his eye over these pages, let him pay a warm attention to the
following observations, as I assure him they are the fruit of a poor
devil's dear-bought experience.--I have literally, like that great
poet and great gallant, and by consequence, that great fool, Solomon,
"turned my eyes to behold madness and folly." Nay, I have, with all
the ardour of a lively, fanciful, and whimsical imagination,
accompanied with a warm, feeling, poetic heart, shaken hands with
their intoxicating friendship.
In the first place, let my pupil, as he tenders his own peace, keep up
a regular, warm intercourse with the Deity. * * * *
This is all worth quoting in my MSS., and more than all.
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 145: See Songs and Ballads, No. I.]
[Footnote 146: See Winter. A Dirge. Poem I.]
[Footnote 147: Song XIV.]
[Footnote 148: Poem IX.]
[Footnote 149: Song V]
[Footnote 150: Song XVII.]
[Footnote 151: Poem X.]
[Footnote 152: Poem XI.]
[Footnote 153: "The Mill, Mill, O," is by Allan Ramsay.]
[Footnote 154: Song VIII.]
[Footnote 155: Alluding to the misfortunes he feelingly laments before
this verse. (This is the author's note.)]
[Footnote 156: Song II.]
* * * * *
IX.
TO MR. JAMES BURNESS,
MONTROSE.
[The elder Burns, whose death this letter intimates, lies buried in
the kirk-yard of Alloway, with a tombstone recording his worth.]
_Lochlea_, 17_th Feb._ 1784.
DEAR COUSIN,
I would have returned you my thanks for your kind favour of the 13th
of December sooner, had it not been that I waited to give you an
account of that melancholy event, which, for some time past, we have
from day to day expected.
On the 13th current I lost the best of fathers. Though, to be sure, we
have had long warning of the impending stroke; still the feelings of
nature claim their part, and I cannot recollect the tender endearments
and parental lessons of the best of friends and ablest of instructors,
without feeling what perhaps the calmer dictates of reason would
partly condemn.
I hope my father's friends in your country will not let their
connexion in this place die with him. For my part I shall ever with
pleasure--with pride, acknowledge my connexion with those who were
allied by the ties of blood and friendship to a man whose memory I
shall ever honour and revere.
I expect, therefore, my dear Sir, you will not neglect any opportunity
of letting me hear from you, which will very much oblige,
My dear Cousin, yours sincerely,
R. B.
* * * * *
X.
TO JAMES BURNESS,
MONTROSE.
[Mrs. Buchan, the forerunner in extravagance and absurdity of Joanna
Southcote, after attempting to fix her tent among the hills of the
west and the vales of the Nith, finally set up her staff at
Auchengibbert-Hill, in Galloway, where she lectured her followers, and
held out hopes of their reaching the stars, even in this life. She
died early: one or two of her people, as she called them, survived
till within these half-dozen years.]
_Mossgiel, August_, 1784.
We have been surprised with one of the most extraordinary phenomena in
the moral world which, I dare say, had happened in the course of this
half century. We have had a party of Presbytery relief, as they call
themselves, for some time in this country. A pretty thriving society
of them has been in the burgh of Irvine for some years past, till
about two years ago, a Mrs. Buchan from Glasgow came among them, and
began to spread some fanatical notions of religion among them, and, in
a short time, made many converts; and, among others, their preacher,
Mr. Whyte, who, upon that account, has been suspended and formally
deposed by his brethren. He continued, however, to preach in private
to his party, and was supported, both he and their spiritual mother,
as they affect to call old Buchan, by the contributions of the rest,
several of whom were in good circumstances; till, in spring last, the
populace rose and mobbed Mrs. Buchan, and put her out of the town; on
which all her followers voluntarily quitted the place likewise, and
with such precipitation, that many of them never shut their doors
behind them; one left a washing on the green, another a cow bellowing
at the crib without food, or anybody to mind her, and after several
stages, they are fixed at present in the neighbourhood of Dumfries.
Their tenets are a strange jumble of enthusiastic jargon; among
others, she pretends to give them the Holy Ghost by breathing on them,
which she does with postures and practices that are scandalously
indecent; they have likewise disposed of all their effects, and hold a
community of goods, and live nearly an idle life, carrying on a great
farce of pretended devotion in barns and woods, where they lodge and
lie all together, and hold likewise a community of women, as it is
another of their tenets that they can commit no mortal sin. I am
personally acquainted with most of them, and I can assure you the
above mentioned are facts.
