place of the latter
a small collection of 'Letters by Eminent Wits,' which proved of more
advantage (or disadvantage) to his nephew than to himself, for it
inspired the lad with a desire to excel in epistolary writing. Not long
after this Robert's early tutor Murdoch returned to Ayr, and lent him
Pope's Works; a bookish friend of his father's obtained for him the
reading of two volumes of Richardson's 'Pamela' and another friendly
soul the reading of Smollett's 'Ferdinand Count Fathom,' and 'Peregrine
Pickle.' The book which most delighted him, however, was a collection of
English songs called 'The Lark.'

[Illustration: ROBERT BURNS.]

Mount Oliphant taxed the industry and endurance of William Burness to
the utmost; and what with the sterility of the soil, which was the
poorest in the parish, and the loss of cattle by accidents and disease,
it was with great difficulty that he managed to support his family. They
lived so sparingly that butcher's meat was for years a stranger in the
house, and they labored, children and all, from morning to night.
Robert, at the age of thirteen, assisted in threshing the crop of corn,
and at fifteen he was the principal laborer on the farm, for they could
not afford a hired hand. That he was constantly afflicted with a dull
headache in the evenings was not to be wondered at; nor that the sight
and thought of his gray-haired father, who was turned fifty, should
depress his spirits and impart a tinge of gloom to his musings. It was
under circumstances like these that he composed his first song, the
inspiration of which was a daughter of the blacksmith who had loaned him
the 'History of Sir William Wallace.' It was the custom of the country
to couple a man and woman together in the labors of harvest; and on this
occasion his partner was Nelly Kilpatrick, with whom, boy-like,--for he
was in his seventeenth year and she a year younger,--he liked to lurk
behind the rest of the hands when they returned from their labors in the
evening, and who made his pulse beat furiously when he fingered over her
little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. She sang
sweetly, and among her songs there was one which was said to be composed
by a small laird's son about one of his father's maids, with whom he was
in love; and Robert saw no reason why he should not rhyme as well as he,
for the author had no more school-craft than himself. Writing of this
song a few years later, he called it puer