t Ellisland, near Dumfries. Finding it impossible
to make a living for his increasing family as a farmer, he obtained
through friends the place of exciseman for the surrounding region.
This position obliged him to ride more than two hundred miles a week,
collecting government taxes. In 1791 he moved to the town of Dumfries.
The following year he came near losing his place through an act of
indiscretion which proved him to be more poet than exciseman. He
bought four guns which had come into the possession of the government
through the seizure of a smuggling vessel, and sent them with
expressions of admiration and sympathy to the French Legislative
Assembly. These were the early days of the Revolution when young men
in many parts of the world were enthusiastic in their support of the
movement. Fortunately the guns failed to reach their destination, and
the poet having made his peace with the authorities kept his position
until failing health obliged him to give it up. During his later years
he wrote little but songs, and for these he would take no money,
although he was, as ever, a poor man. He died in 1796, at the age of
thirty-seven. In 1815 his remains were transferred to a mausoleum
built as a tribute to his genius.

As a man, Burns was far from perfect. His passions were strong and he
never learned to control them, and in consequence he had reason to
repent bitterly many a rash act. Yet he was brave and honest; he had a
righteous hatred of hypocrisy; as the champion of the humble, he
claimed for the poorest the full privileges of sturdy manhood; he cared
heartily for his fellowmen and had a place in his affections even for
the field-mouse and the daisy. Because his verse beats with the
passions of his fiery and sympathetic nature, the world loves him as it
loves few other poets. Among the best known of his productions are
_The Cotter's Saturday Night_, _Tam o' Shanter_, _Address to the Unco
Guid_, _To a Mouse_, and _To a Mountain Daisy_. In speaking of his
songs, one might mention first, _Scots Wha Hae_,--composed in the midst
of tempests, while the poet was riding over a wild Galloway moor,--and
next, _Highland Mary_ and _A Man's a Man for a' That_; but there is no
need of enumerating the songs of Burns. As Emerson has said, "The wind
whispers them, the birds whistle them, the corn, barley, and bulrushes
hoarsely rustle them. . . . They are the property and the solace of
mankind."

THE COTTER'S