(Illustrations: Google images)

Rather than yet another potted biography, I am moving the spotlight from the man to the context.

The atmosphere of the 18th century is easier to sample than you might imagine as there is no sanitation. Those seeking a less aromatic experience are referred to “Gulliver’s Travels”, Jonathan Swift’s excellent satire of the period’s social mores.

Beer, which is purer than the water, is drunk with every meal. Gin shops advertise “Drunk for a penny. Dead drunk for tuppence.” Drunken brawls and duels are a common cause of death.

It is a time when some notorious characters come to remarkably different ends. Rob Roy dies in his sleep.

Alexander Selkirk, the original Robinson Crusoe, returns to privateering and contracts yellow fever. Blackbeard is killed while resisting arrest. His 2.i.c, Israel Hands, is granted immunity from prosecution after blowing the whistle on corrupt officials and later dies as a beggar. It may disappoint readers of “Treasure Island,” to learn that Hands was not shot in self-defence by Jim Hawkins but, by way of compensation, there really were 15 men stranded on a tiny Caribbean island known as “The Dead Man’s Chest.” In France a mysterious prisoner, immortalised as “The Man in the Iron Mask,” carries the secret of his identity to the grave.

RN officers in a small Spanish town drain the town fountain, filling it with several hundred gallons of punch. A small boy in a boat acts as server. 3 days later the boat touches bottom.

Medical science is advanced when a Dr Fuller publishes the first authoritative description of the difference between measles spots and flea bites. Patients seeking admission to St Bart’s hospital in London must deposit a burial fee of 19/6. Survivors are refunded.

Building on the theory of gravity advanced by his friend, the late Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley predicts the return of the comet that will henceforth bear his name.

Early building societies meet in pubs. The monthly subscription is one penny: ha’penny for the fund; a farthing for the clerk and a farthing for beer.

In 1745 a new hit song, “God Save the King”, is performed in public for the first time. The 6th verse reads:
Lord grant that Marshal Wade / May by Thy mighty aid / Victory bring. / May he sedition hush / And like a torrent rush / Rebellious Scots to crush. / God save the King!

This prayer does not deter Bonnie Prince Charlie, who only loses one battle during the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion.

The battle of Culloden ends the last of numerous attempts to restore the Stewarts and government’s savage determination to forever settle the matter creates the Scotland into which Robert Burns is born on 25 January 1759.

Headline news in the ‘50s:
Tea begins to rival alcohol as a favoured drink, causing a significant drop in the number of alcohol-related deaths. Brits have solved their problems with a nice hot cuppa ever since.

Britain adopts the Gregorian calendar, resulting in the 11 days between September 2 and September 14 1752 being omitted. Angry mobs believe that their lives have been shortened.

On All Saints Day, 1756, an earthquake buries 50 000 in the rubble of Lisbon. The shock wave is felt throughout the continent and Britain. The resulting tsunami swamps several W. Indian Islands and exhausts itself on America’s eastern seaboard.

Christmas 1758 sees Halley’s Comet return on schedule. Sadly, the astronomer did not live to see it.

In South Africa, ox wagons cross the Buffalo & Gonubie Rivers for the first time.
H.M.S. Victory is built and her most famous commander, Horatio Nelson, is born. On the morning of Trafalgar, Captains Hardy & Blackwood will witness a codicil to Nelson’s will that bequeaths “Emma, Lady Hamilton, to my King and Country.” History does not record the reaction of either Her Ladyship or of His Majesty.

Also born is future Prime Minister William Pitt and poet William Blake. He wrote “Tiger. Tiger. Burning bright” or, as one wit had it, “Tiger. Tiger. My mistake. I thought that you were William Blake”.

Into the 60’s:
Canada is ceded to Britain – a move still not wholly forgiven by Quebec Province. Mason and Dixon draw the line on slavery. Captain Cook, responsible for the nickname “Limeys,” reaches New Zealand. In Oxford a peddler sells concentrated beer in cubes. Advertised as “A tankard of beer in a teaspoon”, they are popular with young men and produce a strong porter when dissolved.

Famous births include Charles MacIntosh, who will protect his waterproofing technique by only employing Gaelic-speaking Highlanders in his Glascow factory, the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon Bonaparte.

Breaking news from the 70’s:
Social event of the decade is Boston’s tea party. King George does not attend and an offended George Washington declares U.D.I.

