My most respectful compliments to Miss Williams. Her very elegant and friendly letter I cannot answer at present, as my presence is requisite in Edinburgh, and I set out to-morrow.
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 175: Idiot for idiotic.]
[Footnote 176: Paradise Lost, b. iv]
[Footnote 177: "Rob the Rhymer's Welcome to his Bastard Child."--See Poem XXXIII.]
LXXV.
TO ROBERT AINSLIE, ESQ.,
BERRYWELL DUNSE.
[This characteristic letter was first published by Sir Harris Nichols; others, still more characteristic, addressed to the same gentleman, are abroad: how they escaped from private keeping is a sort of a riddle.]
_Edinburgh, 23d August_, 1787.
"As I gaed up to Dunse
To warp a pickle yarn,
Robin, silly body,
He gat me wi' bairn."
From henceforth, my dear Sir, I am determined to set off with my letters like the periodical writers, viz. prefix a kind of text, quoted from some classic of undoubted authority, such as the author of the immortal piece, of which my text is part. What I have to say on my text is exhausted in a letter which I wrote you the other day, before I had the pleasure of receiving yours from Inverkeithing; and sure never was anything more lucky, as I have but the time to write this, that Mr. Nicol, on the opposite side of the table, takes to correct a proof-sheet of a thesis. They are gabbling Latin so loud that I cannot hear what my own soul is saying in my own skull, so I must just give you a matter-of-fact sentence or two, and end, if time permit, with a verse de rei generatione. To-morrow I leave Edinburgh in a chaise; Nicol thinks it more comfortable than horseback, to which I say, Amen; so Jenny Geddes goes home to Ayrshire, to use a phrase of my mother's, wi' her finger in her mouth.
Now for a modest verse of classical authority:
The cats like kitchen;
The dogs like broo;
The lasses like the lads weel,
And th' auld wives too.
CHORUS.
And we're a' noddin,
Nid, nid, noddin,
We're a' noddin fou at e'en.
If this does not please you, let me hear from you; if you write any time before the 1st of September, direct to Inverness, to be left at the post-office till called for; the next week at Aberdeen, the next at Edinburgh.
The sheet is done, and I shall just conclude with assuring you that
I am, and ever with pride shall be,
My dear Sir, &c.
R. B.
Call your boy what you think proper, only interject Burns. What do you say to a Scripture name? Zimri Burns Ainslie, or Architophel, &c., look your Bible for these two heroes, if you do this, I will repay the compliment.
LXXVI.
TO MR. ROBERT MUIR.
[No Scotsman will ever read, without emotion, the poet's words in this letter, and in "Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled," about Bannnockburn and its glories.]
_Stirling, 26th August, 1787._
MY DEAR SIR,
I intended to have written you from Edinburgh, and now write you from Stirling to make an excuse. Here am I, on my way to Inverness, with a truly original, but very worthy man, a Mr. Nicol, one of the masters of the High-school, in Edinburgh. I left Auld Reekie yesterday morning, and have passed, besides by-excursions, Linlithgow, Borrowstouness, Falkirk, and here am I undoubtedly. This morning I knelt at the tomb of Sir John the Graham, the gallant friend of the immortal Wallace; and two hours ago I said a fervent prayer, for Old Caledonia, over the hole in a blue whinstone, where Robert de Bruce fixed his royal standard on the banks of Bannockburn; and just now, from Stirling Castle, I have seen by the setting sun the glorious prospect of the windings of Forth through the rich carse of Stirling, and skirting the equally rich carse of Falkirk. The crops are very strong, but so very late, that there is no harvest, except a ridge or two perhaps in ten miles, all the way I have travelled from Edinburgh.
I left Andrew Bruce and family all well. I will be at least three weeks in making my tour, as I shall return by the coast, and have many people to call for.
My best compliments to Charles, our dear kinsman and fellow-saint; and Messrs. W. and H. Parkers. I hope Hughoc is going on and prospering with God and Miss M'Causlin.
If I could think on anything sprightly, I should let you hear every other post; but a dull, matter-of-fact business, like this scrawl, the less and seldomer one writes, the better.
Among other matters-of-fact I shall add this, that I am and ever shall be,
My dear Sir,
Your obliged,
R. B.
LXXVII.
TO GAVIN HAMILTON, ESQ.
[It is supposed that the warmth of the lover came in this letter to the aid of the imagination of the poet, in his account of Charlotte Hamilton.]
_Stirling, 28th August_, 1787.
MY DEAR SIR,
Here am I on my way to Inverness. I have rambled over the rich, fertile carses of Falkirk and Sterling, and am delighted with their appearance: richly waving crops of wheat, barley, &c., but no harvest at all yet, except, in one or two places, an old wife's ridge. Yesterday morning I rode from this town up the meandering Devon's banks, to pay my respects to some Ayrshire folks at Harvieston. After breakfast, we made a party to go and see the famous Caudron-linn, a remarkable cascade in the Devon, about five miles above Harvieston; and after spending one of the most pleasant days I ever had in my life, I returned to Stirling in the evening. They are a family, Sir, though I had not any prior tie; though they had not been the brother and sisters of a certain generous friend of mine, I would never forget them. I am told you have not seen them these several years, so you can have very little idea of what these young folks are now. Your brother is as tall as you are, but slender rather than otherwise; and I have the satisfaction to inform you that he is getting the better of those consumptive symptoms which I suppose you know were threatening him. His make, and particularly his manner, resemble you, but he will still have a finer face. (I put in the word _still_ to please Mrs. Hamilton.) Good sense, modesty, and at the same time a just idea of that respect that man owes to man, and has a right in his turn to exact, are striking features in his character; and, what with me is the Alpha and the Omega, he has a heart that might adorn the breast of a poet! Grace has a good figure, and the look of health and cheerfulness, but nothing else remarkable in her person. I scarcely ever saw so striking a likeness as is between her and your little Beenie; the mouth and chin particularly. She is reserved at first; but as we grew better acquainted, I was delighted with the native frankness of her manner, and the sterling sense of her observation. Of Charlotte I cannot speak in common terms of admiration: she is not only beautiful but lovely. Her form is elegant; her features not regular, but they have the smile of sweetness and the settled complacency of good nature in the highest degree: and her complexion, now that she has happily recovered her wonted health, is equal to Miss Burnet's. After the exercise of our riding to the Falls, Charlotte was exactly Dr. Donne's mistress:--
--------------"Her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
That one would almost say her body thought."
Her eyes are fascinating; at once expressive of good sense, tenderness, and a noble mind.
I do not give you all this account, my good Sir, to flatter you. I mean it to reproach you. Such relations the first peer in the realm might own with pride; then why do you not keep up more correspondence with these so amiable young folks? I had a thousand questions to answer about you. I had to describe the little ones with the minuteness of anatomy. They were highly delighted when I told them that John was so good a boy, and so fine a scholar, and that Willie was going on still very pretty; but I have it in commission to tell her from them that beauty is a poor silly bauble without she be good. Miss Chalmers I had left in Edinburgh, but I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Chalmers, only Lady Mackenzie being rather a little alarmingly ill of a sore throat somewhat marred our enjoyment.
I shall not be in Ayrshire for four weeks. My most respectful compliments to Mrs. Hamilton, Miss Kennedy, and Doctor Mackenzie. I shall probably write him from some stage or other.
I am ever, Sir,
Yours most gratefully,
R. B.
LXXVIII.
TO MR. WALKER,
BLAIR OF ATHOLE.
[Professor Walker was a native of Ayrshire, and an accomplished scholar; he saw Burns often in Edinburgh; he saw him at the Earl of Athol's on the Bruar; he visited him too at Dumfries; and after the copyright of Currie's edition of the poet's works expired, he wrote, with much taste and feeling his life anew, and edited his works--what passed under his own observation he related with truth and ease.]
_Inverness, 5th September_, 1787.
MY DEAR SIR,
I have just time to write the foregoing,[178] and to tell you that it was (at least most part of it) the effusion of an half-hour I spent at Bruar. I do not mean it was extempore, for I have endeavoured to brush it up as well as Mr. Nicol's chat and the jogging of the chaise would allow. It eases my heart a good deal, as rhyme is the coin with which a poet pays his debts of honour or gratitude. What I owe to the noble family of Athol, of the first kind, I shall ever proudly boast; what I owe of the last, so help me God in my hour of need! I shall never forget.
The "little angel-band!" I declare I prayed for them very sincerely to-day at the Fall of Fyers. I shall never forget the fine
family-piece I saw at Blair; the amiable, the truly noble duchess, with her smiling little seraph in her lap, at the head of the table; the lovely "olive plants," as the Hebrew bard finely says, round the happy mother: the beautiful Mrs. G----; the lovely sweet Miss C., &c. I wish I had the powers of Guido to do them justice! My Lord Duke's kind hospitality--markedly kind indeed. Mr. Graham of Fintray's charms of conversation--Sir W. Murray's friendship. In short, the
recollection of all that polite, agreeable company raises an honest glow in my bosom.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 178: The Humble Petition of Bruar-water]
LXXIX.
TO MR. GILBERT BURNS.
[The letters of Robert to Gilbert are neither many nor important: the latter was a calm, considerate, sensible man, with nothing poetic in his composition: he died lately, much and widely respected.]
_Edinburgh, 17th September, 1787._
MY DEAR BROTHER,
I arrived here safe yesterday evening, after a tour of twenty-two days, and travelling near six hundred miles, windings included. My farthest stretch was about ten miles beyond Inverness. I went through the heart of the Highlands by Crieff, Taymouth, the famous seat of Lord Breadalbane, down the Tay, among cascades and druidical circles of stones, to Dunkeld, a seat of the Duke of Athol; thence across the Tay, and up one of his tributary streams to Blair of Athole, another of the duke's seats, where I had the honour of spending nearly two days with his grace and family; thence many miles through a wild country, among cliffs gray with eternal snows and gloomy savage glens, till I crossed Spey and went down the stream through Strathspey, so famous in Scottish music; Badenoch, &c., till I reached Grant Castle, where I spent half a day with Sir James Grant and family; and then crossed the country for Fort George, but called by the way at Cawdor, the ancient seat of Macbeth; there I saw the identical bed, in which tradition says king Duncan was murdered: lastly, from Fort George to Inverness.
I returned by the coast, through Nairn, Forres, and so on, to Aberdeen, thence to Stonehive, where James Burness, from Montrose, met me by appointment. I spent two days among our relations, and found our aunts, Jean and Isabel, still alive, and hale old women. John Cairn, though born the same year with our father, walks as vigorously as I can: they have had several letters from his son in New York. William Brand is likewise a stout old fellow; but further particulars I delay till I see you, which will be in two or three weeks. The rest of my stages are not worth rehearsing: warm as I was from Ossian's country, where I had seen his very grave, what cared I for fishing-towns or fertile carses? I slept at the famous Brodie of Brodie's one night, and dined at Gordon Castle next day, with the duke, duchess and family. I am thinking to cause my old mare to meet me, by means of John Ronald, at Glasgow; but you shall hear farther from me before I leave Edinburgh. My duty and many compliments from the north to my mother; and my brotherly compliments to the rest. I have been trying for a berth for William, but am not likely to be successful. Farewell.
R. B.
LXXX.
TO MISS MARGARET CHALMERS.
(NOW MRS. HAY.)
[To Margaret Chalmers, the youngest daughter of James Chalmers, Esq., of Fingland, it is said that Burns confided his affection to Charlotte Hamilton: his letters to Miss Chalmers, like those to Mrs. Dunlop, are distinguished for their good sense and delicacy as well as freedom.]
_Sept. 26, 1787._
I send Charlotte the first number of the songs; I would not wait for the second number; I hate delays in little marks of friendship, as I hate dissimulation in the language of the heart. I am determined to pay Charlotte a poetic compliment, if I could hit on some glorious old Scotch air, in number second.[179] You will see a small attempt on a shred of paper in the book: but though Dr. Blacklock commended it very highly, I am not just satisfied with it myself. I intend to make it a description of some kind: the whining cant of love, except in real passion, and by a masterly hand, is to me as insufferable as the preaching cant of old Father Smeaton, whig-minister at Kilmaurs. Darts, flames, cupids, loves, graces, and all that farrago, are just a Mauchline * * * * a senseless rabble.
I got an excellent poetic epistle yesternight from the old, venerable author of "Tullochgorum," "John of Badenyon," &c. I suppose you know he is a clergyman. It is by far the finest poetic compliment I ever got. I will send you a copy of it.
I go on Thursday or Friday to Dumfries, to wait on Mr. Miller about his farms.--Do tell that to Lady Mackenzie, that she may give me credit for a little wisdom. "I Wisdom dwell with Prudence." What a blessed fire-side! How happy should I be to pass a winter evening under their venerable roof! and smoke a pipe of tobacco, or drink water-gruel with them! What solemn, lengthened, laughter-quashing gravity of phiz! What sage remarks on the good-for-nothing sons and daughters of indiscretion and folly! And what frugal lessons, as we straitened the fire-side circle, on the uses of the poker and tongs!
Miss N. is very well, and begs to be remembered in the old way to you. I used all my eloquence, all the persuasive flourishes of the hand, and heart-melting modulation of periods in my power, to urge her out to Harvieston, but all in vain. My rhetoric seems quite to have lost its effect on the lovely half of mankind. I have seen the day--but that is a "tale of other years."--In my conscience I believe that my heart has been so oft on fire that it is absolutely vitrified. I look on the sex with something like the admiration with which I regard the starry sky in a frosty December night. I admire the beauty of the Creator's workmanship; I am charmed with the wild but graceful eccentricity of their motions, and--wish them good night. I mean this with respect to a certain passion _dont j'ai eu l'honneur d'être un miserable esclave_: as for friendship, you and Charlotte have given me pleasure, permanent pleasure, "which the world cannot give, nor take away," I hope; and which will outlast the heavens and the earth.
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 179: Of the Scots Musical Museum]
LXXXI.
TO MISS MARGARET CHALMERS.
[That fine song, "The Banks of the Devon," dedicated to the charms of Charlotte Hamilton, was enclosed in the following letter.]
_Without date._
I have been at Dumfries, and at one visit more shall be decided about a farm in that country. I am rather hopeless in it; but as my brother is an excellent farmer, and is, besides, an exceedingly prudent, sober man (qualities which are only a younger brother's fortune in our family), I am determined, if my Dumfries business fail me, to return into partnership with him, and at our leisure take another farm in the neighbourhood.
I assure you I look for high compliments from you and Charlotte on this very sage instance of my unfathomable, incomprehensible wisdom. Talking of Charlotte, I must tell her that I have, to the best of my power, paid her a poetic compliment, now completed. The air is admirable: true old Highland. It was the tune of a Gaelic song, which an Inverness lady sung me when I was there; and I was so charmed with it that I begged her to write me a set of it from her singing; for it had never been set before. I am fixed that it shall go in Johnson's next number; so Charlotte and you need not spend your precious time in contradicting me. I won't say the poetry is first-rate; though I am convinced it is very well; and, what is not always the case with compliments to ladies, it is not only sincere, but just.
R. B.
LXXXII.
TO JAMES HOY, ESQ.
GORDON CASTLE
[James Hoy, librarian of Gordon Castle, was, it is said, the gentleman whom his grace of Gordon sent with a message inviting in vain that "obstinate son of Latin prose," Nicol, to stop and enjoy himself.]
_Edinburgh, 20th October_, 1787.
SIR,
I will defend my conduct in giving you this trouble, on the best of Christian principles--"Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them."--I shall certainly, among my legacies, leave my latest curse to that unlucky predicament which hurried--tore me away from Castle Gordon. May that obstinate son of Latin prose [Nicol] be curst to Scotch mile periods, and damned to seven league paragraphs; while Declension and Conjugation, Gender, Number, and Time, under the ragged banners of Dissonance and Disarrangement, eternally rank against him in hostile array.
Allow me, Sir, to strengthen the small claim I have to your acquaintance, by the following request. An engraver, James Johnson, in Edinburgh, has, not from mercenary views, but from an honest, Scotch enthusiasm, set about collecting all our native songs and setting them to music; particularly those that have never been set before. Clarke, the well known musician, presides over the musical arrangement, and Drs. Beattie and Blacklock, Mr. Tytler, of Woodhouselee, and your humble servant to the utmost of his small power, assist in collecting the old poetry, or sometimes for a fine air make a stanza, when it has no words. The brats, too tedious to mention, claim a parental pang from my bardship. I suppose it will appear in Johnson's second number--the first was published before my acquaintance with him. My request is--"Cauld Kail in Aberdeen," is one intended for this number, and I beg a copy of his Grace of Gordon's words to it, which you were so kind as to repeat to me. You may be sure we won't prefix the author's name, except you like, though I look on it as no small merit to this work that the names of many of the authors of our old Scotch songs, names almost forgotten, will be inserted.
I do not well know where to write to you--I rather write at you; but if you will be so obliging, immediately on receipt of this, as to write me a few lines, I shall perhaps pay you in kind, though not in quality. Johnson's terms are:--each number a handsome pocket volume, to consist at least of a hundred Scotch songs, with basses for the harpsichord, &c. The price to subscribers 5s.; to non-subscribers 6s. He will have three numbers I conjecture.
My direction for two or three weeks will be at Mr. William
Cruikshank's, St. James's-square, New-town, Edinburgh.
I am,
Sir,
Your's to command,
R. B.
LXXXIII.
TO REV. JOHN SKINNER.
[The songs of "Tullochgorum," and "John of Badenyon," have made the name of Skinner dear to all lovers of Scottish verse: he was a man cheerful and pious, nor did the family talent expire with him: his son became Bishop of Aberdeen.]
_Edinburgh, October 25,_ 1787.
REVEREND AND VENERABLE SIR,
Accept, in plain dull prose, my most sincere thanks for the best poetical compliment I ever received. I assure you, Sir, as a poet, you have conjured up an airy demon of vanity in my fancy, which the best abilities in your other capacity would be ill able to lay. I regret, and while I live I shall regret, that when I was in the north, I had not the pleasure of paying a younger brother's dutiful respect to the author of the best Scotch song ever Scotland saw--"Tullochgorum's my delight!" The world may think slightingly of the craft of song-making, if they please, but, as Job says--"Oh! that mine adversary had written a book!"--let them try. There is a certain something in the old Scotch songs, a wild happiness of thought and expression, which peculiarly marks them, not only from English songs, but also from the modern efforts of song-wrights in our native manner and language. The only remains of this enchantment, these spells of the imagination, rests with you. Our true brother, Ross of Lochlee, was likewise "owre cannie"--a "wild warlock"--but now he sings among the "sons of the morning."
I have often wished, and will certainly endeavour to form a kind of common acquaintance among all the genuine sons of Caledonian song. The world, busy in low prosaic pursuits, may overlook most of us; but "reverence thyself." The world is not our _peers_, so we challenge the jury. We can lash that world, and find ourselves a very great source of amusement and happiness independent of that world.
There is a work going on in Edinburgh, just now, which claims your best assistance. An engraver in this town has set about collecting and publishing all the Scotch songs, with the music, that can be found. Songs in the English language, if by Scotchmen, are admitted, but the music must all be Scotch. Drs. Beattie and Blacklock are lending a hand, and the first musician in town presides over that department. I have been absolutely crazed about it, collecting old stanzas, and every information respecting their origin, authors, &c. &c. This last is but a very fragment business; but at the end of his second number--the first is already published--a small account will be given of the authors, particularly to preserve those of latter times. Your three songs, "Tullochgorum," "John of Badenyon," and "Ewie wi' the crookit horn," go in this second number. I was determined, before I got your letter, to write you, begging that you would let me know where the editions of these pieces may be found, as you would wish them to continue in future times: and if you would be so kind to this undertaking as send any songs, of your own or others, that you would think proper to publish, your name will be inserted among the other authors,--"Nill ye, will ye." One half of Scotland already give your songs to other authors. Paper is done. I beg to hear from you; the sooner the better, as I leave Edinburgh in a fortnight or three weeks.--
I am,
With the warmest sincerity, Sir,
Your obliged humble servant,--R. B.
