Robert Burns - 1905 Author:Thomas Finlayson Henderson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV MOSSGIEL—1783-1786 Failure as Farmer—Consciousness of Genius—Poetic Hopes —Mauchline Young Men—Poetic Satires—Burns and the Kirk—His Religious B... more »elief—Jean Armour— Chambers-Stevenson Fictions—The Unlucky " Paper" —The Kirk and Marriages—Mutilation of the Paper— Rage and Despair of Burns — Mary Campbell — A Bachelor's Certificate—Emigration Resolves—In Hiding —Poetic Publications — The Kilmarnock Volume— Characteristics of his Verse. THE affairs of William Burnes having become hopelessly muddled, and it being certain that he could not long survive, Robert and Gilbert, with the two eldest daughters, put in claims, as creditors, for wages due for several years back, and with the money were able to enter on a lease of the farm of Mossgiel, which was sublet to them by Gavin Hamilton, a lawyer in Mauchline. Between Hamilton and the poet a close intimacy soon sprung up, which developed into warm friendship. The farm was taken from Martinmas 1783, and the family removed to it in March of the following year, shortly after the father's death. It lies high, with treeless and bleak surroundings, but commanding extensive views stretching westwards to the sea, and rather diversified in character, though with no striking features, the monotony of the enclosed farm plots being broken by wooded glens and river valleys, with a horizon to the south, of the low rounded Cumnock hills. A mile to the south-east —and within easy reach of the poet of an evening —lies the village of Mauchline, whose kirkyard and taverns and other features, as well as its more conspicuous and some of its more obscure inhabitants, have attained permanent notability through the poet's verse; and which—though much rebuilding has taken place since the poet's day—is still the same old, dull, ugly, country c...« less