you: and if knowing and reading these give half the pleasure to you,
that communicating them to you gives to me, I am satisfied.
I have a poetic whim in my head, which I at present dedicate, or
rather inscribe to the Right Hon. Charles James Fox; but how long that
fancy may hold, I cannot say. A few of the first lines, I have just
rough-sketched as follows:
SKETCH.
How wisdom and folly meet, mix, and unite;
How virtue and vice blend their black and their white;
How genius, the illustrious father of fiction,
Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction--
I sing: If these mortals, the critics, should bustle,
I care not, not I, let the critics go whistle.
But now for a patron, whose name and whose glory,
At once may illustrate and honour my story.
Thou first of our orators, first of our wits;
Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits;
With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so strong,
No man with the half of 'em e'er went far wrong;
With passion so potent, and fancies so bright,
No man with the half of 'em ere went quite right;
A sorry, poor misbegot son of the muses,
For using thy name offers many excuses.
On the 20th current I hope to have the honour of assuring you in
person, how sincerely I am--
R. B.
* * * * *
CLVII.
TO MR. WILLIAM BURNS,
SADLER,
CARE OF MR. WRIGHT, CARRIER, LONGTOWN.
["Never to despair" was a favourite saying with Burns: and "firm
resolve," he held, with Young, to be "the column of true majesty in
man."]
_Isle, 15th April, 1789._
MY DEAR WILLIAM,
I am extremely sorry at the misfortune of your legs; I beg you will
never let any worldly concern interfere with the more serious matter,
the safety of your life and limbs. I have not time in these hurried
days to write you anything other than a mere how d'ye letter. I will
only repeat my favourite quotation:--
"What proves the hero truly great
Is never, never to despair."
My house shall be your welcome home; and as I know your prudence
(would to God you had _resolution_ equal to your _prudence_!) if
anywhere at a distance from friends, you should need money, you know
my direction by post.
The enclosed is from Gilbert, brought by your sister Nanny. It was
unluckily forgot. Yours to Gilbert goes by post.--I heard from them
yesterday, they are all well.
Adieu.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLVIII.
TO MRS. M'MURDO,
DRUMLANRIG.
[Of this accomplished lady, Mrs. M'Murdo, of Drumlanrig, and her
daughters, something has been said in the notes on the songs: the poem
alluded to was the song of "Bonnie Jean."]
_Ellisland, 2d May, 1789._
MADAM,
I have finished the piece which had the happy fortune to be honoured
with your approbation; and never did little miss with more sparkling
pleasure show her applauded sampler to partial mamma, than I now send
my poem to you and Mr. M'Murdo if he is returned to Drumlanrig. You
cannot easily imagine what thin-skinned animals--what sensitive plants
poor poets are. How do we shrink into the embittered corner of
self-abasement, when neglected or condemned by those to whom we look
up! and how do we, in erect importance, add another cubit to our
stature on being noticed and applauded by those whom we honour and
respect! My late visit to Drumlanrig has, I can tell you, Madam, given
me a balloon waft up Parnassus, where on my fancied elevation I regard
my poetic self with no small degree of complacency. Surely with all
their sins, the rhyming tribe are not ungrateful creatures.--I
recollect your goodness to your humble guest--I see Mr. M'Murdo adding
to the politeness of the gentleman, the kindness of a friend, and my
heart swells as it would burst, with warm emotions and ardent wishes!
It may be it is not gratitude--it may be a mixed sensation. That
strange, shifting, doubling animal man is so generally, at best, but a
negative, often a worthless creature, that we cannot see real goodness
and native worth without feeling the bosom glow with sympathetic
approbation.
With every sentiment of grateful respect,
I have the honour to be,
Madam,
Your obliged and grateful humble servant,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLIX.
TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.
[Honest Jamie Thomson, who shot the hare because she browsed with her
companions on his father's "wheat-braird," had no idea he was pulling
down such a burst of indignation on his head as this letter with the
poem which it enclosed expresses.]
_Ellisland, 4th May, 1789._
MY DEAR SIR,
Your _duty-free_ favour of the 26th April I received two days ago; I
will not say I perused it with pleasure; that is the cold compliment
of ceremony; I perused it, Sir, with delicious satisfaction;--in
short, it is such a letter, that not you, nor your friend, but the
legislature, by express proviso in their postage laws, should frank.
A letter informed with the soul of friendship is such an honour to
human nature, that they should order it free ingress and egress to and
from their bags and mails, as an encouragement and mark of distinction
to supereminent virtue.
