The schoolmaster Murdoch has left a portrait of him in
which he not only extols his virtues as a man but emphasizes his
zest for things of the mind, and states that "he spoke the English
language with more propriety--both with respect to diction and
pronunciation--than any man I ever knew, with no greater advantages."
Though tender and affectionate, he seems to have inspired both wife
and children with a reverence amounting to awe, and he struck
strangers as reserved and austere. He recognized in Robert traces of
extraordinary gifts, but he did not hide from him the fact that his
son's temperament gave him anxiety for his future. Mrs. Burnes was a
devoted wife and mother, by no means her husband's intellectual equal,
but vivacious and quick-tempered, with a memory stored with the song
and legend of the country-side. Other details can be filled in from
the poet's own picture of his father's household as given with little
or no idealization in _The Cotter's Saturday Night_.
THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT
My lov'd, my honour'd, much respected friend!
No mercenary bard his homage pays:
With honest pride I scorn each selfish end,
My dearest meed a friend's esteem and praise:
To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene;
The native feelings strong, the guileless ways;
What Aiken in a cottage would have been--
Ah! tho' his worth unknown, far happier there, I ween.
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