Scotland/Scots > Life of Robert Burns

ROBERT BURNS. 177
solid and tangible shape. His illness and confine¬
ment gave him leisure to concentrate his imagina¬
tion on the darker side of his prospects ; and the
letters which we have quoted, may teach those
who envy the powers and the fame of genius, to
pause for a moment over the annals of literature,
and think what superior capabilities of misery have
been, in the great majority of cases, interwoven
with the possession of those very talents, from
which all but their possessors derive unmingled
gratification.
Burns’s distresses, however, were to be still far¬
ther aggravated. While still under the hands of
his surgeon, he received intelligence from Mauch-
line that his intimacy with Jean Armour had once
more exposed her to the reproaches of her family.
The father sternly and at once turned her out of
doors ; and Burns, unable to walk across his room,
had to write to his friends in Mauchline, to pro¬
cure shelter for his children, and for her whom he
considered as—all but his wife. In a letter to
Mrs Dunlop, written on hearing of this new mis¬
fortune, he says, “ I ivish I were dead, but I'm
no like to die. I fear I am something like—un¬
done ; but I hope for the best. You must not
desert me. Your friendship I think I can count
on, though I should date my letters from a march¬
ing regiment. Early in life, and all my life, I
reckoned on a recruiting drum as my forlorn hope.
Seriously, though, life at present presents me with
but a melancholy path But my limb will soon
be sound, and I shall struggle on. ” *
It seems to have been now that Burns at last
screwed up his courage to solicit the active in-
* Reliques, p. 4-8.
P