I have just put the last hand to a little poem which I think will be
something to your taste. One morning lately, as I was out pretty early
in the fields, sowing some grass seeds, I heard the burst of a shot
from a neighbouring plantation, and presently a poor little wounded
hare came crippling by me. You will guess my indignation at the
inhuman fellow who could shoot a hare at this season, when all of them
have young ones. Indeed there is something in that business of
destroying for our sport individuals in the animal creation that do
not injure us materially, which I could never reconcile to my ideas of
virtue.
Inhuman man! curse on thy barb'rous art,
And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye!
May never pity soothe thee with a sigh,
Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart!
&c. &c.
Let me know how you like my poem. I am doubtful whether it would not
be an improvement to keep out the last stanza but one altogether.
Cruikshank is a glorious production of the author of man. You, he, and
the noble Colonel of the Crochallan Fencibles are to me
"Dear as the ruddy drops which warm my heart"
I have a good mind to make verses on you all, to the tune of "_Three
guid fellows ayont the glen._"
R. B.
* * * * *
CLX.
TO MR. SAMUEL BROWN.
[Samuel Brown was brother to the poet's mother: he seems to have been
a joyous sort of person, who loved a joke, and understood double
meanings.]
_Mossgiel, 4th May, 1789._
DEAR UNCLE,
This, I hope, will find you and your conjugal yoke-fellow in your good
old way; I am impatient to know if the Ailsa fowling be commenced for
this season yet, as I want three or four stones of feathers, and I
hope you will bespeak them for me. It would be a vain attempt for me
to enumerate the various transactions I have been engaged in since I
saw you last, but this know,--I am engaged in a _smuggling trade_, and
God knows if ever any poor man experienced better returns, two for
one, but as freight and delivery have turned out so dear, I am
thinking of taking out a license and beginning in fair trade. I have
taken a farm on the borders of the Nith, and in imitation of the old
Patriarchs, get men-servants and maid-servants, and flocks and herds,
and beget sons and daughters.
Your obedient nephew,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXI.
TO RICHARD BROWN.
[Burns was much attached to Brown; and one regrets that an
inconsiderate word should have estranged the haughty sailor.]
_Mauchline, 21st May, 1789._
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I was in the country by accident, and hearing of your safe arrival, I
could not resist the temptation of wishing you joy on your return,
wishing you would write to me before you sail again, wishing you would
always set me down as your bosom friend, wishing you long life and
prosperity, and that every good thing may attend you, wishing Mrs.
Brown and your little ones as free of the evils of this world, as is
consistent with humanity, wishing you and she were to make two at the
ensuing lying-in, with which Mrs. B. threatens very soon to favour me,
wishing I had longer time to write to you at present; and, finally,
wishing that if there is to be another state of existence, Mr. B.,
Mrs. B., our little ones, and both families, and you and I, in some
snug retreat, may make a jovial party to all eternity!
My direction is at Ellisland, near Dumfries
Yours,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXII.
TO MR. JAMES HAMILTON.
[James Hamilton, grocer, in Glasgow, interested himself early in the
fortunes of the poet.]
_Ellisland, 26th May, 1789._
DEAR SIR,
I send you by John Glover, carrier, the account for Mr. Turnbull, as I
suppose you know his address.
I would fain offer, my dear Sir, a word of sympathy with your
misfortunes; but it is a tender string, and I know not how to touch
it. It is easy to flourish a set of high-flown sentiments on the
subjects that would give great satisfaction to--a breast quite at
ease; but as ONE observes, who was very seldom mistaken in
the theory of life, "The heart knoweth its own sorrows, and a stranger
intermeddleth not therewith."
Among some distressful emergencies that I have experienced in life, I
ever laid this down as my foundation of comfort--_That he who has
lived the life of an honest man, has by no means lived in vain!_
With every wish for your welfare and future success,
I am, my dear Sir,
Sincerely yours,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXIII.
TO WILLIAM CREECH, ESQ.
[The poetic address to the "venomed stang" of the toothache seems to
have come into existence about this time.]
_Ellisland, 30th May, 1789._
SIR,
I had intended to have troubled you with a long letter, but at present
the delightful sensations of an omnipotent toothache so engross all my
inner man, as to put it out of my power even to write nonsense.
