culminates, namely Robert Burns. Burns, the oldest of the seven children of
two sturdy Scotch peasants of the best type, was born in 1759 in Ayrshire,
just beyond the northwest border of England. In spite of extreme poverty,
the father joined with some of his neighbors in securing the services of a
teacher for their children, and the household possessed a few good books,
including Shakspere and Pope, whose influence on the future poet was great.
But the lot of the family was unusually hard. The father's health failed
early and from childhood the boys were obliged to do men's work in the
field. Robert later declared, probably with some bitter exaggeration, that
his life had combined 'the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing
moil of a galley slave.' His genius, however, like his exuberant spirit,
could not be crushed out. His mother had familiarized him from the
beginning with the songs and ballads of which the country was full, and
though he is said at first to have had so little ear for music that he
could scarcely distinguish one tune from another, he soon began to compose
songs (words) of his own as he followed the plough. In the greatness of his
later success his debt to the current body of song and music should not be
overlooked. He is only the last of a long succession of rural Scottish
song-writers; he composed his own songs to accompany popular airs; and many
of them are directly based on fragments of earlier songs. None the less his
work rises immeasurably above all that had gone before it.

The story of Burns' mature life is the pathetic one of a very vigorous
nature in which genius, essential manliness, and good impulses struggled
against and were finally overcome by violent passions, aggravated by the
bitterness of poverty and repeated disappointments. His first effort, at
eighteen, to better his condition, by the study of surveying at a
neighboring town, resulted chiefly in throwing him into contact with bad
companions; a venture in the business of flax-dressing ended in disaster;
and the same ill-fortune attended the several successive attempts which he