This, my dear Sir, is one of the many instances of the folly of
leaving the guidance of sound reason and common sense in matters of
religion.
Whenever we neglect or despise these sacred monitors, the whimsical
notions of a perturbated brain are taken for the immediate influences
of the Deity, and the wildest fanaticism, and the most inconstant
absurdities, will meet with abettors and converts. Nay, I have often
thought, that the more out-of-the-way and ridiculous the fancies are,
if once they are sanctified under the sacred name of religion, the
unhappy mistaken votaries are the more firmly glued to them.
R. B.
* * * * *
XI.
TO MISS ----.
[This has generally been printed among the early letters of Burns.
Cromek thinks that the person addressed was the "Peggy" of the
Common-place Book. This is questioned by Robert Chambers, who,
however, leaves both name and date unsettled.]
MY DEAR COUNTRYWOMAN,
I am so impatient to show you that I am once more at peace with you,
that I send you the book I mentioned directly, rather than wait the
uncertain time of my seeing you. I am afraid I have mislaid or lost
Collins' Poems, which I promised to Miss Irvin. If I can find them, I
will forward them by you; if not, you must apologize for me.
I know you will laugh at it when I tell you that your piano and you
together have played the deuce somehow about my heart. My breast has
been widowed these many months, and I thought myself proof against the
fascinating witchcraft; but I am afraid you will "feelingly convince
me what I am." I say, I am afraid, because I am not sure what is the
matter with me. I have one miserable bad symptom; when you whisper, or
look kindly to another, it gives me a draught of damnation. I have a
kind of wayward wish to be with you ten minutes by yourself, though
what I would say, Heaven above knows, for I am sure I know not. I have
no formed design in all this; but just, in the nakedness of my heart,
write you down a mere matter-of-fact story. You may perhaps give
yourself airs of distance on this, and that will completely cure me;
but I wish you would not: just let us meet, if you please, in the old
beaten way of friendship.
I will not subscribe myself your humble servant, for that is a phrase,
I think at least fifty miles off from the heart; but I will conclude
with sincerely wishing that the Great Protector of innocence may
shield you from the barbed dart of calumny, and hand you by the covert
snare of deceit.
R. B.
* * * * *
XII.
TO MR. JOHN RICHMOND,
OF EDINBURGH.
[John Richmond, writer, one of the poet's Mauchline friends, to whom
we are indebted for much valuable information concerning Burns and his
productions--Connel was the Mauchline carrier.]
_Mossgiel, Feb._ 17, 1786.
MY DEAR SIR,
I have not time at present to upbraid you for your silence and
neglect; I shall only say I received yours with great pleasure. I have
enclosed you a piece of rhyming ware for your perusal. I have been
very busy with the muses since I saw you, and have composed, among
several others, "The Ordination," a poem on Mr. M'Kinlay's being
called to Kilmarnock; "Scotch Drink," a poem; "The Cotter's Saturday
Night;" "An Address to the Devil," &c. I have likewise completed my
poem on the "Dogs," but have not shown it to the world. My chief
patron now is Mr. Aiken, in Ayr, who is pleased to express great
approbation of my works. Be so good as send me Fergusson, by Connel,
and I will remit you the money. I have no news to acquaint you with
about Mauchline, they are just going on in the old way. I have some
very important news with respect to myself, not the most
agreeable--news that I am sure you cannot guess, but I shall give you
the particulars another time. I am extremely happy with Smith; he is
the only friend I have now in Mauchline. I can scarcely forgive your
long neglect of me, and I beg you will let me hear from you regularly
by Connel. If you would act your part as a friend, I am sure neither
good nor bad fortune should strange of alter me. Excuse haste, as I
got yours but yesterday.
I am, my dear Sir,
Yours,
R. B.
* * * * *
XIII.
TO MR. JOHN KENNEDY,
DUMFRIES HOUSE.
[Who the John Kennedy was to whom Burns addressed this note, enclosing
"The Cotter's Saturday night," it is now, perhaps, vain to inquire:
the Kennedy to whom Mr. Cobbett introduces us was a Thomas--perhaps a
relation.]
_Mossgiel, 3d March_, 1786.
SIR,
I have done myself the pleasure of complying with your request in
sending you my Cottager.--If you have a leisure minute, I should be
glad you would copy it, and return me either the original or the
transcript, as I have not a copy of it by me, and I have a friend who
wishes to see it.
"Now, Kennedy, if foot or horse."[157]
ROBT. BURNESS.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 157: Poem LXXV.]
