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 _viva 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 _eclatant_ 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.