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 AEolian 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 L500 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 AEolian 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._