The Book-Hunter
Dr Robert Henry, Edward Henryson, J. Bonaventura Hepburn, Roger
Hog, John Holybush, and Henry Home of Kames.... The gooseberries
appear to dwindle as they ripen. I am afraid few will remain for
you, but you will find a sufficient number where you are. I intend
to _walk_ to Dunkeld, and to take two days. Al. Smith may come a
bit with us.... All my little stock of news is exhausted. Pray
remember me to my grand-aunt, Mrs Brown, and my aunts; and I am, my
dear mother, your affectionate son,
"JOHN HILL BURTON."
[Footnote 10: The Cyclopaedia of Universal Biography.]
This letter describes the beginning of the life of literary labour
which John Hill Burton's was to the end. He would not have liked to see
it described as labour. He even disliked the word work as applied to his
own pursuits, and he did indeed work as easily as most men play. He was
unconscious of his own powers of mental application: his mind worked
with as much ease as his lungs breathed. The great bulk of his earlier
writings must be quite irrecoverable now. He wrote school-books,
specially a set of historical abridgments for the use of schools, under
the name of Dr White; he also compiled much of the information in Oliver
and Boyd's 'Almanac,' and almost all the letterpress of Billings's
'Ecclesiastical and Baronial Antiquities.'
Dr Burton's whole resources at this time were derived from his pen. He
has described this mode of life as a somewhat anxious but by no means
unhappy one. The anxiety lay in that in which all sorts of business
share--the finding work, looking for employment. The employment once
found was agreeable to him. He rapidly acquired a power of mastering
almost any subject on which he had to write, though he always looked
forward with hope to the time, which eventually came, when he might live
securely on a fixed income, free to write from the fulness of his mind
and not from outward pressure.
The house in Howard Place was carefully managed by his mother. On a life
spent entirely in town proving unsuitable to her health, Dr Burton took
for her a little cottage at Brunstane, which served as country quarters
for the family for several years.
In 1844 Dr Burton married Isabella Lauder, daughter of Captain Lauder of
Flatfield, in Perthshire. He then occupied a house in Scotland Street,
and his mother and sister left him to reside in the little cottage
called Liberton Bank. There his beloved and revered mother died, in
1848. His sister still lives in the cottage with a little flock of young
relatives which her kindness has gathered around her.
Dr Burton's first appearance in independent authorship was in 1846, when
he published his 'Life and Correspondence of David Hume.' This work at
once gained for him a recognised position among men of letters.
In 1847 he published a volume containing the Lives of Simon Lord Lovat
and Duncan Forbes of Culloden. This is an eminently readable work, as
are all his minor productions. Literary persons did not consider its
merits quite equal to the promise given in its predecessor. During these
years much of the spare time left by the need of frequent publication
was filled by the task of editing Mr Jeremy Bentham's literary remains,
to which Dr Burton was joint editor along with Dr (afterwards Sir John),
Bowring. He published, as a precursor to the greater work, one styled
'Benthamiana; an Introduction to the Works of Jeremy Bentham.'
In 1849 he wrote for Messrs Chambers a little book entitled 'Political
and Social Economy: Its Practical Application.' May the writer here be
permitted to state that she considers this small and little-noticed work
the best of all her husband's productions? Though the subject is usually
considered particularly dry, there is an ease, rapidity, firmness, and
completeness in this little book, which carries the reader on in spite
of himself or his prejudices.
The book was first published in two small paper-covered volumes. The
writer by chance got possession of the first, which ended without even a
full stop; she, then a young girl of not particularly studious habits,
having read it, its arguments so filled her mind, that she could not
rest till, out of her not over-abundant pocket-money, she had purchased
the other volume. The author was then unknown to her. He was afterwards
gratified by hearing this testimony to the value of a work which he
himself did not esteem so highly as his others. It may not be counted
impertinent to repeat it here, for this reason, that the little book in
question was intended as a popular treatise, not addressed to the
learned, but to the unlearned. It fulfils to perfection the idea of what
such a treatise should be. There is in the style not the slightest
approach to condescension, or that writing down to the meaner capacity
which must always offend an adult student; while the first principles of
the science discussed are stated with such lucidity, that his capacity
must be mean indeed who cannot grasp them, and they are illustrated by
statistics which will remain always interesting, even to the best
informed. Probably the particular charm of the book arises from its
having been written _currente calamo_. The information had been all
previously stored in the author's mind before he ever thought of writing
it. When he began to write, it poured forth without effort or any
reference to authorities. The book was written in some marvellously
short time,--the writer fears now to say how short. It was counted in
days. It would have been quite contrary to Dr Burton's principles to
boast of rapidity of composition. His greater works are monuments of
industry. Dr Burton's information on economic subjects had probably been
acquired during his studies and correspondence about the abolition of
the Corn Laws. He was interim editor of the 'Scotsman' at an early
period of the Corn-Law agitation, and during his editorship committed
the journal to Anti-Corn-Law principles. He was at that time in
correspondence with Mr Cobden, whom he visited in Lancashire, and who
tried to induce him to remove to that part of the world for the purpose
of editing an Anti-Corn-Law newspaper.
