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seed, and next year a bad harvest destroyed half the crop. These disappointments destroyed all Burn's good intentions respecting the farm.

It was about this time that he formed an acquaintance with Jean Armour, a young girl of much goodness of heart and great personal charms, whom he wished to marry. Her father, a stone mason, did not consider Burns a suitable match, and compelled his daughter to refuse him. The poet now rushed into all kinds of dissipation in order to drown his troubles, and at length determined to accept a situation as book-keeper on an estate in the West Indies. But he was too poor to pay for his passage, and he was advised to publish his poems in order to raise a little money. An impression of 600 copies was accordingly struck off at Kilmarnock, and appeared in Aug. 1786. They were received everywhere with rapture and delight. Their simple language and genuine feeling appealed to all, old and young, grave and gay, learned and ignorant. Plough boys and maidservants, we are told, were willing to spend their hardlyearned wages, and even to deprive themselves of necessary clothing in order to purchase the coveted volume. After paying all expenses, the author cleared nearly £20.

Burns was still intent upon going to the West Indies, and he took a passage in the first vessel that was to sail from the Clyde. He had bid farewell to a few friends; his chest was on the road to Greenock, and he had composed his farewell song commencing, The Gloomy Night is Gathering Fast when a letter from Dr. Blacklock of Edinburgh to a friend of his, upset all his plans. A copy of the poems had reached Edinburgh, and had been favourably received by the critics; and it was Dr. Blacklock's opinion that Burns should go to the capital and hazard a second edition. The young poet started for Edinburgh without delay, where he arrived early in December. He was soon introduced to all who were eminent in rank, fashion, or literature in the Scottish metropolis. The brilliant conversational powers of the unlettered ploughman seemed to them as wonderful as

his poetry. Liberal subscriptions for a new edition of the poems flowed in, and no less than 2800 copies were subscribed for. The second edition was published in April 1787.

It was on the occasion of this visit to Edinburgh that Burns and Scott were brought together for the first and only time in their lives. Scott was then a lad of fifteen, and he met the poet at the house of Professor Ferguson. Burns was very much struck by a picture representing a soldier lying dead in the snow, his dog sitting in misery on one side, on the other his widow with a child in her arms. Beneath were a few lines of poetry containing the well known verse,

"The child of misery baptised in tears."

Burns seemed much affected by the print, and actually shed tears. He asked whose the lines were, and it chanced that nobody there knew except young Walter, who whispered to a friend that they occurred in a poem by Langhorne. Burns," said he, "rewarded me with a look and a word which, though of mere civility, I then received, and still recollect with very great pleasure."

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While he was staying at Edinburgh, Burns, out of his slender resources, placed a stone and an epitaph on the grave of Robert Ferguson. The history of this young poet was a very melancholy one. He was originally intended for the church, but his father having died before he finished his college course, he gave up all thoughts of the clerical profession, and returned to his mother's house at Edinburgh. After a time he obtained employment as a clerk in a lawyer's office, and employed his leisure in writing verses. The success which attended his literary efforts drew him into society, and he fell among loose companions. Fits of remorse filled him with melancholy, but still he had not resolution to break off his evil habits. One night, when about to return home from one of his revels, he fell from a staircase and received a violent contusion on the head. This affected

his brain, and the unfortunate young man was removed to a lunatic asylum. There, after two months confinement, he died, in the darkness of the night, alone, on a bed of straw. He was only twenty-three years of age. His poems were of considerable merit, and like those of Burns related to the manners, customs, and simple feelings of the Scottish peasantry. He had been dead twelve years when Burns visited Edinburgh.

The poet had realised about £500 from the second edition of his poems published at Edinburgh, and after staying about a twelvemonth in that city, he resolved to see a little more of the world around him. After making an excursion through the south of Scotland and into England, as far as Newcastle, he paid a visit to the Highlands, and in the spring of 1788 returned to Ayrshire. Here he found his brother Gilbert struggling to support their aged mother, a younger brother, and three sisters, in the farm at Mossgiel. Burns immediately advanced £200 to their relief, and with the money he had left resolved to stock another farm for himself. He fixed upon the farm of Ellisland, about six miles from Dumfries, and having at length overcome the objections of Miss Armour's parents, he married her, and took possession of his farm, June 1788.

