James Bible, as construed by John Knox, was drilled into the young ploughman with his rustic gruel and oatmeal cakes. Yet his poetic nature secretly revolted at the creeds and conduct of puritan preachers, and he resorted to the fields and flowers and hills and streams and birds and beasts and sun and stars for soul-lit consolation! Man-made prayers, creeds and bibles were not relished by our poet after the age of sixteen, when he began to think for himself and commune with the unalterable and everlasting principles of Dame Nature. The "Muses Nine" who sing and circle around the heights of Parnassus are jealous teachers, and no earthly sacerdotal agents are recognized in their splendid realm of imagination and glory! They reign supreme! These fantastic and romantic Beauties were constantly flirting with the brain of Burns, and whether ploughing among the daisies, or field-mice in his native vales, or sporting at the banquets of scholars and royalty in Edinburgh, the Muse was ever buzzing in his willing ear and dictating everlasting words and tunes to his tender, troubled heart. A stormy night before he thought to leave Scotland for Jamaica, when flying from the shadow of the marriage laws, he wrote THE GLOOMY NIGHT IS GATHERING FAST. The gloomy night is gathering fast, The Autumn mourns her rip'ning corn, She sees the scowling tempest fly; 'Tis not the surging billow's roar, To leave the bonnie banks of Ayr. Farewell old Coila's hills and dales, Farewell, my friends! farewell, my foes! EDINBURGH EDITION-ENTERTAINMENTS, TRAVELS. The success of the Kilmarnock Edition of Burns gave him some encouragement, and the ready cash began to lift him out of family troubles. Through the recommendations of Hamilton, Aiken, Dr. Blacklock, Professor Stewart, Dr. Blair, Dr. Mackenzie and the Earl of Glencairn, Mr. Creech, the publisher, was convinced that a new and full edition of the poems of the rustic ploughman would make a hit and he quickly flung them on the breeze of public opinion, meeting a financial success for himself and the poet. Robert Burns entered the great city of Edinburgh, in November, 1786; and through a flattering review of his early poems, in the Lounger Magazine, that circulated largely among scholars and the rich aristocracy, he jumped into immediate notoriety and fame, as welcome as a painted and laughing clown in a circus, or a decorated Indian Chief from the wilds of America! The brain philosophy of Burns broke through the barriers of caste and creed and the Edinburgh professors, as well as the lords, earls and dukes, with their be-jeweled ladies, were delighted to have the ploughman poet sit at their banquet boards, or converse on ethical and poetical subjects in their gilded drawing rooms. He was an intellectual novelty, a tit-bit, or sweet-bread of rural genius, that had never been seen before in Scotland, and was consequently patriotically praised and admired for even his mental and physical eccentricities, but really taken as an amusing and interesting animal for the delectation of lounging aristocracy and egotistical college professors, who endeavored to diagnose and dissect the case as they would a petrified mammoth from the mouth of the low levels of the Lena! In the year 1787, after the successful issue of the second edition of his poems, he longed for the wilds of the Scotch mountains, streams, lakes, crags and noted castles, and with selected companions made four excursions through the summer and fall into the most noted scenes of the Highlands. But strange to say, the mountain scenery, where he even beheld the sunrise darting over grand Ben Lomond, did not inspire his Muse to compose any lofty or sublime poem on the romantic beauty of his native land. The scholars and biographers of his day wondered that he did not break into "lofty rhyme" at beholding the heather wilds, dashing falls and splintered crags of Dame Nature. There is only one explanation: Burns was not built on the lines of a lofty, ethereal, sublime poet, and could not lift himself out of the rude and simple things that grew and ran along the furrows, fields, roads, hills and streams of Ayr and Dumfries! What a contrast in this respect between Burns and Scott, who uttered in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" these patriotic and lofty lines to the mountain scenery of Scotland: O Caledonia! stern and wild, Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, That knits me to thy rugged strand? Think what is now, and what hath been, Seems as to me, of all bereft, Sole friends, thy woods and streams are left. And thus I love them better still, Even in extremity of ill! By Yarrow's stream still let me stray, And yet the simple songs of Highland Mary, John Anderson, My Jo, and Afton Waters, will be sung by millions yet unborn at the fire-side of home and love, when the lofty and sublime lines of Scott, Byron, Milton and Shakespeare are only repeated by the few in rich mansions, or recited through the classic aisles of colleges and universities! HIGHLAND MARY. Ye banks and slopes and streams around, The castle of Montgomery, Green be your woods and fair your flowers, Your waters never murky! There summer first unfolds her robes, And there the longest tarry, For there I took the last farewell Of my sweet Highland Mary. How sweetly bloomed the gay, green birch, As underneath their fragrant shade I clasped her to my bosom! The golden hours on angel wings For dear to me as light and life Was my sweet Highland Mary. With many a vow and locked embrace Our parting was full tender, And pledging oft to meet again We tore ourselves asunder; But oh! fell death's untimely frost, That nipt my flower so early! Now green's the sod and cold the clay O pale, pale now, those rosy lips And closed her eyes-the sparkling glance |