t bears
record to the blameless life of the loving husband, the tender father,
and the friend of man. He had lived long enough to hear some of his
son's poems, and to express admiration for their beauty; but he had also
noted the passionate nature of his first-born. There was one of his
family, he said on his deathbed, for whose future he feared; and Robert
knew who that one was. He turned to the window, the tears streaming down
his cheeks.

Mossgiel, to which the brothers now removed, taking with them their
widowed mother, was a farm of about one hundred and eighteen acres of
cold clayey soil, close to the village of Mauchline. The farm-house,
having been originally the country house of their landlord, Mr. Gavin
Hamilton, was more commodious and comfortable than the home they had
left. Here the brothers settled down, determined to do all in their
power to succeed. They made a fresh start in life, and if hard work and
rigid economy could have compelled success, they might now have looked
to the future with an assurance of comparative prosperity. Mr. Gavin
Hamilton was a kind and generous landlord, and the rent was only L90 a
year; considerably lower than they had paid at Lochlea.

But misfortune seemed to pursue this family, and ruin to wait on their
every undertaking. Burns says: 'I entered on this farm with a full
resolution, "Come, go to, I will be wise." I read farming books; I
calculated crops; I attended markets; and, in short, in spite of the
devil, the world, and the flesh, I should have been a wise man; but the
first year, from unfortunately buying in bad seed; the second from a
late harvest, we lost half of both our crops. This overset all my
wisdom, and I returned like the dog to his vomit, and the sow that was
washed to her wallowing in the mire.'

That this resolution was not just taken in a repentant mood merely to be
forgotten again in a month's time, Gilbert bears convincing testimony.
'My brother's allowance and mine was L7 per annum each, and during the
whole time this family concern lasted, which was four years, as well as
during the preceding period at Lochlea, his expenses never in any one
year exceeded his slender income. His temperance and frugality were
everything that could be wished.'

Honest, however, as Burns's resolution was, it was not to be expected
that he would--or, indeed, could--give up the practice of poetry, or
cease to indulge in dreams of after-greatness. Poetry, as he has alre