| "Can the laborer rest from his labor too soon? He had toiled all the morning, and slumbered at noon." |
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Imprudent in the declaration of his political sentiments, Burns lost the path to preferment in the line of his political duties; easily enticed beyond the sway of his sober and virtuous resolutions, he became broken in health, and destitute of resources; too proud to beg and too proud to complain, his temper became irritable and gloomy, and at length a fever, attended with delirium and debility, terminated his life in the thirty-eighth year of his age. Leaving a widow, who is still living in the house where he died,2 and four sons, of whom three are also at present living. Thus died Robert Burns, "poor, but not in debt, and bequeathing to posterity a name, the fame of which will not soon be eclipsed."
2 Since deceased.
Burns, though he sometimes forgot his homage to the purer and brighter and more enduring orbs of heaven, in chasing the ignis fatuus lights of earth, must ever interest us as a poet and a man. A great many considerations may be properly urged in answer to the too common, and far from just charges upon his moral character. I am of opinion, that his own declaration, made not many months previous to his death, is capable of full and complete support and proof, by a reference to all the circumstances of his life. When accused of disloyalty to his government, he says, in a letter to a distinguished friend—
"In your hands, sir, permit me to lodge my strong disavowal, and defiance of such slanderous falsehoods. Be assured—and tell the world, that Burns was a poor man from his birth, and an exciseman from necessity; but—I will say it! the sterling of his honesty, poverty could not debase, and his independent British spirit, oppression might bend, but could not subdue!"
I have advanced the opinion that the crisis of Burns's fate was his visit, his first visit to Edinborough. From that event may be dated the complete establishment of his character during his after life; and with those who received him there, and undertook the task of doing what they, in their wisdom, thought expedient for the cultivation of his genius, and for his advancement or settlement in life, must, I think, rest the credit or the blame of much—of almost all his future excellence or failure. Burns went into the midst of that gay and literary circle, ready and liable to receive the most striking impressions, as the guides of his opinions and the regulators of his actions. It was another world! It had all the freshness of a new existence in the eyes, and to the mind of the rustic Ayrshire bard. Strong-minded and high-hearted as he was, he could not but look up to his new friends and patrons, as exemplars for his own imitation: and although he was not visibly perplexed with the flashings of these new and unaccustomed lights, yet he was, at heart, led astray by them. They were like the fabled corpse-fires, which danced merrily before the wildered eyes of the traveller, luring him onward to his doom—a grave! He had left the "bonnie banks of Ayr," a young plant, shooting luxuriantly up into a tall and rugged, but healthful tree; and it was upon the new soil, into which it had been transplanted, that this beautiful exotic received an inclination which was destined to be a final one. And yet I would not throw upon the fame of such men as Stewart, and Blair, and Robertson, and McKenzie, the imputation of design, or even of imprudence, in thus being accessory to the melancholy ruin, which followed the victim's acceptance of their kind, and really benevolent patronage. It is only to be lamented that upon his arrival at Edinburgh, he was not introduced at once, and alone, into that circle, which might reasonably have been designated as the only one, in which such a genius and character as Burns's could be duly appreciated and cultivated. But the secret is, he was regarded by them, not as a being for their sympathy, but a thing for the indulgence of their curiosity. In the language of another, "By the great he was treated in the customary fashion; entertained at their tables and dismissed: certain modica of pudding and praise are, from time to time, gladly exchanged for the fascination of his presence; which exchange once effected, the bargain is finished, and each party goes his several way."
Instead of treating with him, as a man, whose genius entitled him to a stand upon their own proud and distinguished level, all uncultivated and unpolished as that genius was—they universally spoke to him, and of him, as an object of patronage—as something that was to become valuable to the world, only through their instrumentality. This feeling, this mode of treatment, are not to be objected to, in themselves considered: their existence was natural, and, rightly conducted, might have been made productive of much good, and lasting happiness to him, who was their subject. But Burns was not the man to rest quietly under the most oppressive burthen that a proud man can ever feel—Patronage. And thus his relative situation to his literary friends could not but be viewed by a mind so sensitive as his own, in its true character. And we find (as soon as the novelty of a "ploughman-poet" had worn off—as every fashionable novelty will wear off in time,) that our poet began to remember that "a life of pleasure and praise would not support his family," and having experienced a portion of these reverses, which they, who depend on popular favor and flattery, must ever find inseparable therefrom—we see him stocking his little farm, and soon after adding the emoluments of the office of exciseman for the district of Ayr, to his scanty income. And here he might have been
| "Content to breathe his native air, On his own ground," |
but for his kind yet misjudging friends, "the patrons," as they were called, "of his genius." Unfortunately for his future peace, each new arrival at his little home of Ellisland, of those who had known him at Edinborough, furnished proof that his old habits of conviviality were only interrupted, but by no means broken: And it was only by the frequency of these opportunities of good cheer in the society of the gay companions of his city life, that he became inattentive to his agricultural concerns, and that he finally lost the composure and happiness, which were the attendants of his new situation, and with these was lost his inclination to temperate and assiduous exertion.