, in which a worthy
minister, Mr. Kirkpatrick, officiated, whom he respected for his
character, though he sometimes demurred to what seemed to him the too
great sternness of his doctrine.

Burns and his wife had not been long settled in their newly-built
farm-house, when prudence induced him to ask that he might be
appointed Excise officer in the district in which he lived. This
request Mr. Graham of Fintray, who had placed his name on the Excise
list before he left Edinburgh, at once granted. The reasons that
impelled Burns to this step were the increase of his family by the
birth of a son in August, 1789, and the prospect that his second
year's harvest would be a failure like the first. He often repeats
that it was solely to make provision for his increasing family that he
submitted to the degradation of--

Searching auld wives' barrels,--
Och, hon! the day!
That clarty barm should stain my laurels,
But--what 'ill ye say?
These movin things, ca'd wives and weans,
Wad move the very hearts o' stanes.

That he felt keenly the slur that attached to the name of gauger is
certain, but it is honourable to him that he resolved bravely to
endure it for the sake of his family.

"I know not," he writes, "how the word exciseman, or the still (p. 104)
more opprobrious gauger, will sound in your ears. I, too, have seen
the day when my auditory nerves would have felt very delicately on
this subject; but a wife and children are things which have a
wonderful power in blunting this kind of sensations. Fifty pounds a
year for life, and a provision for widows and orphans, you will allow,
is no bad settlement for a poet."

In announcing to Dr. Blacklock his new employment, he says,--

But what d'ye think, my trusty fier,
I'm turned a gauger--peace be here!
Parnassian queans, I fear, I fear,
Ye'll now disdain me!
And then my fifty pounds a year
Will little gain me.

* * * * *

Ye ken, ye ken
That strang necessity supreme is
'Mang sons o' men.
I hae a wife and twa wee laddies,
They maun hae brose and brats o' duddies;
Ye ken yoursels my heart right proud is,
I need na vaunt,
But I'l