"O leave novells, ye Mauchline belles, And then ye're prey for Rob Mossgiel," &c. &c. The four years during which Burns resided on this cold and ungrateful farm of Mossgiel, were the most important of his life. It was then that his genius developed its highest energies; on the works produced in these years his fame was first established, and must ever continue mainly to rest: it was then also that his personal character came out in all its brightest lights, and in all but its darkest shadows; and indeed from the commencement of this period, the history of the man may be traced, step by step, in his own immortal writings. Burns now began to know that nature had meant him for a poet; and diligently, though as yet in secret, he laboured in what he felt to be his destined vocation. Gilbert continued for some time to be his chief, often indeed his only confidant; and any thing more interesting and delightful than this excellent man's account of the manner in which the poems included in the first of his brother's publications were composed, is certainly not to be found in the annals of literary history. The reader has already seen, that long before the earliest of them was known beyond the domestic circle, the strength of Burns's understanding, and the keenness of his wit, as displayed in his ordinary conversation, and more particularly at masonic meetings and debating clubs, (of which he formed one in Mauchline, on the Tarbolton model, immediately on his removal to Mossgiel), had made his name known to some considerable extent in the country about Tarbolton, Mauchline, and Irvine; and this prepared the way for his poetry. Professor Walker gives an anecdote on this head, which must not be omitted. Burns already numbered several clergymen among his acquaintances. One of these gentlemen told the Professor, that after entering on the clerical profession, he had repeatedly met Burns in company, "where," said he, "the acuteness and originality displayed by him, the depth of his discernment, the force of his expressions, and the authoritative energy of his understanding, had created a sense of his power, of the extent of which I was unconscious, till it was revealed to me by accident. On the occasion of my second appearance in the pulpit, I came with an assured and tranquil mind, and though a few persons of education were present, advanced some length in the service with my confidence and self-possession unimpaired; but when I saw Burns, who was of a different parish, unexpectedly enter the church, I was affected with a tremor and embarrassment, which suddenly apprised me of the impression which my mind, unknown to itself, had previously received." The Professor adds, that the person who had thus unconsciously been measuring che stature of the intellectual giant, was not only a man of good talents and education, but "remarkable for a more than ordinary portion of con stitutional firmness." Every Scotch peasant who makes any pretension to understanding, is a theological critic-and Burns, no doubt, had long ere this time distinguished himself considerably among those hard-headed groups that may usually be seen gathered together in the church-yard after the sermon is over. It may be guessed that from the time of his residence at Irvine, his stric tures were too often delivered in no reverend vein. "Polemical divinity, says he to Dr. Moore, in 1787, "about this time, was putting the country half mad, and I, ambitious of shining in conversation-parties on Sundays, at funerals, &c., used to puzzle Calvinism with so much heat and indiscretion, that I raised a hue-and-cry of heresy against me, which has not ceased to this hour." To understand Burns's situation at this time, at once patronized by a number of clergymen, and attended with "a hue-and-cry of heresy," we must remember his own words, that polemical divinity was putting the country half mad." Of both the two parties which, ever since the revolution of 1688, have pretty equally divided the Church of Scotland, it so happened that some of the most zealous and conspicuous leaders and partizans were thus opposed to each other, in constant warfare, in this particular district; and their feuds being of course taken up among their congregations, and spleen and prejudice at work, even more furiously in the cottage than in the manse, he who, to the annoyance of the one set of belligerents, could talk like Burns, might count pretty surely, with whatever alloy his wit happened to be mingled, on the applause and countenance of the enemy. And it is needless to add, they were the less scrupulous sect of the two that enjoyed the co-operation, such as it was then, and far more important, as in the sequel it came to be, of our poet. William Burnes, as we have already seen, though a most exemplary and devout man, entertained opinions very different from those which commonly obtained among the rigid Calvanists of his district. The worthy and pious old man himself, therefore, had not improbably infused into his son's mind its first prejudice against these persons. The jovial spirits with whom Burns associated at Irvine, and afterwards, were of course habitual deriders of the manners, as well as the tenets of the “Orthodox, orthodox, wha believe in John Knox." We have already observed the effect of the young poet's own first collision with the ruling powers of presbyterian discipline; but it was in the very act of settling at Mossgiel that Burns formed the connexion, which, more than any circumstance besides, influenced him as to the matter now in question. The farm belonged to the estate of the Earl of Loudoun, but the brothers held it on a sub-lease from Mr. Gavin Hamilton, writer (i. e. attorney) in Mauchline, a man, by every account, of engaging manners, open, kind, generous, and high-spirited, between whom and Robert Burns, a close and intimate friendship was ere long formed. Just about this time it happened that Hamilton was at