Famous Scots Series
Of the many biographies of Robert Burns that have been written, most of them laboriously and carefully, perhaps not one gives so luminous and vivid a portrait, so lifelike and vigorous an impression of the personality of the poet and the man, as the picture the author has give...
When Burns removed from Ellisland to Dumfries, he took up his abode in a small house of three apartments in the Wee Vennel. Here he stayed till Whitsunday 1793, when the family...
5. Chapter 5Edinburgh towards the close of last century was a very different place from Edinburgh of the present day. It was then to a certain extent the hub of Scottish society; the centre...
6. Chapter 6The Edinburgh Edition having now been published, there was no reason for the poet to prolong his stay in the city. It was only after being disappointed of a second Kilmarnock Ed...
1. Chapter 1Of the many biographies of Robert Burns that have been written, most of them laboriously and carefully, perhaps not one gives so luminous and vivid a portrait, so lifelike and v...
4. Chapter 4_The Holy Tulzie_ had been written probably in April 1785, and the greatest of the satires, _The Holy Fair_, is dated August of the same year. It may, however, have been only dr...
7. Chapter 7When Burns turned his back on Edinburgh in February 1788, and set his face resolutely towards his native county and the work that awaited him, he left the city a happier and hea...
3. Chapter 3Before we can clearly see and understand Burns's attitude to the Church, we must have studied the nature of the man himself, and we must know something also of his religious tra...
2. Chapter 2The farm at Mount Oliphant proved a ruinous failure, and after weathering their last two years on it under the tyranny of the scoundrel factor, it was with feelings of relief, w...
9. Chapter 9In Mrs. Riddell's sketch of Burns, which appeared shortly after his death, she starts with the somewhat startling statement that poetry was not actually his _forte_. She did not...