of his characters, for whom we feel that he is
no more responsible than we are, since they move, live, and have their
being in a world of their own, above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
which men call Earth,--the world of pure, perfect, poetic art. If
Shakespeare was conscious of himself when he wrote, he succeeded in
concealing himself so thoroughly that it is impossible to discover him
in his writing,--as impossible as it is not to discover other poets in
their writings; for whatever is absent from the choir of British song,
the note of personality is always present there. A low laugh in the
gracious mouth of Chaucer, a harsh rebuke on the stern lips of Milton, a
modish sneer in the smile of Pope,--it was now a stifled complaint, now
an amorous ditty, and now a riotous shout with Burns, who was as much a
poet through his personality as through his genius. He put his life into
his song; and not to know what his life was, is not to know what his
song is,--why it was a consolation to him while he lived, and why after
his death it made his--

"One of the few, the immortal names,
That were not born to die."

Early in the last half of the eighteenth century a staid and worthy man,
named William Burness (as the name Burns was then spelled), a native of
Kincardineshire, emigrated to Ayrshire in pursuit of a livelihood. He
hired himself as a gardener to the laird of Fairlie, and later to a Mr.
Crawford of Doonside, and at length took a lease of seven acres of land
on his own account at Alloway on the banks of the Doon. He built a clay
cottage there with his own hands, and to this little cottage, in
December 1757, he brought a wife, the eldest daughter of a farmer of
Carrick. There was a disparity in their ages, for he was about
thirty-six and she some eight or nine years younger; and a disparity in
their education, for he was an intelligent reader and lover of books,
while she, though she had been taught as a child to read the Bible and
to repeat the Psalms, was not able to write her name. She had a great
respect for her husband, whose occupation was now that of a nurseryman.
A little more than a year after their marriage, on the 25th of January,
1759, she bore him a son who was christened Robert, who was followed, as
time went on, by brothers and sisters; and before many years were over,
what with the guidman, the guidwife, and the bonny bairns, there was not
much spare room in the little clay biggin at Alloway