Chapter 7

MIGRATION TO DUMFRIES.

A great change it must have been to pass from the pleasant holms and broomy banks of the Nith at Ellisland to a town home in the Wee Vennel of Dumfries. It was, moreover, a confession visible to the world of what Burns himself had long felt, that his endeavour to combine the actual and the ideal, his natural calling as a farmer with the exercise of his gift as a poet, had failed, and that henceforth he must submit to a round of toil, which, neither in itself nor in its surroundings, had anything to redeem it from commonplace drudgery. He must have felt from the time when he first became Exciseman, that he had parted company with all thought of steadily working out his ideal, and that whatever he might now do in that way must be by random snatches. To his proud spirit the name of gauger must have been gall and wormwood, and it is much to his credit that for the sake of his wife and children he was content to undergo what he often felt to be a social obloquy. It would have been well for him if this had been the only drawback to his new calling. Unfortunately the life into which it led him, exposed him to those very temptations which his nature was least able to withstand. If social indulgence and irregular habits had somewhat impaired his better resolves, and his power of poetic (p. 136) concentration, before he left Ellisland, Dumfries, and the society into which it threw him, did with increased rapidity the fatal work which had been already begun. His biographers, though with varying degrees of emphasis, on the whole agree, that from the time he settled in Dumfries, "his moral course was downwards."

The social condition of Dumfries at the time when Burns went to live in it was neither better nor worse than that of other provincial towns in Scotland. What that was, Dr. Chambers has depicted from his own youthful experience of just such another country town. The curse of such towns, he tells us, was that large numbers of their inhabitants were either half or wholly idle; either men living on competences, with nothing to do, or shopkeepers with their time but half employed; their only amusement to meet in taverns, soak, gossip, and make stupid personal jokes. "The weary waste of spirits and energy at those soaking evening meetings was deplorable. Insipid toasts, petty raillery, empty gabble about trivial occurrences, endless disputes on small questions of fact, these relieved now and then by a song,"--such Chambers describes as the items which made up provincial town life in his younger days. "A life," he says, "it was without progress or profit, or anything that tended to moral elevation." For such dull companies to get a spirit like Burns among them, to enliven them with his wit and eloquence, what a windfall it must have been! But for him to put his time and his powers at their disposal, how great the degradation! During the day, no doubt, he was employed busily enough in doing his duty as an Exciseman. This could now be done with less travelling than in the Ellisland days, and did not require him as formerly to keep a horse. When the day's work was over, his small (p. 137) house in the Wee Vennel, and the domestic hearth with the family ties gathered round it, were not enough for him. At Ellisland he had sung,--

To make a happy fire-side clime, For weans and wife, Is the true pathos and sublime Of human life.

But it is one thing to sing wisely, another to practise wisdom. Too frequently at nights Burns's love of sociality and excitement drove him forth to seek the companionship of neighbours and drouthy cronies, who gathered habitually at the Globe Tavern and other such haunts. From these he was always sure to meet a warm welcome, abundant appreciation, and even flattery, for to this he was not inaccessible, while their humble station did not jar in any way on his social prejudices, nor their mediocre talents interfere with his love of pre-eminence. In such companies Burns no doubt had the gratification of feeling that he was, what is proverbially called, cock of the walk. The desire to be so probably grew with that growing dislike to the rich and the titled, which was observed in him after he came to Dumfries. In earlier days we have seen that he did not shrink from the society of the greatest magnates, and when they showed him that deference which he thought his due, he even enjoyed it. But now so bitter had grown his scorn and dislike of the upper classes, that we are told that if any one named a lord, or alluded to a man of rank in his presence, he instantly "crushed the offender in an epigram, or insulted him by some sarcastic sally." In a letter written during his first year at Dumfries, this is the way he speaks of his daily occupations:--"Hurry of business, grinding the faces of the (p. 138) publican and the sinner on the merciless wheels of the Excise, making ballads, and then drinking and singing them; and over and above all, correcting the press of two different publications." But besides these duties by day, and the convivialities by night, there were other calls on his time and strength, to which Burns was by his reputation exposed. When those of the country gentry whom he still knew were in Dumfries for some hours, or when any party of strangers passing through the town, had an idle evening on their hands, it seems to have been their custom to summon Burns to assist them in spending it; and he was weak enough, on receiving the message, to leave his home and adjourn to the Globe, the George, or the King's Arms, there to drink with them late into the night, and waste his powers for their amusement. Verily, a Samson, as has been said, making sport for Philistines!

