o far
had set his feet on the road to perfection. Being natural, he was bound
to improve by practice, and if there was genius in him to become in time
a great poet. That he was already conscious of his powers we know, and
the longing for fame, 'that last infirmity of noble mind,' was strong in
him and continually growing stronger.

'Then out into the world my course I did determine,
Though to be rich was not my wish, yet to be great was charming;
My talents they were not the worst, nor yet my education;
Resolved was I at least to try to mend my situation.'

Before this he had thought of more ambitious things than songs, and had
sketched the outlines of a tragedy; but it was only after meeting with
Fergusson's _Scotch Poems_ that he 'struck his wildly resounding lyre
with rustic vigour.' In his commonplace book, begun in 1783, we have
ever-recurring hints of his devoting himself to poetry. 'For my own part
I never had the least thought or inclination of turning poet till I got
once heartily in love, and then Rhyme and Song were in a measure the
spontaneous language of my heart.'

The story of Wallace from the poem by Blind Harry had years before fired
his imagination, and his heart had glowed with a wish to make a song on
that hero in some measure equal to his merits.

'E'en then, a wish, I mind its power--
A wish that to my latest hour
Shall strongly heave my breast--
That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake,
Some usefu' plan or beuk could make,
Or sing a sang at least.'

This was written afterwards, but it is retrospective of the years of his
dawning ambition.

For a time, however, all dreams of greatness are to be set aside as
vain. The family had again fallen on evil days, and when the father
died, his all went 'among the hell-hounds that grovel in the kennel of
justice.' This was no time for poetry, and Robert was too much of a man
to think merely of his own aims and ambitions in such a crisis. It was
only by ranking as creditors to their father's estate for arrears of
wages that the children of William Burness made a shift to scrape
together a little money, with which Robert and Gilbert were able to
stock the neighbouring farm of Mossgiel. Thither the family removed in
March 1784; and it is on this farm that the life of the poet becomes
most deeply interesting. The remains of the father were buried in
Alloway Kirkyard; and on a small tombstone over the grave the poe