ancient Scottish tunes, and
as soon as he fell in love he began to make poetry as naturally as a
bird sings. He composed his verses while following the plow or working
in the stack-yard; or, at evening, balancing on two legs of his chair
and watching the light of a peat fire play over the reeky walls of the
cottage. Burns's love songs are in many keys, ranging from strains of
the most pure and exalted passion, like _Ae Fond Kiss_ and _To Mary in
Heaven_, to such loose ditties as _When Januar' Winds_ and _Green Grow
the Rashes O_.

Burns liked a glass almost as well as a lass, and at Mauchline, where
he carried on a farm with his brother Gilbert, after their father's
death, he began to seek a questionable relief from the pressure of
daily toil and unkind fates, in the convivialities of the tavern.
There, among the wits of the Mauchline Club, farmers' sons, shepherds
from the uplands, and the smugglers who swarmed over the west coast, he
would discuss politics and farming, recite his verses, and join in the
singing and ranting, while

"Bousin o'er the nappy,
And gettin' fou and unco happy."

To these experiences we owe not only those excellent drinking songs,
_John Barleycorn_ and _Willie {218} Brewed a Peck o' Maut_, but the
headlong fun of _Tam O'Shanter_, and the visions, grotesquely terrible,
of _Death and Dr. Hornbook_, and the dramatic humor of the _Jolly
Beggars_. Cowper had celebrated "the cup which cheers but not
inebriates." Burns sang the praises of _Scotch Drink_. Cowper was a
stranger to Burns's high animal spirits, and his robust enjoyment of
life. He had affections, but no passions. At Mauchline, Burns, whose
irregularities did not escape the censure of the kirk, became involved,
through his friendship with Gavin Hamilton, in the controversy between
the Old Light and New Light clergy. His _Holy Fair_, _Holy Tulzie_,
_Two Herds_, _Holy Willie's Prayer_, and _Address to the Unco Gude_,
are satires against bigotry and hypocrisy. But in spite of the
rollicking profanity of his language, and the violence of his rebound
against the austere religion of Scotland, Burns was at bottom deeply
impressible by religious ideas, as may be seen from his _Prayer under
the Pressure of Violent Anguish_, and _Prayer in Prospect of Death_.

His farm turned out a failure, and he was on the eve of sailing for
Jamaica, when the favor with which his volume of poems was received,
stayed his departure, and turned h