To one such invitation his impromptu answer was--

The king's most humble servant, I Can scarcely spare a minute; But I'll be with you by-and-by, Or else the devil's in it.

And this we may be sure was the spirit of many another reply to these ill-omened invitations. It would have been well if, on these occasions, the pride he boasted of had stood him in better stead, and repelled such unjustifiable intrusions. But in this, as in so many other respects, Burns was the most inconsistent of men.

From the time of his migration to Dumfries, it would appear that he was gradually dropped out of acquaintance by most of the Dumfriesshire lairds, as he had long been by the parochial and all other (p. 139) ministers. I have only conversed with one person who remembered in his boyhood to have seen Burns. He was the son of a Dumfriesshire baronet, the representative of the House of Redgauntlet. The poet was frequently in the neighbourhood of the baronet's country seat, but the old gentleman so highly disapproved of "Robbie Burns," that he forbade his sons to have anything to do with him. My informant, therefore, though he had often seen, had never spoken to the poet. When I conversed with him, his age was nigh four score years, and the one thing he remembered about Burns was "the blink of his black eye." This is probably but a sample of the feeling with which Burns was regarded by most of the country gentry around Dumfries. What were the various ingredients that made up their dislike of him, it is not easy now exactly to determine. Politics most likely had a good deal to do with it, for they were Tories and aristocrats, Burns was a Whig and something more. Though politics may have formed the chief, they were not probably the only element in their aversion. Yet though the majority of the county families turned their backs on him, there were some with which he still continued intimate.

These were either the few Whig magnates of the southern counties, whose political projects he supported by electioneering ballads, charged with all the powers of sarcasm he could wield; or those still fewer, whose literary tastes were strong enough to make them willing, for the sake of his genius, to tolerate both his radical politics and his irregular life. Among these latter was a younger brother of Burns's old friend, Glen Riddel, Mr. Walter Riddel, who with his wife had settled at a place four miles from Dumfries, formerly called Goldie-lea, but named after Mrs. Riddel's maiden name, Woodley (p. 140) Park. Mrs. Riddel was handsome, clever, witty, not without some tincture of letters, and some turn for verse-making. She and her husband welcomed the poet to Woodley Park, where for two years he was a constant and favourite guest. The lady's wit and literary taste found, it may be believed, no other so responsive spirit in all the south of Scotland. In the third year came a breach in their friendship, followed by a savage lampoon of Burns on the lady, because she did not at once accept his apology; then, a period of estrangement. After an interval, however, the Riddels forgave the insult, and were reconciled to the poet, and when the end came, Mrs. Riddel did her best to befriend him, and to do honour to his memory when he was gone.

It ought perhaps to have been mentioned before, that about the time of Burns's first settling at Dumfries, that is towards the close of 1791, he paid his last visit to Edinburgh. It was occasioned by the news that Clarinda was about to sail for the West Indies, in search of the husband who had forsaken her. Since Burns's marriage the silence between them seems to have been broken by only two letters to Clarinda from Ellisland. In the first of these he resents the name of "villain," with which she appears to have saluted him. In the second he admits that his past conduct had been wrong, but concludes by repeating his error and enclosing a song addressed to her in the most exaggerated strain of love. Now he rushed to Edinburgh to see her once more before she sailed. The interview was a brief and hurried one, and no record of it remains, except some letters and a few impassioned lyrics which about that time he addressed to her. The first letter is stiff and formal, as if to break the ice of long estrangement. The others are in the last strain of rapturous devotion--language (p. 141) which, if feigned, is the height of folly; if real, is worse. The lyrics are some of them strained and artificial. One, however, stands out from all the rest, as one of the most impassioned effusions that Burns ever poured forth. It contains that one consummate stanza in which Scott, Byron, and many more, saw concentrated "the essence of a thousand love-tales,"--

Had we never loved so kindly, Had we never loved so blindly; Never met, or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

After a time Mrs. M'Lehose returned from the West Indies, but without having recovered her truant husband. On her return, one or two more letters Burns wrote to her in the old exaggerated strain--the last in June, 1794--after which Clarinda disappears from the scene.

Other Delilahs on a smaller scale Burns met with during his Dumfries sojourn, and to these he was ever and anon addressing songs of fancied love. By the attentions which the wayward husband was continually paying to ladies and others into whose society his wife could not accompany him, the patience of "bonny Jean," it may easily be conceived, must have been severely tried.

