are often clothed, give them wonderful power to transport every imagination and every heart. To the soul of Burns, they were like a happy breeze touching the wires of an Æolian harp, and calling forth the most ravishing melody.
Beside all this, the Gentle Shepherd and the other poems of Allan Ramsay, have long been highly popular in Scotland. They fell early into the hands of Burns; and while the fond applause which they received drew his emulation, they presented to him likewise treasures of phraseology, and models of versification. Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine was during this time published; was supported chiefly by the original communications of correspondents, and found a very extensive sale. In it, Burns read the poetry of Robert Ferguson, written chiefly in the Scottish dialect, and exhibiting many specimens of uncommon poetical excellence. The Seasons of Thomson, too, the Grave of Blair, the far-famed Elegy of Gray, the Paradise Lost of Milton, perhaps the Minstrel of Beattie, were so commonly read, even among those with whom Burns would naturally associate, that poetical curiosity, although even less ardent than his, could, in such circumstances, have little difficulty in procuring them.
With such means to give his imagination a poetical bias, and to favour the culture of his taste and genius, Burns gradually became a poet.[1] He was not, however, one of those forward children, who, from a mistaken impulse, begin prematurely to write and to rhyme, and hence never attain to excellence. Conversing familiarly for a long while with the works of those poets who were known to him: contemplating the aspect of nature, in a district which exhibits an uncommon assemblage of the beautiful and the ruggedly grand, of the cultivated and the wild; looking upon human life with an eye quick and keen to remark, as well the stronger and leading, as the nicer and subordinate features of character to discriminate the generous, the honourable, the manly, in conduct, from the ridiculous, the base, and the mean; he was distinguished among his fellows for extraordinary intelligence, good sense, and penetration, long before others, or perhaps even himself, suspected him to be capable of writing verses. His mind was mature, and well stored with such knowledge as lay within his reach; he had made himself master of powers of language, superior to those of almost any former writer in the Scottish dialect, before he conceived the idea of surpassing Ramsay and Ferguson.
In the meantime, besides, the studious bent of his genius, there were some other particulars in his opening character, which might seem to mark him for a poet He began early in life, to regard with a sort of sullen aversion and disdain, all that was sordid in the pursuits and interests of the peasants among whom he was placed. He became discontented with the humble labours to which he saw himself confined, and with the poor subsistence he was able to earn by them. He could not help looking upon the rich and great whom he saw around him, with an emotion between envy and contempt; as if something had still whispered to his heart, that there was injustice in the external inequality between his fate and their's. While such emotions arose in his mind, he conceived an inclination, very common among the young men of the more uncultivated parts of Scotland to emigrate to America, or the West Indies, in quest of a better fortune;[2] at the same time, his heart was expanded with pas-
- ↑ He himself relates that he first wrote verses in his sixteenth year, the subject being a comely lass of the name of Nelly, who was associated with him after the usual fashion on the harvest-rig.
- ↑ His father, in his sixteenth year, had removed to Lochlea in Tarbolton parish, where the old man died of a broken heart in 1784 Burns, and his younger brother Gilbert, then took the small farm of Mossgeil, near Mauchline, which they cultivated in partnership for some time, till want of success, and the consequences of an illicit amour, induced the poet to think of leaving his native country. He was, strictly speaking, a farmer, and not a plough-
