Burns made a journey to Liverpool, where they explained and arranged the manuscripts, and selected such as seemed worthy of the press. From this visit I derived a degree of pleasure which has compensated much of my labour. I had the satisfaction of renewing my personal intercourse with a much valued friend, and of forming an acquaintance with a man, closely allied to Burns in talents as well as in blood, in whose future fortunes the friends of virtue will not, I trust, be uninterested.

The publication of these volumes has been delayed by obstacles which these gentlemen could neither remove nor foresee, and which it would be tedious to enumerate. At length the task is finished. If the part which I have taken shall serve the interest of the family, and receive the approbation of good men, I shall have my recompense. The errors into which I have fallen are not, I hope, very important, and they will be easily accounted for by those who know the circumstances under which this undertaking has been performed. Ge nerous minds will receive the posthumous works of Burns with candour, and even

partiality, as the remains of an unfortunate man of genius, published for the benefit of his family as the stay of the widow and the hope of the fatherless.

To secure the suffrages of such minds, all topics are omitted in the writings, and avoided in the life of Burns, that have a tendency to awaken the animosity of party. In perusing the following volumes no offence will be received, except by those to whom even the natural erect aspect of genius is offensive; characters that will scarcely be found among those who are educated to the profession of arms. Such men do not court situations of danger, or tread in the paths of glory. They will not be found in your service, which, in our own days, emulates on another element the superior fame of the Macedonian phalanx, or of the Roman legion, and which has, lately made the shores of Europe and of Africa resound with the shouts of victory, from the Texel to the Tagus, and from the Tagus to the Nile!

The works of Burns will be received favourably by one who stands in the foremost rank of this noble service, and who

deserves his station. On the land or on the sea, I know no man more capable of judging of the character or of the writings of this original genius. Homer, and Shakespeare, and Ossian, cannot always occupy your leisure. These volumes may sometimes engage your attention, while the steady breezes of the tropic swell your sails, and in another quarter of the earth charm you with the strains of nature, or awake in your memory the scenes of your early days. Suffer me to hope that they may sometimes recall to your mind the friend who addresses you, and who bids you-most affectionately-adieu!

LIVERPOOL, 1st May, 1800.

J. CURRIE.

THE LIFE

OF

ROBERT BURNS.

PREFATORY REMARKS.

THOUGH the dialect in which many of the happiest effusions of ROBERT BURNS are composed be peculiar to Scotland, yet his reputation has extended itself beyond limits of that country, and his poetry has been admired as the offspring of original genius, by persons of taste in every part of the sister islands. The interest excited by his early death, and the distress of his infant family, have been felt in a remarkable manner wherever his writings have been known and these posthumous volumes, which give to the world his works complete, and which, it is hoped, may raise his Widow and Children from penury, are printed and published in England. It seems proper, therefore, to write the memoirs of his life, not with the view of their being read by Scotchmen only, but also by natives of England, and of other countries where the English language is spoken or understood.

Robert Burns was, in reality, what he has been represented to be, a Scottish peasant. To render

the incidents of his humble story generally intelligible, it seems, therefore, advisable to prefix some observations on the character and situation of the order to which he belonged-a class of men distinguished by many peculiarities: by this means we shall form a more correct notion of the advantages with which he started, and of the obstacles which hẹ surmounted. A few observations on the Scottish peasantry will not, perhaps, be found unworthy of attention in other respects: and the subject is, in a great measure, new. Scotland has produced persons of high distinction in every branch of philosophy and literature; and her history, while a separate and independent nation, has been successfully explored. But the present character of the people was not then formed; the nation then presented features similar to those which the feudal system and the catholic religion had diffused over Europe, modified, indeed, by the peculiar nature of her territory and climate. The Reformation, by which such important changes were produced on the national character, was speedily followed by the Accession of the Scottish monarchs to the English throne; and the period which elapsed from that Accession to the Union has been rendered memorable, chiefly, by those bloody conyulsions in which both divisions of the island were involved, and which, in a considerable degree, concealed from the eye of the historian the domestic history of the people, and the gradual variations in their condition and manners. Since the Union, Scotland, though the seat of two unsuccessful attempts to restore the House of Stuart to the throne, has en