* * * * *
XIV.
TO MR. ROBERT MUIR,
KILMARNOCK.
[The Muirs--there were two brothers--were kind and generous patrons of
the poet. They subscribed for half-a-hundred copies of the Kilmarnock
edition of his works, and befriended him when friends were few.]
_Mossgiel_, 20_th March_, 1786.
DEAR SIR,
I am heartily sorry I had not the pleasure of seeing you as you
returned through Mauchline; but as I was engaged, I could not be in
town before the evening.
I here enclose you my "Scotch Drink," and "may the ---- follow with a
blessing for your edification." I hope, some time before we hear the
gowk, to have the pleasure of seeing you at Kilmarnock, when I intend
we shall have a gill between us, in a mutchkin-stoup; which will be a
great comfort and consolation to,
Dear Sir,
Your humble servant,
ROBT. BURNESS.
* * * * *
XV.
TO MR. AIKEN.
[Robert Aiken, the gentleman to whom the "Cotter's Saturday Night" is
inscribed, is also introduced in the "Brigs of Ayr." This is the last
letter to which Burns seems to have subscribed his name in the
spelling of his ancestors.]
_Mossgiel, 3d April_, 1786.
DEAR SIR,
I received your kind letter with double pleasure, on account of the
second flattering instance of Mrs. C.'s notice and approbation, I
assure you I
"Turn out the burnt o' my shin,"
as the famous Ramsay, of jingling memory, says, at such a patroness.
Present her my most grateful acknowledgment in your very best manner
of telling truth. I have inscribed the following stanza on the blank
leaf of Miss More's Work:--[158]
My proposals for publishing I am just going to send to press. I expect
to hear from you by the first opportunity.
I am ever, dear Sir,
Yours,
ROBT. BURNESS.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 158: See Poem LXXVIII.]
* * * * *
XVI.
TO MR. M'WHINNIE,
WRITER, AYR.
[Mr. M'Whinnie obtained for Burns several subscriptions for the first
edition of his Poems, of which this note enclosed the proposals.]
_Mossgiel, 17th April, 1786._
It is injuring some hearts, those hearts that elegantly bear the
impression of the good Creator, to say to them you give them the
trouble of obliging a friend; for this reason, I only tell you that I
gratify my own feelings in requesting your friendly offices with
respect to the enclosed, because I know it will gratify yours to
assist me in it to the utmost of your power.
I have sent you four copies, as I have no less than eight dozen, which
is a great deal more than I shall ever need.
Be sure to remember a poor poet militant in your prayers. He looks
forward with fear and trembling to that, to him, important moment
which stamps the die with--with--with, perhaps, the eternal disgrace
of,
My dear Sir,
Your humble,
afflicted, tormented,
ROBERT BURNS.
* * * * *
XVII.
TO MR. JOHN KENNEDY.
["The small piece," the very last of his productions, which the poet
enclosed in this letter, was "The Mountain Daisy," called in the
manuscript more properly "The Gowan."]
_Mossgiel, 20th April, 1786._
SIR,
By some neglect in Mr. Hamilton, I did not hear of your kind request
for a subscription paper 'till this day. I will not attempt any
acknowledgment for this, nor the manner in which I see your name in
Mr. Hamilton's subscription list. Allow me only to say, Sir, I feel
the weight of the debt.
I have here likewise enclosed a small piece, the very latest of my
productions. I am a good deal pleased with some sentiments myself, as
they are just the native querulous feelings of a heart, which, as the
elegantly melting Gray says, "melancholy has marked for her own."
Our race comes on a-pace; that much-expected scene of revelry and
mirth; but to me it brings no joy equal to that meeting with which
your last flattered the expectation of,
Sir,
Your indebted humble servant,
R. B.
* * * * *
XVIII.
TO MON. JAMES SMITH,
MAUCHLINE.
[James Smith, of whom Burns said he was small of stature, but large of
soul, kept at that time a draper's shop in Mauchline, and was comrade
to the poet in many a wild adventure.]