It would have been well, however, if stray flirtations and Platonic affections had been all that could be laid to his charge. But there is a darker story. The facts of it are told by Chambers in connexion with the earlier part of the Dumfries period, and need not be repeated here. Mrs. Burns is said to have been a marvel of long-suffering and forgivingness; but the way she bore those wrongs must have touched her husband's better nature, and pierced him to the quick. When his calmer moments came, that very mildness must have made him feel, as (p. 142) nothing else could, what self-reproach was, and what

Self-contempt bitterer to drink than blood.

To the pangs of that remorse have, I doubt not, been truly attributed those bitter outpourings of disgust with the world and with society, which are to be found in some of his letters, especially in those of his later years. Some samples of these outbreaks have been given, more might easily have been added. The injuries he may have received from the world and society, what were they compared with those which he could not help feeling that he had inflicted on himself? It is when a man's own conscience is against him that the world looks worst.

During the first year at Dumfries, Burns for the first time began to dabble in politics, which ere long landed him in serious trouble. Before this, though he had passed for a sort of Jacobite, he had been in reality a Whig. While he lived in Edinburgh he had consorted more with Whigs than with Tories, but yet he had not in any marked way committed himself as a partisan. The only exception to this were some expressions in his poetry favourable to the Stuarts, and his avowed dislike to the Brunswick dynasty. Yet, notwithstanding these, his Jacobitism was but skin deep. It was only with him, as with so many another Scot of that day, the expression of his discontent with the Union of 1707, and his sense of the national degradation that had followed it. When in song he sighed to see _Jamie come hame_, this was only a sentimental protest against the existing order of things. But by the time he came to Dumfries the day of Jacobitism was over, (p. 143) and the whole aspect of the political heavens seemed dark with coming change. The French Revolution was in full swing, and vibrations of it were felt in the remotest corners of Europe. These reached even to the dull provincial towns of Scotland, and roused the pot-house politicians with whom Burns consorted, at the Globe and other taverns, to unwonted excitement. Under this new stimulus, Burns's previous Jacobitism passed towards the opposite, but not very distant, extreme of Jacobinism. At these gatherings we may easily imagine that, with his native eloquence, his debating power, trained in the Tarbolton Club, and his ambition to shine as a public speaker, the voice of Burns would be the loudest and most vehement. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, these were words which must have found an echo in his inmost heart. But it was not only the abstract rights of man, but the concrete wrongs of Scotland that would be there discussed. And wrongs no doubt there were, under which Scotland was suffering, ever since the Union had destroyed not only her nationality, but almost her political existence. The franchise had become very close--in the counties restricted to a few of the chief families--in the boroughs thrown into the hands of the Baillies, who were venal beyond conception. It was the day, too, of Henry Dundas. A prominent member of the Pitt administration, he ruled Scotland as an autocrat, and as the dispenser of all her patronage. A patriotic autocrat no doubt, loving his country, and providing well for those of her people whom he favoured--still an autocrat. The despotism of Dundas has been pictured, in colours we may well believe sufficiently strong, by Lord Cockburn and others bent on inditing the Epic of Whiggery, in which they and their friends should figure as heroes and martyrs. But whatever may be said against Dundas's régime, as a permanent (p. 144) system, it must be allowed that this was no time to remodel it when England was face to face with the French troubles. When the tempest is breaking over the ship, the captain may reasonably be excused for thinking that the moment would be ill chosen for renewing cordage or repairing timbers. Whatever may have been right in a time of quiet, it was not unnatural that the Pitt administration should postpone all thoughts of reform, till the vessel of the State had weathered the storm which was then upon her.

Besides his conviction as to public wrongs to be redressed, Burns had, he thought, personal grievances to complain of, which, as is so often seen, added fuel to his reforming zeal. His great powers, which he believed entitled him to a very different position, were unacknowledged and disregarded by the then dispensers of patronage. Once he had been an admirer of Pitt, latterly he could not bear the mention of his name. Of the ministry, Addington, we have seen, was fully alive to his merits, and pressed his claims on Pitt, who himself was quite awake to the charm of Burns's poetry. The Premier, it is said, "pushed the bottle on to Dundas, and did nothing,"--to Dundas, too practical and too prosaic to waste a thought on poets and poetry. Latterly this neglect of him by public men preyed on the spirit of Burns, and was seldom absent from his thoughts. It added force, no doubt, to the rapture with which he, like all the younger poets of the time, hailed the French Revolution, and the fancied dawn of that day, which would place plebeian genius and worth in those high places, whence titled emptiness and landed incapacity would be at length thrust ignominiously down.