LXXXIV.
TO JAMES HOY, ESQ.
AT GORDON CASTLE, FOCHABERS.
[In singleness of heart and simplicity of manners James Hoy is said, by one who knew him well, to have rivalled Dominie Sampson: his love of learning and his scorn of wealth are still remembered to his honour.]
_Edinburgh, 6th November_, 1787.
DEAR SIR,
I would have wrote you immediately on receipt of your kind letter, but a mixed impulse of gratitude and esteem whispered me that I ought to send you something by way of return. When a poet owes anything, particularly when he is indebted for good offices, the payment that usually recurs to him--the only coin indeed in which he probably is conversant--is rhyme. Johnson sends the books by the fly, as directed, and begs me to enclose his most grateful thanks: my return I intended should have been one or two poetic bagatelles which the world have not seen, or, perhaps, for obvious reasons, cannot see. These I shall send you before I leave Edinburgh. They may make you laugh a little, which, on the whole, is no bad way of spending one's precious hours and still more precious breath: at any rate, they will be, though a small, yet a very sincere mark of my respectful esteem for a gentleman whose further acquaintance I should look upon as a peculiar obligation.
The duke's song, independent totally of his dukeship, charms me. There is I know not what of wild happiness of thought and expression peculiarly beautiful in the old Scottish song style, of which his Grace, old venerable Skinner, the author of "Tullochgorum," &c., and the late Ross, at Lochlee, of true Scottish poetic memory, are the only modern instances that I recollect, since Ramsay with his contemporaries, and poor Bob Fergusson, went to the world of deathless existence and truly immortal song. The mob of mankind, that many-headed beast, would laugh at so serious a speech about an old song; but as Job says, "O that mine adversary had written a book!" Those who think that composing a Scotch song is a trifling
business--let them try.
I wish my Lord Duke would pay a proper attention to the Christian admonition--"Hide not your candle under a bushel," but "let your light shine before men." I could name half a dozen dukes that I guess are a devilish deal worse employed: nay, I question if there are half a dozen better: perhaps there are not half that scanty number whom Heaven has favoured with the tuneful, happy, and, I will say, glorious gift.
I am, dear Sir,
Your obliged humble servant,
R. B.
LXXXV.
TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE,
EDINBURGH.
["I set you down," says Burns, elsewhere, to Ainslie, "as the staff of my old age, when all my other friends, after a decent show of pity, will have forgot me."]
_Edinburgh, Sunday Morning_,
_Nov._ 23, 1787.
I Beg, my dear Sir, you would not make any appointment to take us to Mr. Ainslie's to-night. On looking over my engagements, constitution, present state of my health, some little vexatious soul concerns, &c., I find I can't sup abroad to-night. I shall be in to-day till one o'clock if you have a leisure hour.
You will think it romantic when I tell you, that I find the idea of your friendship almost necessary to my existence.--You assume a proper length of face in my bitter hours of blue-devilism, and you laugh fully up to my highest wishes at my good things.--I don't know upon the whole, if you are one of the first fellows in God's world, but you are so to me. I tell you this just now in the conviction that some inequalities in my temper and manner may perhaps sometimes make you suspect that I am not so warmly as I ought to be your friend.
R. B.
LXXXVI.
TO THE EARL OF GLENCAIRN.
[The views of Burns were always humble: he regarded a place in the excise as a thing worthy of paying court for, both in verse and prose.]
_Edinburgh_, 1787.
MY LORD,
I know your lordship will disapprove of my ideas in a request I am going to make to you; but I have weighed, long and seriously weighed, my situation, my hopes and turn of mind, and am fully fixed to my scheme if I can possibly effectuate it. I wish to get into the Excise; I am told that your lordship's interest will easily procure me the grant from the commissioners; and your lordship's patronage and goodness, which have already rescued me from obscurity, wretchedness, and exile, embolden me to ask that interest. You have likewise put it in my power to save the little tie of home that sheltered an aged mother, two brothers, and three sisters from destruction. There, my lord, you have bound me over to the highest gratitude.
My brother's farm is but a wretched lease, but I think he will probably weather out the remaining seven years of it; and after the assistance which I have given and will give him, to keep the family together, I think, by my guess, I shall have rather better than two hundred pounds, and instead of seeking, what is almost impossible at present to find, a farm that I can certainly live by, with so small a stock, I shall lodge this sum in a banking-house, a sacred deposit, expecting only the calls of uncommon distress or necessitous old age.
These, my lord, are my views: I have resolved from the maturest deliberation; and now I am fixed, I shall leave no stone unturned to carry my resolve into execution. Your lordship's patronage is the strength of my hopes; nor have I yet applied to anybody else. Indeed my heart sinks within me at the idea of applying to any other of the great who have honoured me with their countenance. I am ill qualified to dog the heels of greatness with the impertinence of solicitation, and tremble nearly as much at the thought of the cold promise as the cold denial; but to your lordship I have not only the honour, the comfort, but the pleasure of being
Your lordship's much obliged
And deeply indebted humble servant,
R. B.
LXXXVII.
TO JAMES DALRYMPLE, ESQ.
ORANGEFIELD.
[James Dalrymple, Esq., of Orangefield, was a gentleman of birth and poetic tastes--he interested himself in the fortunes of Burns.]
_Edinburgh_, 1787.
DEAR SIR,
I suppose the devil is so elated with his success with you that he is determined by a _coup de main_ to complete his purposes on you all at once, in making you a poet. I broke open the letter you sent me; hummed over the rhymes; and, as I saw they were extempore, said to myself, they were very well; but when I saw at the bottom a name that I shall ever value with grateful respect, "I gapit wide, but naething spak." I was nearly as much struck as the friends of Job, of affliction-bearing memory, when they sat down with him seven days and seven nights, and spake not a word.
I am naturally of a superstitious cast, and as soon as my
wonder-scared imagination regained its consciousness, and resumed its functions, I cast about what this mania of yours might portend. My foreboding ideas had the wide stretch of possibility; and several events, great in their magnitude, and important in their consequences, occurred to my fancy. The downfall of the conclave, or the crushing of the Cork rumps; a ducal coronet to Lord George Gordon and the Protestant interest; or St. Peter's keys to * * * * * *.
You want to know how I come on. I am just in _statu quo_, or, not to insult a gentleman with my Latin, in "auld use and wont." The noble Earl of Glencairn took me by the hand to-day, and interested himself in my concerns, with a goodness like that benevolent Being, whose image he so richly bears. He is a stronger proof of the immortality of the soul, than any that philosophy ever produced. A mind like his can never die. Let the worshipful squire H. L., or the reverend Mass J. M. go into their primitive nothing. At best, they are but ill-digested lumps of chaos, only one of them strongly tinged with bituminous particles and sulphureous effluvia. But my noble patron, eternal as the heroic swell of magnanimity, and the generous throb of
benevolence, shall look on with princely eye at "the war of elements, the wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds."
R. B.
LXXXVIII.
TO CHARLES HAY. ESQ.,
ADVOCATE.
[The verses enclosed were written on the death of the Lord President Dundas, at the suggestion of Charles Hay, Esq., advocate, afterwards a judge, under the title of Lord Newton.]
SIR,
The enclosed poem was written in consequence of your suggestion, last time I had the pleasure of seeing you. It cost me an hour or two of next morning's sleep, but did not please me; so it lay by, an ill-digested effort, till the other day that I gave it a critic brush. These kind of subjects are much hackneyed; and, besides, the wailings of the rhyming tribe over the ashes of the great are cursedly suspicious, and out of all character for sincerity. These ideas damped my muse's fire; however, I have done the best I could, and, at all events, it gives me an opportunity of declaring that I have the honour to be, Sir, your obliged humble servant,
R. B.
LXXXIX.
TO MISS M----N.
[This letter appeared for the first time in the "Letters to Clarinda," a little work which was speedily suppressed--it is, on the whole, a sort of Corydon and Phillis affair, with here and there expressions too graphic, and passages over-warm. Who the lady was is not known--or known only to one.]
_Saturday Noon, No. 2, St. James's Square_,
_New Town, Edinburgh_
Here have I sat, my 'dear Madam, in the stony altitude of perplexed study for fifteen vexatious minutes, my head askew, bending over the intended card; my fixed eye insensible to the very light of day poured around; my pendulous goose-feather, loaded with ink, hanging over the future letter, all for the important purpose of writing a
complimentary card to accompany your trinket.
Compliment is such a miserable Greenland expression, lies at such a chilly polar distance from the torrid zone of my constitution, that I cannot, for the very soul of me, use it to any person for whom I have the twentieth part of the esteem every one must have for you who knows you.
As I leave town in three or four days, I can give myself the pleasure of calling on you only for a minute. Tuesday evening, some time about seven or after, I shall wait on you for your farewell commands.
The hinge of your box I put into the hands of the proper connoisseur. The broken glass, likewise, went under review; but deliberative wisdom thought it would too much endanger the whole fabric.
I am, dear Madam,
With all sincerity of enthusiasm,
Your very obedient servant,
R. B.
XC.
TO MISS CHALMERS.
[Some dozen or so, it is said, of the most beautiful letters that Burns ever wrote, and dedicated to the beauty of Charlotte Hamilton, were destroyed by that lady, in a moment when anger was too strong for reflection.]
_Edinburgh, Nov._ 21, 1787.
I have one vexatious fault to the kindly-welcome, well-filled sheet which I owe to your and Charlotte's goodness,--it contains too much sense, sentiment, and good-spelling. It is impossible that even you two, whom I declare to my God I will give credit for any degree of excellence the sex are capable of attaining, it is impossible you can go on to correspond at that rate; so like those who, Shenstone says, retire because they make a good speech, I shall, after a few letters, hear no more of you. I insist that you shall write whatever comes first: what you see, what you read, what you hear, what you admire, what you dislike, trifles, bagatelles, nonsense; or to fill up a corner, e'en put down a laugh at full length. Now none of your polite hints about flattery; I leave that to your lovers, if you have or shall have any; though, thank heaven, I have found at last two girls who can be luxuriantly happy in their own minds and with one another, without that commonly necessary appendage to female bliss--A LOVER.
Charlotte and you are just two favourite resting-places for my soul in her wanderings through the weary, thorny wilderness of this world. God knows I am ill-fitted for the struggle: I glory in being a Poet, and I want to be thought a wise man--I would fondly be generous, and I wish to be rich. After all, I am afraid I am a lost subject. "Some folk hae a hantle o' fauts, an' I'm but a ne'er-do-weel."
_Afternoon_--To close the melancholy reflections at the end of last sheet, I shall just add a piece of devotion commonly known in Carrick by the title of the "Wabster's grace:"--
"Some say we're thieves, and e'en sae are we,
Some say we lie, and e'en sae do we!
Gude forgie us, and I hope sae will he!
--Up and to your looms, lads."
R. B.
XCI.
TO MISS CHALMERS.
[The "Ochel-Hills," which the poet promises in this letter, is a song, beginning,
"Where braving angry winter's storms
The lofty Ochels rise,"
written in honour of Margaret Chalmers, and published along with the "Banks of the Devon," in Johnson's Musical Museum.]
_Edinburgh, Dec._ 12, 1787.
I am here under the care of a surgeon, with a bruised limb extended on a cushion; and the tints of my mind vying with the livid horror preceding a midnight thunder-storm. A drunken coachman was the cause of the first, and incomparably the lightest evil; misfortune, bodily constitution, hell, and myself have formed a "quadruple alliance" to guaranty the other. I got my fall on Saturday, and am getting slowly better.
I have taken tooth and nail to the Bible, and am got through the five books of Moses, and half way in Joshua. It is really a glorious book. I sent for my bookbinder to-day, and ordered him to get me an octavo Bible in sheets, the best paper and print in town; and bind it with all the elegance of his craft.
I would give my best song to my worst enemy, I mean the merit of making it, to have you and Charlotte by me. You are angelic creatures, and would pour oil and wine into my wounded spirit.
I enclose you a proof copy of the "Banks of the Devon," which present with my best wishes to Charlotte. The "Ochel-hills" you shall probably have next week for yourself. None of your fine speeches!
R. B.
XCII.
TO MISS CHALMERS.
[The eloquent hypochondriasm of the concluding paragraph of this letter, called forth the commendation of Lord Jeffrey, when he criticised Cromek's Reliques of Burns, in the Edinburgh Review.]
_Edinburgh, Dec._ 19, 1787.
I begin this letter in answer to yours of the 17th current, which is not yet cold since I read it. The atmosphere of my soul is vastly clearer than when I wrote you last. For the first time, yesterday I crossed the room on crutches. It would do your heart good to see my hardship, not on my poetic, but on my oaken stilts; throwing my best leg with an air! and with as much hilarity in my gait and countenance, as a May frog leaping across the newly harrowed ridge, enjoying the fragrance of the refreshed earth, after the long-expected shower!
I can't say I am altogether at my ease when I see anywhere in my path that meagre, squalid, famine-faced spectre, Poverty; attended as he always is, by iron-fisted oppression, and leering contempt; but I have sturdily withstood his buffetings many a hard-laboured day already, and still my motto is--I DARE! My worst enemy is _moi-même._ I lie so miserably open to the inroads and incursions of a
mischievous, light-armed, well-mounted banditti, under the banners of imagination, whim, caprice, and passion: and the heavy-armed veteran regulars of wisdom, prudence, and forethought move so very, very slow, that I am almost in a state of perpetual warfare, and, alas! frequent defeat. There are just two creatures I would envy, a horse in his wild state traversing the forests of Asia, or an oyster on some of the desert shores of Europe. The one has not a wish without enjoyment, the other has neither wish nor fear.
R. B.
XCIII.
TO SIR JOHN WHITEFOORD.
[The Whitefoords of Whitefoord, interested themselves in all matters connected with literature: the power of the family, unluckily for Burns, was not equal to their taste.]
_Edinburgh, December_, 1787.
SIR,
Mr. Mackenzie, in Mauchline, my very warm and worthy friend, has informed me how much you are pleased to interest yourself in my fate as a man, and (what to me is incomparably dearer) my fame as a poet. I have, Sir, in one or two instances, been patronized by those of your character in life, when I was introduced to their notice by * * * * * friends to them and honoured acquaintances to me! but you are the first gentleman in the country whose benevolence and goodness of heart has interested himself for me, unsolicited and unknown. I am not master enough of the etiquette of these matters to know, nor did I stay to inquire, whether formal duty bade, or cold propriety disallowed, my thanking you in this manner, as I am convinced, from the light in which you kindly view me, that you will do me the justice to believe this letter is not the manoeuvre of the needy, sharping author, fastening on those in upper life, who honour him with a little notice of him or his works. Indeed, the situation of poets is generally such, to a proverb, as may, in some measure, palliate that prostitution of heart and talents, they have at times been guilty of. I do not think prodigality is, by any means, a necessary concomitant of a poetic turn, but I believe a careless indolent attention to economy, is almost inseparable from it; then there must be in the heart of every bard of Nature's making, a certain modest sensibility, mixed with a kind of pride, that will ever keep him out of the way of those windfalls of fortune which frequently light on hardy impudence and foot-licking servility. It is not easy to imagine a more helpless state than his whose poetic fancy unfits him for the world, and whose character as a scholar gives him some pretensions to the _politesse_ of life--yet is as poor as I am.
For my part, I thank Heaven my star has been kinder; learning never elevated my ideas above the peasant's shed, and I have an independent fortune at the plough-tail.
I was surprised to hear that any one who pretended in the least to the manners of the gentleman, should be so foolish, or worse, as to stoop to traduce the morals of such a one as I am, and so inhumanly cruel, too, as to meddle with that late most unfortunate, unhappy part of my story. With a tear of gratitude, I thank you, Sir, for the warmth with which you interposed in behalf of my conduct. I am, I acknowledge, too frequently the sport of whim, caprice, and passion, but reverence to God, and integrity to my fellow-creatures, I hope I shall ever preserve. I have no return, Sir, to make you for your goodness but one--a return which, I am persuaded, will not be unacceptable--the honest, warm wishes of a grateful heart for your happiness, and every one of that lovely flock, who stand to you in a filial relation. If ever calumny aim the poisoned shaft at them, may friendship be by to ward the blow!
R. B.
XCIV.
TO MISS WILLIAMS,
ON READING HER POEM OF THE SLAVE-TRADE.
[The name and merits of Miss Williams are widely known; nor is it a small honour to her muse that her tender song of "Evan Banks" was imputed to Burns by Cromek: other editors since have continued to include it in his works, though Sir Walter Scott named the true author.]
_Edinburgh, Dec._ 1787.
I know very little of scientific criticism, so all I can pretend to in that intricate art is merely to note, as I read along, what passages strike me as being uncommonly beautiful, and where the expression seems to be perplexed or faulty.
The poem opens finely. There are none of these idle prefatory lines which one may skip over before one comes to the subject. Verses 9th and 10th in particular,
"Where ocean's unseen bound
Leaves a drear world of waters round,"
are truly beautiful. The simile of the hurricane is likewise fine; and, indeed, beautiful as the poem is, almost all the similes rise decidedly above it. From verse 31st to verse 50th is a pretty eulogy on Britain. Verse 36th, "That foul drama deep with wrong," is nobly expressive. Verse 46th, I am afraid, is rather unworthy of the rest; "to dare to feel" is an idea that I do not altogether like. The contrast of valour and mercy, from the 36th verse to the 50th, is admirable.
Either my apprehension is dull, or there is something a little confused in the apostrophe to Mr. Pitt. Verse 55th is the antecedent to verses 57th and 58th, but in verse 58th the connexion seems ungrammatical:--
"Powers. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
With no gradation mark'd their flight,
But rose at once to glory's height."
Ris'n should be the word instead of rose. Try it in prose.
Powers,--their flight marked by no gradations, but [the same powers] risen at once to the height of glory. Likewise, verse 53d, "For this," is evidently meant to lead on the sense of the verses 59th, 60th, 61st, and 62d: but let us try how the thread of connexion runs,--
"For this . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The deeds of mercy, that embrace
A distant sphere, an alien race,
Shall virtue's lips record and claim
The fairest honours of thy name."
I beg pardon if I misapprehended the matter, but this appears to me the only imperfect passage in the poem. The comparison of the sunbeam is fine.
The compliment to the Duke of Richmond is, I hope, as just as it is certainly elegant The thought,
"Virtue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Sends from her unsullied source,
The gems of thought their purest force,"
is exceeding beautiful. The idea, from verse 81st to the 85th, that the "blest decree" is like the beams of morning ushering in the glorious day of liberty, ought not to pass unnoticed or unapplauded. From verse 85th to verse 108th, is an animated contrast between the unfeeling selfishness of the oppressor on the one hand, and the misery of the captive on the other. Verse 88th might perhaps be amended thus: "Nor ever _quit_ her narrow maze." We are said to _pass_ a bound, but we _quit_, a maze. Verse 100th is exquisitely beautiful:--
"They, whom wasted blessings tire."
Verse 110th is I doubt a clashing of metaphors: "to load a span" is, I am afraid, an unwarrantable expression. In verse 114th, "Cast the universe in shade," is a fine idea. From the 115th verse to the 142d is a striking description of the wrongs of the poor African. Verse 120th, "The load of unremitted pain," is a remarkable, strong expression. The address to the advocates for abolishing the slave-trade, from verse 143d to verse 208th, is animated with the true life of genius. The picture of oppression:--
"While she links her impious chain,
And calculates the price of pain;
Weighs agony in sordid scales,
And marks if death or life prevails,"--
is nobly executed.
