testations and mean excuses; and the result of his acquaintance with the high life of the capital was, that he retired to his native county almost as poor as before, sickened and disappointed. The emolument from his poems barely sufficed to stock another farm in Ayrshire, of the name of Ellisland, which, however, was made more agreeable to him by the neighbourhood of several gentlemen of cultivated minds and generous dispositions. Riddel, of Friar's Carse, and Miller, of Dalswinton, and Syme, of Ryedale, are still known and honoured for their attachment to the poet; and ladies of station and talent were honoured by his correspondence. But farming seems a poor speculation unless supported by skill and wealth. Burns may have had skill, but it was merely the mechanic skill of holding the plough or guiding the harrow; and wealth he had none. Yet he fought a gallant fight He with sterile land and deficient harvests. published songs in the Museum, a periodical of the time for the preservation of Scotch music, and joined Mr. Thomson in his great and ultimately successful work, the "Collection of Scottish Airs." But these are but the embroidery, not the cloth; and Ellisland was a losing conAt the end of the third year he resigned the lease, and what did he do now to support his wife and family? He had been made an excise cern. man a short time before this, and henceforth had no higher occupation than to look after private stills, and do his duty to the revenue. What the opinion of his brother excisemen may have been of the dignity of their occupation we have no means of judging, but Burns astonished them, at one of their convivial meetings, by stating what the sentiments of the public were on the merits of the fraternity, and burst forth into the following song: The deil cam' fiddling through the town, The deil's awa wi' the Exciseman; He's danc'd awa wi' the Exciseman! We'll mak our maut, we'll brew our drink, There's threesome reels, there's foursome reels, The deil's awa wi' the Exciseman: An extempore also on receiving his appoint ment is very characteristic: : Searching auld wives' barrels, That clarty barm should stain my laurels ; These movin' things ca'd wives and weans It will be seen from this that he was not much pleased with the office, and great accusations have been made against the Government of the day for condemning the greatest poet of his country to one of its most unpleasant employments. Many bitter words have been said on this subject, and there were few who in the days of their youth did not feel indignant at the degradation. But 1789 had not exactly the feelings of 1856, either with regard to Burns or other things. The dreadful upheaving of all constituted authorities and recognised positions was just beginning in France. There was a wide spirit of disaffection at home; and no wonder, for there was such cruelty, such narrowness, and such blindness in the Government, that, on reading the state of public affairs at that time, it seems marvellous that we escaped the horrors of as bloody a revolution as our neighbours. The wisest of our statesmen saw little chance of avoiding a universal disruption of society, a reign of terror, a state of anarchy, to be followed by a relentless military despotism. All this was clearly prophesied as the unfailing circle of forcible and violent changes of constitution; and every day showed the truth of these forebodings. by the frightful scenes which were enacted in the most civilized nation in Europe. Burns had, unfortunately, the reputation of uniting in his own person the two wildest extremes of opposition to the English Government; being by hereditary and poetic feeling a Jacobite, and, earnest in his regrets for the exiled Stuarts, and by his honest indignation at some defects in the administration, an earnest advocate for reform. In neither of those views was he in dangerous earnest, for when the trial came, he showed himself as patriotic and conservative as the best. But the time in 1789 had not come. He had been active and open in what then passed for treasonable hopes, and had drunk some dangerous and inflammatory toasts. These circumstances are sufficient to account for the slender patronage the Ministry of the day thought it right to extend to him; and perhaps they are even to be applauded for taking no official notice of his proceedings. What could they have done for so hostile a politician, whatever they may have wished to do for so admirable a writer? What post was open to him? Could they have made him Commissioner of Excise, when he had declared himself opposed to their ordinary authority? The country itself would have been alarmed if it had seen power and influence put into the hands of a man who had professed sympathy with the demagogues of France. If there had at that time been a fund for pensioning distinguished authors, it is perfectly clear that Burns would not have accepted a penny; not that it would have been wrong, for no money can be so amply earned as that which a nation pays to men who have instructed or delighted it, but the principle of this reciprocal right and duty was not then understood. The recipient of a pension would have appeared to Burns a purchased slave; it would have appeared the wages of corruption, not the reward of merit; and he would have preferred his honest income from the rummaging of barrels and ferreting of smugglers to the gilded trappings of what he would have considered a dishonourable dependence. But, gauger as he was, the Muse did not disdain his company. It may be doubted, indeed, whether she would have presented herself so often if he had sate in an easy chair, counting over the gains of some golden sinecure. But other sources of inspiration were, unfortunately, as frequent with him as the Muse. To drown care, as it is |