Harassed at length by pecuniary difficulties, and driven to the border of despair, Burns determined on running off to Jamaica to avoid "the horrors of a jail." Before putting this resolve into execution, he published a small edition of his poems by subscription. He cleared by this 20_l_. and gained some reputation. This sum came very seasonably, as without it he would have been compelled to indent himself for want of money to pay his passage. He had taken his place in a ship about to sail from the Clyde, when a letter from Dr. Blacklock, by "opening new prospects to {106} his poetic ambition," overthrew his runaway schemes, and led him to Edinburgh. There the Earl of Glencairn became his patron. His after life is well known. Burns died in July 1796, and was buried with much state in the southern church yard of Dumfries. The great misfortune of our poet's life was to want an aim. Without this, with a strong appetite for sociability, as well from native hilarity as from a pride of observation and remark, a constitutional melancholy or hypochondriasm made him shun solitude. Add to these incentives to social life, a reputation for bookish knowledge, (comparatively) a certain wild logical talent, and a strength of thought something like the rudiments of good sense, and it will seem no great wonder that "he was ever one in each companie where jollity and pleasaunce were held in esteeme." Burns was full of a seeming independence of spirit. He breaks out into the most fiery expressions of contempt for the rich and the great. But we recognize in these rather the man of genius than the man of real independence. If in his real feelings he had been independent of the rich and the great, they might have gone their way and he would have gone his, we should have heard nothing of his scorn and disdain. These were dictated, not as they professed to be, by a spirit of independence, but by that which, wherever it exists, comes in abatement of independence--by pride.[3] [Footnote 3: "A keen desire of aggrandizement in the eyes of others, a sensitive apprehension of humiliation in their eyes are the constituents of pride."] Scotland has had an Allan Ramsay to revive the pastoral visions of Colin Clout--an earlier Drummond to transmit to posterity the _fresh philosophy_ of the olden time--a Leyden to haunt the "far east countries" with the pleasant traditions of Teviotdale--an Allan Cunningham to embody the spirit of the ancient Scottish romaunt in the sturdiest language of our own day--a Hogg to fill the Ettrick valleys with the echoes of his "trueful song"--a Scott to restore to the hills of Moffat and to the banks of the Annan the lance and the eye-haunting plume--a Scott to restore knight and monk, to castle and abbey, from the Skye to Melrose--a Scott to tell of old-time woes by Gallawater and by Yarrow--but Robert Burns has no master among these. The "Robin of Ayr had the richest song of them all."