open feud with Mr. Auld, the minister of Mauchline, (the same who had already rebuked the poet), and the ruling elders of the parish, in consequence of certain irregularities in his personal conduct and deportment, which, according to the usual strict notions of kirk discipline, were considered as fairly demanding the vigorous interference of these authorities. The notice of this person, his own landlord, and, as it would seem, one of the principal inhabitants of the village of Mauchline at the time, must, of course, have been very flattering to our polemical young farmer. He espoused Gavin Hamilton's quarrel warmly. Hamilton was naturally enough disposed to mix up his personal affair with the standing controversies whercon Auld was at variance with a large and powerful body of his brother clergymen; and by degrees Mr. Hamilton's ardent protegé came to be as vehemently interested in the church politics of Ayrshire, as he could have been in politics of another order, had he happened to be a freeman of some open borough, and his patron a candidate for the honour of representing it in St. Stephen's. Mr. Cromek has been severely criticised for some details of Mr. Gavin Hamilton's dissensions with his parish minister; but perhaps it might have been well to limit the censure to the tone and spirit of the narrative, since there is no doubt that these petty squabbles had a large share in directing the early energies of Burns's poetical talents. Even in the west of Scotland, such matters would hardly excite much notice now-a-days, but they were quite enough to produce a world of vexation and controversy forty years ago; and the English reader to whom all such details are denied, will certainly never be able to compre hend either the merits or the demerits of many of Burns's most remarkable productions. Since I have touched on this matter at all, I may as well add, that Hamilton's family, though professedly adhering to the Presbyterian Establishment, had always lain under a strong suspicion of Episcopalianism. Gavin's grandfather had been curate of Kirkoswald in the troubled times that preceded the Revolution, and incurred great and lasting popular hatred, in consequence of being supposed to have had a principal hand in bringing a thousand of the Highland host into that region in 1677-8. The district was commonly said not to have entirely recovered the effects of that savage visitation in less than a hundred years; and the descendants and representatives of the Covenanters, whom the curate of Kirkoswald had the reputation at least of persecuting, were commonly supposed to regard with any thing rather than ready good-will, his grandson, the witty writer of Mauchline. A well-nursed prejudice of this kind was likely enough to be met by counter-spleen, and such seems to have been the truth of the case. The lapse of another generation has sufficed to wipe out every trace of feuds, that were still abundantly discernible, in the days when Ayrshire first began to ring with the equally zealous applause and vituperation of,— It is impossible to look back now to the civil war, which then raged among the churchmen of the west of Scotland, without confessing, that on either side there was much to regret, and not a little to blame. Proud and haughty spirits were unfortunately opposed to each other; and in the superabundant display of zeal as to doctrinal points, neither party seems to have mingled much of the charity of the Christian temper. The whole exhibition was unlovely-the spectacle of such indecent violence among the leading Ecclesiastics of the district, acted most unfavourably on many men's minds-and no one can doubt that in the unsettled state of Robert Burns's principles, the effect must have been powerful as to him. Macgill and Dalrymple, the two ministers of the town of Ayr, had long been suspected of entertaining heterodox opinions on several points, particularly the doctrine of original sin, and even of the Trinity; and the former at length published an Essay, which was considered as demanding the notice of the Church-courts. More than a year was spent in the discussions which arose out of this; and at last Dr. Macgill was fain to acknowledge his errors, and promise that he would take an early opportunity of apologizing for them to his own congregation from the pulpit-which promise, however, he never performed. The gentry of the country took, for the most part, the side of Macgill, who was a man of cold unpopular manners, but of unreproached moral character, and possessed of some accomplishments, though certainly not of distinguished talents. The bulk of the lower orders espoused, with far more fervid zeal, the cause of those who conducted the prosecution against this erring doctor. Gavin Hamilton, and all persons of his stamp, were of course on the side of Macgill— Auld, and the Mauchline elders, were his enemies. Mr. Robert Aiken, a writer in Ayr, a man of remarkable talents. particularly in public speaking, had the principal management of Macgill's cause before the Presbytery, and, I believe, also before the Synod. He was an intimate friend of Hamilton, and through him had about this time formed an acquaintance, which soon ripened into a warm friendship, with Burns. Burns, therefore, was from the beginning a zealous, as in the end he was perhaps the most effective partizan, of the side on which Aiken had staked so much of his reputation. Macgill, Dalrymple, and their brethren, suspected, with more or less justice, of leaning to heterodox opinions, are the New Light pastors of his earliest satires. The prominent antagonists of these men, and chosen champions of the Auld Light, in Ayrshire, it must now be admitted on all hands, presented, in many particulars of personal conduct and demeanour, as broad a mark as ever tempted the shafts of a satirist. These men prided themselves on being the legitimate and undegenerate descendants and representatives of the haughty