What a tender idea is in verse 108th! Indeed, that whole description of home may vie with Thomson's description of home, somewhere in the beginning of his Autumn. I do not remember to have seen a stronger expression of misery than is contained in these verses:--
"Condemned, severe extreme, to live
When all is fled that life can give"
The comparison of our distant joys to distant objects is equally original and striking.
The character and manners of the dealer in the infernal traffic is a well done though a horrid picture. I am not sure how far introducing the sailor was right; for though the sailor's common characteristic is generosity, yet, in this case, he is certainly not only an unconcerned witness, but, in some degree, an efficient agent in the business. Verse 224th is a nervous ... expressive--"The heart convulsive anguish breaks." The description of the captive wretch when he arrives in the West Indies, is carried on with equal spirit. The thought that the oppressor's sorrow on seeing the slave pine, is like the butcher's regret when his destined lamb dies a natural death, is exceedingly fine.
I am got so much into the cant of criticism, that I begin to be afraid lest I have nothing except the cant of it; and instead of elucidating my author, am only benighting myself. For this reason, I will not pretend to go through the whole poem. Some few remaining beautiful lines, however, I cannot pass over. Verse 280th is the strongest description of selfishness I ever saw. The comparison of verses 285th and 286th is new and fine; and the line, "Your arms to penury you lend," is excellent. In verse 317th, "like" should certainly be "as" or "so;" for instance--
"His sway the hardened bosom leads
To cruelty's remorseless deeds:
As (or, so) the blue lightning when it springs
With fury on its livid wings,
Darts on the goal with rapid force,
Nor heeds that ruin marks its course."
If you insert the word "like" where I have placed "as," you must alter "darts" to "darting," and "heeds" to "heeding" in order to make it grammar. A tempest is a favourite subject with the poets, but I do not remember anything even in Thomson's Winter superior to your verses from the 347th to the 351st. Indeed, the last simile, beginning with "Fancy may dress," &c., and ending with the 350th verse, is, in my opinion, the most beautiful passage in the poem; it would do honour to the greatest names that ever graced our profession.
I will not beg your pardon, Madam, for these strictures, as my conscience tells me, that for once in my life I have acted up to the duties of a Christian, in doing as I would be done by.
R. B.
XCV.
TO MR. RICHARD BROWN,
IRVINE.
[Richard Brown was the "hapless son of misfortune," alluded to by Burns in his biographical letter to Dr. Moore: by fortitude and prudence he retrieved his fortunes, and lived much respected in Greenock, to a good old age. He said Burns had little to learn in matters of levity, when he became acquainted with him.]
_Edinburgh, 30th Dec._ 1787.
MY DEAR SIR,
I have met with few things in life which have given me more pleasure than Fortune's kindness to you since those days in which we met in the vale of misery; as I can honestly say, that I never knew a man who more truly deserved it, or to whom my heart more truly wished it. I have been much indebted since that time to your story and sentiments for steeling my mind against evils, of which I have had a pretty decent share. My will-o'wisp fate you know: do you recollect a Sunday we spent together in Eglinton woods! You told me, on my repeating some verses to you, that you wondered I could resist the temptation of sending verses of such merit to a magazine. It was from this remark I derived that idea of my own pieces, which encouraged me to endeavour at the character of a poet. I am happy to hear that you will be two or three months at home. As soon as a bruised limb will permit me, I shall return to Ayrshire, and we shall meet; "and faith, I hope we'll not sit dumb, nor yet cast out!"
I have much to tell you "of men, their manners, and their ways," perhaps a little of the other sex. Apropos, I beg to be remembered to Mrs. Brown. There I doubt not, my dear friend, but you have found substantial happiness. I expect to find you something of an altered but not a different man; the wild, bold, generous young fellow composed into the steady affectionate husband, and the fond careful parent. For me, I am just the same will-o'-wisp being I used to be. About the first and fourth quarters of the moon, I generally set in for the trade wind of wisdom: but about the full and change, I am the luckless victim of mad tornadoes, which blow me into chaos. Almighty love still reigns and revels in my bosom; and I am at this moment ready to hang myself for a young Edinburgh widow, who has wit and wisdom more murderously fatal than the assassinating stiletto of the Sicilian banditti, or the poisoned arrow of the savage African. My highland dirk, that used to hang beside my crutches, I have gravely removed into a neighbouring closet, the key of which I cannot command in case of spring-tide paroxysms. You may guess of her wit by the following verses, which she sent me the other day:--
Talk not of love, it gives me pain,
For love has been my foe;
He bound me with an iron chain,
And plunged me deep in woe!
But friendship's pure and lasting joys.
My heart was formed to prove,--
There, welcome, win, and wear the prize,
But never talk of love!
Your friendship much can make me blest--
O why that bliss destroy?
Why urge the odious one request,
You know I must deny?[180]
My best compliments to our friend Allan.
Adieu!
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 180: See song 186, in Johnson's Musical Museum. Burns altered the two last lines, and added a stanza:
Why urge the only one request
You know I will deny!
Your thought if love must harbour there,
Conceal it in that thought;
Nor cause me from my bosom tear
The very friend I sought.]
XCVI.
TO GAVIN HAMILTON.
[The Hamiltons of the West continue to love the memory of Burns: the old arm-chair in which the bard sat, when he visited Nanse Tinnocks, was lately presented to the mason Lodge of Mauchline, by Dr. Hamilton, the "wee curly Johnie" of the Dedication.]
[_Edinburgh, Dec._ 1787.]
MY DEAR SIR,
It is indeed with the highest pleasure that I congratulate you on the return of days of ease and nights of pleasure, after the horrid hours of misery in which I saw you suffering existence when last in Ayrshire; I seldom pray for any body, "I'm baith dead-sweer and wretched ill o't;" but most fervently do I beseech the Power that directs the world, that you may live long and be happy, but live no longer than you are happy. It is needless for me to advise you to have a reverend care of your health. I know you will make it a point never at one time to drink more than a pint of wine (I mean an English pint), and that you will never be witness to more than one bowl of punch at a time, and that cold drams you will never more taste; and, above all things, I am convinced, that after drinking perhaps boiling punch, you will never mount your horse and gallop home in a chill late hour. Above all things, as I understand you are in habits of intimacy with that Boanerges of gospel powers, Father Auld, be earnest with him that he will wrestle in prayer for you, that you may see the vanity of vanities in trusting to, or even practising the casual moral works of charity, humanity, generosity, and forgiveness of things, which you practised so flagrantly that it was evident you delighted in them, neglecting, or perhaps profanely despising, the wholesome doctrine of faith without works, the only anchor of salvation. A hymn of thanksgiving would, in my opinion, be highly becoming from you at present, and in my zeal for your well-being, I earnestly press on you to be diligent in chanting over the two enclosed pieces of sacred poesy. My best compliments to Mrs. Hamilton and Miss Kennedy.
Yours in the L--d,
R. B.
XCVII.
TO MISS CHALMERS.
[The blank which takes the place of the name of the "Gentleman in mind and manners," of this letter, cannot now be filled up, nor is it much matter: the acquaintance of such a man as the poet describes few or none would desire.]
_Edinburgh, Dec._ 1787.
MY DEAR MADAM,
I just now have read yours. The poetic compliments I pay cannot be misunderstood. They are neither of them so particular as to point you out to the world at large; and the circle of your acquaintances will allow all I have said. Besides, I have complimented you chiefly, almost solely, on your mental charms. Shall I be plain with you? I will; so look to it. Personal attractions, Madam, you have much above par; wit, understanding, and worth, you possess in the first class. This is a cursed flat way of telling you these truths, but let me hear no more of your sheepish timidity. I know the world a little. I know what they will say of my poems; by second sight I suppose; for I am seldom out in my conjectures; and you may believe me, my dear Madam, I would not run any risk of hurting you by any ill-judged compliment. I wish to show to the world, the odds between a poet's friends and those of simple prosemen. More for your information, both the pieces go in. One of them, "Where braving angry winter's storms," is already set--the tune is Neil Gow's Lamentation for _Abercarny_; the other is to be set to an old Highland air in Daniel Dow's collection of ancient Scots music; the name is "_Ha a Chaillich air mo Dheith._" My treacherous memory has forgot every circumstance about _Les Incas_, only I think you mentioned them as being in Creech's possession. I shall ask him about it. I am afraid the song of "Somebody" will come too late--as I shall, for certain, leave town in a week for Ayrshire, and from that to Dumfries, but there my hopes are slender. I leave my direction in town, so anything, wherever I am, will reach me.
I saw yours to ----; it is not too severe, nor did he take it amiss. On the contrary, like a whipt spaniel, he talks of being with you in the Christmas days. Mr. ---- has given him the invitation, and he is determined to accept of it. O selfishness! he owns, in his sober moments, that from his own volatility of inclination, the
circumstances in which he is situated, and his knowledge of his father's disposition;--the whole affair is chimerical--yet he _will_ gratify an idle _penchant_ at the enormous, cruel expense, of perhaps ruining the peace of the very woman for whom he professes the generous passion of love! He is a gentleman in his mind and manners--_tant pis_! He is a volatile school-boy--the heir of a man's fortune who well knows the value of two times two!
Perdition seize them and their fortunes, before they should make the amiable, the lovely ----, the derided object of their purse-proud contempt!
I am doubly happy to hear of Mrs. ----'s recovery, because I really thought all was over with her. There are days of pleasure yet awaiting her:
"As I came in by Glenap,
I met with an aged woman:
She bad me cheer up my heart,
For the best o' my days was comin'."
This day will decide my affairs with Creech. Things are, like myself, not what they ought to be; yet better than what they appear to be.
"Heaven's sovereign saves all beings but himself--
That hideous sight--a naked human heart."
Farewell! remember me to Charlotte.
R. B.
XCVIII.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The poet alludes in this letter, as in some before, to a hurt which he got in one of his excursions in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh.]
_Edinburgh, January 21, 1788._
After six weeks' confinement, I am beginning to walk across the room. They have been six horrible weeks; anguish and low spirits made me unfit to read, write, or think.
I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an officer resigns a commission: for I would not take in any poor, ignorant wretch, by selling out. Lately I was a sixpenny private; and, God knows, a miserable soldier enough; now I march to the campaign, a starving cadet: a little more conspicuously wretched.
I am ashamed of all this; for though I do want bravery for the warfare of life, I could wish, like some other soldiers, to have as much fortitude or cunning as to dissemble or conceal my cowardice.
As soon as I can bear the journey, which will be, I suppose, about the middle of next week, I leave Edinburgh: and soon after I shall pay my grateful duty at Dunlop-House.
R. B.
XCIX.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The levity with which Burns sometimes spoke of things sacred, had been obliquely touched upon by his good and anxious friend Mrs. Dunlop: he pleads guilty of folly, but not of irreligion.]
_Edinburgh, February 12, 1788._
Some things in your late letters hurt me: not that _you say them_, but that _you mistake me._ Religion, my honoured Madam, has not only been all my life my chief dependence, but my dearest enjoyment. I have, indeed, been the luckless victim of wayward follies; but, alas! I have ever been "more fool than knave." A mathematician without religion is a probable character; an irreligious poet is a monster.
R. B.
C.
TO THE REV. JOHN SKINNER.
[When Burns undertook to supply Johnson with songs for the Musical Museum, he laid all the bards of Scotland under contribution, and Skinner among the number, of whose talents, as well as those of Ross, author of Helenore, he was a great admirer.]
_Edinburgh, 14th February, 1788._
REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,
I have been a cripple now near three months, though I am getting vastly better, and have been very much hurried beside, or else I would have wrote you sooner. I must beg your pardon for the epistle you sent me appearing in the Magazine. I had given a copy or two to some of my intimate friends, but did not know of the printing of it till the publication of the Magazine. However, as it does great honour to us both, you will forgive it.
The second volume of the songs I mentioned to you in my last is published to-day. I send you a copy which I beg you will accept as a mark of the veneration I have long had, and shall ever have, for your character, and of the claim I make to your continued acquaintance. Your songs appear in the third volume, with your name in the index; as, I assure you, Sir, I have heard your "Tullochgorum," particularly among our west-country folks, given to many different names, and most commonly to the immortal author of "The Minstrel," who, indeed, never wrote anything superior to "Gie's a sang, Montgomery cried." Your brother has promised me your verses to the Marquis of Huntley's reel, which certainly deserve a place in the collection. My kind host, Mr. Cruikshank, of the High-school here, and said to be one of the best Latins in this age, begs me to make you his grateful acknowledgments for the entertainment he has got in a Latin publication of yours, that I borrowed for him from your acquaintance and much respected friend in this place, the Reverend Dr. Webster. Mr. Cruikshank maintains that you write the best Latin since Buchanan. I leave Edinburgh to-morrow, but shall return in three weeks. Your song you mentioned in your last, to the tune of "Dumbarton Drums," and the other, which you say was done by a brother by trade of mine, a ploughman, I shall thank you much for a copy of each. I am ever, Reverend Sir, with the most respectful esteem and sincere veneration, yours,
R. B.
CI.
TO RICHARD BROWN.
[The letters of Burns to Brown, and Smith, and Richmond, and others of his west-country friends, written when he was in the first flush of fame, show that he did not forget humble men, who anticipated the public in perceiving his merit.]
_Edinburgh, February 15th_, 1788.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I received yours with the greatest pleasure. I shall arrive at Glasgow on Monday evening; and beg, if possible, you will meet me on Tuesday. I shall wait you Tuesday all day. I shall be found at Davies', Black Bull inn. I am hurried, as if hunted by fifty devils, else I should go to Greenock: but if you cannot possibly come, write me, if possible, to Glasgow, on Monday; or direct to me at Mossgiel by Mauchline; and name a day and place in Ayrshire, within a fortnight from this date, where I may meet you. I only stay a fortnight in Ayrshire, and return to Edinburgh. I am ever, my dearest friend, yours,
R. B.
CII.
TO MRS. ROSE, OF KILRAVOCK.
[Mrs. Rose of Kilravock, a lady distinguished by the elegance of her manners, as well as by her talents, was long remembered by Burns: she procured for him snatches of old songs, and copies of northern melodies; to her we owe the preservation of some fine airs as well as the inspiration of some fine lyrics.]
_Edinburgh, February 17th, 1788._
MADAM,
You are much indebted to some indispensable business I have had on my hands, otherwise my gratitude threatened such a return for your obliging favour as would have tired your patience. It but poorly expresses my feelings to say, that I am sensible of your kindness: it may be said of hearts such as yours is, and such, I hope, mine is, much more justly than Addison applies it,--
"Some souls by instinct to each other turn."
There was something in my reception at Kilravock so different from the cold, obsequious, dancing-school bow of politeness, that it almost got into my head that friendship had occupied her ground without the intermediate march of acquaintance. I wish I could transcribe, or rather transfuse into language, the glow of my heart when I read your letter. My ready fancy, with colours more mellow than life itself, painted the beautifully wild scenery of Kilravock--the venerable grandeur of the castle--the spreading woods--the winding river, gladly leaving his unsightly, heathy source, and lingering with apparent delight as he passes the fairy walk at the bottom of the garden;--your late distressful anxieties--your present enjoyments--your dear little angel, the pride of your hopes;--my aged friend, venerable in worth and years, whose loyalty and other virtues will strongly entitle her to the support of the Almighty Spirit here, and his peculiar favour in a happier state of existence. You cannot imagine, Madam, how much such feelings delight me; they are my dearest proofs of my own immortality. Should I never revisit the north, as probably I never will, nor again see your hospitable mansion, were I, some twenty years hence, to see your little fellow's name making a proper figure in a newspaper paragraph, my heart would bound with pleasure.
I am assisting a friend in a collection of Scottish songs, set to their proper tunes; every air worth preserving is to be included: among others I have given "Morag," and some few Highland airs which pleased me most, a dress which will be more generally known, though far, far inferior in real merit. As a small mark of my grateful esteem, I beg leave to present you with a copy of the work, as far as it is printed; the Man of Feeling, that first of men, has promised to transmit it by the first opportunity.
I beg to be remembered most respectfully to my venerable friend, and to your little Highland chieftain. When you see the "two fair spirits of the hill," at Kildrummie,[181] tell them that I have done myself the honour of setting myself down as one of their admirers for at least twenty years to come, consequently they must look upon me as an acquaintance for the same period; but, as the apostle Paul says, "this I ask of grace, not of debt."
I have the honour to be, Madam, &c.,
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 181: Miss Sophia Brodie, of L----, and Miss Rose of Kilravock.]
CIII.
TO RICHARD BROWN.
[While Burns was confined to his lodgings by his maimed limb, he beguiled the time and eased the pain by composing the Clarinda epistles, writing songs for Johnson, and letters to his companions.]
_Mossgiel, 24th February, 1788._
MY DEAR SIR,
I cannot get the proper direction for my friend in Jamaica, but the following will do:--To Mr. Jo. Hutchinson, at Jo. Brownrigg's, Esq., care of Mr. Benjamin Henriquez, merchant, Orange-street, Kingston. I arrived here, at my brother's, only yesterday, after fighting my way through Paisley and Kilmarnock, against those old powerful foes of mine, the devil, the world, and the flesh--so terrible in the fields of dissipation. I have met with few incidents in my life which gave me so much pleasure as meeting you in Glasgow. There is a time of life beyond which we cannot form a tie worth the name of friendship. "O youth! enchanting stage, profusely blest." Life is a fairy scene: almost all that deserves the name of enjoyment or pleasure is only a charming delusion; and in comes repining age in all the gravity of hoary wisdom, and wretchedly chases away the bewitching phantom. When I think of life, I resolve to keep a strict look-out in the course of economy, for the sake of worldly convenience and independence of mind; to cultivate intimacy with a few of the companions of youth, that they may be the friends of age; never to refuse my liquorish humour a handful of the sweetmeats of life, when they come not too dear; and, for futurity,--
"The present moment is our ain,
The neist we never saw!"[182]
How like you my philosophy? Give my best compliments to Mrs. B., and believe me to be,
My dear Sir,
Yours most truly,
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 182: Mickle.]
CIV.
TO MR. WILLIAM CRUIKSHANK.
[The excise and farming alternately occupied the poet's thoughts in Edinburgh: he studied books of husbandry and took lessons in gauging, and in the latter he became expert.]
_Mauchline, March 3d, 1788._
MY DEAR SIR,
Apologies for not writing are frequently like apologies for not singing--the apology better than the song. I have fought my way severely through the savage hospitality of this country, to send every guest drunk to bed if they can.
I executed your commission in Glasgow, and I hope the cocoa came safe. 'Twas the same price and the very same kind as your former parcel, for the gentleman recollected your buying there perfectly well.
I should return my thanks for your hospitality (I
leave a blank for the epithet, as I know none can do it justice) to a poor, wayfaring bard, who was spent and utmost overpowered fighting with prosaic wickednesses in high places; but I am afraid lest you should burn the letter whenever you come to the passage, so I pass over it in silence. I am just returned from visiting Mr. Miller's farm. The friend whom I told you I would take with me was highly pleased with the farm; and as he is, without exception, the most intelligent farmer in the country, he has staggered me a good deal. I have the two plans of life before me; I shall balance them to the best of my judgment, and fix on the most eligible. I have written Mr. Miller, and shall wait on him when I come to town, which shall be the beginning or middle of next week; I would be in sooner, but my unlucky knee is rather worse, and I fear for some time will scarcely stand the fatigue of my Excise instructions. I only mention these ideas to you; and, indeed, except Mr. Ainslie, whom I intend writing to to-morrow, I will not write at all to Edinburgh till I return to it. I would send my compliments to Mr. Nicol, but he would be hurt if he knew I wrote to anybody and not to him: so I shall only beg my best, kindest, kindest compliments to my worthy hostess and the sweet little rose-bud.
