seem from his writings of this period, he reflected with inexpressible heart-bitterness, on the high hopes from which he had fallen ; on the errors of moral conduct into which he had been hurried, by the ardour, and, in some measure, by the very generosity of his nature; on the disgrace and wretchedness into which he saw himself rapidly sinking; on the sorrow with which his misconduct oppressed the heart of his Jane; on the want and destitute misery in which it seemed probable that he must leave her and her infants; nor, amidst these agonizing reflections, did he fail to look, with indignation half invidious, half contemptuous, on those, who, with moral habits not more excellent than his, with powers of intellect far interior, yet basked in the sunshine of fortune, and were loaded with the wealth and honours of the world, while his follies could
not obtain pardon, nor his wants an honourable supply. His wit became, from this time, more gloomily sarcastic; and his conversation and writings began to assume something of a tone of misanthropical malignity, by which they had not
been before, in any eminent degree, distinguished. But, with all these failings, he was still that exalted mind which had raised itself above the depression of its original condition; with all the energy of the lion, pawing to set free his hinder limbs from the incumbent earth, he still appeared not less the archangel ruined.
What more remains there for me to relate? In Dumfries his dissipation became still more deeply habitual;4 he was here more exposed than in the country to be solicited to share the riot of the dissolute and the idle; foolish young men, such as writers' apprentices, young surgeons, merchants' clerks, and his brother excisemen, flocked eagerly about him, and from time to time pressed him to drink with them,[1] that they might enjoy his wicked wit.[2] His friend
- ↑ "To a lady, (I have it from herself,) who remonstrated with him on the danger from drink, and the pursuits of some of his associates, he replied, 'Madam, they would not thank me for my company, if I did not drink with them; I must give them a slice of my constitution." Letter from Bloomfield, the poet, to the Earl of Buchan, Edinburgh Monthly Magazine and Review, 1810.
- ↑ The information respecting Burns' latter years in this memoir is drawn chiefly from the account of the poet given by Heron. Though somewhat overdrawn, the author believes it to be nearest the truth, as it coincides most nearly with the reports of the greater number of witnesses. It may be interesting, however, to lay before the reader another account, from the eloquent pen of Professor Wilson, as given in his celebrated Essay on the Life and Genius of Burns:—
“Much of the obloquy that so long rested on the memory of our great national poet originated in frivolous hearsays of his life and conversation, which in every telling lost some portion of whatever truth might have once belonged to them, and acquired at least an equal portion of falsehod, till they became unmixed calumnies—many of them of the blackest kind-got into print, which is implicitly believed by the million-till the simple story, which, as first told, had illustrated some interesting trait of his character or genius, as last told, redounded to his disgrace, and was listened to by the totally abstinent with uplifted eyes, hands, and shoulders, as an anecdote of the dreadful debaucheries of Robert Burns. “That he did sometimes associate, while in Edinburgh, with persons not altogether worthy of him, need not be denied, nor wondered at, for it was inevitable. He was not for ever beset with the conciousness of his own supereminence. Prudence he did not despise, and
the Muirheads! He was not disposed, however, to sit down with the affront: on the contrary, he replied to it in a virulent diatribe, which we present to the reader for the first time, as a remarkable specimen of clerical and poetical irritability; and curious, moreover, as perhaps the only contemporary satire upon Burns of which the world has ever heard—besides the immortal "trimming letter" from his tailor. Dr Muirhead's jeu d'esprit is in the shape of a translation from Martial's ode "Ad Vacerram:"
" Vacerras, shabby son of whore,
Why do thy patrons keep thee poor?
Thou art a sycophant and traitor,
A liar, a calumniator,
Who conscience (hadst thou that) wouldst sell,
Nay, lave the common sewers of hell
For whisky.—Eke, most precious imp,
Thou art a gauger, rhymster, pimp,
How comes it, then, Vacerras, that
