BURNS, RonEfir (1759-96). The great lyric poet of Scotland. lie was born at Alloway, in Ayrshire, January 25, 1759. His father, then a nursery gardener. and afterwards the occupant of a small farm, had to struggle all his life with poverty and misfortune, but made every exertion to give his children a good education; and the boy was able to enjoy a considerable amount of instruction and miscellaneous reading in spite of his poverty. Among the books placed in his way were the Spectator, Locke's Essay, and Pope's Iliad. He learned French and some Latin; and lie knew Allan Ramsay and the popular songs of Scotland. In Ids seventeenth sear he wrote his first poem, adressed to 1:1ilpatrick, by whose side he had worked in the fields. In 1777 he was sent to study surveying in the house of his uncle, Samuel Brown, at Bal lochneil. Here be fell into the company of some 'jovial smugglers,' and began to realize the force of the traditional association of wine, woman, and song. His father was now trying another farm at Lochlea„ near Tarbolton, to hich the young poet returned, probably feeling himself not a little of a man of the world. In 1780 he was one of the founders of a 'Bachelor's Club' at Tarbolton. at whose meetings such weighty topics as the relative merits of love and friendship were gravely discussed. The love affairs which have provoked so much ethical controversy continually beset him. The gen erally lax morality of the Scotch peasantry at the period may partly account for. if not excuse, his failings in this direction. He was for a while seriously smitten by the charms of a farm er's daughter named Ellison Begbie, who is sup posed to be the original of his Morison; but she prudently declined an alliance, and in the summer of 1781 he went to Irvine to join a relative of his mother's in a flax-dressing busi ness; but a convivial celebration of the next new year's advent ended in the burning down of the shop. Returning to Loehlea, he lived quietly and temperately after this reverse; and after his father's death, in 1784, he and his brother Gilbert settled on a small farm, which they had taken in the previous autumn at Mossgiel, near 111anchline. Here he became acquainted with several educated men and wrote seine of his finest poems, such as "The Jolly Beggars," "The Cot tar's Saturday Night," and the lines "To a (louse." Ile had already begun to think of
publication, his brother having assured hint that his "Epistle to Davie" would 'bear being printed,' when the perplexing consequences of his love affair with Jean Armour (to whom he had given, under pressure, a written certificate that she was his wife, but who had been induced to repudiate him) determined him to emigrate. Ile accordingly published a volume of poems in July, 1786, with a view to making his passage money to Jamaica. Meantime. from May to October of the same year (while still able to protest on June 6 that Ile loved Jean to dis traction), he developed a passionate attachment to Mary Campbell. who died of a fever, and was commemorated by some of his most pathetic poems, "To Mary in Heaven" and "Highland Mary." The success of his little volume and negotiations for a second edition decided him to stay in Scotland, and finally in November drew him to Edinburgh. Here lie was received with enthusiasm in good society, and made a favorable impression by the 'dignified plainness and simplicity' of which Scott, who then saw him, speaks. From the second edition of his poems (April, 1787) he received in the end about f500. While waiting for payment lie traveled agreeably in various company, and renewed his old relations with Jean Armour, to whom he was legally married in August. 1788. Before this, in March, he had been appointed to a place in the excise, and had taken the lease of a farm at Ell island, near Dumfries. The farm not pay ing too well, Burns took up his duties as excise man, and diseharged them vigorously, though not with excessive sternness. Here he wrote "Tam o' Shanter" in a single day for Grose, the anti quarian, in whose Antiquities of .`'cot In nil (1791) it was first published. In December, 1791, having given up his farm, he settled in Dumfries on a salary of £70 a year. Some un guarded political expressions drew upon him the suspicion of the Government, and he came near losing his post. Possibly embittered by what he felt to be injustice, he allowed his habits of dis sipation to grow on him, to the detriment of both his reputation and his health. All the while, however, his poetical activity continued, though he indignantly refused offers of a regu lar salary for to the London and Horning Ch ran irle. Broken in health and spirits, he died July 21, 1796.