So soon as I am settled in the routine of life, either as an Excise-officer, or as a farmer, I propose myself great pleasure from a regular correspondence with the only man almost I ever saw who joined the most attentive prudence with the warmest generosity.
I am much interested for that best of men, Mr. Wood; I hope he is in better health and spirits than when I saw him last.
I am ever,
My dearest friend,
Your obliged, humble servant,
R. B.
CV.
TO ROBERT AINSLIE, ESQ.
[The sensible and intelligent farmer on whose judgment Burns depended in the choice of his farm, was Mr. Tait, of Glenconner.]
_Mauchline, 3d March, 1788._
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I am just returned from Mr. Miller's farm. My old friend whom I took with me was highly pleased with the bargain, and advised me to accept of it. He is the most intelligent sensible farmer in the county, and his advice has staggered me a good deal. I have the two plans before me: I shall endeavour to balance them to the best of my judgement, and fix on the most eligible. On the whole, if I find Mr. Miller in the same favourable disposition as when I saw him last, I shall in all probability turn farmer.
I have been through sore tribulation and under much buffeting of the wicked one since I came to this country. Jean I found banished, forlorn, destitute and friendless: I have reconciled her to her fate, and I have reconciled her to her mother.
I shall be in Edinburgh middle of next week. My farming ideas I shall keep private till I see. I got a letter from Clarinda yesterday, and she tells me she has got no letter of mine but one. Tell her that I wrote to her from Glasgow, from Kilmarnock, from Mauchline, and yesterday from Cumnock as I returned from Dumfries. Indeed she is the only person in Edinburgh I have written to till this day. How are your soul and body putting up?--a little like man and wife, I suppose.
R. B.
CVI.
TO RICHARD BROWN.
[Richard Brown, it is said, fell off in his liking for Burns when he found that he had made free with his name in his epistle to Moore.]
_Mauchline, 7th March_, 1788.
I have been out of the country, my dear friend, and have not had an opportunity of writing till now, when I am afraid you will be gone out of the country too. I have been looking at farms, and, after all, perhaps I may settle in the character of a farmer. I have got so vicious a bent to idleness, and have ever been so little a man of business, that it will take no ordinary effort to bring my mind properly into the routine: but you will save a "great effort is worthy of you." I say so myself; and butter up my vanity with all the stimulating compliments I can think of. Men of grave, geometrical minds, the sons of "which was to be demonstrated," may cry up reason as much as they please; but I have always found an honest passion, or native instinct, the truest auxiliary in the warfare of this world. Reason almost always comes to me like an unlucky wife to a poor devil of a husband, just in sufficient time to add her reproaches to his other grievances.
I am gratified with your kind inquiries after Jean; as, after all, I may say with Othello:--
--------------------"Excellent wretch!
Perdition catch my soul, but I do love thee!"
I go for Edinburgh on Monday.
Yours,--R. B.
CVII.
TO MR. MUIR.
[The change which Burns says in this letter took place in his ideas, refers, it is said, to his West India voyage, on which, it appears by one of his letters to Smith, he meditated for some time after his debut in Edinburgh.]
_Mossgiel, 7th March_, 1788.
DEAR SIR,
I have partly changed my ideas, my dear friend, since I saw you. I took old Glenconner with mo to Mr. Miller's farm, and he was so pleased with it, that I have wrote an offer to Mr. Miller, which, if he accepts, I shall sit down a plain farmer, the happiest of lives when a man can live by it. In this case I shall not stay in Edinburgh above a week. I set out on Monday, and would have come by Kilmarnock, but there are several small sums owing me for my first edition about Galston and Newmills, and I shall set off so early as to dispatch my business, and reach Glasgow by night. When I return, I shall devote a forenoon or two to make some kind of acknowledgment for all the kindness I owe your friendship. Now that I hope to settle with some credit and comfort at home, there was not any friendship or friendly correspondence that promised me more pleasure than yours; I hope I will not be disappointed. I trust the spring will renew your shattered frame, and make your friends happy. You and I have often agreed that life is no great blessing on the whole. The close of life, indeed, to a reasoning eye, is,
"Dark as was chaos, ere the infant sun
Was roll'd together, or had try'd his beams
Athwart their gloom profound."[183]
But an honest man has nothing to fear. If we lie down in the grave, the whole man a piece of broken machinery, to moulder with the clods of the valley, be it so: at least there is an end of pain, care, woes, and wants: if that part of us called mind does survive the apparent destruction of the man--away with old-wife prejudices and tales! Every age and every nation has had a different set of stories; and as the many are always weak, of consequence, they have often, perhaps always, been deceived; a man conscious of having acted an honest part among his fellow-creatures--even granting that he may have been the sport at times of passions and instincts--he goes to a great unknown Being, who could have no other end in giving him existence but to make him happy, who gave him those passions and instincts, and well knows their force.
These, my worthy friend, are my ideas; and I know they are not far different from yours. It becomes a man of sense to think for himself, particularly in a case where all men are equally interested, and where, indeed, all men are equally in the dark.
Adieu, my dear Sir; God send us a cheerful meeting!
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 183: Blair's Grave.]
CVIII.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[One of the daughters of Mrs. Dunlop painted a sketch of Coila from Burns's poem of the Vision: it is still in existence, and is said to have merit.]
_Mossgiel, 17th March, 1788._
MADAM,
The last paragraph in yours of the 30th February affected me most, so I shall begin my answer where you ended your letter. That I am often a sinner with any little wit I have, I do confess: but I have taxed my recollection to no purpose, to find out when it was employed against you. I hate an ungenerous sarcasm a great deal worse than I do the devil; at least as Milton described him; and though I may be rascally enough to be sometimes guilty of it myself, I cannot endure it in others. You, my honoured friend, who cannot appear in any light but you are sure of being respectable--you can afford to pass by an occasion to display your wit, because you may depend for fame on your sense; or, if you choose to be silent, you know you can rely on the gratitude of many, and the esteem of all; but, God help us, who are wits or witlings by profession, if we stand for fame there, we sink unsupported!
I am highly flattered by the news you tell me of Coila. I may say to the fair painter who does me so much honour, as Dr. Beattie says to Ross the poet of his muse Scota, from which, by the bye, I took the idea of Coila ('tis a poem of Beattie's in the Scottish dialect, which perhaps you have never seen:)--
Ye shak your heads, but o' my fegs,
Ye've sat auld Scota on her legs:
Lang had she lien wi' beffs and flegs,
Bumbaz'd and dizzie,
Her fiddle wanted strings and pegs.
Wae's me, poor hizzie."
R. B.
CIX.
TO MISS CHALMERS.
[The uncouth cares of which the poet complains in this letter were the construction of a common farmhouse, with barn, byre, and stable to suit.]
_Edinburgh, March 14, 1788._
I know, my ever dear friend, that you will be pleased with the news when I tell you, I have at last taken a lease of a farm. Yesternight I completed a bargain with Mr. Miller, of Dalswinton for the farm of Ellisland, on the banks of the Nith, between five and six miles above Dumfries. I begin at Whit-Sunday to build a house, drive lime, &c.; and heaven be my help! for it will take a strong effort to bring my mind into the routine of business. I have discharged all the army of my former pursuits, fancies, and pleasures; a motley host! and have literally and strictly retained only the ideas of a few friends, which I have incorporated into a lifeguard. I trust in Dr. Johnson's observation, "Where much is attempted, something is done." Firmness, both in sufferance and exertion, is a character I would wish to be thought to possess: and have always despised the whining yelp of complaint, and the cowardly, feeble resolve.
Poor Miss K. is ailing a good deal this winter, and begged me to remember her to you the first time I wrote to you. Surely woman, amiable woman, is often made in vain. Too delicately formed for the rougher pursuits of ambition; too noble for the dirt of avarice, and even too gentle for the rage of pleasure; formed indeed for, and highly susceptible of enjoyment and rapture; but that enjoyment, alas! almost wholly at the mercy of the caprice, malevolence, stupidity, or wickedness of an animal at all times comparatively unfeeling, and often brutal.
R. B.
CX.
TO RICHARD BROWN.
[The excitement referred to in this letter arose from the dilatory and reluctant movements of Creech, who was so slow in settling his accounts that the poet suspected his solvency.]
_Glasgow, 26th March, 1788._
I am monstrously to blame, my dear Sir, in not writing to you, and sending you the Directory. I have been getting my tack extended, as I have taken a farm; and I have been racking shop accounts with Mr. Creech, both of which, together with watching, fatigue, and a load of care almost too heavy for my shoulders, have in some degree actually fevered me. I really forgot the Directory yesterday, which vexed me; but I was convulsed with rage a great part of the day. I have to thank you for the ingenious, friendly, and elegant epistle from your friend Mr. Crawford. I shall certainly write to him, but not now. This is merely a card to you, as I am posting to Dumfries-shire, where many perplexing arrangements await me. I am vexed about the Directory; but, my dear Sir, forgive me: these eight days I have been positively crazed. My compliments to Mrs. B. I shall write to you at Grenada.--I am ever, my dearest friend,
Yours,--R. B.
CXI.
TO MR. ROBERT CLEGHORN.
[Cleghorn was a farmer, a social man, and much of a musician. The poet wrote the Chevalier's Lament to please the jacobitical taste of his friend; and the musician gave him advice in farming which he neglected to follow:--"Farmer Attention," says Cleghorn, "is a good farmer everywhere."]
_Mauchline, 31st March, 1788._
Yesterday, my dear Sir, as I was riding through a track of melancholy, joyless muirs, between Galloway and Ayrshire, it being Sunday, I turned my thoughts to psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs; and your favourite air, "Captain O'Kean," coming at length into my head, I tried these words to it. You will see that the first part of the tune must be repeated.
I am tolerably pleased with these verses, but as I have only a sketch of the tune, I leave it with you to try if they suit the measure of the music.
I am so harassed with care and anxiety, about this farming project of mine, that my muse has degenerated into the veriest prose-wench that ever picked cinders, or followed a tinker. When I am fairly got into the routine of business, I shall trouble you with a longer epistle; perhaps with some queries respecting farming; at present, the world sits such a load on my mind, that it has effaced almost every trace of the poet in me.
My very best compliments and good wishes to Mrs. Cleghorn.
R. B.
CXII.
TO MR. WILLIAM DUNBAR,
EDINBURGH.
[This letter was printed for the first time by Robert Chambers, in his "People's Edition" of Burns.]
_Mauchline, 7th April, 1788._
I have not delayed so long to write you, my much respected friend, because I thought no farther of my promise. I have long since give up that kind of formal correspondence, where one sits down irksomely to write a letter, because we think we are in duty bound so to do.
I have been roving over the country, as the farm I have taken is forty miles from this place, hiring servants and preparing matters; but most of all I am earnestly busy to bring about a revolution in my own mind. As, till within these eighteen months, I never was the wealthy master of 10 guineas, my knowledge of business is to learn; add to this my late scenes of idleness and dissipation have enervated my mind to an alarming degree. Skill in the sober science of life is my most serious and hourly study. I have dropt all conversation and all reading (prose reading) but what tends in some way or other to my serious aim. Except one worthy young fellow, I have not one single correspondent in Edinburgh. You have indeed kindly made me an offer of that kind. The world of wits, and _gens comme il faut_ which I lately left, and with whom I never again will intimately mix--from that port, Sir, I expect your Gazette: what _Les beaux esprit_ are saying, what they are doing, and what they are singing. Any sober intelligence from my sequestered walks of life; any droll original; any passing reward, important forsooth, because it is mine; any little poetic effort, however embryoth; these, my dear Sir, are all you have to expect from me. When I talk of poetic efforts, I must have it always understood, that I appeal from your wit and taste to your friendship and good nature. The first would be my favourite tribunal, where I defied censure; but the last, where I declined justice.
I have scarcely made a single distich since I saw you. When I meet with an old Scots air that has any facetious idea in its name, I have a peculiar pleasure in following out that idea for a verse or two.
I trust that this will find you in better health than I did last time I called for you. A few lines from you, directed to me at Mauchline, were it but to let me know how you are, will set my mind a good deal [at rest.] Now, never shun the idea of writing me because perhaps you may be out of humour or spirits. I could give you a hundred good consequences attending a dull letter; one, for example, and the remaining ninety-nine some other time--it will always serve to keep in countenance, my much respected Sir, your obliged friend and humble servant,
R. B.
CXIII.
TO MISS CHALMERS.
[The sacrifice referred to by the poet, was his resolution to unite his fortune with Jean Armour.]
_Mauchline, 7th April, 1788._
I am indebted to you and Miss Nimmo for letting me know Miss Kennedy. Strange! how apt we are to indulge prejudices in our judgments of one another! Even I, who pique myself on my skill in marking
characters--because I am too proud of my character as a man, to be dazzled in my judgment for glaring wealth; and too proud of my situation as a poor man to be biased against squalid poverty--I was unacquainted with Miss K.'s very uncommon worth.
I am going on a good deal progressive in _mon grand bût_, the sober science of life. I have lately made some sacrifices, for which, were I _vivâ voce_ with you to paint the situation and recount the circumstances, you should applaud me.
R. B.
CXIV.
TO MISS CHALMERS.
[The hint alluded to, was a whisper of the insolvency of Creech; but the bailie was firm as the Bass.]
_No date._
Now for that wayward, unfortunate thing, myself. I have broke measures with Creech, and last week I wrote him a frosty, keen letter. He replied in terms of chastisement, and promised me upon his honour that I should have the account on Monday; but this is Tuesday, and yet I have not heard a word from him. God have mercy on me! a poor d--mned, incautious, duped, unfortunate fool! The sport, the miserable victim of rebellious pride, hypochondriac imagination, agonizing sensibility, and bedlam passions?
"I wish that I were dead, but I'm no like to die!" I had lately "a hair-breadth 'scape in th' imminent deadly breach" of love too. Thank my stars, I got off heart-whole, "waur fleyd than hurt."--Interruption.
I have this moment got a hint: I fear I am something like--undone--but I hope for the best. Come, stubborn pride and unshrinking resolution; accompany me through this, to me, miserable world! You must not desert me! Your friendship I think I can count on, though I should date my letters from a marching regiment. Early in life, and all my life I reckoned on a recruiting drum as my forlorn hope. Seriously though, life at present presents me with but a melancholy path: but--my limb will soon be sound, and I shall struggle on.
R. B.
CXV.
TO MISS CHALMERS.
[Although Burns gladly grasped at a situation in the Excise, he wrote many apologies to his friends, for the acceptance of a place, which, though humble enough, was the only one that offered.]
_Edinburgh, Sunday._
To-morrow, my dear madam, I leave Edinburgh. I have altered all my plans of future life. A farm that I could live in, I could not find; and, indeed, after the necessary support my brother and the rest of the family required, I could not venture on farming in that style suitable to my feelings. You will condemn me for the next step I have taken. I have entered into the Excise. I stay in the west about three weeks, and then return to Edinburgh, for six weeks' instructions: afterwards, for I get employ instantly, I go _où il plait à Dieu_,--_et mon Roi._ I have chosen this, my dear friend, after mature deliberation. The question is not at what door of fortune's palace shall we enter in; but what doors does she open to us? I was not likely to get anything to do. I wanted _un bût_, which is a dangerous, an unhappy situation. I got this without any hanging on, or mortifying solicitation; it is immediate bread, and though poor in comparison of the last eighteen months of my existence, 'tis luxury in comparison of all my preceding life: besides, the commissioners are some of them my acquaintances, and all of them my firm friends.
R. B.
CXVI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The Tasso, with the perusal of which Mrs. Dunlop indulged the poet, was not the line version of Fairfax, but the translation of Hoole--a far inferior performance.]
_Mauchline, 28th April, 1788._
MADAM,
Your powers of reprehension must be great indeed, as I assure you they made my heart ache with penitential pangs, even though I was really not guilty. As I commence farmer at Whit-Sunday, you will easily guess I must be pretty busy; but that is not all. As I got the offer of the Excise business without solicitation, and as it costs me only six months' attendance for instructions, to entitle me to a
commission--which commission lies by me, and at any future period, on my simple petition, ca be resumed--I thought five-and-thirty pounds a-year was no bad _dernier ressort_ for a poor poet, if fortune in her jade tricks should kick him down from the little eminence to which she has lately helped him up.
For this reason, I am at present attending these instructions, to have them completed before Whit-sunday. Still, Madam, I prepared with the sincerest pleasure to meet you at the Mount, and came to my brother's on Saturday night, to set out on Sunday; but for some nights preceding I had slept in an apartment, where the force of the winds and rains was only mitigated by being sifted through numberless apertures in the windows, walls, &c. In consequence I was on Sunday, Monday, and part of Tuesday, unable to stir out of bed, with all the miserable effects of a violent cold.
You see, Madam, the truth of the French maxim, _le vrai n'est pas toujours le vraisemblable_; your last was so full of expostulation, and was something so like the language of an offended friend, that I began to tremble for a correspondence, which I had with grateful pleasure set down as one of the greatest enjoyments of my future life.
Your books have delighted me: Virgil, Dryden, and Tasso were all equally strangers to me; but of this more at large in my next.
R. B.
CXVII.
TO MR. JAMES SMITH,
AVON PRINTFIELD, LINLITHGOW.
[James Smith, as this letter intimates, had moved from Mauchline to try to mend his fortunes at Avon Printfield, near Linlithgow.]
_Mauchline, April 28, 1788._
Beware of your Strasburgh, my good Sir! Look on this as the opening of a correspondence, like the opening of a twenty-four gun battery!
There is no understanding a man properly, without knowing something of his previous ideas (that is to say, if the man has any ideas; for I know many who, in the animal-muster, pass for men, that are the scanty masters of only one idea on any given subject, and by far the greatest part of your acquaintances and mine can barely boast of ideas, 1.25--1.5--1.75 or some such fractional matter;) so to let you a little into the secrets of my pericranium, there is, you must know, a certain clean-limbed, handsome, bewitching young hussy of your acquaintance, to whom I have lately and privately given a matrimonial title to my corpus.
"Bode a robe and wear it,
Bode a pock and bear it,"
says the wise old Scots adage! I hate to presage ill-luck; and as my girl has been doubly kinder to me than even the best of women usually are to their partners of our sex, in similar circumstances, I reckon on twelve times a brace of children against I celebrate my twelfth wedding-day: these twenty-four will give me twenty-four gossipings, twenty-four christenings (I mean one equal to two), and I hope, by the blessing of the God of my fathers, to make them twenty-four dutiful children to their parents, twenty-four useful members of society, and twenty-four approved services of their God! * * *
"Light's heartsome," quo' the wife when she was stealing sheep. You see what a lamp I have hung up to lighten your paths, when you are idle enough to explore the combinations and relations of my ideas. 'Tis now as plain as a pike-staff, why a twenty-four gun battery was a metaphor I could readily employ.
Now for business.--I intend to present Mrs. Burns with a printed shawl, an article of which I dare say you have variety: 'tis my first present to her since I have irrevocably called her mine, and I have a kind of whimsical wish to get her the first said present from an old and much-valued friend of hers and mine, a trusty Trojan, on whose friendship I count myself possessed of as a life-rent lease.
Look on this letter as a "beginning of sorrows;" I will write you till your eyes ache reading nonsense.
Mrs. Burns ('tis only her private designation) begs her best compliments to you.
R. B.
CXVIII.
TO PROFESSOR DUGALD STEWART.
[Dugald Stewart loved the poet, admired his works, and enriched the biography of Currie with some genuine reminiscences of his earlier days.]