_Monday Morning, Mossgiel, 1786._
MY DEAR SIR,
I went to Dr. Douglas yesterday, fully resolved to take the
opportunity of Captain Smith: but I found the Doctor with a Mr. and
Mrs. White, both Jamaicans, and they have deranged my plans
altogether. They assure him that to send me from Savannah la Mar to
Port Antonio will cost my master, Charles Douglas, upwards of fifty
pounds; besides running the risk of throwing myself into a pleuritic
fever, in consequence of hard travelling in the sun. On these
accounts, he refuses sending me with Smith, but a vessel sails from
Greenock the first of September, right for the place of my
destination. The Captain of her is an intimate friend of Mr. Gavin
Hamilton's, and as good a fellow as heart could wish: with him I am
destined to go. Where I shall shelter, I know not, but I hope to
weather the storm. Perish the drop of blood of mine that fears them! I
know their worst, and am prepared to meet it;--
"I'll laugh an' sing, an' shake my leg,
As lang's I dow."
On Thursday morning, if you can muster as much self-denial as to be
out of bed about seven o'clock, I shall see you, as I ride through to
Cumnock. After all, Heaven bless the sex! I feel there is still
happiness for me among them:
"O woman, lovely woman! Heaven design'd you
To temper man!--we had been brutes without you."[159]
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 159: Otway. Venice Preserved.]
* * * * *
XIX.
TO MR. JOHN KENNEDY.
[Burns was busy in a two-fold sense at present: he was seeking patrons
in every quarter for his contemplated volume, and was composing for it
some of his most exquisite poetry.]
_Mossgiel, 16 May, 1796._
DEAR SIR,
I have sent you the above hasty copy as I promised. In about three or
four weeks I shall probably set the press a-going. I am much hurried
at present, otherwise your diligence, so very friendly in my
subscription, should have a more lengthened acknowledgment from,
Dear Sir,
Your obliged servant,
R. B.
* * * * *
XX.
TO MR. DAVID BRICE.
[David Brice was a shoemaker, and shared with Smith the confidence of
the poet in his love affairs. He was working in Glasgow when this
letter was written.]
_Mossgiel, June_ 12, 1786.
DEAR BRICE,
I received your message by G. Patterson, and as I am not very throng
at present, I just write to let you know that there is such a
worthless, rhyming reprobate, as your humble servant, still in the
land of the living, though I can scarcely say, in the place of hope. I
have no news to tell you that will give me any pleasure to mention, or
you to hear.
Poor ill-advised ungrateful Armour came home on Friday last. You have
heard all the particulars of that affair, and a black affair it is.
What she thinks of her conduct now, I don't know; one thing I do
know--she has made me completely miserable. Never man loved, or rather
adored a woman more than I did her; and, to confess a truth between
you and me, I do still love her to distraction after all, though I
won't tell her so if I were to see her, which I don't want to do. My
poor dear unfortunate Jean! how happy have I been in thy arms! It is
not the losing her that makes me so unhappy, but for her sake I feel
most severely: I foresee she is in the road to, I am afraid, eternal
ruin. * * * *
May Almighty God forgive her ingratitude and perjury to me, as I from
my very soul forgive her: and may his grace be with her and bless her
in all her future life! I can have no nearer idea of the place of
eternal punishment than what I have felt in my own breast on her
account. I have tried often to forget her; I have run into all kinds
of dissipation and riots, mason-meetings, drinking matches, and other
mischief, to drive her out of my head, but all in vain. And now for a
grand cure; the ship is on her way home that is to take me out to
Jamaica; and then, farewell dear old Scotland! and farewell dear
ungrateful Jean! for never never will I see you more.
You will have heard that I am going to commence poet in print; and to
morrow my works go to the press. I expect it will be a volume of about
two hundred pages--it is just the last foolish action I intend to do;
and then turn a wise man as fast as possible.
Believe me to be, dear Brice,
Your friend and well-wisher,
R. B.
* * * * *
XXI.
TO MR. ROBERT AIKEN.
[This letter was written under great distress of mind. That separation
which Burns records in "The Lament," had, unhappily, taken place
between him and Jean Armour, and it would appear, that for a time at
least a coldness ensued between the poet and the patron, occasioned,
it is conjectured, by that fruitful subject of sorrow and disquiet.
The letter, I regret to say, is not wholly here.]
[_Ayrshire_, 1786.]
SIR,
I was with Wilson, my printer, t'other day, and settled all our
by-gone matters between us. After I had paid him all demands, I made
him the offer of the second edition, on the hazard of being paid out
of the first and readiest, which he declines. By his account, the
paper of a thousand copies would cost me about twenty-seven pounds,
and the printing about fifteen or sixteen: he offers to agree to this
for the printing, if I will advance for the paper, but this, you know,
is out of my power; so farewell hopes of a second edition till I grow
rich! an epoch which I think will arrive at the payment of the
British national debt.
