t achieve any long and sustained effort--to be
preserved, it is to be expected, in a folio edition, and assigned a
fitting place among other musty and hide-bound immortals on the shelves
of libraries under lock and key. As well might we seek to apologise for
the fields and meadows, in so far as they bring forth neither corn nor
potatoes, but only grasses and flowers, to dance to the piping of the
wind, and nod in the sunshine of summer.

It is a healthier sign, however, that the more recent biographers of
Burns snap their fingers in the face of convention, and, looking to the
legacy he has left the world, refuse to sit in sackcloth and ashes round
his grave, either in the character of moralising mourners or charitable
mutes. Whatever has to be said against them nowadays, the 'cant of
concealment'--to adopt another of Gilfillan's phrases--is not to be laid
to their charge. Rather have they rushed to the other extreme, and in
their eagerness to do justice to the memory of the poet, led the reader
astray in a wilderness of unnecessary detail. So much is now known of
Burns, so many minute and unimportant details of his life and the lives
of others have been unearthed, that the poet is, so to speak, buried in
biography; the character and the personality of the man lost in the
voluminous testimony of many witnesses. Reading, we note the care and
conscientiousness of the writer; we have but a confused and blurred
impression of the poet. Although a century has passed since his death,
we do not yet see the events of Burns's life in proper perspective.
Things trifling in themselves, and of little bearing on his character,
have been preserved, and are still recorded with painful elaboration;
while the sidelights from friends, companions, and acquaintances, male
and female, are many and bewildering.

Would it not be possible out of this mass of material to tell the story
of Robert Burns's life simply and clearly, neither wandering away into
the family histories and genealogies of a crowd of uninteresting
contemporaries, nor wasting time in elaborating inconsequential trifles?
What is wanted is a picture of the man as he was, and an understanding
of all that tended to make him the name and the power he is in the world
to-day.

William Burness, the father of the poet, was a native of
Kincardineshire, and 'was thrown by early misfortunes on the world at
large.' After many years' wanderings, he at last settled in Ayrshire,
where he