t Burns was an ordinary laborer on
one or another of the Ayrshire tenant farms which his father or
brothers leased. At the age of fifteen, he was worked beyond his
strength in doing a man's full labor. He called his life on the
Ayrshire farms "the unceasing toil of a galley slave." All his life he
fought a hand-to-hand fight with poverty.

In 1786, when he was twenty-seven years old, he resolved to abandon
the struggle and seek a position in the far-off island of Jamaica. In
order to secure money for his passage, he published some poems which
he had thought out while following the plow or resting after the day's
toil. Six hundred copies were printed at three shillings each. All
were sold in a little over a month. A copy of this Kilmarnock edition
has since sold in Edinburgh for L572. His fame from that little volume
has grown as much as its monetary value.

Some Edinburgh critics praised the poems very highly and suggested a
second edition. Burns therefore abandoned the idea of going to Jamaica
and went to Edinburgh to arrange for a new edition. Here he was
entertained by the foremost men, some of whom wished to see how a
plowman would behave in polite society, while others desired to gaze
on what they regarded as a freak of nature.

The new volume appeared in 1787, and contained but few poems which had
not been published the previous year. The following winter he again
went to Edinburgh; but having shocked society by his intemperate
habits, he was almost totally neglected by the leaders of literature
and fashion.

In 1788 Burns married Jean Armour and took her to a farm which he
leased in Dumfriesshire. The first part of this new period was the
happiest in his life. She has been immortalized in his songs:--

"I see her in the dewy flowers,
I see her sweet and fair:
I hear her in the tunefu' birds,
I hear her charm the air:
There's not a bonie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green
There's not a bonie bird that sings,
But minds me o' my Jean."[10]

As this farm proved unprofitable, Burns appealed to influential
persons for some position that would enable him to support his family
and write poetry. This was an age of pensions, but not a farthing of
pension did he ever get. He was made an exciseman or gauger, at a
salary of L50 a year, and he followed that occupation for the few
remaining years of his life.

Robert Burns wrote and did some things unworthy of a great poet; but