_Mauchline, 3d May, 1788._
SIR,
I enclose you one or two more of my bagatelles. If the fervent wishes of honest gratitude have any influence with that great unknown being who frames the chain of causes and events, prosperity and happiness will attend your visits to the continent, and return you safe to your native shore.
Wherever I am, allow me, Sir, to claim it as my privilege to acquaint you with my progress in my trade of rhymes; as I am sure I could say it with truth, that next to my little fame, and the having it in my power to make life more comfortable to those whom nature has made dear to me, I shall ever regard your countenance, your patronage, your friendly good offices, as the most valued consequence of my late success in life.
R. B.
CXIX.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[A poem, something after the fashion of the Georgics, was long present to the mind of Burns: had fortune been more friendly he might have, in due time, produced it.]
_Mauchline, 4th May, 1788._
MADAM,
Dryden's Virgil has delighted me. I do not know whether the critics will agree with me, but the Georgics are to me by far the best of Virgil. It is indeed a species of writing entirely new to me; and has filled my head with a thousand fancies of emulation: but, alas! when I read the Georgics, and then survey my own powers, 'tis like the idea of a Shetland pony, drawn up by the side of a thorough-bred hunter to start for the plate. I own I am disappointed in the Æneid. Faultless correctness may please, and does highly please, the lettered critic: but to that awful character I have not the most distant pretensions. I do not know whether I do not hazard my pretensions to be a critic of any kind, when I say that I think Virgil, in many instances, a servile copier of Homer. If I had the Odyssey by me, I could parallel many passages where Virgil has evidently copied, but by no means improved, Homer. Nor can I think there is anything of this owing to the translators; for, from everything I have seen of Dryden, I think him in genius and fluency of language, Pope's master. I have not perused Tasso enough to form an opinion: in some future letter, you shall have my ideas of him; though I am conscious my criticisms must be very inaccurate and imperfect, as there I have ever felt and lamented my want of learning most.
R. B.
CXX.
TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.
[I have heard the gentleman say, to whom this brief letter is addressed, how much he was pleased with the intimation, that the poet had reunited himself with Jean Armour, for he know his heart was with her.]
_Mauchline, May 26, 1788._
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I am two kind letters in your debt, but I have been from home, and horribly busy, buying and preparing for my farming business, over and above the plague of my Excise instructions, which this week will finish.
As I flatter my wishes that I foresee many future years'
correspondence between us, 'tis foolish to talk of excusing dull epistles; a dull letter may be a very kind one. I have the pleasure to tell you that I have been extremely fortunate in all my buyings, and bargainings hitherto; Mrs. Burns not excepted; which title I now avow to the world. I am truly pleased with this last affair: it has indeed added to my anxieties for futurity, but it has given a stability to my mind, and resolutions unknown before; and the poor girl has the most sacred enthusiasm of attachment to me, and has not a wish but to gratify my every idea of her deportment. I am interrupted.--Farewell! my dear Sir.
R. B.
CXXI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[This letter, on the hiring season, is well worth the consideration of all masters, and all servants. In England, servants are engaged by the month; in Scotland by the half-year, and therefore less at the mercy of the changeable and capricious.]
27_th May, 1788._
MADAM,
I have been torturing my philosophy to no purpose, to account for that kind partiality of yours, which has followed me, in my return to the shade of life, with assiduous benevolence. Often did I regret, in the fleeting hours of my late will-o'-wisp appearance, that "here I had no continuing city;" and but for the consolation of a few solid guineas, could almost lament the time that a momentary acquaintance with wealth and splendour put me so much out of conceit with the sworn companions of my road through life--insignificance and poverty.
There are few circumstances relating to the unequal distribution of the good things of this life that give me more vexation (I mean in what I see around me) than the importance the opulent bestow on their trifling family affairs, compared with the very same things on the contracted scale of a cottage. Last afternoon I had the honour to spend an hour or two at a good woman's fireside, where the planks that composed the floor were decorated with a splendid carpet, and the gay table sparkled with silver and china. 'Tis now about term-day, and there has been a revolution among those creatures, who though in appearance partakers, and equally noble partakers, of the same nature with Madame, are from time to time--their nerves, their sinews, their health, strength, wisdom, experience, genius, time, nay a good part of their very thoughts--sold for months and years, not only to the necessities, the conveniences, but, the caprices of the important few. We talked of the insignificant creatures, nay notwithstanding their general stupidity and rascality, did some of the poor devils the honour to commend them. But light be the turf upon his breast who taught "Reverence thyself!" We looked down on the unpolished wretches, their impertinent wives and clouterly brats, as the lordly bull does on the little dirty ant-hill, whose puny inhabitants he crushes in the carelessness of his ramble, or tosses in the air in the wantonness of his pride.
R. B.
CXXII.
TO MRS. DUNLOP,
AT MR DUNLOP'S, HADDINGTON.
[In this, the poet's first letter from Ellisland, he lays down his whole system of in-door and out-door economy: while his wife took care of the household, he was to manage the farm, and "pen a stanza" during his hours of leisure.]
_Ellisland, 13th June, 1788._
"Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see,
My heart, untravell'd, fondly turns to thee;
Still to my _friend_ it turns with ceaseless pain,
and drags at each remove a lengthening chain."
GOLDSMITH.
This is the second day, my honoured friend, that I have been on my farm. A solitary inmate of an old smoky spense; far from every object I love, or by whom I am beloved; nor any acquaintance older than yesterday, except Jenny Geddes, the old mare I ride on; while uncouth cares and novel plans hourly insult my awkward ignorance and bashful inexperience. There is a foggy atmosphere native to my soul in the hour of care; consequently the dreary objects seem larger than life. Extreme sensibility, irritated and prejudiced on the gloomy side by a series of misfortunes and disappointments, at that period of my existence when the soul is laying in her cargo of ideas for the voyage of life, is, I believe, the principal cause of this unhappy frame of mind.
"The valiant, in himself, what can he suffer?
Or what need he regard his _single_ woes?" &c.
Your surmise, Madam, is just; I am indeed a husband.
To jealousy or infidelity I am an equal stranger. My preservative from the first is the most thorough consciousness of her sentiments of honour, and her attachment to me: my antidote against the last is my long and deep-rooted affection for her.
In housewife matters, of aptness to learn and activity to execute, she is eminently mistress; and during my absence in Nithsdale, she is regularly and constantly apprentice to my mother and sisters in their dairy and other rural business.
The muses must not be offended when I tell them, the concerns of my wife and family will, in my mind, always take the _pas_; but I assure them their ladyships will ever come next in place.
You are right that a bachelor state would have insured me more friends; but from a cause you will easily guess, conscious peace in the enjoyment of my own mind, and unmistrusting confidence in approaching my God, would seldom have been of the number.
I found a once much-loved and still much-loved female, literally and truly cast out to the mercy of the naked elements; but I enabled her to _purchase_ a shelter;--there is no sporting with a fellow-creature's happiness or misery.
The most placid good-nature and sweetness of disposition; a warm heart, gratefully devoted with all its powers to love me; vigorous health and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to the best advantage by a more than commonly handsome figure; these, I think, in a woman, may make a good wife, though she should never have read a page but the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, nor have danced in a brighter assembly than a penny pay-wedding.
R. B.
CXXIII.
TO ROBERT AINSLIE, ESQ.
[Had Burns written his fine song, beginning "Contented wi' little and cantie wi' mair," when he penned this letter, the prose might have followed as a note to the verse; he calls the Excise a luxury.]
_Ellisland, June 14th, 1788._
This is now the third day, my dearest Sir, that I have sojourned in these regions; and during these three days you have occupied more of my thoughts than in three weeks preceding: in Ayrshire I have several variations of friendship's compass, here it points invariably to the pole. My farm gives me a good many uncouth cares and anxieties, but I hate the language of complaint. Job, or some one of his friends, says well--"why should a living man complain?"
I have lately been much mortified with contemplating an unlucky imperfection in the very framing and construction of my soul; namely, a blundering inaccuracy of her olfactory organs in hitting the scent of craft or design in my fellow-creatures. I do not mean any compliment to my ingenuousness, or to hint that the defect is in consequence of the unsuspicious simplicity of conscious truth or honour: I take it to be, in some, why or other, an imperfection in the mental sight; or, metaphor apart, some modification of dulness. In two or three small instances lately, I have been most shamefully out.
I have all along hitherto, in the warfare of life, been bred to arms among the light-horse--the piquet-guards of fancy: a kind of hussars and Highlanders of the brain; but I am firmly resolved to sell out of these giddy battalions, who have no ideas of a battle but fighting the foe, or of a siege but storming the town. Cost what it will, I am determined to buy in among the grave squadrons of heavy-armed thought, or the artillery corps of plodding contrivance.
What books are you reading, or what is the subject of your thoughts, besides the great studies of your profession? You said something about religion in your last. I don't exactly remember what it was, as the letter is in Ayrshire; but I thought it not only prettily said, but nobly thought. You will make a noble fellow if once you were married. I make no reservation of your being well-married: you have so much sense, and knowledge of human nature, that though you may not realize perhaps the ideas of romance, yet you will never be ill-married.
Were it not for the terrors of my ticklish situation respecting provision for a family of children, I am decidedly of opinion that the step I have taken is vastly for my happiness. As it is I look to the Excise scheme as a certainty of maintenance!--luxury to what either Mrs. Burns or I were born to.
Adieu.
R. B.
CXXIV.
TO ROBERT AINSLIE, ESQ.
[The kindness of Field, the profilist, has not only indulged me with a look at the original, from which the profile alluded to in the letter was taken, but has put me in possession of a capital copy.]
_Mauchline, 23d June, 1788._
This letter, my dear Sir, is only a business scrap. Mr. Miers, profile painter in your town, has executed a profile of Dr. Blacklock for me: do me the favour to call for it, and sit to him yourself for me, which put in the same size as the doctor's. The account of both profiles will be fifteen shillings, which I have given to James Connell, our Mauchline carrier, to pay you when you give him the parcel. You must not, my friend, refuse to sit. The time is short: when I sat to Mr. Miers, I am sure he did not exceed two minutes. I propose hanging Lord Glencairn, the Doctor, and you in trio over my new chimney-piece that is to be.
Adieu.
R. B.
CXXV.
TO ROBERT AINSLIE, ESQ.
["There is a degree of folly," says Burns in this letter, "in talking unnecessarily of one's private affairs." The folly is scarcely less to write about them, and much did the poet and his friend write about their own private affairs as well as those of others.]
_Ellisland, June 30th, 1788._
MY DEAR SIR,
I just now received your brief epistle; and, to take vengeance on your laziness, I have, you see, taken a long sheet of writing-paper, and have begun at the top of the page, intending to scribble on to the very last corner.
I am vexed at that affair of the * * *, but dare not enlarge on the subject until you send me your direction, as I suppose that will be altered on your late master and friend's death. I am concerned for the old fellow's exit, only as I fear it may be to your disadvantage in any respect--for an old man's dying, except he has been a very benevolent character, or in some particular situation of life that the welfare of the poor or the helpless depended on him, I think it an event of the most trifling moment in the world. Man is naturally a kind, benevolent animal, but he is dropped into such a needy situation here in this vexatious world, and has such a whoreson hungry, growling, multiplying pack of necessities, appetites, passions, and desires about him, ready to devour him for want of other food; that in fact he must lay aside his cares for others that he may look properly to himself. You have been imposed upon in paying Mr. Miers for the profile of a Mr. H. I did not mention it in my letter to you, nor did I ever give Mr. Miers any such order. I have no objection to lose the money, but I will not have any such profile in my possession.
I desired the carrier to pay you, but as I mentioned only fifteen shillings to him, I would rather enclose you a guinea note. I have it not, indeed, to spare here, as I am only a sojourner in a strange land in this place; but in a day or two I return to Mauchline, and there I have the bank-notes through the house like salt permits.
There is a great degree of folly in talking unnecessarily of one's private affairs. I have just now been interrupted by one of my new neighbours, who has made himself absolutely contemptible in my eyes, by his silly garrulous pruriency. I know it has been a fault of my own, too; but from this moment I abjure it, as I would the service of hell! Your poets, spend-thrifts, and other fools of that kidney, pretend forsooth to crack their jokes on prudence; but 'tis a squalid vagabond glorying in his rags. Still, imprudence respecting money matters is much more pardonable than imprudence respecting character. I have no objection to prefer prodigality to avarice, in some few instances; but I appeal to your observation, if you have not met, and often met, with the same disingenuousness, the same hollow-hearted insincerity, and disintegritive depravity of principle, in the hackneyed victims of profusion, as in the unfeeling children of parsimony. I have every possible reverence for the much-talked-of world beyond the grave, and I wish that which piety believes, and virtue deserves, may be all matter of fact. But in things belonging to, and terminating in this present scene of existence, man has serious and interesting business on hand. Whether a man shall shake hands with welcome in the distinguished elevation of respect, or shrink from contempt in the abject corner of insignificance; whether he shall wanton under the tropic of plenty, at least enjoy himself in the comfortable latitudes of easy convenience, or starve in the arctic circle of dreary poverty; whether he shall rise in the manly consciousness of a self-approving mind, or sink beneath a galling load of regret and remorse--these are alternatives of the last moment.
You see how I preach. You used occasionally to sermonize too; I wish you would, in charity, favour me with a sheet full in your own way. I admire the close of a letter Lord Bolingbroke writes to Dean Swift:--"Adieu dear Swift! with all thy faults I love thee entirely: make an effort to love me with all mine!" Humble servant, and all that trumpery, is now such a prostituted business, that honest friendship, in her sincere way, must have recourse to her primitive,
simple,--farewell!
R. B.
CXXVI.
TO MR. GEORGE LOCKHART,
MERCHANT, GLASGOW.
[Burns, more than any poet of the age, loved to write out copies of his favourite poems, and present them to his friends: he sent "The Falls of Bruar" to Mr. Lockhart.]
_Mauchline, 18th July, 1788._
MY DEAR SIR,
I am just going for Nithsdale, else I would certainly have transcribed some of my rhyming things for you. The Miss Baillies I have seen in Edinburgh. "Fair and lovely are thy works, Lord God Almighty! Who would not praise thee for these thy gifts in thy goodness to the sons of men!" It needed not your fine taste to admire them. I declare, one day I had the honour of dining at Mr. Baillie's, I was almost in the predicament of the children of Israel, when they could not look on Moses' face for the glory that shone in it when he descended from Mount Sinai.
I did once write a poetic address from the Falls of Bruar to his Grace of Athole, when I was in the Highlands. When you return to Scotland, let me know, and I will send such of my pieces as please myself best. I return to Mauchline in about ten days.
My compliments to Mr. Purdon. I am in truth, but at present in haste,
Yours,--R. B.
CXXVII.
TO MR. PETER HILL.
[Peter Hill was a bookseller in Edinburgh: David Ramsay, printer of the Evening Courant: William Dunbar, an advocate, and president of a club of Edinburgh wits; and Alexander Cunningham, a jeweller, who loved mirth and wine.]
MY DEAR HILL,
I shall say nothing to your mad present--you have so long and often been of important service to me, and I suppose you mean to go on conferring obligations until I shall not be able to lift up my face before you. In the mean time, as Sir Roger de Coverley, because it happened to be a cold day in which he made his will, ordered his servants great coats for mourning, so, because I have been this week plagued with an indigestion, I have sent you by the carrier a fine old ewe-milk cheese.
Indigestion is the devil: nay, 'tis the devil and all. It besets a man in every one of his senses. I lose my appetite at the sight of successful knavery, and sicken to loathing at the noise and nonsense of self-important folly. When the hollow-hearted wretch takes me by the hand, the feeling spoils my dinner: the proud man's wine so offends my palate that it chokes me in the gullet; and the
_pulvilised_, feathered, pert coxcomb is so disgustful in my nostril that my stomach turns.
If ever you have any of these disagreeable sensations, let me prescribe for you patience; and a bit of my cheese. I know that you are no niggard of your good things among your friends, and some of them are in much need of a slice. There, in my eye is our friend Smellie; a man positively of the first abilities and greatest strength of mind, as well as one of the best hearts and keenest wits that I have ever met with; when you see him, as, alas! he too is smarting at the pinch of distressful circumstances, aggravated by the sneer of contumelious greatness--a bit of my cheese alone will not cure him, but if you add a tankard of brown stout, and superadd a magnum of right Oporto, you will see his sorrows vanish like the morning mist before the summer sun.
Candlish, the earliest friend, except my only brother, that I have on earth, and one of the worthiest fellows that ever any man called by the name of friend, if a luncheon of my cheese would help to rid him of some of his super-abundant modesty, you would do well to give it him.
David,[184] with his _Courant_, comes, too, across my recollection, and I beg you will help him largely from the said ewe-milk cheese, to enable him to digest those bedaubing paragraphs with which he is eternally larding the lean characters of certain great men in a certain great town. I grant you the periods are very well turned; so, a fresh egg is a very good thing, but when thrown at a man in a pillory, it does not at all improve his figure, not to mention the irreparable loss of the egg.
My facetious friend Dunbar I would wish also to be a partaker: not to digest his spleen, for that he laughs off, but to digest his last night's wine at the last field-day of the Crochallan corps.[185]
Among our common friends I must not forget one of the dearest of them--Cunningham. The brutality, insolence, and selfishness of a world unworthy of having such a fellow as he is in it, I know sticks in his stomach, and if you can help him to anything that will make him a little easier on that score, it will be very obliging.
As to honest J---- S----e, he is such a contented, happy man, that I know not what can annoy him, except, perhaps, he may not have got the better of a parcel of modest anecdotes which a certain poet gave him one night at supper, the last time the said poet was in town.
Though I have mentioned so many men of law, I shall have nothing to do with them professedly--the faculty are beyond my prescription. As to their clients, that is another thing; God knows they have much to digest!
The clergy I pass by; their profundity of erudition, and their liberality of sentiment; their total want of pride, and their detestation of hypocrisy, are so proverbially notorious as to place them far, far above either my praise or censure.
I was going to mention a man of worth whom I have the honour to call friend, the Laird of Craigdarroch; but I have spoken to the landlord of the King's-Arms inn here, to have at the next county meeting a large ewe-milk cheese on the table, for the benefit of the
Dumfries-shire Whigs, to enable them to digest the Duke of
Queensberry's late political conduct.
I have just this moment an opportunity of a private hand to Edinburgh, as perhaps you would not digest double postage.
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 184: Printer of the _Edinburgh Evening Courant._]
[Footnote 185: A club of choice spirits.]
CXXVIII.
TO ROBERT GRAHAM, ESQ.,
OF FINTRAY.
[The filial and fraternal claims alluded to in this letter were satisfied with about three hundred pounds, two hundred of which went to his brother Gilbert--a sum which made a sad inroad on the money arising from the second edition of his Poems.]
SIR,
When I had the honour of being introduced to you at Athole-house, I did not think so soon of asking a favour of you. When Lear, in Shakspeare, asked Old Kent why he wished to be in his service, he answers, "Because you have that in your face which I would fain call master." For some such reason, Sir, do I now solicit your patronage. You know, I dare say, of an application I lately made to your Board to be admitted an officer of Excise. I have, according to form, been examined by a supervisor, and to-day I gave in his certificate, with a request for an order for instructions. In this affair, if I succeed, I am afraid I shall but too much need a patronizing friend. Propriety of conduct as a man, and fidelity and attention as an officer, I dare engage for; but with anything like business, except manual labour, I am totally unacquainted.
I had intended to have closed my late appearance on the stage of life, in the character of a country farmer; but after discharging some filial and fraternal claims, I find I could only fight for existence in that miserable manner, which I have lived to see throw a venerable parent into the jaws of a jail; whence death, the poor man's last and often best friend, rescued him.
