ROBERT BURNS.

ROBERT BURNS. UNIV. OF

CALIFORNU

BIOGRAPHICAL STUDY.

BURNS is the world's greatest lyric poet. He is also the national poet of Scotland, the poet revered and loved by Scotsmen the wide world over.

The genius of Burns for song writing was of the very highest order. For the writing of poetry of every sort it was of the highest order also, only, unfortunately, he gave to the world few proofs of his genius other than in songs. The story of his life is inexpressibly sad. The great powers with which he was endowed were only partially employed. Oftentimes, too, they were employed on themes unworthy of them. Oppressed with care and anxiety, defeated of hope, broken in health, broken also in courage and in fortitude to resist evil, he came to an untimely end; and the last years of his life, years in the very prime of manhood, that should have been his happiest years and fruitful of the noblest accomplishment, were the saddest years of all, and fruitful of little but disappointment and sorrow.

Robert Burns was born in a cottage (still standing) near "Alloway's haunted kirk," and the "Auld Brig o' Doon," about two miles from the town of Ayr, on Jan

uary 25, 1759. His father, a man of Scotland's noblest type, had come from Kincardineshire, and was a gardener, and at the time of the poet's birth was making a livelihood by cultivating a small nursery garden. His

mother, whom the poet much resembled both in features and in address, and whom he tenderly loved, was a woman also of the noblest type, who possessed an "inexhaustible store of ballads and traditionary tales," which she made the delightful entertainment of her gifted son during all his years of childhood and youth.

When Burns was seven years old his father gave up his nursery garden, and took a farm two miles from the "Brig o' Doon," called Mount Oliphant. At Mount

Oliphant the family remained for eleven years, or until the poet was in his eighteenth year. The Mount Oliphant farm, however, proved to be a very bottomless pit to the industry of its occupants. Not the consci

entious and zealous labors of the father, nor the overworked strength of the young poet and his brother, nor

ness.

the frugal, self-denying endeavors of the mother, were of any avail in their long-continued struggle with its barrenBurns afterward spoke of his toils at Mount Oliphant as "the unceasing moil of a galley slave." But, worse, his constitution became irretrievably impaired in efforts as a lad to do the work of a man. The father, too, in his hopeless contest with his untoward lot, wore out his strength, and broke his health. In 1777, how