their flame than to 

 servile imitation. Ferguson's Farmer's Ingle, which 

 may be considered as a Scottish pastoral, was cer- 

 tainly the architype of his CotUr't Saturday Night. 

 The picturesque simplicity of the former is not only 

 caught by Burns, but it ia elevated by louche* of 

 tenderness and sublime devotion unknown to Fergu- 

 son. The description of these humble cottagers for- 

 ming a wider circle round their hearth, and uniting 

 in the worship of God, is a picture, as Dr Currie has 

 observed, the most deeply affecting of any which the 

 rural muse has ever presented. Such poetry (it is 

 well added by the same critic,) is not to be estimated 

 by the degree of pleasure it bestows ; it is calculated 

 far beyond any other human means to give perma- 

 nence to the scenes and characters it so exquisitely 

 describes. 



As a song writer, he has adapted the Scottish me- 

 lodies to such appropriate words, that he seems more 

 like one discovering by inspiration certain thoughts 

 which had lain hid in the tune, than like a writer 

 adapting his own thoughts to the music. Sometime* 

 in his descriptive and epistolary poetry, his mirth is 

 coarse, but he is never vulgar (that we recollect) in 

 his songs ; even in the rustic and bacchanalian strains. 

 His love songs are the best. In comparing the dif- 

 ferent faculties of his mind as a poet, we think his 

 feeling predominated considerably beyond his fancy. 

 This may account for the simplicity of his amatory 

 poetry, in the language of which, fancy is always a 

 dangerous intruder. Setting aside the now forgot- 

 ten authors of ancient ballads, he has done more for 

 Scottish song, than all the other writers in our north- 

 ern dialect. Crawfurd, Skinner, Ross, and Fer- 

 guson, are names not to be put in the most distant 

 competition with his. Ramsay was, with all his 

 other merits, an indifferent song writer. There are 

 not above half a dozen songs true to the national 

 character and dialect, produced within the last cen- 

 tury, which have the exquisite stamp of merit suf- 

 ficient to rank with his happiest effusions. Those 

 few are indeed very beautiful exceptions : The reader 

 will, perhaps, anticipate that we allude to the 

 " Flowers of the Forest," and " Auld Robin Gray," 

 as the most striking instances. In one species of 

 eong he had no predecessor; we mean his war songs 

 of Bruce to his troops, apd the song of Death. In 

 these he has ri-en to a lyric energy to which the pas- 

 toral genius of our music does not follow hi:n. 



Dr Currie has scarcely left any thing to do in il- 

 lustrating the merit of his chief poems individually ; 

 and we owe no small degree of gratitude to the me- 

 mory of that good and great man, for so fully ex-.. cut- 

 ing the trust of a critic and biographer to the poet 

 of Scotland. JIoli/ li'i/lie's Prater, which Dr Currie 

 has omitted, is inferior to nothing which I3uru has. 



tl !.'.. 