I know, Sir, that to need your goodness, is to have a claim on it; may I, therefore, beg your patronage to forward me in this affair, till I be appointed to a division; where, by the help of rigid economy, I will try to support that independence so dear to my soul, but which has been too often so distant from my situation.
R. B.
CXXIX.
TO WILLIAM CRUIKSHANK.
[The verses which this letter conveyed to Cruikshank were the lines written in Friars-Carse Hermitage: "the first-fruits," says the poet, elsewhere, "of my intercourse with the Nithsdale muse."]
_Ellisland, August, 1788._
I have not room, my dear friend, to answer all the particulars of your last kind letter. I shall be in Edinburgh on some business very soon; and as I shall be two days, or perhaps three, in town, we shall discuss matters _vivâ voce._ My knee, I believe, will never be entirely well; and an unlucky fall this winter has made it still worse. I well remember the circumstance you allude to, respecting Creech's opinion of Mr. Nicol; but, as the first gentleman owes me still about fifty pounds, I dare not meddle in the affair.
It gave me a very heavy heart to read such accounts of the consequence of your quarrel with that puritanic, rotten-hearted, hell-commissioned scoundrel A----. If, notwithstanding your unprecedented industry in public, and your irreproachable conduct in private life, he still has you so much in his power, what ruin may he not bring on some others I could name?
Many and happy returns of seasons to you, with your dearest and worthiest friend, and the lovely little pledge of your happy union. May the great Author of life, and of every enjoyment that can render life delightful, make her that comfortable blessing to you both, which you so ardently wish for, and which, allow me to say, you so well deserve! Glance over the foregoing verses, and let me have your blots.
Adieu.
R. B.
CXXX.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The lines on the Hermitage were presented by the poet to several of his friends, and Mrs. Dunlop was among the number.]
_Mauchline, August 2, 1788._
HONOURED MADAM,
Your kind letter welcomed me, yesternight, to Ayrshire. I am, indeed, seriously angry with you at the quantum of your luckpenny; but, vexed and hurt as I was, I could not help laughing very heartily at the noble lord's apology for the missed napkin.
I would write you from Nithsdale, and give you my direction there, but I have scarce an opportunity of calling at a post-office once in a fortnight. I am six miles from Dumfries, am scarcely ever in it myself, and, as yet, have little acquaintance in the neighbourhood. Besides, I am now very busy on my farm, building a dwelling-house; as at present I am almost an evangelical man in Nithsdale, for I have scarce "where to lay my head."
There are some passages in your last that brought tears in my eyes. "The heart knoweth its own sorrows, and a stranger intermeddleth not therewith." The repository of these "sorrows of the heart" is a kind of _sanctum sanctorum:_ and 'tis only a chosen friend, and that, too, at particular sacred times, who dares enter into them:--
"Heaven oft tears the bosom-chords
That nature finest strung."
You will excuse this quotation for the sake of the author. Instead of entering on this subject farther, I shall transcribe you a few lines I wrote in a hermitage, belonging to a gentleman in my Nithsdale neighbourhood. They are almost the only favours the muses have conferred on me in that country:--
Thou whom chance may hither lead.[186]
Since I am in the way of transcribing, the following were the production of yesterday as I jogged through the wild hills of New Cumnock. I intend inserting them, or something like them, in an epistle I am going to write to the gentleman on whose friendship my Excise hopes depend, Mr. Graham, of Fintray, one of the worthiest and most accomplished gentlemen not only of this country, but, I will dare to say it, of this age. The following are just the first crude thoughts "unhousel'd, unanointed, unanneal'd:"--
Pity the tuneful muses' helpless train;
Weak, timid landsmen on life's stormy main:
The world were blest, did bliss on them depend;
Ah, that "the friendly e'er should want a friend!"
The little fate bestows they share as soon;
Unlike sage, proverb'd, wisdom's hard-wrung boon.
Let Prudence number o'er each sturdy son,
Who life and wisdom at one race begun;
Who feel by reason and who give by rule;
Instinct's a brute and sentiment a fool!
Who make poor _will do_ wait upon _I should_;
We own they're prudent, but who owns they're good?
Ye wise ones, hence! ye hurt the social eye;
God's image rudely etch'd on base alloy!
But come * * * * * *
Here the muse left me. I am astonished at what yon tell me of Anthony's writing me. I never received it. Poor fellow! you vex me much by telling me that he is unfortunate. I shall be in Ayrshire ten days from this date. I have just room for an old Roman farewell.
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 186: See Poems LXXXIX and XC]
CXXXI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[This letter has been often cited, and very properly, as a proof of the strong attachment of Burns to one who was, in many respects, worthy.]
_Mauchline, August 10, 1788._
MY MUCH HONOURED FRIEND,
Yours of the 24th June is before me. I found it, as well as another valued friend--my wife, waiting to welcome me to Ayrshire: I met both with the sincerest pleasure.
When I write you, Madam, I do not sit down to answer every paragraph of yours, by echoing every sentiment, like the faithful Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, answering a speech from the best of kings! I express myself in the fulness of my heart, and may, perhaps, be guilty of neglecting some of your kind inquiries; but not from your very old reason, that I do not read your letters. All your epistles for several months have cost me nothing, except a swelling throb of gratitude, or a deep-felt sentiment of veneration.
When Mrs. Burns, Madam, first found herself "as women wish to be who love their lords," as I loved her nearly to distraction, we took steps for a private marriage. Her parents got the hint; and not only forbade me her company and their house, but, on my rumoured West Indian voyage, got a warrant to put me in jail, till I should find security in my about-to-be paternal relation. You know my lucky reverse of fortune. On my _éclatant_ return to Mauchline, I was made very welcome to visit my girl. The usual consequences began to betray her; and, as I was at that time laid up a cripple in Edinburgh, she was turned, literally turned out of doors, and I wrote to a friend to shelter her till my return, when our marriage was declared. Her happiness or misery were in my hands, and who could trifle with such a deposit?
I can easily fancy a more agreeable companion for my journey of life; but, upon my honour, I have never seen the individual instance.
Circumstanced as I am, I could never have got a female partner for life, who could have entered into my favourite studies, relished my favourite authors, &c., without probably entailing on me at the same time expensive living, fantastic caprice, perhaps apish affectation, with all the other blessed boarding-school acquirements, which (_pardonnez moi, Madame_,) are sometimes to be found among females of the upper ranks, but almost universally pervade the misses of the would-be gentry.
I like your way in your church-yard lucubrations. Thoughts that are the spontaneous result of accidental situations, either respecting health, place, or company, have often a strength, and always an originality, that would in vain be looked for in fancied circumstances and studied paragraphs. For me, I have often thought of keeping a letter, in progression by me, to send you when the sheet was written out. Now I talk of sheets, I must tell you, my reason for writing to you on paper of this kind is my pruriency of writing to you at large. A page of post is on such a dissocial, narrow-minded scale, that I cannot abide it; and double letters, at least in my miscellaneous revery manner, are a monstrous tax in a close correspondence.
R. B.
CXXXII.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[Mrs. Miller, of Dalswinton, was a lady of beauty and talent: she wrote verses with skill and taste. Her maiden name was Jean Lindsay.]
_Ellisland, 16th August, 1788._
I am in a fine disposition, my honoured friend, to send you an elegiac epistle; and want only genius to make it quite Shenstonian:--
"Why droops my heart with fancied woes forlorn?
Why sinks my soul, beneath each wintry sky?"
My increasing cares in this, as yet strange country--gloomy conjectures in the dark vista of futurity--consciousness of my own inability for the struggle of the world--my broadened mark to misfortune in a wife and children;--I could indulge these reflections till my humour should ferment into the most acid chagrin, that would corrode the very thread of life.
To counterwork these baneful feelings, I have sat down to write to you; as I declare upon my soul I always find that the most sovereign balm for my wounded spirit.
I was yesterday at Mr. Miller's to dinner for the first time. My reception was quite to my mind: from the lady of the house quite flattering. She sometimes hits on a couplet or two, _impromptu._ She repeated one or two to the admiration of all present. My suffrage as a professional man, was expected: I for once went agonizing over the belly of my conscience. Pardon me, ye my adored household gods, independence of spirit, and integrity of soul! In the course of conversation, "Johnson's Musical Museum," a collection of Scottish songs with the music, was talked of. We got a song on the harpsichord, beginning,
"Raving winds around her blowing."[187]
The air was much admired: the lady of the house asked me whose were the words. "Mine, Madam--they are indeed my very best verses;" she took not the smallest notice of them! The old Scottish proverb says well, "king's caff is better than ither folks' corn." I was going to make a New Testament quotation about "casting pearls" but that would be too virulent, for the lady is actually a woman of sense and taste.
After all that has been said on the other side of the question, man is by no means a happy creature. I do not speak of the selected few, favoured by partial heaven, whose souls are tuned to gladness amid riches and honours, and prudence and wisdom. I speak of the neglected many, whose nerves, whose sinews, whose days are sold to the minions of fortune.
If I thought you had never seen it, I would transcribe for you a stanza of an old Scottish ballad, called, "The Life and Age of Man;" beginning thus:
"'Twas in the sixteenth hunder year
Of God and fifty-three,
Frae Christ was born, that bought us dear,
As writings testifie."
I had an old grand-uncle, with whom my mother lived awhile in her girlish years; the good old man, for such he was, was long blind ere he died, during which time his highest enjoyment was to sit down and cry, while my mother would sing the simple old song of "the Life and Age of Man."
It is this way of thinking; it is these melancholy truths, that make religion so precious to the poor, miserable children of men.--If it is a mere phantom, existing only in the heated imagination of enthusiasm,
"What truth on earth so precious as a lie."
My idle reasonings sometimes make me a little sceptical, but the necessities of my heart always give the cold philosophisings the lie. Who looks for the heart weaned from earth; the soul affianced to her God; the correspondent devout thanksgiving, constant as the vicissitudes of even and morn; who thinks to meet with these in the court, the palace, in the glare of public life? No: to find them in their precious importance and divine efficacy, we must search among the obscure recesses of disappointment, affliction, poverty, and distress.
I am sure, dear Madam, you are now more than pleased with the length of my letters. I return to Ayrshire middle of next week: and it quickens my pace to think that there will be a letter from you waiting me there. I must be here again very soon for my harvest.
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 187: See Song LII.]
CXXXIII.
TO MR. BEUGO,
ENGRAVER, EDINBURGH.
[Mr. Beugo was at well-known engraver in Edinburgh: he engraved Nasmyth's portrait of Burns, for Creech's first edition of his Poems; and as he could draw a little, he improved, as he called it, the engraving from sittings of the poet, and made it a little more like, and a little less poetic.]
_Ellisland, 9th Sept. 1788._
MY DEAR SIR,
There is not in Edinburgh above the number of the graces whose letters would have given me so much pleasure as yours of the 3d instant, which only reached me yesternight.
I am here on the farm, busy with my harvest; but for all that most pleasurable part of life called SOCIAL COMMUNICATION, I am
here at the very elbow of existence. The only things that are to be found in this country, in any degree of perfection, are stupidity and canting. Prose they only know in graces, prayers, &c., and the value of these they estimate as they do their plaiding webs--by the ell! As for the muses, they have as much an idea of a rhinoceros as of a poet. For my old capricious but good-natured huzzy of a muse--
"By banks of Nith I sat and wept
When Coila I thought on,
In midst thereof I hung my harp
The willow-trees upon."
I am generally about half my time in Ayrshire with my "darling Jean," and then I, at lucid intervals, throw my horny fist across my becob-webbed lyre, much in the same manner as an old wife throws her hand across the spokes of her spinning-wheel.
I will send you the "Fortunate Shepherdess" as soon as I return to Ayrshire, for there I keep it with other precious treasure. I shall send it by a careful hand, as I would not for anything it should be mislaid or lost. I do not wish to serve you from any benevolence, or other grave Christian virtue; 'tis purely a selfish gratification of my own feelings whenever I think of you.
If your better functions would give you leisure to write me, I should be extremely happy; that is to say if you neither keep nor look for a regular correspondence. I hate the idea of being obliged to write a letter. I sometimes write a friend twice a week, at other times once a quarter.
I am exceedingly pleased with your fancy in making the author you mention place a map of Iceland instead of his portrait before his works: 'twas a glorious idea.
Could you conveniently do me one thing?--whenever you finish any head I should like to have a proof copy of it. I might tell you a long story about your fine genius; but as what everybody knows cannot have escaped you, I shall not say one syllable about it.
R. B.
CXXXIV.
TO MISS CHALMERS,
EDINBURGH.
[To this fine letter all the biographer of Burns are largely indebted.]
_Ellisland, near Dumfries, Sept. 16th, 1788._
Where are you? and how are you? and is Lady Mackenzie recovering her health? for I have had but one solitary letter from you. I will not think you have forgot me, Madam; and for my part--
"When thee, Jerusalem, I forget,
Skill part from my right hand!"
"My heart is not of that rock, nor my soul careless as that sea." I do not make my progress among mankind as a bowl does among its fellows--rolling through the crowd without bearing away any mark of impression, except where they hit in hostile collision.
I am here, driven in with my harvest-folks by bad weather; and as you and your sister once did me the honour of interesting yourselves much _à l'égard de moi_, I sit down to beg the continuation of your goodness. I can truly say that, all the exterior of life apart, I never saw two, whose esteem flattered the nobler feelings of my soul--I will not say more, but so much as Lady Mackenzie and Miss Chalmers. When I think of you--hearts the best, minds the noblest of human kind--unfortunate even in the shades of life--when I think I have met with you, and have lived more of real life with you in eight days than I can do with almost any body I meet with in eight years--when I think on the improbability of meeting you in this world again--I could sit down and cry like a child! If ever you honoured me with a place in your esteem, I trust I can now plead more desert. I am secure against that crushing grip of iron poverty, which, alas! is less or more fatal to the native worth and purity of, I fear, the noblest souls; and a late important step in my life has kindly taken me out of the way of those ungrateful iniquities, which, however overlooked in fashionable license, or varnished in fashionable phrase, are indeed but lighter and deeper shades of VILLANY.
Shortly after my last return to Ayrshire, I married "my Jean." This was not in consequence of the attachment of romance, perhaps; but I had a long and much-loved fellow-creature's happiness or misery in my determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a deposit. Nor have I any cause to repent it. If I have not got polite tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse of boarding-school affectation: and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the county. Mrs. Burns believes, as firmly as her creed, that I am _le plus bel esprit, et le plus honnête homme_ in the universe; although she scarcely ever in her life, except the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and the Psalms of David in metre, spent five minutes together either on prose or verse. I must except also from this last a certain late publication of Scots poems, which she has perused very devoutly; and all the ballads in the country, as she has (O the partial lover! you will cry) the finest "wood-note wild" I ever heard. I am the more particular in this lady's character, as I know she will henceforth have the honour of a share in your best wishes. She is still at Mauchline, as I am building my house; for this hovel that I shelter in, while occasionally here, is pervious to every blast that blows, and every shower that falls; and I am only preserved from being chilled to death by being suffocated with smoke. I do not find my farm that pennyworth I was taught to expect, but I believe, in time, it may be a saving bargain. You will be pleased to hear that I have laid aside idle _éclat_, and bind every day after my reapers.
To save me from that horrid situation of at any time going down in a losing bargain of a farm, to misery, I have taken my Excise instructions, and have my commission in my pocket for any emergency of fortune. If I could set all before your view, whatever disrespect you, in common with the world, have for this business, I know you would approve of my idea.
I will make no apology, dear Madam, for this egotistic detail; I know you and your sister will be interested in every circumstance of it. What signify the silly, idle gewgaws of wealth, or the ideal trumpery of greatness! When fellow-partakers of the same nature fear the same God, have the same benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul, the same detestation at everything dishonest, and the same scorn at everything unworthy--if they are not in the dependence of absolute beggary, in the name of common sense are they not EQUALS? And if the bias, the instinctive bias, of their souls run the same way, why may they not be FRIENDS?
When I may have an opportunity of sending you this, Heaven only knows. Shenstone says, "When one is confined idle within doors by bad weather, the best antidote against _ennui_ is to read the letters of or write to, one's friends;" in that case then, if the weather continues thus, I may scrawl you half a quire.
I very lately--to wit, since harvest began--wrote a poem, not in imitation, but in the manner, of Pope's Moral Epistles. It is only a short essay, just to try the strength of my muse's pinion in that way. I will send you a copy of it, when once I have heard from you. I have likewise been laying the foundation of some pretty large poetic works: how the superstructure will come on, I leave to that great maker and marrer of projects--TIME. Johnson's collection of Scots songs is going on in the third volume; and, of consequence, finds me a consumpt for a great deal of idle metre. One of the most tolerable things I have done in that way is two stanzas I made to an air, a musical gentleman of my acquaintance composed for the anniversary of his wedding-day, which happens on the seventh of November. Take it as follows:--
"The day returns--my bosom burns,
The blissful day we twa did meet," &c.[188]
I shall give over this letter for shame. If I should be seized with a scribbling fit, before this goes away, I shall make it another letter; and then you may allow your patience a week's respite between the two. I have not room for more than the old, kind, hearty farewell.
To make some amends, _mes chères Mesdames_, for dragging you on to this second sheet, and to relieve a little the tiresomeness of my unstudied and uncorrectible prose, I shall transcribe you some of my late poetic bagatelles; though I have, these eight or ten months, done very little that way. One day in a hermitage on the banks of Nith, belonging to a gentleman in my neighbourhood, who is so good as give me a key at pleasure, I wrote as follows; supposing myself the sequestered, venerable inhabitant of the lonely mansion.
LINES WRITTEN IN FRIARS-CARSE
HERMITAGE.
"Thou whom chance may hither lead,
Be thou clad in russet weed."[189]
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 188: Song LXIX.]
[Footnote 189: Poems LXXXIX. and XC.]
CXXXV.
TO MR. MORISON,
MAUCHLINE.
[Morison, of Mauchline, made most of the poet's furniture, for Ellisland: from Mauchline, too, came that eight-day clock, which was sold, at the death of the poet's widow, for thirty-eight pounds, to one who would have paid one hundred, sooner than wanted it.]
_Ellisland, September 22, 1788._
MY DEAR SIR,
Necessity obliges me to go into my new house even before it be plastered. I will inhabit the one end until the other is finished. About three weeks more, I think, will at farthest be my time, beyond which I cannot stay in this present house. If ever you wished to deserve the blessing of him that was ready to perish; if ever you were in a situation that a little kindness would have rescued you from many evils; if ever you hope to find rest in future states of untried being--get these matters of mine ready. My servant will be out in the beginning of next week for the clock. My compliments to Mrs. Morison.
I am,
After all my tribulation,
Dear Sir, yours,
R. B.
CXXXVI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP,
OF DUNLOP.
[Burns had no great respect for critics who found blemishes without perceiving beauties: he expresses his contempt for such in this letter.]
_Mauchline, 27th Sept. 1788._
I have received twins, dear Madam, more than once; but scarcely ever with more pleasure than when I received yours of the 12th instant. To make myself understood; I had wrote to Mr. Graham, enclosing my poem addressed to him, and the same post which favoured me with yours brought me an answer from him. It was dated the very day he had received mine; and I am quite at a loss to say whether it was most polite or kind.
Your criticisms, my honoured benefactress, are truly the work of a friend. They are not the blasting depredations of a canker-toothed, caterpillar critic; nor are they the fair statement of cold impartiality, balancing with unfeeling exactitude the _pro_ and _con_ of an author's merits; they are the judicious observations of animated friendship, selecting the beauties of the piece. I have just arrived from Nithsdale, and will be here a fortnight. I was on horseback this morning by three o'clock; for between my wife and my farm is just forty-six miles. As I jogged on in the dark, I was taken with a poetic fit as follows:
"Mrs. Ferguson of Craigdarroch's lamentation for the death of her son; an uncommonly promising youth of eighteen or nineteen years of age."
