t a measure of their greatness. Tried by this
standard, Burns must be great indeed, for during the eighty years that
have passed since his death, men's interest in the man himself and
their estimate of his genius have been steadily increasing. Each
decade since he died has produced at least two biographies of him.
When Mr. Carlyle wrote his well-known essay on Burns in 1828, he could
already number six biographies of the Poet, which had been given to
the world during the previous thirty years; and the interval between
1828 and the present day has added, in at least the same proportion,
to their number. What it was in the man and in his circumstances that
has attracted so much of the world's interest to Burns, I must make
one more attempt to describe.

If success were that which most secures men's sympathy, Burns would
have won but little regard; for in all but his poetry his was a (p. 002)
defeated life--sad and heart-depressing to contemplate beyond the
lives even of most poets.

Perhaps it may be the very fact that in him so much failure and
shipwreck were combined with such splendid gifts, that has attracted
to him so deep and compassionate interest. Let us review once more the
facts of that life, and tell again its oft-told story.

It was on the 25th of January, 1759, about two miles from the town of
Ayr, in a clay-built cottage, reared by his father's own hands, that
Robert Burns was born. The "auld clay bigging" which saw his birth
still stands by the side of the road that leads from Ayr to the river
and the bridge of Doon. Between the banks of that romantic stream and
the cottage is seen the roofless ruin of "Alloway's auld haunted
kirk," which Tam o' Shanter has made famous. His first welcome to the
world was a rough one. As he himself says,--

A blast o' Janwar' win'
Blew hansel in on Robin.

A few days after his birth, a storm blew down the gable of the
cottage, and the poet and his mother were carried in the dark morning
to the shelter of a neighbour's roof, under which they remained till
their own home was repaired. In after-years he would often say, "No
wonder that one ushered into the world amid such a tempest should be
the victim of stormy passions." "It is hard to be born in Scotland,"
says the brilliant Parisian. Burns had many hardships to endure, but
he never reckoned this to be one of them.

His father, William Burness or Burnes, for so he spelt his name,