Puritans, who chiefly conducted the overthrow of Popery in Scotland, and who ruled for a time, and would fain have continued to rule, over both king and people, with a more tyrannical dominion than ever the Catholic priesthood itself had been able to exercise amidst that high-spirited nation. With the horrors of the Papal system for ever in their mouths, these men were in fact as bigoted monks, and almost as relentless inquisitors in their hearts, as ever wore cowl and cord-austere and ungracious of aspect, coarse and repulsive of address and mannersvery Pharisees as to the lesser matters of the law, and many of them, to all outward appearance at least, overflowing with pharisaical self-conceit, as well as monastic bile. That admirable qualities lay concealed under this ungainly exterior, and mingled with and checked the worst of these gloomy passions, no candid man will permit himself to doubt or suspect for a moment; and that Burns has grossly overcharged his portraits of them, deepening shadows that were of themselves sufficiently dark, and excluding altogether those brighter, and perhaps softer, traits of character, which redeemed the originals within the sympathies of many of the worthiest and best of men, seems equally clear. Their bitterest enemies dared not at least to bring against them, even when the feud was at its height of fervour, charges of that heinous sort, which they fearlessly, and I fear justly, preferred against their antagonists. No one ever accused them of signing the Articles, administering the sacraments, and eating the bread of a Church, whose fundamental doctrines they disbelieved, and, by insinuation at least, disavowed. The law of Church-patronage was another subject on which controversy ran high and furious in the district at the same period; the actual condition of things on this head being upheld by all the men of the New Light, and condemned as equally at variance with the precepts of the gospel, and the rights of freemen, by not a few of the other party, and, in particular, by certain conspicuous zealots in the immediate neighbourhood of Burns. While this warfare raged, there broke out an intestine discord within the camp of the faction which he loved not. Two of the foremost leaders of the Auld Light party quarrelled about a question of parish-boundaries; the matter was taken up in the Presbytery of Kilmarnock, and there, in the open court, to which the announcement of the discussion had drawn a multitude of the country people, and Burns among the rest, the reverend divines, hitherto sworn friends and associates, lost all command of temper, and abused each other coram populo, with a fiery virulence of personal invective, such as has long been banished from all popular assemblies, wherein the laws of courtesy are enforced by those of a certain unwritten code. "The first of my poetic offspring that saw the light," says Burns," was a burlesque lamentation on a quarrel between two reverend Calvinists, both of them dramatis personæ in my Holy Fair. I had a notion myself, that the piece had some merit; but to prevent the worst, I gave a copy of it to a friend who was very fond of such things, and told him that I could not guess who was the author of it, but that I thought it pretty clever. With a certain description of the clergy, as well as laity, it met with a roar of applause." This was The Holy Tuilzie, or Twa Herds. The two herds, or pastors, were Mr. Moodie, minister of Riccartoun, and that favourite victim of Burns's, John Russell, then minister of Kilmarnock, and afterwards of Stirling." From this time," Burns says, " I began to be known in the country as a maker of rhymes. . . .. Holy Willie's Prayer next made its appearance, and alarmed the kirk-session so much, that they held several meetings to look over their spiritual artillery, and see if any of it might be pointed against profane rhymers.-Burns's reverend editor, Mr. Paul, presents Holy Willie's Prayer at full length, although not inserted in Dr. Currie's edition, and calls on the friends of religion to bless the memory of the poet who took such a judicious method of " leading the liberal mind to a rational view of the nature of prayer."-" This," says that bold commentator," was not only the prayer of Holy Willie, but it is merely the metrical version of every prayer that is offered up by those who call themselves the pure reformed church of Scotland. In the course of his reading and polemical warfare, Burns embraced and defended the opinions of Taylor of Norwich, Macgill, and that school of Divines. He could not reconcile his mind to that picture of the Being, whose very essence is love, which is drawn by the high Calvinists or the representatives of the Covenanters-namely, that he is disposed to grant salvation to none but a few of their sect; that the whole Pagan world, the disciples of Mahomet, the Roman Catholics, the Lutherans, and even the Calvinists who differ from them in certain tenets, must, like Korah, Dathan and Abiram, descend to the pit of perdition, man, woman, and child, without the possibility of escape; but such are the identical doctrines of the Cameronians of the present day, and such was Holy Willie's style of prayer. The hypocrisy and dishonesty of the man, who was at the time a reputed Saint, were perceived by the discerning penetration of Burns, and to expose them he considered his duty. The terrible view of the Deity exhibited in that able production is precisely the same view which is given of him, in different words, by many devout preachers at present. They inculcate, that the greatest sinner is the greatest favourite of heaven-that a reformed bawd is more acceptable to the Almighty than a pure virgin, who has hardly ever transgressed even in thought-that the lost sheep alone will be saved, and that the ninety-and-nine out of the hundred. will be left in the wilderness, to perish without mercy-that the Saviour of the world loves C |