The Real Robert Burns Part 18

_37 Years Old._

Early in the year his health gave way, and he died, 21st July 1796. Though apparently a strong man, it is reasonable to believe that he had a const.i.tutional tendency towards consumption. His father died from this dread disease, and his grandmother (his mother's mother) died at thirty-five from the same cause. Burns inherited his physical and intellectual powers mainly from his mother. Both by heredity and contagion, therefore, he was made susceptible to influences that develop consumption. He continued to write poetry, chiefly love-songs, during his illness. His last poem was written, nine days before his death, to Miss Margaret Chalmers, for whom he had a reverent affection.

No reference has been made in this sketch of his development to the prose written each year. Five hundred and thirty-four of his letters have been published. They are written in a stately style, and most of them contain philosophic discussions of religion, ethics, or democracy.

A shy, sensitive, retiring boy; a deep-thinking, persistently studying, eloquent, still shy youth; a brilliant reasoner, a thinker ranking with leaders in his neighbourhood, meeting each on equal terms, and easily proving his superiority by his remarkable knowledge of each man's special subject of study, and by his still more remarkable powers of independent thinking and clear revelation of his thought in his young manhood, but still at twenty-two too shy to propose to the first lover of his maturity; always a reverent lover of Nature, whose mind saw G.o.d in beauty, in dawn-gleam and eve-glow, in tree and flower, in river and mountain; he studied, thought, and expressed his thoughts in exquisite poetry, and, according to those who knew him best, in still richer and more captivating conversation, until at twenty-seven he stood in the midst of the most learned professors of Scotland and outcla.s.sed them all. No single professor of the galaxy of culture in which he stood, modest and dignified, could have spoken so wisely, so profoundly, so easily, and with such graceful manner and charming eloquence on _so many subjects_ as did Burns.

It is a marvel that grows greater the more we try to understand it, that a boy who left school when he was nine years old, and, except for a few weeks, did not go to school again; and who, from nine years of age to his thirty-second year, was a steady farm-worker, with the exception of a brief interval during which he was engaged publis.h.i.+ng his poems; and was a gauger from thirty-two to thirty-six, should have been able to write so much immortal poetry and so much instructive prose in such a short time.

One of the most interesting of all the pictures of the lives of the world's literary leaders is the picture of Robert Burns, after a day of toil on the farm, walking from Mossgiel farm, when his evening meal was over, two miles to his favourite seat in the woods on Ballochmyle estate, and sitting there on the high bank of the Ayr in the long Scottish gloaming, and often on in the moonlight, 'shut in with G.o.d,' revealing in sublime form the visions that thrilled his soul. During the last few years of his life he walked from his home to Lincluden Abbey ruins on his favourite path beside the winding Nith to spend his gloaming hours alone, and composed there some of his masterpieces.

Short was his life, but he lives on in the hearts of succeeding generations. He lives on, too, in his permanent influence on religion, freedom, and brotherhood.

THE END.