"Fate gave the word--the arrow sped,
And pierced my darling's heart."[190]
You will not send me your poetic rambles, but, you see I am no niggard of mine. I am sure your impromptus give me double pleasure; what falls from your pen can neither be unentertaining in itself, nor indifferent to me.
The one fault you found, is just; but I cannot please myself in an emendation.
What a life of solicitude is the life of a parent! You interested me much in your young couple.
I would not take my folio paper for this epistle, and now I repent it. I am so jaded with my dirty long journey that I was afraid to drawl into the essence of dulness with anything larger than a quarto, and so I must leave out another rhyme of this morning's manufacture.
I will pay the sapientipotent George, most cheerfully, to hear from you ere I leave Ayrshire.
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 190: Poem XCII.]
CXXXVII.
TO MR. PETER HILL.
["The 'Address to Lochlomond,' which this letter criticises," says Currie in 1800, "was written by a gentleman, now one of the masters of the High-school of Edinburgh, and the same who translated the beautiful story of 'The Paria,' published in the Bee of Dr. Anderson."]
_Mauchline, 1st October, 1788._
I have been here in this country about three days, and all that time my chief reading has been the "Address to Lochlomond" you were so obliging as to send to me. Were I impannelled one of the author's jury, to determine his criminality respecting the sin of poesy, my verdict should be "guilty! a poet of nature's making!". It is an excellent method for improvement, and what I believe every poet does, to place some favourite classic author in his own walks of study and composition, before him as a model. Though your author had not mentioned the name, I could have, at half a glance, guessed his model to be Thomson. Will my brother-poet forgive me, if I venture to hint that his imitation of that immortal bard is in two or three places rather more servile than such a genius as his required:--_e.g._
"To soothe the maddening passions all to peace."
ADDRESS.
"To soothe the throbbing passions into peace."
THOMSON.
I think the "Address" is in simplicity, harmony, and elegance of versification, fully equal to the "Seasons." Like Thomson, too, he has looked into nature for himself: you meet with no copied description. One particular criticism I made at first reading; in no one instance has he said too much. He never flags in his progress, but, like a true poet of nature's making kindles in his course. His beginning is simple and modest, as if distrustful of the strength of his pinion; only, I do not altogether like--
-------------------------------"Truth
The soul of every song that's nobly great."
Fiction is the soul of many a song that is nobly great. Perhaps I am wrong: this may be but a prose criticism. Is not the phrase in line 7, page 6, "Great lake," too much vulgarized by every-day language for so sublime a poem?
"Great mass of waters, theme for nobler song,"
is perhaps no emendation. His enumeration of a comparison with other lakes is at once harmonious and poetic. Every reader's ideas must sweep the
"Winding margin of an hundred miles."
The perspective that follows mountains blue--the imprisoned billows beating in vain--the wooded isles--the digression on the
yew-tree--"Ben-lomond's lofty, cloud-envelop'd head," &c. are beautiful. A thunder-storm is a subject which has been often tried, yet our poet in his grand picture has interjected a circumstance, so far as I know, entirely original:--
-----------------------------"the gloom
Deep seam'd with frequent streaks of moving fire."
In his preface to the Storm, "the glens how dark between," is noble highland landscape! The "rain ploughing the red mould," too, is beautifully fancied. "Ben-lomond's lofty, pathless top," is a good expression; and the surrounding view from it is truly great: the
-----------------"silver mist,
Beneath the beaming sun,"
is well described; and here he has contrived to enliven his poem with a little of that passion which bids fair, I think, to usurp the modern muses altogether. I know not how far this episode is a beauty upon the whole, but the swain's wish to carry "some faint idea of the vision bright," to entertain her "partial listening ear," is a pretty thought. But in my opinion the most beautiful passages in the whole poem are the fowls crowding, in wintry frosts, to Lochlomond's "hospitable flood;" their wheeling round, their lighting, mixing, diving, &c.; and the glorious description of the sportsman. This last is equal to anything in the "Seasons." The idea of "the floating tribe distant seen, far glistering to the moon," provoking his eye as he is obliged to leave them, is a noble ray of poetic genius. "The howling winds," the "hideous roar" of the white cascades, are all in the same style.
I forget that while I am thus holding forth with the heedless warmth of an enthusiast, I am perhaps tiring you with nonsense. I must, however, mention that the last verse of the sixteenth page is one of the most elegant compliments I have ever seen. I must likewise notice that beautiful paragraph beginning, "The gleaming lake," &c. I dare not go into the particular beauties of the last two paragraphs, but they are admirably fine, and truly Ossianic.
I must beg your pardon for this lengthened scrawl. I had no idea of it when I began--I should like to know who the author is; but, whoever he be, please present him with my grateful thanks for the entertainment he has afforded me.
A friend of mine desired me to commission for him two books, "Letters on the Religion essential to Man," a book you sent me before; and "The World unmasked, or the Philosopher the greatest Cheat." Send me them by the first opportunity. The Bible you sent me is truly elegant; I only wish it had been in two volumes.
R. B.
CXXXVIII.
TO THE EDITOR OF "THE STAR."
[The clergyman who preached the sermon which this letter condemns, was a man equally worthy and stern--a divine of Scotland's elder day: he received "a harmonious call" to a smaller stipend than that of Dunscore--and accepted it.]
_November 8th, 1788._
SIR,
Notwithstanding the opprobrious epithets with which some of our philosophers and gloomy sectarians have branded our nature--the principle of universal selfishness, the proneness to all evil, they have given us; still the detestation in which inhumanity to the distressed, or insolence to the fallen, are held by all mankind, shows that they are not natives of the human heart. Even the unhappy partner of our kind, who is undone, the bitter consequence of his follies or his crimes, who but sympathizes with the miseries of this ruined profligate brother? We forget the injuries and feel for the man.
I went, last Wednesday, to my parish church, most cordially to join in grateful acknowledgment to the AUTHOR OF ALL GOOD, for the
consequent blessings of the glorious revolution. To that auspicious event we owe no less than our liberties, civil and religious; to it we are likewise indebted for the present Royal Family, the ruling features of whose administration have ever been mildness to the subject, and tenderness of his rights.
Bred and educated in revolution principles, the principles of reason and common sense, it could not be any silly political prejudice which made my heart revolt at the harsh abusive manner in which the reverend gentleman mentioned the House of Stewart, and which, I am afraid, was too much the language of the day. We may rejoice sufficiently in our deliverance from past evils, without cruelly raking up the ashes of those whose misfortune it was, perhaps as much as their crime, to be the authors of those evils; and we may bless God for all his goodness to us as a nation, without at the same time cursing a few ruined, powerless exiles, who only harboured ideas, and made attempts, that most of us would have done, had we been in their situation.
"The bloody and tyrannical House of Stewart" may be said with propriety and justice, when compared with the present royal family, and the sentiments of our days; but is there no allowance to be made for the manners of the times? Were the royal contemporaries of the Stewarts more attentive to their subjects' rights? Might not the epithets of "bloody and tyrannical" be, with at least equal justice, applied to the House of Tudor, of York, or any other of their predecessors?
The simple state of the case, Sir, seems to be this:--At that period, the science of government, the knowledge of the true relation between king and subject, was, like other sciences and other knowledge, just in its infancy, emerging from dark ages of ignorance and barbarity.
The Stewarts only contended for prerogatives which they knew their predecessors enjoyed, and which they saw their contemporaries enjoying; but these prerogatives were inimical to the happiness of a nation and the rights of subjects.
In the contest between prince and people, the consequence of that light of science which had lately dawned over Europe, the monarch of France, for example, was victorious over the struggling liberties of his people: with us, luckily the monarch failed, and his unwarrantable pretensions fell a sacrifice to our rights and happiness. Whether it was owing to the wisdom of leading individuals, or to the justling of parties, I cannot pretend to determine; but likewise happily for us, the kingly power was shifted into another branch of the family, who, as they owed the throne solely to the call of a free people, could claim nothing inconsistent with the covenanted terms which placed them there.
The Stewarts have been condemned and laughed at for the folly and impracticability of their attempts in 1715 and 1745. That they failed, I bless GOD; but cannot join in the ridicule against them.
Who does not know that the abilities or defects of leaders and commanders are often hidden until put to the touchstone of exigency; and that there is a caprice of fortune, an omnipotence in particular accidents and conjunctures of circumstances, which exalt us as heroes, or brand us as madmen, just as they are for or against us?
Man, Mr. Publisher, is a strange, weak, inconsistent being; who would believe, Sir, that in this our Augustan age of liberality and refinement, while we seem so justly sensible and jealous of our rights and liberties, and animated with such indignation against the very memory of those who would have subverted them--that a certain people under our national protection should complain, not against our monarch and a few favorite advisers, but against our WHOLE LEGISLATIVE BODY, for similar oppression, and almost in the very same terms, as our forefathers did of the house of Stewart! I will not, I cannot enter into the merits of the cause; but I dare say the American Congress, in 1776, will be allowed to be as able and as enlightened as the English Convention was in 1688; and that their posterity will celebrate the centenary of their deliverance from us, as duly and sincerely as we do ours from the oppressive measures of the wrong-headed House of Stewart.
To conclude, Sir; let every man who has a tear for the many miseries incident to humanity feel for a family illustrious as any in Europe, and unfortunate beyond historic precedent; and let every Briton (and particularly every Scotsman) who ever looked with reverential pity on the dotage of a parent, cast a veil over the fatal mistakes of the kings of his forefathers.
R. B.
CXXXIX.
TO MRS. DUNLOP,
AT MOREHAM MAINS.
[The heifer presented to the poet by the Dunlops was bought, at the sale of Ellisland stock, by Miller of Dalswinton, and long grazed the pastures in his "policies" by the name of "Burns."]
_Mauchline_, 13_th November_, 1788.
MADAM,
I had the very great pleasure of dining at Dunlop yesterday. Men are said to flatter women because they are weak; if it is so, poets must be weaker still; for Misses R. and K. and Miss G. M'K., with their flattering attentions, and artful compliments, absolutely turned my head. I own they did not lard me over as many a poet does his patron, but they so intoxicated me with their sly insinuations and delicate inuendos of compliment, that if it had not been for a lucky recollection, how much additional weight and lustre your good opinion and friendship must give me in that circle, I had certainly looked upon myself as a person of no small consequence. I dare not say one word how much I was charmed with the Major's friendly welcome, elegant manner, and acute remark, lest I should be thought to overbalance my orientalisms of applause over-against the finest quey[191] in Ayrshire, which he made me a present of to help and adorn my farm-stock. As it was on hallow-day, I am determined annually, as that day returns, to decorate her horns with an ode of gratitude to the family of Dunlop.
So soon as I know of your arrival at Dunlop, I will take the first conveniency to dedicate a day, or perhaps two, to you and friendship, under the guarantee of the Major's hospitality. There will soon be threescore and ten miles of permanent distance between us; and now that your friendship and friendly correspondence is entwisted with the heart-strings of my enjoyment of life, I must indulge myself in a happy day of "The feast of reason and the flow of soul."
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 191: Heifer.]
CXL.
TO MR. JAMES JOHNSON,
ENGRAVER.
[James Johnson, though not an ungenerous man, meanly refused to give a copy of the Musical Museum to Burns, who desired to bestow it on one to whom his family was deeply indebted. This was in the last year of the poet's life, and after the Museum had been brightened by so much of his lyric verse.]
_Mauchline, November 15th, 1788._
MY DEAR SIR,
I have sent you two more songs. If you have got any tunes, or anything to correct, please send them by return of the carrier.
I can easily see, my dear friend, that you will very probably have four volumes. Perhaps you may not find your account lucratively in this business; but you are a patriot for the music of your country; and I am certain posterity will look on themselves as highly indebted to your public spirit. Be not in a hurry; let us go on correctly, and your name shall be immortal.
I am preparing a flaming preface for your third volume. I see every day new musical publications advertised; but what are they? Gaudy, hunted butterflies of a day, and then vanish for ever: but your work will outlive the momentary neglects of idle fashion, and defy the teeth of time.
Have you never a fair goddess that leads you a wild-goose chase of amorous devotion? Let me know a few of her qualities, such as whether she be rather black, or fair; plump, or thin; short, or tall, &c.; and choose your air, and I shall task my muse to celebrate her.
R. B.
CXLI.
TO DR. BLACKLOCK.
[Blacklock, though blind, was a cheerful and good man. "There was, perhaps, never one among all mankind," says Heron, "whom you might more truly have called an angel upon earth."]
_Mauchline, November 15th, 1788._
REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,
As I hear nothing of your motions, but that you are, or were, out of town, I do not know where this may find you, or whether it will find you at all. I wrote you a long letter, dated from the land of matrimony, in June; but either it had not found you, or, what I dread more, it found you or Mrs. Blacklock in too precarious a state of health and spirits to take notice of an idle packet.
I have done many little things for Johnson, since I had the pleasure of seeing you; and I have finished one piece, in the way of Pope's "Moral Epistles;" but, from your silence, I have everything to fear, so I have only sent you two melancholy things, which I tremble lest they should too well suit the tone of your present feelings.
In a fortnight I move, bag and baggage, to Nithsdale; till then, my direction is at this place; after that period, it will be at Ellisland, near Dumfries. It would extremely oblige me, were it but half a line, to let me know how you are, and where you are. Can I be indifferent to the fate of a man to whom I owe so much? A man whom I not only esteem, but venerate.
My warmest good wishes and most respectful compliments to Mrs. Blacklock, and Miss Johnston, if she is with you.
I cannot conclude without telling you that I am more and more pleased with the step I took respecting "my Jean." Two things, from my happy experience, I set down as apothegms in life. A wife's head is immaterial, compared with her heart; and--"Virtue's (for wisdom what poet pretends to it?) ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace."
Adieu!
R. B.
[Here follow "The Mother's Lament for the Loss of her Son," and the song beginning "The lazy mist hangs from the brow of the hill."]
CXLII.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The "Auld lang syne," which Burns here introduces to Mrs. Dunlop as a strain of the olden time, is as surely his own as Tam-o-Shanter.]
_Ellisland, 17th December, 1788._
MY DEAR HONOURED FRIEND,
Yours, dated Edinburgh, which I have just read, makes me very unhappy. "Almost blind and wholly deaf," are melancholy news of human nature; but when told of a much-loved and honoured friend, they carry misery in the sound. Goodness on your part, and gratitude on mine, began a tie which has gradually entwisted itself among the dearest chords of my bosom, and I tremble at the omens of your late and present ailing habit and shattered health. You miscalculate matters widely, when you forbid my waiting on you, lest it should hurt my worldly concerns. My small scale of farming is exceedingly more simple and easy than what you have lately seen at Moreham Mains. But, be that as it may, the heart of the man and the fancy of the poet are the two grand considerations for which I live: if miry ridges and dirty dunghills are to engross the best part of the functions of my soul immortal, I had better been a rook or a magpie at once, and then I should not have been plagued with any ideas superior to breaking of clods and picking up grubs; not to mention barn-door cocks or mallards, creatures with which I could almost exchange lives at any time. If you continue so deaf, I am afraid a visit will be no great pleasure to either of us; but if I hear you are got so well again as to be able to relish conversation, look you to it, Madam, for I will make my threatenings good. I am to be at the New-year-day fair of Ayr; and, by all that is sacred in the world, friend, I will come and see you.
Your meeting, which you so well describe, with your old schoolfellow and friend, was truly interesting. Out upon the ways of the world!--They spoil "these social offsprings of the heart." Two veterans of the "men of the world" would have met with little more heart-workings than two old hacks worn out on the road. Apropos, is not the Scotch phrase, "Auld lang syne," exceedingly expressive? There is an old song and tune which has often thrilled through my soul. You know I am an enthusiast in old Scotch songs. I shall give you the verses on the other sheet, as I suppose Mr. Ker will save you the postage.
"Should auld acquaintance be forgot!"[192]
Light be the turf on the breast of the heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment. There is more of the fire of native genius in it than in half-a-dozen of modern English Bacchanalians! Now I am on my hobby-horse, I cannot help inserting two other old stanzas, which please me mightily:--
"Go fetch to me a pint of wine."[193]
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 192: See Song CCX.]
[Footnote 193: See Song LXXII.]
CXLIII.
TO MISS DAVIES.
[The Laird of Glenriddel informed "the charming, lovely Davies" that Burns was composing a song in her praise. The poet acted on this, and sent the song, enclosed in this characteristic letter.]
_December, 1788._
MADAM,
I understand my very worthy neighbour, Mr. Riddel, has informed you that I have made you the subject of some verses. There is something so provoking in the idea of being the burthen of a ballad, that I do not think Job or Moses, though such patterns of patience and meekness, could have resisted the curiosity to know what that ballad was: so my worthy friend has done me a mischief, which I dare say he never intended; and reduced me to the unfortunate alternative of leaving your curiosity ungratified, or else disgusting you with foolish verses, the unfinished production of a random moment, and never meant to have met your ear. I have heard or read somewhere of a gentleman who had some genius, much eccentricity, and very considerable dexterity with his pencil. In the accidental group of life into which one is thrown, wherever this gentleman met with a character in a more than ordinary degree congenial to his heart, he used to steal a sketch of the face, merely, he said, as a _nota bene_, to point out the agreeable recollection to his memory. What this gentleman's pencil was to him, my muse is to me; and the verses I do myself the honour to send you are a _memento_ exactly of the same kind that he indulged in.
It may be more owing to the fastidiousness of my caprice than the delicacy of my taste; but I am so often tired, disgusted and hurt with insipidity, affectation, and pride of mankind, that when I meet with a person "after my own heart," I positively feel what an orthodox Protestant would call a species of idolatry, which acts on my fancy like inspiration; and I can no more desist rhyming on the impulse, than an Æolian harp can refuse its tones to the streaming air. A distich or two would be the consequence, though the object which hit my fancy were gray-bearded-age; but where my theme is youth and beauty, a young lady whose personal charms, wit, and sentiment are equally striking and unaffected--by heavens! though I had lived three score years a married man, and three score years before I was a married man, my imagination would hallow the very idea: and I am truly sorry that the inclosed stanzas have done such poor justice to such a subject.
R. B.
CXLIV.
TO MR. JOHN TENNANT.
[The mill of John Currie stood on a small stream which fed the loch of Friar's Carse--near the house of the dame of whom he sang, "Sic a wife as Willie had."]
_December 22, 1788._
I yesterday tried my cask of whiskey for the first time, and I assure you it does you great credit. It will bear five waters strong; or six ordinary toddy. The whiskey of this country is a most rascally liquor; and, by consequence, only drank by the most rascally part of the inhabitants. I am persuaded, if you once get a footing here, you might do a great deal of business, in the way of consumpt; and should you commence distiller again, this is the native barley country. I am ignorant if, in your present way of dealing, you would think it worth your while to extend your business so far as this country side. I write you this on the account of an accident, which I must take the merit of having partly designed to. A neighbour of mine, a John Currie, miller in Carsemill--a man who is, in a word, a "very" good man, even for a £500 bargain--he and his wife were in my house the time I broke open the cask. They keep a country public-house and sell a great deal of foreign spirits, but all along thought that whiskey would have degraded this house. They were perfectly astonished at my whiskey, both for its taste and strength; and, by their desire, I write you to know if you could supply them with liquor of an equal quality, and what price. Please write me by first post, and direct to me at Ellisland, near Dumfries. If you could take a jaunt this way yourself, I have a spare spoon, knife and fork very much at your service. My compliments to Mrs. Tennant, and all the good folks in Glenconnel and Barquharrie.