Mrs Burton was fond of society, and her husband had not then become
positively averse to it. His acquaintance in Edinburgh gradually
increased. It included Lord Jeffrey and his family, Lord Murray, who
remained a fast friend during his life, and all the remaining members of
the old Edinburgh circle.
About the year 1848, the writer first saw Dr Burton, accompanied by his
wife, as guests at one of those late evening parties given by Mrs
Jeffrey during the last years of her husband's life--a very faint
reflection of the earlier hospitalities of Craigcrook and Moray Place.
In 1848 Dr Burton left Scotland Street for a house in Royal Crescent,
better suited for occasional reception than the other. But in 1849 the
heaviest blow of his life fell on him in the loss of his wife. His five
married years had been a period of perfect domestic happiness. He found
himself left with three infant daughters; their guide and his gone from
him. He has described his sufferings at this time to the writer as fully
realising to him the common phrase, "a broken heart." As each day
passed, and each night returned, he rose and lay down with the feeling
that his heart was broken. He of course shunned all society, and never
again recovered any real zest for it. He sometimes thought of imitating
his grandfather under like circumstances with a difference--he thought
of flying, not to London, but to the backwoods of America, or some place
where he should never see a white face, and becoming a "wild man," a
savage--a personage of whom he always believed himself to share many of
the characteristics. Only consideration for his little girls deterred
him from such a course. Although an excessively affectionate parent, Dr
Burton had no pleasure in the company of children, owing to his want of
any system with them. He could not, according to the common phrase,
"manage" children at all--a necessary art for any one who has much of
their company. He secured the services of a former governess of his
wife, a Miss Wade, as care-taker of his children; and, as soon as he
could, removed from the house in Royal Crescent to a small one in Castle
Street, and afterwards, from a wish to let his children amuse themselves
with little gardens of their own, to one in Ann Street. He has told the
writer's father, Cosmo Innes, then his most intimate friend, that the
first relief to his oppressed spirits was obtained from the nearest
realisation of the "wild man" life to be found within his own country.
He took long walks in all weathers, sometimes walking all night as well
as all day, at times with a companion, oftener with none. The late
Alexander Russel, then editor of the 'Scotsman,' was his companion in
some of these rambles, Joseph Robertson in others, and Cosmo Innes in
others. It was Mr Russel who accompanied him in the run across Ireland,
which took place about this time, and of which his printed sketch is one
of the liveliest of his minor writings. His pace was so rapid, and his
powers of walking so inexhaustible, that with the lapse of years it
became more and more difficult to find a companion who could keep up
with him. He has described to Mr Innes one particular walk taken alone
to the waterfall called the Grey Mare's Tail. The whole excursion was
performed in pitiless rain and wind, which gave the waterfall every
advantage, and it was while battling with the elements in climbing the
hill to view it that Dr Burton felt the first return of his natural
elasticity of spirit. He soon found also the best medicine of all in
hard work. The years between the death of his first wife and his second
marriage were the most active of his literary life, at least in the line
of periodical literature. He contributed regularly to 'Blackwood's
Magazine,' besides other periodicals. In 1852 he published narratives
from Criminal Trials in Scotland. In 1853 a 'Treatise on the Law of
Bankruptcy in Scotland,' and in the same year his 'History of Scotland
from the Revolution to the extinction of the last Jacobite Rebellion.'
CHAPTER IV.
SECOND STAGE OF LITERARY LIFE.
_Appointed Secretary to the Prison Board--Second marriage--Daily
life--Death of infant child--First volunteers--Removal to Craighouse._
In 1854 Dr Burton was appointed Secretary to the Prison Board, at a
salary of L700 per annum, and was thus relieved of the necessity, which
had pressed on him for more than twenty years, of maintaining himself by
his pen. On his appointment to this office he removed from Ann Street to
the house then 27 Lauriston Place, the site of which is now occupied by
the Simpson Memorial Hospital. In 1854 the situation was half rural. The
house stood in a good old-fashioned garden of its own, beyond which lay
a field containing some old trees; and the house possessed good offices,
stables, &c., which were soon adapted to a workshop for Dr Burton
himself, and rabbit and pigeon houses for his children.
The productiveness of the garden was marred by incursions of
rabbits,--_not_ the children's pets, but wild rabbits, however
incredible that may appear, now that the situation has got so entirely
separated from the country by new buildings. At that time there was no
building between Lauriston Place and Morningside.
Dr Burton, while a widower, had become a more and more frequent visitor
at the house of Cosmo Innes in Inverleith Row. The writer does not
recollect ever seeing him there along with other company--he preferred
finding the family alone. She has met him occasionally in company in
other houses--memorably in that of the late Mrs Cunningham, Lord