Cook discovers Australia, vindicating scientists who have theorised that irregularities in the Earth’s rotation can only be explained by a large landmass in the southern hemisphere.

Robert Gordon of the V.O.C’s Scottish Battalion discovers a river in S.A. and names it for the House of Orange. Egotistical Governor van Plettenberg must be content with imposing his name on another of Gordon’s discoveries, an insignificant bay in the S.Cape.

Edinburgh University’s Adam Smith publishes “An Enquiry into the Wealth of Nations”, still the benchmark for all economic theories. He could as easily have written a thesis on BO as there were only 3 baths in the City of Edinburgh.

Good news for some: The penal laws against Clan Gregor are repealed.

Former slave-ship captain, John Newton, writes “Amazing Grace”.

Writers Rousseau and Voltaire die. Their works helped inspire Jefferson’s heretical pronouncement that all men are created equal and also kindled the fire that will become the French Revolution.

James Cook is murdered in Hawaii. In the global village we tend to forget that such men did “boldly go where no man has gone before” and Cook not only sailed further than any man had previously sailed, but as far as it is possible to sail.

The curfew tolls the knell for Thomas Grey, who stops writing elegies in a churchyard and takes up permanent residence in one.

Births include Beethoven, William Wordsworth – who is to “Wander lonely as a cloud” doing unspecified things to daffodils, Sir Walter Scott – who, when asked if his family has a tartan will reply “No. Thank God my people have always been able to afford trousers” – and Samuel Coleridge. Sam will record “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and write the poem “Xanadu” after abusing opium.

During the ‘80s:
The Treaty of Versailles recognises American Independence; Pitt the younger becomes Prime Minister; The first convicts arrive in Australia – sheep and sick jokes to follow; Fletcher Christian leads the mutiny on the Bounty; The French Revolution begins with the storming of the Bastille; The first of 9 wars is fought on the Cape’s eastern frontier and HRH, Prince Charles Edward Stewart, dies in exile.

William Brodie, respectable church deacon by day and arch-criminal by night, is betrayed by one of his gang. He is the inspiration for Stevenson’s novel “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”. Daily newspapers are a new idea and are not highly-esteemed. Rev. William Dodd, charged with forgery, is described as “sunk so low as to have become the editor of a newspaper”.

The pace of social revolution is apparent when we note that Burns can freely write “For a’ that and a’ that”, a song which echoes the radical ideas of Thomas Paine’s, “The Rights of Man”. Contemporary accounts indicate that Paine’s name was an accurate description of the man and, a mix between Karl Marx and Che Guevara, he patronised both the American and the French revolutions.

Samuel Johnson passes away. He could mock himself as easily as he could mock others and his famous dictionary includes the entry: “Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge”.

Joining us on the world stage is locomotive inventor George Stephenson, frontiersman Davy Crocket and Lord Byron. When, while a student at Cambridge, Byron is told he may not keep a dog in his room, he reacts by keeping a bear instead.

Historically, the last decade of Burns’ life is as eventful as the others. Dealing only with events into 1796:

The guillotine is introduced in France. Far away from the reign of terror, society ladies adopt the macabre fashion of short dishevelled hair and a red ribbon around the neck. France is declared a republic and celebrates by declaring war on Britain, the Netherlands and Spain.

The 4th Duke of Gordon (The Cock o’ the North) raises the Gordon Highlanders. His wife assists by giving a kiss to each man who enlists. If portraits do the Duchess justice, the Jocks don’t stand a chance against this approach.

Britain occupies the Cape.

Edward Jenner makes the first vaccination against smallpox. The magnitude of his discovery is shown when, during the Napoleonic Wars, Jenner requests the freedom of an English prisoner and Napoleon signs the release saying, “We can refuse him nothing.”

Obituaries include Mozart, Benjamin Franklin and John Montague – better known as the 4th Earl of Sandwich and progenitor of the fast-food industry. Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Mouron dies. Who was he? In 1684, aged 17, he was sentenced to 100 years and 1 day in the galleys. He served every day of his sentence and survived his release by 6 years.

Inventors Samuel Morse and Michael Faraday are born as are poets John Keats and Percy Shelley.

Burns dies on 21 July 1796.

I chose to look at the context, rather than the man, to emphasise that he lived contemporary to many great historical figures and giants of literature. That his life and works can stand out against such a distinguished company makes him all the more remarkable.