e
world at large; where, after many years' wanderings and
sojournings, he picked up a pretty large quantity of observation
and experience, to which I am indebted for most of my pretensions
to Wisdom. I have met with few who understood Men, their manners
and their ways, equal to him; but stubborn, ungainly Integrity,
and headlong, ungovernable Irascibility, are disqualifying
circumstances; consequently, I was born, a very poor man's son."

"You can now, Sir, form a pretty near guess of what sort of Wight
he is, whom for some time you have honored with your
correspondence. That Whim and Fancy, keen sensibility and riotous
passions, may still make him zig-zag in his future path of life is
very probable; but, come what will, I shall answer for him--the
most determinate integrity and honor [shall ever characterise
him]; and though his evil star should again blaze in his meridian
with tenfold more direful influence, he may reluctantly tax
friendship with pity, but no more."

These two paragraphs form respectively the beginning and the end of a
long autobiographical letter written by Robert Burns to Doctor John
Moore, physician and novelist. At the time they were composed, the
poet had just returned to his native county after the triumphant
season in Edinburgh that formed the climax of his career. But no
detailed knowledge of circumstances is necessary to rouse interest
in a man who wrote like that. You may be offended by the
self-consciousness and the swagger, or you may be charmed by the
frankness and dash, but you can not remain indifferent. Burns had many
moods besides those reflected in these sentences, but here we can see
as vividly as in any of his poetry the fundamental characteristics of
the man--sensitive, passionate, independent, and as proud as
Lucifer--whose life and work are the subject of this volume.

1. Alloway, Mount Oliphant, and Lochlea

William Burnes, the father of the poet, came of a family of farmers
and gardeners in the county of Kincardine, on the east coast of
Scotland. At the age of twenty-seven, he left his native district for
the south; and when Robert, his eldest child, was born on January 25,
1759, William was employed as gardener to the provost of Ayr. He had
besides leased some seven acres of land, of which he planned to make a
nursery and market-garden, in the neighboring parish of Alloway; and
there near the Brig o' Doon b