And, cheerful singing, up the air she steers, Still high she mounts, still loud and sweet she sings.' It was not until 1770 that Logan issued at Edinburgh, in a thin quarto, Bruce's Poems on Several Occasions, and it was commonly (though probably quite unjustly) believed by Bruce's partisans that the editor had lost some of Bruce's poems, suppressed others, and borrowed and adapted one or two for his own ends. Friends, and relatives especially, are apt to over-estimate the value of the fragmentary remains of an immature minor poet. Robert Fergusson (1750-1774), 'precentor' of the convivial coterie of Auld Reikie, owes much Robert Fergusson of his fame to the fact that he was, in (1750-1774). a special sense, the precursor of Burns, though some of his own verses well deserve to live on their own merits. Burns, the soul of generosity, was not slow to recognize either Fergusson's merits or his own debt to one whom he calls By far my elder brother in the muses': 'My senses wad be in a creel, Should I but dare a hope to speel, Or Fergusson, the writer chiel, 'O Fergusson! thy glorious parts Ye Enbrugh gentry! The tythe of what ye waste at cartes Wad stow'd his pantry!' To William Simpson. Fergusson himself, however, was merely a transmitter of tradition, and he speaks with equal veneration of poetical ancestors. Speaking of his muse in vein and in metre carefully observed by his great successor, Fergusson says: Born at Edinburgh on September 5th, 1750, Fergusson was a fragile youth, endowed with a delicate sensibility and a quickness with which went an impulsive fickleness, not infrequently characteristic of the poetic temperament. After four years at St. Andrews, his father having died during his college course, he returned to Edinburgh and obtained employment as copying clerk in a lawyer's office. In the night clubs, of which he was an ornament in his time among the 'bucks of Edinburgh,' he was distinguished by his vivacity and humour, his power of mimicry, and his gift of Scots song. In person he is described as of a slender, handsome figure, his forehead high, his countenance open and pleasing, though somewhat effeminate and characterized by extreme pallor, but kindled into life by the animation of his large black eyes, whenever he became interested in the conversation. At nine years less than thirty, sweet ane an' twenty,' Fergusson began contributing pieces, both grave and humorous, in English and in vernacular, to Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine.' Few are distinguished by any depth of poetic feeling, but the dialect pieces show graphic 1 T. Ruddiman edited his Poems on Various Subjects with a memoir, 1779. humour and a descriptive power rich with promise. He excelled in descriptive pieces, modelled on those of Swift and Gay, and in poetic epistles, garnished with strong pronunciations and in the Scotish metre': 'Could lavrocks, at the dawnin' day, Compare wi' Birks o' Invermay ?— His fear that the songs of Scotia were dying was happily without foundation. In 1773, when he was but twenty-three, Fergusson's songs were collected and published in a volume. Burns was fifteen at the time, and we may be sure that a copy soon found its way to Mauchline. With Chatterton and Keats, and Chénier and Lermontoff, Fergusson was unhappily to be one of the great potentialities of literature. Before he completed his twentyfourth year he died in a mad-house at Edinburgh, October 16th, 1774. In 1787 Robert Burns sought out Fergusson's grave in the Canongate cemetery, and put up a cut stone at his own cost.1 Fergusson's Leith Races supplied the model for Burns's Holy Fair, The Mutual Complaint of Plainstanes and Causey, probably suggested The Brigs of Ayr, nor will a comparison of The Farmer's Ingle of Fergusson with The Cotter's Saturday Night admit of a doubt as to the influence of the city-bred over the country-bred muse. can still read, with a glow of genuine appreciation, the elder poet's Hallow Fair, and Auld Reikie, his Epistles, and his odes to the Bee and the Gowdspink, or his deliately-touched lines On seeing a Butterfly in the Street: 'Cf. Stevenson's Letters, 1899, ii. 330. One 'Now shou'd our sclates wi' hailstones' ring, In pity lat you skaithless stay?' To turn from such pieces as these, good as they are, to the consummate workmanship of poems which they seem to have inspired or suggested (the Epistles to Simpson and Lapraik, To a Mouse, and others), assists one to evaluate the incandescence of great genius. The fable lay comparatively inert under Æsop and his imitators; then came La Fontaine and vitalized it in every part. Robert Burns was the son of William Burnes, who married in 1757 Agnes Brown, the daughter of a Carrick farmer. The Burneses had long been small farmers in the uplands of Kincardineshire. The poet, who was the eldest son, was born at Alloway, Ayrshire, on January 25th, 1759, and he had two and a half years' schooling there between the ages of six and nine, under John Murdoch. His father then left the small clay cottage which he had occupied as a gardener, and set up upon a small farm of £40 rental at Mount Oliphant. William Burnes was now what his ancestors had been, a yeoman farmer, and one of the martyrs of la petite culture. The farm was small, the soil not rich, the living very rude; and it was only by unceasing toil that the wolf could be kept from the door. At fifteen Robert became chief farm-hand to his father. The latter, happily, was not rendered morose by the grind of toil and poverty; he was of strong sense and lively affection, and he gave the best of his mind to his sons. In 1777 the family moved to Lochlie, a 130 acre farm in the parish of Tarbolton, which proved rather more easy to work. There Robert learned to fill his glass, and fell in love with a charming fillette,' who overset his trigonometry' when he was but sixteen. Thus began a series of amours which appear only to have concluded with his life. A period of comparative ease came to an end in 1784, when William Burnes died. Robert and his brother Gilbert managed to get a small farm at Mossgiel in Mauchline, where, amidst the press of uphill work to make ends meet, most of his best poetry was written as he cut the furrows at the tail of the plough. The enumeration merely of these masterpieces in vernacular verse is a source of pleasure; among them were Poor Mailie (1782), Green Grow the Rashes O, Corn Rigs, Mary Morison, To a Mouse, To a Mountain Daisy, To a Louse, Epistle to William Simpson, Jolly Beggars, Hallowe'en, Holy Willie, Holy Fair, Address to the Unco' Guid, The Cotter's Saturday Night, and The Twa Dogs (1786). The endowments of Burns as he grew up were not hidden under a bushel. There was a quick responsiveness in him to every human aspiration; he seemed indeed the favourite of nature, so gifted was he with strength and beauty, with vitality and humour. Quite apart from the aureole that surrounded the young poet, there were few that could resist the magnetism of his personal charm. The poet, on his part, was 'constantly the victim of some fair enslaver.' In the course of 1788 he was married to Jean Armour, the daughter of a Mauchline mason, but he was incorrigibly unfaithful; one of his nameless children was nursed by the devoted Jean along with her own. Meanwhile, in the summer of 1786, a volume of The Poetical Works of Robert Burns had been printed by Wilson of Kilmarnock, and the poet cleared about £20 by |