Page:The poetical works of Robert Burns.djvu/38

This—with the exception of the actual close—was the darkest period in Burns' life. In a short time the horizon cleared a little. The quarrel with Mrs. Riddel was healed, and in a short time books and poems were exchanged between them as of yore. He appears also to have had again some hope of obtaining a supervisorship—the mirage that haunted his closing years. Meanwhile political feeling had become less bitter; and, in 1795, he exhibited his friendliness to the institutions of the country by entering himself one of a corps of volunteers which was raised in Dumfries, and by composing the spirited patriotic song, Does haughty Gaul invasion threat? This song became at once popular; and it showed the nation that the heart of the writer was sound at the core, that he hated anarchy and tyranny alike, and wished to steer a prudent middle course. Better days were dawning; but by this time the hardships of his youth, his constant anxieties, his hoping against hope, and his continual passionate stress and tumult of soul, began to tell on a frame that was originally powerful. In a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, in the beginning of the year, we have, under his own hand, the first warning of failing strength. "What a transient business is life," he writes. "Very lately I was a boy; but t'other day I was a young man; and I already begin to feel the rigid fibre and stiffening joints of old age coming fast over my frame." In spite of breaking health, he attended his Excise duties, and the packets of songs were sent regularly from Dumfries to Edinburgh. In the songs there was no symptom of ache or pain; in these his natural vigor was in no wise abated. The dew still hung, diamond-like, upon the thorn. Love was still lord of all. On one occasion he went to a party at the Globe Tavern, where he waited late, and on his way home, heavy with liquor, he fell asleep in the open air. The result, in his weakened state of body, was disastrous. He was attacked by rheumatic fever, his appetite began to fail, his black eyes lost their lustre, his voice became tremulous and hollow. His friends hoped that, if he could endure the cold spring months, the summer warmth would revive him; but summer came and brought no recovery. He was now laid aside from his official work. During his illness he was attended by Miss Jessie Lewars, a sister of his friend Lewars—"a fellow of uncommon merit; indeed, by far the cleverest fellow I have met in this part of the world"—and her kindness the dying poet repaid by the only thing he was rich enough to give-a song of immortal sweetness. His letters at this time are full of his disease, his gloomy prospects, his straitened circumstances. In July he went to Brow, a sea-bathing village on the Solway, where Mrs. Riddel was then residing in weak health, and there the friends,—for all past bitternesses were now forgotten,—had an interview. "Well, Madam, have you any commands for the other world?" was Burns's greeting. He talked of his approaching decease calmly, like one who had grown so familiar with the idea that it had lost all its terror. His residence on the Solway was not productive of benefit: he was beyond all aid from sunshine and the saline breeze. On the 7th July, he wrote Mr. Cunningham, urging him to use his influence with the Commissioners of Excise to grant him his full salary. "If they do not grant it me," he concludes, "I must lay my account with an exit truly en poëte; if I die not of disease, I must perish with hunger." On the 10th July, he wrote his brother Gilbert; and Mrs. Dunlop, who had become unaccountably silent, two days after. On this same 12th July, he addressed the following letter to his cousin:—