Burns had not been more than three months in Dumfries, before he (p. 145) found an opportunity of testifying by deed his sympathy with the French Revolutionists. At that time the whole coast of the Solway swarmed with smuggling vessels, carrying on a contraband traffic, and manned by men of reckless character, like the Dirk Hatteraick of _Guy Mannering_. In 1792, a suspicious-looking brig appeared in the Solway, and Burns, with other excisemen, was set to watch her motions. She got into shallow water, when the gaugers, enforced by some dragoons, waded out to her, and Burns, sword in hand, was the first to board her. The captured brig "Rosamond," with all her arms and stores, was sold next day at Dumfries, and Burns became the purchaser of four of her guns. These he sent, with a letter, to the French Legislative Assembly, requesting them to accept the present as a mark of his admiration and sympathy. The guns with the letter never reached their destination. They were, however, intercepted by the Custom-House officers at Dover, and Burns at once became a suspected man in the eye of the Government. Lockhart, who tells this incident, connects with it the song, _The Deil's awa' wi' the Exciseman_, which Burns, he said, composed while waiting on the shore to watch the brig. But Mr. Scott Douglas doubts whether the song is referable to this occasion. However this may be, the folly of Burns's act can hardly be disputed. He was in the employ of Government, and had no right to express in this way his sympathy with a movement, which, he must have known, the Government, under whom he served, regarded, if not yet with open hostility, at least with jealous suspicion. Men who think it part of their personal right and public duty unreservedly to express, by word and deed, their views on politics, had better not seek employment in the public service. (p. 146) Burns having once drawn upon himself the suspicions of his superiors, all his words and actions were no doubt closely watched. It was found that he 'gat the Gazetteer,' a revolutionary print published in Edinburgh, which only the most extreme men patronized, and which after a few months' existence was suppressed by Government. As the year 1792 drew to a close, the political heaven, both at home and abroad, became ominously dark. In Paris the king was in prison, the Reign of Terror had begun, and innocent blood of loyalists flowed freely in the streets; the republic which had been established was threatening to propagate its principles in other countries by force of arms. In this country, what at the beginning of the year had been but suspicion of France, was now turned to avowed hostility, and war against the republic was on the eve of being declared. There were uneasy symptoms, too, at home. Tom Paine's _Rights of Man_ and _Age of Reason_ were spreading questionable doctrines and fomenting disaffection. Societies named Friends of the People were formed in Edinburgh and the chief towns of Scotland, to demand reform of the representation and other changes, which, made at such a time were believed by those in power to cover seditious aims. At such a crisis any government might be expected to see that all its officers, from the highest to the lowest, were well affected. But though the Reign of Terror had alarmed many others who had at first looked favourably on the Revolution in France, Burns's ardour in its cause was no whit abated. He even denounced the war on which the ministry had determined; he openly reviled the men in power; and went so far in his avowal of democracy that at a social meeting, he proposed as a toast, "Here's the last verse of the (p. 147) last chapter of the last Book of Kings." This would seem to be but one specimen of the freedom of political speech in which Burns at this time habitually indulged,--the truculent way in which he flaunted defiance in the face of authority. It would not have been surprising, if at any time the Government had ordered inquiry to be made into such conduct, much less in such a season of anxiety and distrust. That an inquiry was made is undoubted; but as to the result which followed it, there is uncertainty. Some have thought that the poet received from his superiors only a slight hint or caution to be more careful in future. Others believed, that the matter went so far that he was in serious danger of dismissal from his post; and that this was only averted by the timely interposition of some kind and powerful friends. That Burns himself took a serious view of it, and was sufficiently excited and alarmed, may be seen from two letters which he wrote, the one at the time of the occurrence, the other soon after it. It was thus that in December, 1792, he addressed Mr. Graham of Fintray, the same person whose good offices had at first obtained for the poet his appointment, and whose kindness never failed him while he lived:--

"Sir,--I have been surprised, confounded, and distracted by Mr. Mitchell, the collector, telling me that he has received an order from your Board, to inquire into my political conduct, and blaming me as a person disaffected to Government.

