Scotland/Scots > Life of Robert Burns

306 LIFE OF
Sic vos non vobis. The great poet himself,
whose name is enough to ennoble his children’s
children, was, to the eternal disgrace of his coun¬
try, suffered to live and die in penury, and, as far
as such a creature could be degraded by any ex¬
ternal circumstances, in degradation. Who can
open the page of Burns, and remember without a
blush, that the author of such verses, the human
being whose breast glowed with such feelings, was
doomed to earn mere bread for his children by cast¬
ing up the stock of publicans’ cellars, and riding
over moors and mosses in quest of smuggling
stills ? The subscription for his Poems was, for
the time, large and liberal, and perhaps absolves
a certain number of the gentry of Scotland as
individuals; but that some strong movement of
indignation did not spread over the whole king¬
dom, when it was known that Robert Burns, after
being caressed and flattered by the noblest and
most learned of his countrymen, was about to be
established as a common gauger among the wilds
of Nithsdale—and that, after he was so established,
no interference from a higher quarter arrested that
unworthy career :—these are circumstances which
must continue to bear heavily on the memory of
that generation, and especially of those who then
administered the public patronage of Scotland.
In defence, or at least in palliation, of this nation¬
al crime, two false arguments, the one resting on
facts grossly exaggerated, the other having no
foundation whatever either on knowledge or on
wisdom, have been rashly set up, and arrogantly
a few of the sailors wept'outright, natives of Scotland,
who, even when far away, had revived their recollections
of home and youth, by listening to, or repeating, the poetry
of Burns.”