a home, Robert had already the making of an excellent
education; and what Murdoch added, although it may not have
been much in amount, was in character the very essence of a
literary training. Schools and colleges, for one great man
whom they complete, perhaps unmake a dozen; the strong spirit
can do well upon more scanty fare.

Robert steps before us, almost from the first, in his
complete character - a proud, headstrong, impetuous lad,
greedy of pleasure, greedy of notice; in his own phrase
"panting after distinction," and in his brother's "cherishing
a particular jealousy of people who were richer or of more
consequence than himself:" with all this, he was emphatically
of the artist nature. Already he made a conspicuous figure
in Tarbolton church, with the only tied hair in the parish,
"and his plaid, which was of a particular colour, wrapped in
a particular manner round his shoulders." Ten years later,
when a married man, the father of a family, a farmer, and an
officer of Excise, we shall find him out fishing in
masquerade, with fox-skin cap, belted great-coat, and great
Highland broadsword. He liked dressing up, in fact, for its
own sake. This is the spirit which leads to the extravagant
array of Latin Quarter students, and the proverbial velveteen
of the English landscape-painter; and, though the pleasure
derived is in itself merely personal, it shows a man who is,
to say the least of it, not pained by general attention and
remark. His father wrote the family name BURNES; Robert
early adopted the orthography BURNESS from his cousin in the
Mearns; and in his twenty-eighth year changed it once more to
BURNS. It is plain that the last transformation was not made