"Sir, you are a husband and a father. You know what you would feel to see the much-loved wife of your bosom, and your helpless, prattling little ones turned adrift into the world, degraded and disgraced from a situation in which they had been respectable and respected, and left almost without the necessary support of a miserable existence. (p. 148)

"Alas! sir, must I think that such soon will be my lot! and from the dark insinuations of hellish, groundless envy, too! I believe, sir, I may aver it, and in the sight of Omniscience, that I would not tell a deliberate falsehood, no, not though even worse horrors, if worse can be, than those I have mentioned, hung over my head; and I say, that the allegation, whatever villain has made it, is a lie! To the British Constitution, on revolution principles, next after my God, I am most devoutly attached. You, sir, have been much and generously my friend.--Heaven knows how warmly I have felt the obligation, and how gratefully I have thanked you. Fortune, sir, has made you powerful, and me impotent--has given you patronage, and me dependence. I would not, for my single self, call on your humanity; were such my insular, unconnected situation, I would despise the tear that now swells in my eye. I would brave misfortune--I could face ruin, for at the worst Death's thousand doors stand open; but the tender concerns that I have mentioned, the claims and ties that I see at this moment, and feel around me, how they unnerve courage and wither resolution! To your patronage, as a man of some genius, you have allowed me a claim; and your esteem, as an honest man, I know is my due. To these, sir, permit me to appeal; by these may I adjure you, to save me from that misery which threatens to overwhelm me, and which--with my latest breath I will say it--I have not deserved. R. B."

That this appeal was not without effect may be gathered from a letter on this same affair, which Burns addressed on the 13th April, 1793, to Mr. Erskine, of Mar, in which he says one of the supervisors-general, a Mr. Corbet, "was instructed to inquire on the spot, and to (p. 149) document me that my business was to act, _not to think_: and that, whatever might be men or measures, it was for me to be _silent_ and _obedient_."

Much obloquy has been heaped upon the Excise Board--but on what grounds of justice I have never been able to discover--for the way in which they on this occasion dealt with Burns. The members of the Board were the servants of the Government, to which they were responsible for the conduct of all their subordinates. To have allowed any of their subordinates to set themselves up by word or deed in opposition to the Ministry, and especially at such a crisis, was inconsistent with the ideas of the time as to official duty. And when called on to act, it is hard to see how they could have done so with more leniency than by hinting to him the remonstrance which so alarmed and irritated the recipient of it. Whatever may be said of his alarm,--his irritation, if perhaps natural, was not reasonable. No man has a right to expect that, because he is a genius, he shall be absolved from those rules of conduct, either in private or in public life, which are held binding on his more commonplace brethren. About the time when he received this rebuke, he wrote to Mrs. Dunlop, "I have set, henceforth, a seal on my lips as to these unlucky politics." But neither his own resolve nor the remonstrance of the Excise Board seem to have weighed much with him. He continued at convivial parties to express his feelings freely, and at one of these, shortly after he had been rebuked by the Excise Board, when the health of William Pitt was drunk, he followed it by craving a bumper "to the health of a much better man--General Washington." And on a subsequent occasion, as we shall see, he brought himself into trouble by giving an injudicious toast. The (p. 150) repression brought to bear on Burns cannot have been very stringent when he was still free to sport such sentiments. The worst effect of the remonstrance he received seems to have been to irritate his temper, and to depress his spirits by the conviction, unfounded though it was, that all hope of promotion for him was over.

But amid all the troubles entailed on him by his conduct, domestic, social, and political, the chief refuge and solace which he found, was in exercising his gifts of song. All hope of his ever achieving a great poem, which called for sustained effort, was now over. Even poems descriptive of rustic life and characters, such as he had sketched in his Ayrshire days--for these he had now no longer either time or inclination. His busy and distracted life, however, left him leisure from time to time to give vent to his impulses, or to soothe his feelings by short arrow-flights of song. He found in his own experience the truth of those words of another poet,--

They can make who fail to find Short leisure even in busiest days, Moments to cast a look behind, And profit by those kindly rays, Which through the clouds will sometimes steal, And all the far-off past reveal.

Such breaks in the clouds he eagerly waited for, and turned every golden gleam to song.

It may be remembered that while Burns was in Edinburgh he became acquainted with James Johnson, who was engaged in collecting the Songs of Scotland in a work called the _Musical Museum_. He had at once thrown himself ardently into Johnson's undertaking, and put all his power of traditional knowledge, of criticism, and of original composition at Johnson's disposal. This he continued to do through (p. 151) all the Ellisland period, and more or less during his residence in Dumfries. To the _Museum_ Burns from first to last gratuitously contributed not less than one hundred and eighty-four songs original, altered, or collected.

