Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/20

the midst of his studies, he was upset by the charms of a country girl who lived next door to the school. While taking the sun's altitude, he observed her walking in the adjoining garden, and Love put Trigonometry to flight. During his stay at Kirkoswald, he had read Shenstone and Thomson, and on his return home he maintained a literary correspondence with his schoolfellows, and pleased his vanity with the thought that he could turn a sentence with greater skill and neatness than any one of them.

For some time it had been Burns's habit to take a small portion of land from his father for the purpose of raising flax; and, as he had now some idea of settling in life, it struck him that if he could add to his farmer-craft the accomplishment of flax-dressing, it might not be unprofitable. He accordingly went to live with a relation of his mother's in Irvine—Peacock by name—who followed that business, and with him for some time he worked with diligence and success. But, while welcoming the New Year morning after a bacchanalian fashion, the premises took fire, and his schemes were laid waste. Just at this time, too—to complete his discomfiture—he had been jilted by a sweetheart, "who had pledged her soul to meet him in the field of matrimony." In almost all the foul weather which Burns encountered, a woman may be discovered flitting through it like a stormy petrel. His residence at Irvine was a loss, in a worldly point of view, but there he ripened rapidly, both spiritually and poetically. At Irvine, as at Kirkoswald, he made the acquaintance of persons engaged in contraband traffic, and he tells us that a chief friend of his "spoke of illicit love with the levity of a sailor—which, hitherto, I had regarded with horror. There his friendship did me a mischief." About this time, too, John Rankine—to whom he afterwards addressed several of his epistles—introduced him to St. Mary's Lodge, in Torbolton, and he became an enthusiastic Freemason. Of his mental states and intellectual progress, we are furnished with numerous hints. He was a member of a debating club at Torbolton, and the question for Hallowe'en still exists in his handwriting. It is as follows: "Suppose a young man, bred a farmer, but without any fortune, has it in his power to marry either of two women, the one a girl of large fortune, but neither handsome in person, nor agreeable in conversation, but who can manage the household affairs of a farm well enough; the other of them a girl every way agreeable in person, conversation, and behavior, but without any fortune: which of them shall he choose?" Not a bad subject for a collection of clever rustics to sharpen their wits upon! We may surmise that Burns found himself as much superior in debate to his companions at the Bachelor's Club as he had previously found himself superior to his Kirkoswald correspondents in letter-writing. The question for the Hallowe'en discussion is interesting mainly in so far as it indicates what kind of discussions were being at that time conducted in his own brain; and also how habitually, then and afterwards, his thinking grew out of his personal condition and surroundings. A question of this kind interested him more than whether, for instance, Cromwell deserved well of his country. Neither now nor afterwards did he trouble himself much about far-removed things. He cared for no other land than Caledonia. He did not sing of Helen's beauty, but of the beauty of the country girl he loved. His poems were as much the product of his own farm and its immediate neighborhood, as were the clothes and shoes he wore, the oats and turnips he grew. Another aspect of him may be found in the letter addressed to his father three days before the Irvine flax-shop went on fire. It is infected with a magnificent hypochondriasis. It is written as by a Bolingbroke—by a man who had played for a mighty stake, and who, when defeated, could smile gloomily and turn fortune's slipperiness into parables. And all the while the dark philosophy and the rolling periods flowed from the pen of a country lad, whose lodgings are understood to have cost a shilling per week, and "whose meal was nearly out, but who was going to borrow till he got more." One other circumstance attending his Irvine life deserves notice—his falling in with a copy of Fergusson's Poems. For some time previously he had not written much, but Fergusson stirred him with emulation, and on his removal to Mossgiel, shortly afterwards, he in a single winter poured forth more immortal verse—measured by mere quantity—than almost any poet in the same space of time, either before his day or after.

Three months before the death of the elder Burness, Robert and Gilbert rented the