ibutor to the
early "Blackwood," where his fine translations of Spanish
ballads first appeared, and he edited the "Quarterly Review"
from 1825 to 1853. He died at Abbotsford on November 25, 1854,
and was buried at Scott's feet in Dryburgh Abbey. Lockhart's
forte was biography, and his "Life of Scott" ranks beside
Boswell's "Johnson." The "Life of Burns" was published first
in Constable's "Miscellany" in 1828, when the whole impression
was exhausted in six weeks. It passed through five editions
before the author's death. Though many lives of Burns have
appeared since, with details unknown to Lockhart, his
biography is in many respects the best we possess, and is
never likely to be superseded. Even Mr. Henley is "glad to
agree with Lockhart." It is this book that is the subject of
Carlyle's famous essay on Burns.

_I.--The Poet in the Making_

Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759, in a clay cottage at Alloway,
two miles south of Ayr, and near the "auld brig o' Doon." His father,
William Burnes, or Burness--for so he spelt his name--was from
Kincardineshire. When Robert was born he had the lease of a seven-acre
croft, and had intended to establish himself as a nurseryman. He was a
man of notable character and individuality, immortalised by his son as
"the saint, the father, and the husband" of "The Cottar's Saturday
Night." "I have met with few," said Burns, "who understood men, their
manners, and their ways, equal to my father." Agnes Brown, the poet's
mother, is described as a very sagacious woman, with an inexhaustible
store of ballads and traditionary tales, upon which she nourished
Robert's infant imagination, while her husband attended to "the
weightier matters of the law."

When Burns was between six and seven, his father removed to the farm of
Mount Oliphant, two miles from the Brig o' Doon. But the soil was poor,
and the factor--afterwards pictured in "The Twa Dogs"--so harsh and
unreasonable, that the tenant was glad to quit. In 1777 he removed about
ten miles to the larger and better farm of Lochlea, in the parish of
Tarbolton. Here, after a short interval of prosperity, some trouble
arose about the conditions of the lease. The dispute involved William
Burnes in ruin, and he died broken-hearted in February, 1784.

Meanwhile, at the age of six, Robert, with his brother Gilbert, was
learning to read, write, and sum under the direct