BURNS 



1011 



BURNS 



Burns was the son of a tenant farmer, and 

 was born on January 25, 1759, at Alloway, in 

 Ayrshire, in a little cottage which has become 

 a Mecca to thousands of pilgrims. His father 

 could give him little enough, but whenever he 

 could spare him to go to school he did it gladly, 

 and he encouraged the longings for knowledge 

 which were born in the boy. Most of young 

 Robert's education was gained from reading, to 

 which he earnestly devoted himself. In this 

 way he learned what the best English poets 

 could teach him, and thus he cultivated the 

 instinct for poetry which was a part of his 

 nature. 



At an early age he had to begin working on 

 the farm, and by the time he was fifteen he 

 was doing the work of a man. In 1781 he went 

 to Irvine to learn the business of flax-dressing, 

 but the building in which he was working was 

 destroyed by fire, and he was forced to abandon 

 that living. When his father died, Robert 

 took a small farm at Mossgiel with his brother 

 Gilbert, but the. venture was not highly suc- 

 cessful. Robert, however, began by his poems 

 to attract the attention not only of his neigh- 

 bors but of educated men of the vicinity, and 

 this seems not strange when it is remembered 

 that The Cotter's Saturday Night, To a Mouse 

 and The Jolly Beggars were produced at that 

 time. 



An unhappy and unsuccessful love affair with 

 Jean Armour of Mossgiel decided him to emi- 

 grate to Jamaica, and to obtain money for his 

 passage he published by subscription in 1786 

 a volume of his poems. 



This volume gained the approval of emi- 

 nent men in Edinburgh, and at their suggestion 

 he gave up his voyage and went to the city 

 to make arrangements for publishing a new 

 edition. The books sold far better than he 

 had dared to hope, and the young man, ad- 

 mired and flattered, was received in the highest 

 society. Scott, then a boy of fifteen, saw him 

 and was deeply impressed. "I never saw," 

 he wrote years later, "such another eye in a 

 human head, though I have seen the most 

 distinguished men in my time." 



Returning to the country with about $2,500 

 which the sale of his books had brought him, 

 Burns took a farm at Ellisland, near Dumfries, 

 and in 1788 married Jean Armour. It was 

 during his residence on this farm that he 

 wrote, in a single day, Tarn O'Shanter. Again 

 farming was not successful, and Burns accepted 

 the post of exciseman, performing his duties 

 conscientiously. The spectacle of Scotland's 



greatest poet testing ale and collecting duties 

 on it is a strange one to people of to-day, but 

 those of his own time appear to have seen 

 nothing unusual in it. 



In 1791, completely discouraged with farming, 

 Burns moved to Dumfries and relied entirely 



THE BURNS COTTAGE 

 Where the poet was born. 



on his salary as exciseman. He continued to 

 write, increasing his local fame by a number 

 of beautiful songs adapted to old Scottish 

 tunes. But the life in Dumfries was of the 

 wrong sort for a man possessed of as little 

 self-control as was Burns. The idle and the 

 dissipated gathered around him, for his bril- 

 liant wit gave a charm to their meetings; 

 while the more respectable classes refused to 

 admit him to their society because of these 

 low associations and his own increasingly dissi- 

 pated habits. In the winter of 1795 his health 

 began to decline, and in the following summer 

 he died. His wife and four children were made 

 comfortable by the proceeds from a subscrip- 

 tion edition of his poems which his friends and 

 admirers at once brought out. 



Burns was one of the most human of all the 

 world's great writers the things which inter- 

 ested and moved him interest and move every 

 man who keeps himself open to impressions. 

 Honest, proud, friendly and warm-hearted, with 

 a sound understanding and vigorous imagina- 

 tion, he combined with these qualities the high 

 passions which were his ruin. Burns himself 

 felt that justice had never been done him, 

 but he owed the unhappiness and failure of 

 his life fully as much to his own lack of self- 

 control as to outward circumstances. And yet 

 the epigram that "it was Burns' virtues that 

 killed him" has in it much of truth, for his 

 understanding and his better judgment were 

 at war continually with his passions, and the 

 struggle wore out even his strong body. 



As to his poetry, there is but one verdict 

 of its kind it is unsurpassed. The charm of 



