road to Greenock; I had composed the last song I should ever measure in Caledonia, "The Gloomy Night is Gathering Fast,” when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a friend of mine, overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects to my poetic ambition. The Doctor belonged to a set of critics, for whose applause I had not dared to hope. His opinion that I would meet with encouragement in Edinburgh for a second edition, fired me so much, that away I posted for that city, without a single acquaintance or a single letter of introduction. The baneful star which had so long shed its blasting influence in my zenith, for once made a revolution to the nadir; and a kind Providence placed me under the patronage of one of the noblest men, the Earl of Glencairn. I need relate no farther. At Edinburgh I was in a new world; I mingled among many classes of men, but all of them new to me, and I was all attention to catch the characters and the manners living as they rise. Whether I have profited, time will show." Unfortunately in many of the poems and letters of Burns, a vein of complaint, disappointment, grief and remorse are plainly discernible. Such feelings should not permeate the mind of the true philosopher, who must think and feel with my own poem:- LOVE AND LAUGHTER. Laugh, and the world laughs with you; This grand old earth must borrow its mirth, Sing, and the hills will answer; Sigh, it is lost on the air; The echoes bound to a joyful sound Be glad, and your friends are many; There are none to decline your nectared wine, For a long and lordly train, But one by one we must all file on Feast, and your halls are crowded; They want full measure of all your pleasure, KILMARNOCK EDITION. PEN PICTURES OF THE POET. The Kilmarnock edition in the year 1786, of six hundred copies of the poems of Burns, brought him one hundred dollars profit and relieved his immediate needs. His matrimonial entanglements with Jean Armour and the enmity of her father had caused many a secret pang of fear and remorse to the sensitive soul of the poet, but he could now see some light through the wilderness of poverty, by a prospective second edition through the suggestion of Dr. Blacklock to the Edinburgh book publisher. Burns made a number of enemies among the landed aristocrats, and the "Old Lights" of the Presbyterian Kirks, in siding with the liberal "New Lights," who endeavored to reform the ancient wrongs that had crept into the severe creed of Calvin and Knox-self-constituted tyrants of impudence, bigotry and religious tyranny. The poet could not see any reason for one or two keen religious fanatics manipulating the minds and bodies of the Scotch people, in the name and by the so-called authority of an unknown God, when these blatant preachers themselves knew no more about the will and power of a Universal Creator than the bug or blind worm they crushed beneath their feet! Burns constantly felt an envy and even malice against pretending preachers, lords, earls, dukes, princes and kings, wondering why God made these voracious animals to rule over the destinies of mankind, while he, with greater hope, heart and brain was compelled to plough the fields and cleave the woods for a bare physical support! Hear his bitterness against tyrant man in the poem: A WINTER NIGHT. Blow, blow, ye winds, with heavier gusts! More hard unkindness, unrelenting, That heaven lighted man on brother man bestows. See stern oppression's iron grip Or mad ambition's gory hand Sending like blood-hounds from the slip Woe, want and murder o'er the land! Even in the peaceful rural vale Truth weeping tells the mournful tale How pampered Luxury, Flattery by her side With all the servile wretches in the rear- Whose toil upholds the glittering show Some coarser substance unrefined Oh ye! who sink in beds of down, Burns was purely a pastoral poet and derived his daily inspiration from the soil and animals of his thistle fields, flowery-dells, heather hills and winding streams. While his hands and feet toiled in the vale of poverty, his head, heart and soul soared over the rocky crags of his native land, and though the wings of his rural muse had not the strength or lofty flight of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton or Pope, his common, every day reason and rude morality touches the heart of the plain reader and convinces, that each and all of us are of the earth, earthy! The rustic obscurity and pelting poverty of the black-eyed Burns was a violent contrast to his intuitive wisdom and soul aspirations, which caused the Kilmarnock edition of his poems to be wonderously praised by his farm companions, and their echo reverberated in the classic halls of Edinburgh University, inducing scholars and philosophers to "mark time" to the poetic melody of the rustic ploughman! By perusing carefully the poems and personal correspondence of our poet, the discriminating reader may get his soul lit autobiography in the unconscious confessions of his personal weakness, anxiety, ambition and nameless despair. Robert Burns never had a practical business aim in life, and was continually wafted by every breeze like the thistle down of his native wilds, rising and falling in the mysterious daily combination of the rolling universe. Not one of his numerous biographers has ever entered the rustic sanctuary of his mental afflictions, and while most of the writers of his short and uneventful life were disposed to be friendly, they prominently parade the poet's failings, follies and faults. • Only a Bohemian poet can think and feel for the erratic, volcanic wave of impulsive passion that continually sweeps through the mind of another poet, one who can rise or fall with the intense fluctuations of circumstance and environment, and forget all the failings of his poor human tribe, only remembering the good, kind, true and beautiful in this transient life! Burns thus made fun of the Country Scotch Camp Meeting in his poem- THE HOLY FAIR. My name is Fun, my cronie dear, Hear how the preacher tells of faith |