R. B.
CXLV.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The feeling mood of moral reflection exhibited in the following letter, was common to the house of William Burns: in a letter addressed by Gilbert to Robert of this date, the poet is reminded of the early vicissitudes of their name, and desired to look up, and be thankful.]
_Ellisland, New-year-day Morning, 1789._
This, dear Madam, is a morning of wishes, and would to God that I came under the apostle James's description!--_the prayer of a righteous man availeth much._ In that case, Madam, you should welcome in a year full of blessings: everything that obstructs or disturbs tranquillity and self-enjoyment, should be removed, and every pleasure that frail humanity can taste, should be yours. I own myself so little a Presbyterian, that I approve of set times and seasons of more than ordinary acts of devotion, for breaking in on that habitual routine of life and thought, which is so apt to reduce our existence to a kind of instinct, or even sometimes, and with some minds, to a state very little superior to mere machinery.
This day, the first Sunday of May, a breezy, blue-skyed noon some time about the beginning, and a hoary morning and calm sunny day about the end, of autumn; these, time out of mind, have been with me a kind of holiday.
I believe I owe this to that glorious paper in the Spectator, "The Vision of Mirza," a piece that struck my young fancy before I was capable of fixing an idea to a word of three syllables: "On the 6th day of the moon, which, according to the custom of my forefathers, I always _keep holy_, after washing myself, and offering up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hill of Bagdat, in order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer."
We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the substance or structure of our souls, so cannot account for those seeming caprices in them, that one should be particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which, on minds of a different cast, makes no extraordinary impression. I have some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain-daisy, the hare-bell, the fox-glove, the wild
brier-rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of grey plovers, in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the Æolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities--a God that made all things--man's immaterial and immortal nature--and a world of weal or woe beyond death and the grave.
R. B.
CXLVI.
TO DR. MOORE.
[The poet seems, in this letter, to perceive that Ellisland was not the bargain he had reckoned it: he intimated, as the reader will remember, something of the same kind to Margaret Chalmers.]
_Ellisland, 4th Jan. 1789._
SIR,
As often as I think of writing to you, which has been three or four times every week these six months, it gives me something so like the idea of an ordinary-sized statue offering at a conversation with the Rhodian colossus, that my mind misgives me, and the affair always miscarries somewhere between purpose and resolve. I have at last got some business with you, and business letters are written by the stylebook. I say my business is with you, Sir, for you never had any with me, except the business that benevolence has in the mansion of poverty.
The character and employment of a poet were formerly my pleasure, but are now my pride. I know that a very great deal of my late eclat was owing to the singularity of my situation, and the honest prejudice of Scotsmen; but still, as I said in the preface to my first edition, I do look upon myself as having some pretensions from Nature to the poetic character. I have not a doubt but the knack, the aptitude, to learn the muses' trade, is a gift bestowed by him "who forms the secret bias of the soul;"--but I as firmly believe, that _excellence_ in the profession is the fruit of industry, labour, attention, and pains. At least I am resolved to try my doctrine by the test of experience. Another appearance from the press I put off to a very distant day, a day that may never arrive--but poesy I am determined to prosecute with all my vigour. Nature has given very few, if any, of the profession, the talents of shining in every species of
composition. I shall try (for until trial it is impossible to know) whether she has qualified me to shine in any one. The worst of it is, by the time one has finished a piece, it has been so often viewed and reviewed before the mental eye, that one loses, in a good measure, the powers of critical discrimination. Here the best criterion I know is a friend--not only of abilities to judge, but with good-nature enough, like a prudent teacher with a young learner, to praise perhaps a little more than is exactly just, lest the thin-skinned animal fall into that most deplorable of all poetic diseases--heart-breaking despondency of himself. Dare I, Sir, already immensely indebted to your goodness, ask the additional obligation of your being that friend to me? I enclose you an essay of mine in a walk of poesy to me entirely new; I mean the epistle addressed to R. G. Esq. or Robert Graham of Fintray, Esq., a gentleman of uncommon worth, to whom I lie under very great obligations. The story of the poem, like most of my poems, is connected with my own story, and to give you the one, I must give you something of the other. I cannot boast of Mr. Creech's ingenuous fair dealing to me. He kept me hanging about Edinburgh from the 7th August, 1787, until the 13th April, 1788, before he would condescend to give me a statement of affairs; nor had I got it even then, but for an angry letter I wrote him, which irritated his pride. "I could" not a "tale" but a detail "unfold," but what am I that should speak against the Lord's anointed Bailie of Edinburgh?
I believe I shall in the whole, 100_l._ copyright included, clear about 400_l._ some little odds; and even part of this depends upon what the gentleman has yet to settle with me. I give you this information, because you did me the honour to interest yourself much in my welfare. I give you this information, but I give it to yourself only, for I am still much in the gentleman's mercy. Perhaps I injure the man in the idea I am sometimes tempted to have of him--God forbid I should! A little time will try, for in a month I shall go to town to wind up the business if possible.
To give the rest of my story in brief, I have married "my Jean," and taken a farm: with the first step I have every day more and more reason to be satisfied: with the last, it is rather the reverse. I have a younger brother, who supports my aged mother; another still younger brother, and three sisters, in a farm. On my last return from Edinburgh, it cost me about 180l. to save them from ruin. Not that I have lost so much.--I only interposed between my brother and his impending fate by the loan of so much. I give myself no airs on this, for it was mere selfishness on my part: I was conscious that the wrong scale of the balance was pretty heavily charged, and I thought that throwing a little filial piety and fraternal affection into the scale in my favour, might help to smooth matters at the _grand reckoning._ There is still one thing would make my circumstances quite easy: I have an excise officer's commission, and I live in the midst of a country division. My request to Mr. Graham, who is one of the commissioners of excise, was, if in his power, to procure me that division. If I were very sanguine, I might hope that some of my great patrons might procure me a Treasury warrant for supervisor, surveyor-general, &c.
Thus, secure of a livelihood, "to thee, sweet poetry, delightful maid," I would consecrate my future days.
R. B.
CXLVII.
TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.
[The song which the poet says he brushed up a little is nowhere mentioned: he wrote one hundred, and brushed up more, for the Museum of Johnson.]
_Ellisland, Jan. 6, 1789._
Many happy returns of the season to you, my dear Sir! May you be comparatively happy up to your comparative worth among the sons of men; which wish would, I am sure, make you one of the most blest of the human race.
I do not know if passing a "Writer to the signet," be a trial of scientific merit, or a mere business of friends and interest. However it be, let me quote you my two favourite passages, which, though I have repeated them ten thousand times, still they rouse my manhood and steel my resolution like inspiration.
------------------"On reason build resolve,
That column of true majesty in man."
YOUNG. NIGHT THOUGHTS.
"Hear, Alfred, hero of the state,
Thy genius heaven's high will declare;
The triumph of the truly great,
Is never, never to despair!
Is never to despair!"
THOMSON. MASQUE OF ALFRED.
I grant you enter the lists of life, to struggle for bread, business, notice, and distinction, in common with hundreds.--But who are they? Men, like yourself, and of that aggregate body your compeers, seven-tenths of them come short of your advantages natural and accidental; while two of those that remain, either neglect their parts, as flowers blooming in a desert, or mis-spend their strength, like a bull goring a bramble-bush.
But to change the theme: I am still catering for Johnson's
publication; and among others, I have brushed up the following old favourite song a little, with a view to your worship. I have only altered a word here and there; but if you like the humour of it, we shall think of a stanza or two to add to it.
R. B.
CXLVIII.
TO PROFESSOR DUGALD STEWART.
[The iron justice to which the poet alludes, in this letter, was exercised by Dr. Gregory, on the poem of the "Wounded Hare."]
_Ellisland, 20th Jan, 1789._
SIR,
The enclosed sealed packet I sent to Edinburgh, a few days after I had the happiness of meeting you in Ayrshire, but you were gone for the Continent. I have now added a few more of my productions, those for which I am indebted to the Nithsdale muses. The piece inscribed to R. G. Esq., is a copy of verses I sent Mr. Graham, of Fintray, accompanying a request for his assistance in a matter to me of very great moment. To that gentleman I am already doubly indebted, for deeds of kindness of serious import to my dearest interests, done in a manner grateful to the delicate feelings of sensibility. This poem is a species of composition new to me, but I do not intend it shall be my last essay of the kind, as you will see by the "Poet's Progress." These fragments, if my design succeed, are but a small part of the intended whole. I propose it shall be the work of my utmost exertions, ripened by years; of course I do not wish it much known. The fragment beginning "A little, upright, pert, tart, &c.," I have not shown to man living, till I now send it you. It forms the postulata, the axioms, the definition of a character, which, if it appear at all, shall be placed in a variety of lights. This particular part I send you merely as a sample of my hand at portrait-sketching, but, lest idle conjecture should pretend to point out the original, please to let it be for your single, sole inspection.
Need I make any apology for this trouble, to a gentleman who has treated me with such marked benevolence and peculiar kindness--who has entered into my interests with so much zeal, and on whose critical decisions I can so fully depend? A poet as I am by trade, these decisions are to me of the last consequence. My late transient acquaintance among some of the mere rank and file of greatness, I resign with ease; but to the distinguished champions of genius and learning, I shall be ever ambitious of being known. The native genius and accurate discernment in Mr. Stewart's critical strictures; the justness (iron justice, for he has no bowels of compassion for a poor poetic sinner) of Dr. Gregory's remarks, and the delicacy of Professor Dalzel's taste, I shall ever revere.
I shall be in Edinburgh some time next month.
I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your highly obliged, and very
Humble servant,
R. B.
CXLIX.
TO BISHOP GEDDES.
[Alexander Geddes was a controversialist and poet, and a bishop of the broken remnant of the Catholic Church of Scotland: he is known as the author of a very humorous ballad called "The Wee bit Wifickie," and as the translator of one of the books of the Iliad, in opposition to Cowper.]
_Ellisland, 3d Feb. 1789._
VENERABLE FATHER,
As I am conscious that wherever I am, you do me the honour to interest yourself in my welfare, it gives me pleasure to inform you that I am here at last, stationary in the serious business of life, and have now not only the retired leisure, but the hearty inclination, to attend to those great and important questions--what I am? where I am? and for what I am destined?
In that first concern, the conduct of the man, there was ever but one side on which I was habitually blameable, and there I have secured myself in the way pointed out by Nature and Nature's God. I was sensible that to so helpless a creature as a poor poet, a wife and family were encumbrances, which a species of prudence would bid him shun; but when the alternative was, being at eternal warfare with myself, on account of habitual follies, to give them no worse name, which no general example, no licentious wit, no sophistical infidelity, would, to me, ever justify, I must have been a fool to have hesitated, and a madman to have made another choice. Besides, I had in "my Jean" a long and much-loved fellow-creature's happiness or misery among my hands, and who could trifle with such a deposit?
In the affair of a livelihood, I think myself tolerably secure: I have good hopes of my farm, but should they fail, I have an excise commission, which on my simple petition, will, at any time, procure me bread. There is a certain stigma affixed to the character of an Excise officer, but I do not pretend to borrow honour from my profession; and though the salary be comparatively small, it is luxury to anything that the first twenty-five years of my life taught me to expect.
Thus, with a rational aim and method in life, you may easily guess, my reverend and much-honoured friend, that my characteristical trade is not forgotten. I am, if possible, more than over an enthusiast to the muses. I am determined to study man and nature, and in that view incessantly; and to try if the ripening and corrections of years can enable me to produce something worth preserving.
You will see in your book, which I beg your pardon for detaining so long, that I have been tuning my lyre on the banks of Nith. Some large poetic plans that are floating in my imagination, or partly put in execution, I shall impart to you when I have the pleasure of meeting with you; which, if you are then in Edinburgh, I shall have about the beginning of March.
That acquaintance, worthy Sir, with which you were pleased to honour me, you must still allow me to challenge; for with whatever unconcern I give up my transient connexion with the merely great, those self-important beings whose intrinsic * * * * [con]cealed under the accidental advantages of their * * * * I cannot lose the patronizing notice of the learned and good, without the bitterest regret.
R. B.
CL.
TO MR. JAMES BURNESS.
[Fanny Burns married Adam Armour, brother to bonnie Jean, went with him to Mauchline, and bore him sons and daughters.]
_Ellisland, 9th Feb. 1789._
MY DEAR SIR,
Why I did not write to you long ago, is what, even on the rack, I could not answer. If you can in your mind form an idea of indolence, dissipation, hurry, cares, change of country, entering on untried scenes of life, all combined, you will save me the trouble of a blushing apology. It could not be want of regard for a man for whom I had a high esteem before I knew him--an esteem which has much increased since I did know him; and this caveat entered, I shall plead guilty to any other indictment with which you shall please to charge me.
After I had parted from you for many months my life was one continued scene of dissipation. Here at last I am become stationary, and have taken a farm and--a wife.
The farm is beautifully situated on the Nith, a large river that runs by Dumfries, and falls into the Solway frith. I have gotten a lease of my farm as long as I pleased: but how it may turn out is just a guess, it is yet to improve and enclose, &c.; however, I have good hopes of my bargain on the whole.
My wife is my Jean, with whose story you are partly acquainted. I found I had a much-loved fellow creature's happiness or misery among my hands, and I durst not trifle with so sacred a deposit. Indeed I have not any reason to repent the step I have taken, as I have attached myself to a very good wife, and have shaken myself loose of every bad failing.
I have found my book a very profitable business, and with the profits of it I have begun life pretty decently. Should fortune not favour me in farming, as I have no great faith in her fickle ladyship, I have provided myself in another resource, which however some folks may affect to despise it, is still a comfortable shift in the day of misfortune. In the heyday of my fame, a gentleman whose name at least I dare say you know, as his estate lies somewhere near Dundee, Mr. Graham, of Fintray, one of the commissioners of Excise, offered me the commission of an Excise officer. I thought it prudent to accept the offer; and accordingly I took my instructions, and have my commission by me. Whether I may ever do duty, or be a penny the better for it, is what I do not know; but I have the comfortable assurance, that come whatever ill fate will, I can, on my simple petition to the Excise-board, get into employ.
We have lost poor uncle Robert this winter. He has long been very weak, and with very little alteration on him, he expired 3d Jan.
His son William has been with me this winter, and goes in May to be an apprentice to a mason. His other son, the eldest, John, comes to me I expect in summer. They are both remarkably stout young fellows, and promise to do well. His only daughter, Fanny, has been with me ever since her father's death, and I purpose keeping her in my family till she be quite woman grown, and fit for service. She is one of the cleverest girls, and has one of the most amiable dispositions I have ever seen.
All friends in this country and Ayrshire are well. Remember me to all friends in the north. My wife joins me in compliments to Mrs. B. and family.
I am ever, my dear Cousin,
Yours, sincerely,
R. B.
CLI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The beautiful lines with which this letter concludes, I have reason to believe were the production of the lady to whom the epistle is addressed.]
_Ellisland, 4th March, 1789._
Here am I, my honoured friend, returned safe from the capital. To a man, who has a home, however humble or remote--if that home is like mine, the scene of domestic comfort--the bustle of Edinburgh will soon be a business of sickening disgust.
"Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate you!"
When I must skulk into a corner, lest the rattling equipage of some gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to exclaim--"What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some state of pre-existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the sceptre of rule, and the key of riches in his puny fist, and I am kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?" I have read somewhere of a monarch (in Spain I think it was), who was so out of humour with the Ptolemean system of astronomy, that he said had he been of the CREATOR'S council, he could have saved him a great deal of labour and absurdity. I will not defend this blasphemous speech; but often, as I have glided with humble stealth through the pomp of Princes' street, it has suggested itself to me, as an improvement on the present human figure, that a man in proportion to his own conceit of his consequence in the world, could have pushed out the longitude of his common size, as a snail pushes out his horns, or, as we draw out a perspective. This trifling alteration, not to mention the prodigious saving it would be in the tear and wear of the neck and limb-sinews of many of his majesty's liege subjects, in the way of tossing the head and tiptoe strutting, would evidently turn out a vast advantage, in enabling us at once to adjust the ceremonials in making a bow, or making way to a great man, and that too within a second of the precise spherical angle of reverence, or an inch of the particular point of respectful distance, which the important creature itself requires; as a measuring-glance at its towering altitude, would determine the affair like instinct.
You are right, Madam, in your idea of poor Mylne's poem, which he has addressed to me. The piece has a good deal of merit, but it has one great fault--it is, by far, too long. Besides, my success has encouraged such a shoal of ill-spawned monsters to crawl into public notice, under the title of Scottish Poets, that the very term Scottish Poetry borders on the burlesque. When I write to Mr. Carfrae, I shall advise him rather to try one of his deceased friend's English pieces. I am prodigiously hurried with my own matters, else I would have requested a perusal of all Mylne's poetic performances; and would have offered his friends my assistance in either selecting or correcting what would be proper for the press. What it is that occupies me so much, and perhaps a little oppresses my present spirits, shall fill up a paragraph in some future letter. In the mean time, allow me to close this epistle with a few lines done by a friend of mine * * * * *. I give you them, that as you have seen the original, you may guess whether one or two alterations I have ventured to make in them, be any real improvement.
"Like the fair plant that from our touch withdraws,
Shrink, mildly fearful, even from applause,
Be all a mother's fondest hope can dream,
And all you are, my charming ..., seem.
Straight as the fox-glove, ere her bells disclose,
Mild as the maiden-blushing hawthorn blows,
Fair as the fairest of each lovely kind,
Your form shall be the image of your mind;
Your manners shall so true your soul express,
That all shall long to know the worth they guess:
Congenial hearts shall greet with kindred love,
And even sick'ning envy must approve."
R. B.
CLII.
TO THE REV. PETER CARFRAE.
[Mylne was a worthy and a modest man: he died of an inflammatory fever in the prime of life.]
1789.
REV. SIR,
I do not recollect that I have ever felt a severer pang of shame, than on looking at the date of your obliging letter which accompanied Mr. Mylne's poem.
I am much to blame: the honour Mr. Mylne has done me, greatly enhanced in its value by the endearing, though melancholy circumstance, of its being the last production of his muse, deserved a better return.
I have, as you hint, thought of sending a copy of the poem to some periodical publication; but, on second thoughts, I am afraid, that in the present case, it would be an improper step. My success, perhaps as much accidental as merited, has brought an inundation of nonsense under the name of Scottish poetry. Subscription-bills for Scottish poems have so dunned, and daily do dun the public, that the very name is in danger of contempt. For these reasons, if publishing any of Mr. Mylne's poems in a magazine, &c., be at all prudent, in my opinion it certainly should not be a Scottish poem. The profits of the labours of a man of genius are, I hope, as honourable as any profits whatever; and Mr. Mylne's relations are most justly entitled to that honest harvest, which fate has denied himself to reap. But let the friends of Mr. Mylne's fame (among whom I crave the honour of ranking myself) always keep in eye his respectability as a man and as a poet, and take no measure that, before the world knows anything about him, would risk his name and character being classed with the fools of the times.
I have, Sir, some experience of publishing; and the way in which I would proceed with Mr. Mylne's poem is this:--I would publish, in two or three English and Scottish public papers, any one of his English poems which should, by private judges, be thought the most excellent, and mention it, at the same time, as one of the productions of a Lothian farmer, of respectable character, lately deceased, whose poems his friends had it in idea to publish, soon, by subscription, for the sake of his numerous family:--not in pity to that family, but in justice to what his friends think the poetic merits of the deceased; and to secure, in the most effectual manner, to those tender connexions, whose right it is, the pecuniary reward of those merits.
R. B.