In such harassing conditions he sank into delirium, and
died on July 21, 1796. The child, who died in infancy, was born on
the day his father was buried.
With Burns's death a reaction in popular opinion set in. He was given
a military funeral; and a subscription which finally amounted to one
thousand two hundred pounds was raised for his family. The official
biography, by Doctor Currie of Liverpool, doubled this sum, so that
Jean was enabled to bring up the children respectably, and end her
days in comfort. Scotland, having done little for Burns in his life,
was stricken with remorse when he died, and has sought ever since to
atone for her neglect by an idolatry of the poet and by a more than
charitable view of the man.
CHAPTER II
INHERITANCE: LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
Three forms of speech were current in Scotland in the time of Burns,
and, in different proportions, are current to-day: in the Highlands,
north and west of a slanting line running from the Firth of Clyde to
Aberdeenshire, Gaelic; in the Lowlands, south and east of the same
line, Lowland Scots; over the whole country, among the more educated
classes, English. Gaelic is a Celtic language, belonging to an
entirely different linguistic group from English, and having close
affinities to Irish and Welsh. This tongue Burns did not know. Lowland
Scots is a dialect of English, descended from the Northumbrian dialect
of Anglo-Saxon.
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