5, 1900 and 1906. In parliament he became well known as an
independent Radical, and he was included in the Liberal cabinet by Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman in December 1905 as president of the Local
Government Board. During the next two years, though much out of favour with
his former socialist allies, he earned golden opinions for his
administrative policy, and for his refusal to adopt the visionary proposals
put forward by the more extreme members of the Labour party for dealing
with the "unemployed" question; and in 1908 he retained his office in Mr
Asquith's cabinet.

BURNS, ROBERT (1759-1796), Scottish poet, was born on the 25th of January
1759 in a cottage about 2 m. from Ayr. He was the eldest son of a small
farmer, William Burness, of Kincardineshire stock, who wrought hard,
practised integrity, wished to bring up his children in the fear of God,
but had to fight all his days against the winds and tides of adversity.
"The poet," said Thomas Carlyle, "was fortunate in his father--a man of
thoughtful intense character, as the best of our peasants are, valuing
knowledge, possessing some and open-minded for more, of keen insight and
devout heart, friendly and fearless: a fully unfolded man seldom found in
any rank in society, and worth descending far in society to seek. ... Had
he been ever so little richer, the whole might have issued otherwise. But
poverty sunk the whole family even below the reach of our cheap school
system, and Burns remained a hard-worked plough-boy."

Through a series of migrations from one unfortunate farm to another; from
Alloway (where he was taught to read) to Mt. Oliphant, and then (1777) to
Lochlea in Tarbolton (where he learnt the rudiments of geometry), the poet
remained in the same condition of straitened circumstances. At the age of
thirteen he thrashed the corn with his own hands, at fifteen he was the
principal labourer. The family kept no servant, and for several years
butchers' meat was a thing unknown in the house. "This kind of life," he
writes, "the cheerless gloom of a hermit and the unceasing toil of a
galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth year." His naturally robust frame
was overtasked, and his nervous constitution received a fatal strain. His
shoulders were bowed, he became liable to headaches, palpitations and fits
of depressing melancholy. From these hard tasks and his fiery temperament,
craving in vain for sympathy in a frigid air, grew the strong temptations
on whic