During the first year that Burns lived in Dumfries, in September, 1792, he received an invitation from Mr. George Thomson, to lend the aid of his lyrical genius to a collection of Scottish melodies, airs, and words, which a small band of musical amateurs in Edinburgh were then projecting. This collection was pitched to a higher key than the comparatively humble _Museum_. It was to be edited with more rigid care, the symphonies and accompaniments were to be supplied by the first musicians of Europe, and it was to be expurgated from all leaven of coarseness, and from whatever could offend the purest taste. To Thomson's proposal Burns at once replied, "As the request you make to me will positively add to my enjoyment in complying with it, I shall enter into your undertaking with all the small portion of abilities I have, strained to their utmost exertion by the impulse of enthusiasm....

"If you are for English verses, there is, on my part, an end of the matter. Whether in the simplicity of the ballad, or the pathos of the song, I can only hope to please myself in being allowed at least a sprinkling of our native tongue.... As to remuneration, you may think my songs either above or below price; for they shall be absolutely the one or the other. In the honest enthusiasm with which I embark in your undertaking, to talk of money, wages, fee, hire, &c., would be downright prostitution of soul."

In this spirit he entered on the enterprise which Thomson opened (p. 152) before him, and in this spirit he worked at it to the last, pouring forth song after song almost to his latest breath. Hardly less interesting than the songs themselves, which from time to time he sent to Thomson, were the letters with which he accompanied them. In these his judgment and critical power are as conspicuous, as his genius and his enthusiasm for the native melodies. For all who take interest in songs and in the laws which govern their movement, I know not where else they would find hints so valuable as in these occasional remarks on his own and others' songs, by the greatest lyric singer whom the modern world has seen.

The bard who furnished the English songs for this collection was a certain Dr. Wolcot, known as Peter Pindar. This poetizer, who seems to have been wholly devoid of genius, but to have possessed a certain talent for hitting the taste of the hour, was then held in high esteem; he has long since been forgotten. Even Burns speaks of him with much respect, "The very name of Peter Pindar is an acquisition to your work," he writes to Thomson. Well might Chambers say, "It is a humiliating thought that Peter Pindar was richly pensioned by the booksellers, while Burns, the true sweet singer, lived in comparative poverty." Hard measure has been dealt to Thomson for not having liberally remunerated Burns for the priceless treasures which he supplied to the Collection. Chambers and others, who have thoroughly examined the whole matter, have shown this censure to be undeserved. Thomson himself was by no means rich, and his work brought him nothing but outlay as long as Burns lived. Indeed once, in July, 1793, when Thomson had sent Burns some money in return for his songs, the bard thus replied:--

"I assure you, my dear sir, that you truly hurt me with your (p. 153) pecuniary parcel. It degrades me in my own eyes. However, to return it would savour of affectation; but, as to any more traffic of that debtor and creditor kind, I swear, by that honour which crowns the upright statue of _Robert Burns's Integrity_, on the least motion of it, I will indignantly spurn the by-pact transaction, and from that moment commence entire stranger to you. Burns's character for generosity of sentiment and independence of mind, will, I trust long outlive any of his wants which the cold, unfeeling ore can supply; at least I will take care that such a character he shall deserve."

This sentiment was no doubt inconsistent, and may be deemed Quixotic, when we remember that for his poems Burns was quite willing to accept all that Creech would offer. Yet one cannot but honour it. He felt that both Johnson and Thomson were enthusiasts, labouring to embalm in a permanent form their country's minstrelsy, and that they were doing this without any hope of profit. He too would bear his part in the noble work; if he had not in other respects done full justice to his great gifts, in this way he would repay some of the debt he owed to his country, by throwing into her national melodies the whole wealth and glory of his genius. And this he would do, "all for love and nothing for reward." And the continual effort to do this worthily was the chief relaxation and delight of those sad later years. When he died, he had contributed to Thomson's work sixty songs, but of these only six had then appeared, as only one half-volume of Thomson's work had then been published. Burns had given Thomson the copyright of all the sixty songs; but as soon as a posthumous edition of the poet's works was proposed, Thomson returned all the songs to the poet's family, to be included in the forthcoming edition, along with (p. 154) the interesting letters which had accompanied the songs. Thomson's collection was not completed till 1841, when the sixth and last volume of it appeared. It is affecting to know that Thomson himself, who was older than Burns by two years, survived him for more than five-and-fifty, and died in February, 1851, at the ripe old age of ninety-four.