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ness was never wasted on one who, whatever his faults, has never been accused of ingratitude. But in the bard s city life there was an unnatural element. He stooped to beg for neither smiles nor favour, but the gnarled country oak is cut up into cabinets in artificial prose and verse. In the letters to Mr Graham, the prologue to Mr Wood, and the epistles to Clarinda, he is dancing minuets with hob nailed shoes. When, in 1787, the second edition of the Poems came out, the proceeds of their sale realized for the author 400. On the strength of this sum he gave himself two long rambles, full of poetic material one through the border towns into England as far as Newcastle, returning by Dumfries to Mauchline, and another a grand tour through the East Highlands, as far as Inverness, returning

by Edinburgh, and so home to Ayrshire.

In 1788 Burns took a new farm at Ellisland on the Nith, settled there, married, lost his little money, and wrote, among other pieces, " Auld Lang Syne " and " Tain O Shanter." In 1789 he obtained, through the good office of Mr Graham of Fintry, an appointment as excise-officer of the district, worth 50 per annum. In 1791 he removed to a similar post at Dumfries worth 70. In the course of the following year he was asked to edit and supply the Melodies of /Scotland with Symjihonies and Accompaniments for the Pianoforte and Violin : tJte poetry by Robert Burns. To this work he contributed about one hundred songs, the best of which are now ringing in the ear of every Scotchman from New Zealand to San Francisco. For these, original and adapted, he received a shawl for his wife, a picture by David Allan representing the "Cottar s Saturday Night," and 5 ! The poet wrote an indignant letter and never afterwards composed for money. Unfortunately the " Bock of Independence " to which he had proudly retired was but a castle of air, over which the meteors of French political enthusiasm cast a lurid gleam. In the last years of his life, exiled from polite society on account of his revolu tionary opinions, he became sourer in temper and plunged more deeply into the dissipations of the lower ranks, among whom he found his only companionship and sole, though shallow, sympathy. To have Jacobin tendencies, to rejoice at the downfall of the Bastille, was regarded as the sign of an abandoned character, as it was twelve years ago in Scotland to embrace the cause of the Northern States in the American War.

Burns began to feel himself prematurely old. Walking with a friend who proposed to him to join a county ball, he shook his head, saying " that s all over now," and adding a verse of Lady Grissel Baillie s ballad

" were we young as we ancc hae been, We siul hae been galloping down on yon green, And linking it ower the lily-white lea, But were na my heart light I wad dee."

His hand shook ; his pulse and appetite failed ; his spirits sunk into a uniform gloom. In April 179G he wrote " I fear it will be some time before I tune my lyre again. By Babel s streams I have sat and wept. I have only known existence by the pressure of sickness and counted time by the repercussions of pain. I close my eyes in misery and open them without hope. I look on the vernal day and say with poor Ferguson

"Say wherefore has an all-indulgent heaven Life to the comfortless and wretched given."

On the 4th of July he was seen to be dying. On the 12th he wrote to his cousin for the loan of 10 to save him from passing his last days in jail. On the 21st he was no more. On the 25th, when his last son came into the world, he was buried with local honours, the volqnteers of the company to which he belonged firing three volleys over his grave.

It haa been said that Lowland Scotland as a distinct nationality came in with two warriors and went out with two bards. It came in with William Wallace and Robert Bruce and went out with Robert Burns and Walter Scott. The first two made the history, the last two told the story and sung the song." But what in the minstrel s lay was mainly a requiem was in the people s poet also a prophecy. The position of Burns in the progress of our literature may be shortly defined ; he was a link between two eras, like Chaucer, the last of the old and the first of the new the inheritor of the traditions and the music of the past, in some respects the herald of the future.

The volumes of our lyrist owe part of their popularity to the fact of their being an epitome of melodies, moods, and memories that had belonged for centuries to the national life, the best inspirations of which have passed into them. But in gathering from his ancestors Burns has exalted their work by asserting a new dignity for their simplest themes. He is the heir of Barbour, distilling the spirit of the old poet s epic into a battle chant, and of Dunbar, reproducing the various humours of a half -sceptical, half-religious philosophy of life. He is the pupil of Ramsay, but he leaves his master, to make a social protest and to lead a literary revolt. The Gentle Shepherd, still largely a court pastoral, in which " a man s a man " if born a gentleman, may be contrasted with the " Jolly Beggars " the one is like a minuet of the ladies of Versailles on the sward of the Swiss village near the Trianon, the other like the march of the maenads with Theroigne de Mericourt. Ramsay adds to the rough tunes and words of the ballads the refinement of the wits who in the " Easy " and " Johnstone " clubs talked over their cups of Prior and Pope, Addison and Gay. Burns inspires them with a fervour that thrills the most wooden of his race. We may clench the contrast by a representative example. This is from Ramsay s version of perhaps the best known of our songs,

" Methinks around us on each bough A thousand Cupids play; "Whilst through the groves I walk with you. Each object makes me gay. Since your return the sun and moon With brighter beams do shine, Streams murmur soft notes while they run As they did langsyne." Compare the verses in Burns

" We twa hae run about the braes And pou t the gowans tine ; But we ve wandered mony a weary foot Sin auld lang syne. We twa hae paidl d in the burn, Frae morning sun till dine : But seas between us braid hae roar d Sin auld lang syne."

Burns as a poet of the inanimate world doubtless derived hints from Thomson (i.e., the poet, not his correspondent), but in his power of timing its manifestations to the moods of the mind he is more properly ranked as a forerunner of Wordsworth. He never follows the fashions of his century, except in his failures in his efforts at set panegyric or fine letter-writing. His highest work knows nothing of " Damon " or " Musidora." He leaves the atmosphere of drawing-rooms for the ingle or the ale-house or the mountain breeze.

The affectations of his style are insignificant and rare.

His prevailing characteristic is an absolute sincerity. A love for the lower forms of social life was his besetting sin ; Nature was his healing power. Burns compares himself to an yEolian harp, strung to every wind of heaven. His genius flows over all living and lifeless things with a sympathy that finds nothing mean or insignificant. An uprooted daisy becomes in his pages an enduring emblem

of the fate of artless maid and simple bard. He disturbs