The three years he spent at Ellisland were perhaps the happiest in his life; but his farm did not succeed so well as he expected. Through the kindness of a friend he obtained a position in the Excise, which brought him in at first £50 a-year, but was afterwards increased to £70. The duties attached to the office, however, exposed him to temptations which he could not withstand. The farm became more and more neglected, and he found himself at length obliged to resign it to his landlord. He abandoned Ellisland, and removed to Dumfries in January 1792. It was during his residence at Ellisland that he composed Auld Langsyne and Tam o' Shanter-the first, perhaps, the most widely known of all his songs; the second, the finest of his poems.

Burns now looked forward with some reason to promo

tion in the Excise; but his sympathy with the French Revolution was a bar to his advancement, and almost cost him his place. That he was thoroughly loyal in his feelings, however, is proved by the fact that, though pressed with poverty, he refused the offer of a salary to write for a paper opposed to the government. He also enrolled his name among the Dumfries Volunteers, and stimulated their loyalty by writing martial songs, among which was Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled. This celebrated

song, along with several others composed about this time, were afterwards published with musical accompaniments by Mr. Thompson, under the title of Melodies of Scotland. Burns undertook to assist in bringing out this work in September 1792, and he contributed one hundred songs, but with romantic generosity refused all remuneration. One cannot but regret that when his means were so straitened, he should decline to support himself by his pen. He seemed, however, to think it dishonourable to have any "traffic of that debt and creditor kind" where poetry was concerned.

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In the meantime disappointed, and soured in spirit at the failure of his hopes of promotion, and fond of applause, even from unworthy companions, his nights were too often devoted to intemperance, and his days to remorse. length his health gave way. As early as 1794, his strength began to fail, and during the following year he gradually grew weaker. In the month of July 1796, he went for the benefit of his health to Brow, a sea-bathing village on the banks of the Solway, in Annandale. At first he thought himself better, but when he returned home, a fortnight later, he was not able to stand upright. Fever and delirium set in, and on the 21st he died in his thirtyeighth year. He was followed to his grave by men of all ranks and opinions, and the numbers who attended his funeral could not have been less than ten or twelve thousand. A subscription for the benefit of the poet's family was commenced immediately after his death, and amounted to a considerable sum; and a Scottish nobleman, Lord Panmure, generously allowed a pension of £100 a-year

to Mrs. Burns, until the circumstances of her sons rendered his bounty no longer necessary.

The poetry of Burns deals with subjects, feelings, and sentiments that every one understands, and his language is the spontaneous expression of the thought or sentiment: it is always natural, and its truth is always apparent. It is this which makes his writings so popular. They express feelings which every one has experienced, in language which every one can understand.

WILLIAM COWPER-1731-1800.

COWPER, who has been described by Southey as "the most popular poet of his generation, and the best of English letter writers," was born at Great Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire, on the 26th November 1731. His father, the Rev. Dr. Cowper, was the son of Spencer Cowper, one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas, and a younger brother of the first Earl Cowper, Lord Chancellor. His mother was allied to some of the noblest families in England, and could trace her descent from Henry III. Dr. Cowper was chaplain to George II., and also rector of the parish in which the poet was born. From his birth Cowper was a frail child, both in physical and mental organization; and the death of his mother, when he was only in his sixth year, deprived him of that tender care which might have counteracted, in some measure, those tendencies which so sadly overshadowed a large portion of his life.

How keenly he felt the loss of his mother, and what a vivid impression she had made upon his mind, we learn from those exquisite lines which he composed fifty years later, on the receipt of her portrait from his cousin. Shortly after his mother's death, he was sent to a public school in Market Street. To a child so timid and sensitive as Cowper was, the change from a pleasant home to the rough scenes of a public school must have been, under any circumstances, very trying; but it was made still

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