There is scarcely anything hurts me so much in being disappointed of
my second edition, as not having it in my power to show my gratitude
to Mr. Ballantyne, by publishing my poem of "The Brigs of Ayr." I
would detest myself as a wretch, if I thought I were capable in a very
long life of forgetting the honest, warm, and tender delicacy with
which he enters into my interests. I am sometimes pleased with myself
in my greateful sensations; but I believe, on the whole, I have very
little merit in it, as my gratitude is not a virtue, the consequence
of reflection; but sheerly the instinctive emotion of my heart, too
inattentive to allow worldly maxims and views to settle into selfish
habits. I have been feeling all the various rotations and movements
within, respecting the excise. There are many things plead strongly
against it; the uncertainty of getting soon into business; the
consequences of my follies, which may perhaps make it impracticable
for me to stay at home; and besides I have for some time been pining
under secret wretchedness, from causes which you pretty well know--the
pang of disappointment, the sting of pride, with some wandering stabs
of remorse, which never fail to settle on my vitals like vultures,
when attention is not called away by the calls of society, or the
vagaries of the muse. Even in the hour of social mirth, my gayety is
the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of the
executioner. All these reasons urge me to go abroad, and to all these
reasons I have only one answer--the feelings of a father. This, in the
present mood I am in, overbalances everything that can be laid in the
scale against it. * * * *
You may perhaps think it an extravagant fancy, but it is a sentiment
which strikes home to my very soul: though sceptical in some points of
our current belief, yet, I think, I have every evidence for the
reality of a life beyond the stinted bourne of our present existence;
if so, then, how should I, in the presence of that tremendous Being,
the Author of existence, how should I meet the reproaches of those who
stand to me in the dear relation of children, whom I deserted in the
smiling innocency of helpless infancy? O, thou great unknown
Power!--thou almighty God! who has lighted up reason in my breast, and
blessed me with immortality!--I have frequently wandered from that
order and regularity necessary for the perfection of thy works, yet
thou hast never left me nor forsaken me! * * * *
Since I wrote the foregoing sheet, I have seen something of the storm
of mischief thickening over my folly-devoted head. Should you, my
friends, my benefactors, be successful in your applications for me,
perhaps it may not be in my power, in that way, to reap the fruit of
your friendly efforts. What I have written in the preceding pages, is
the settled tenor of my present resolution; but should inimical
circumstances forbid me closing with your kind offer, or enjoying it
only threaten to entail farther misery-- * * * *
To tell the truth, I have little reason for complaint; as the world,
in general, has been kind to me fully up to my deserts. I was, for
some time past, fast getting into the pining, distrustful snarl of the
misanthrope. I saw myself alone, unlit for the struggle of life,
shrinking at every rising cloud in the chance-directed atmosphere of
fortune, while all defenceless I looked about in vain for a cover. It
never occurred to me, at least never with the force it deserved, that
this world is a busy scene, and man, a creature destined for a
progressive struggle; and that, however I might possess a warm heart
and inoffensive manners (which last, by the by, was rather more than I
could well boast); still, more than these passive qualities, there was
something to be done. When all my school-fellows and youthful compeers
(those misguided few excepted who joined, to use a Gentoo phrase, the
"hallachores" of the human race) were striking off with eager hope and
earnest intent, in some one or other of the many paths of busy life, I
was "standing idle in the market-place," or only left the chase of the
butterfly from flower to flower, to hunt fancy from whim to
whim. * * * *
You see, Sir, that if to know one's errors were a probability of
mending them, I stand a fair chance; but according to the reverend
Westminster divines, though conviction must precede conversion, it is
very far from always implying it. * * * *
R. B.
* * * * *
XXII.
TO JOHN RICHMOND,
EDINBURGH.
[The minister who took upon him to pronounce Burns a single man, as he
intimates in this letter, was the Rev. Mr. Auld, of Mauchline: that
the law of the land and the law of the church were at variance on the
subject no one can deny.]
_Mossgiel_, 9_th July_, 1786.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
With the sincerest grief I read your letter. You are truly a son of
misfortune. I shall be extremely anxious to hear from you how your
health goes on; if it is in any way re-establishing, or if Leith
promises well; in short, how you feel in the inner man.
No news worth anything: only godly Bryan was in the inquisition
yesterday, and half the country-side as witness against him. He still
stands out steady and denying: but proof was led yesternight of
circumstances highly suspicious: almost _de facto_ one of the servant
girls made faith that she upon a time rashly entered the house--to
speak in your cant, "in the hour of cause."