BURNS, Robert, Scottish poet : b. near Ayr, Scotland, 25 Jan. 1759; d. Dumfries, 21 July 1796. His father, William Burnes or Burness, a native of Kincardineshire, had been a gar dener, but at the time of the poet's birth was a nurseryman on a small piece of land on the banks of the Doon in Ayrshire. He was a man of strong intelligence and deep piety, but un successful in his struggle with poverty. His mother was Agnes Brown, a woman of ability, and, though of meagre book education, well versed in folk-song and legend. Robert, the eldest of seven children, went to school for three years, 1765-68, under John Murdoch in the neighboring village of Al)oway. Later he wai in attendance for a few months each at Dal rymple parish school in 1772, at Ayr Academy in 1773 and at Kirkoswald about 1776; but the more important part of his education he re ceived from his father and his own reading. In 1766 William Burness had borrowed .money to rent the farm of Mount Oliphant; and the future poet by the time he was 16 was do ing a man's work, overstraining his immature physique in performing his share in the vain effort of the family to keep its head above water. The scene of the struggle was moved in 1777 to Lochlea, about .10 miles distant, where in 1784 his father died. During the Lochlea period, Burns, ambitious to improve his position, went to the neighboring town of Irvine to learn flax-dressing. Nothing came of this move; but while resident there he formed that acquaintance with a dissipated sailor to which he himself ascribed the beginning of his licentious adventures. On his father's death, Robert and his brother Gilbert rented the farm of Mossgiel, but this experiment was no more successful than those previously made. While here he contracted an intimacy with Jean Armour, which brought upon him the censure of the Kirk-session. Finally the poet, dis heartened by successive bad harvests and irri tated by the attempts of his father-in-law to cancel his irregular marriage with Jean and to hand him over to the law, determined to emi grate. For 10 years he had been composing verses, some of which had brought him con siderable local fame, and these he collected and published in order to raise money for the voy but the unexpected success of this volume (Kilmarnock 1786) roused his literary ambition, gave him fresh courage and led him to change his plans. Instead of sailing for the West Indies, he went to Edinburgh in November 1786, and during that winter was the literary lion of the season. Here he met such celebrities
as Dugald Stewart, the philosopher; Blair, the rhetorician; Henry Mackenzie, the author of The Man of Feeling); Lord Glencairn; the Duchess of Gordon, and Creech, the publisher. The last named undertook an enlarged edition of his poems (Edinburgh 1787) • and while waiting for the profits of this. volume, Burns made several tours through the country, traces of which are to be found in a number of occa sional poems. Creech finally paid him enough to enable him to give substantial help to his brother in Mossgiel, and to rent and stock thy farm in Ellisland in Dumfriesshire. Hither in 1788 he brought Jean Armour, to whom he was now regularly married, his success and fame having reconciled her parents to the match; and for three years he tried farming. But failure still dogged him, and in 1791 he moved to Dumfries, where he lived on a posi tion in the excise service which he had obtained while still at Ellisland through the influence of some of the powerful acquaintances he had made in Edinburgh. He had, however, lost heart; and after a few years of drudgery, varied with the drinking bouts to which he was con stantly tempted both by habit and by the invita tion of foolish admirers, he died at Dumfries in his 38th year.
Biographies of Burns have frequently been crowded with attempts to disentangle or to ex plain away the facts of his numerous amours. There is much controversy over the identity of the semi-mythical Mary Campbell, the "High land Mary° of the songs; much curiosity over the precise degree of Platonism in his feeling for Mrs. McLehose, the "Clarinda" of his let ters, and the inspirer of a number of lyrics; much difference of opinion as to whether and how long he was in love with his wife. Into these details we do not enter. It is clear enough that Burns was a man of exceptionally power ful passions, that the extreme and depressing of his youth, and, indeed, of the greater part of his life, along with his natural tendencies to conviviality, drove him to excesses of self-indulgence; and that while he strove often and painfully after better things, his striving was many times without avail. "The sport,* he calls himself, "the miserable victim of rebellious pride, hypochondriac imagination, agonizing sensibility and bedlam passions.* These phrases are true enough, though they do not imply the further explanation of his pitiful career that is found in the habits of his class and time, and the untoward nature of his en vironment.