Preface(2/5)
g that winter he was the chief literary celebrity of the season. an enlarged edition of his poems was published there in 1787, and the money derived from this enabled him to aid his brother in mossgiel, and to take and stock for himself the farm of ellisland in dumfriesshire. his fame as poet had reconciled the armours to the connection, and having now regularly married jean, he brought her to ellisland, and once more tried farming for three years. continued ill-success, however, led him, in 1791, to abandon ellisland, and he moved to dumfries, where he had obtained a position in the excise. but he was now thoroughly discouraged; his work was mere drudgery; his tendency to take his relaxation in debauchery increased the weakness of a constitution early undermined; and he died at dumfries in his thirty-eighth year.
it is not necessary here to attempt to disentangle or explain away the numerous amours in which he was engaged through the greater part of his life. it is evident that burns was a man of extremely passionate nature and fond of conviviality; and the misfortunes of his lot combined with his natural tendencies to drive him to frequent excesses of self-indulgence. he was often remorseful, and he strove painfully, if intermittently, after better things. but the story of his life must be admitted to be in its externals a painful and somewhat sordid chronicle. that it contained, however, many moments of joy and exaltation is proved by the poems here printed.
burns' poetry falls into two main groups: english and scottish. his english poems are, for the most part, inferior specimens of conventional eighteenth-century verse. but in scottish poetry he achieved triumphs of a quite extraordinary kind. since the time of the reformation and the union of the crowns of england and scotland, the scots dialect had largely fallen into disuse as a medium for dignified writing. shortly before burns' time, however, allan ramsay and robert fergusson had been t
it is not necessary here to attempt to disentangle or explain away the numerous amours in which he was engaged through the greater part of his life. it is evident that burns was a man of extremely passionate nature and fond of conviviality; and the misfortunes of his lot combined with his natural tendencies to drive him to frequent excesses of self-indulgence. he was often remorseful, and he strove painfully, if intermittently, after better things. but the story of his life must be admitted to be in its externals a painful and somewhat sordid chronicle. that it contained, however, many moments of joy and exaltation is proved by the poems here printed.
burns' poetry falls into two main groups: english and scottish. his english poems are, for the most part, inferior specimens of conventional eighteenth-century verse. but in scottish poetry he achieved triumphs of a quite extraordinary kind. since the time of the reformation and the union of the crowns of england and scotland, the scots dialect had largely fallen into disuse as a medium for dignified writing. shortly before burns' time, however, allan ramsay and robert fergusson had been t
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