However, as in duty bound, I approach my bookseller with an offering
in my hand--a few poetic clinches, and a song:--To expect any other
kind of offering from the Rhyming Tribe would be to know them much
less than you do. I do not pretend that there is much merit in these
_morceaux_, but I have two reasons for sending them; _primo_, they are
mostly ill-natured, so are in unison with my present feelings, while
fifty troops of infernal spirits are driving post from ear to ear
along my jaw-bones; and _secondly_, they are so short, that you cannot
leave off in the middle, and so hurt my pride in the idea that you
found any work of mine too heavy to get through.
I have a request to beg of you, and I not only beg of you, but conjure
you, by all your wishes and by all your hopes, that the muse will
spare the satiric wink in the moment of your foibles; that she will
warble the song of rapture round your hymeneal couch; and that she
will shed on your turf the honest tear of elegiac gratitude! Grant my
request as speedily as possible--send me by the very first fly or
coach for this place three copies of the last edition of my poems,
which place to my account.
Now may the good things of prose, and the good things of verse, come
among thy hands, until they be filled with the _good things of this
life_, prayeth
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXIV.
TO MR. M'AULEY.
[The poet made the acquaintance of Mr. M'Auley, of Dumbarton, in one
of his northern tours,--he was introduced by his friend Kennedy.]
_Ellisland, 4th June, 1789._
DEAR SIR,
Though I am not without my fears respecting my fate, at that grand,
universal inquest of right and wrong, commonly called _The Last Day_,
yet I trust there is one sin, which that arch-vagabond, Satan, who I
understand is to be king's evidence, cannot throw in my teeth, I mean
ingratitude. There is a certain pretty large quantum of kindness for
which I remain, and from inability, I fear, must still remain, your
debtor; but though unable to repay the debt, I assure you, Sir, I
shall ever warmly remember the obligation. It gives me the sincerest
pleasure to hear by my old acquaintance, Mr. Kennedy, that you are, in
immortal Allan's language, "Hale, and weel, and living;" and that your
charming family are well, and promising to be an amiable and
respectable addition to the company of performers, whom the Great
Manager of the Drama of Man is bringing into action for the succeeding
age.
With respect to my welfare, a subject in which you once warmly and
effectively interested yourself, I am here in my old way, holding my
plough, marking the growth of my corn, or the health of my dairy; and
at times sauntering by the delightful windings of the Nith, on the
margin of which I have built my humble domicile, praying for
seasonable weather, or holding an intrigue with the muses; the only
gipsies with whom I have now any intercourse. As I am entered into the
holy state of matrimony, I trust my face is turned completely
Zion-ward; and as it is a rule with all honest fellows to repeat no
grievances, I hope that the little poetic licenses of former days will
of course fall under the oblivious influence of some good-natured
statute of celestial prescription. In my family devotion, which, like
a good Presbyterian, I occasionally give to my household folks, I am
extremely fond of that psalm, "Let not the errors of my youth," &c.,
and that other, "Lo, children are God's heritage," &c., in which last
Mrs. Burns, who by the bye has a glorious "wood-note wild" at either
old song or psalmody, joins me with the pathos of Handel's Messiah.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXV.
TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.
[The following high-minded letter may be regarded as a sermon on
domestic morality preached by one of the experienced.]
_Ellisland, 8th June, 1789._
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I am perfectly ashamed of myself when I look at the date of your last.
It is not that I forget the friend of my heart and the companion of my
peregrinations; but I have been condemned to drudgery beyond
sufferance, though not, thank God, beyond redemption. I have had a
collection of poems by a lady, put into my hands to prepare them for
the press; which horrid task, with sowing corn with my own hand, a
parcel of masons, wrights, plasterers, &c., to attend to, roaming on
business through Ayrshire--all this was against me, and the very first
dreadful article was of itself too much for me.
13th. I have not had a moment to spare from incessant toil since the 8th.
Life, my dear Sir, is a serious matter. You know by experience that a man's
individual self is a good deal, but believe me, a wife and family of
children, whenever you have the honour to be a husband and a father, will
show you that your present and most anxious hours of solitude are spent on
trifles. The welfare of those who are very dear to us, whose only support,
hope and stay we are--this, to a generous mind, is another sort of more
important object of care than any concerns whatever which centre merely in
the individual. On the other hand, let no young, unmarried, rakehelly dog
among you, make a song of his pretended liberty and freedom from care. If
the relations we stand in to king, country, kindred, and friends, be
anything but the visionary fancies of dreaming metaphysicians; if religion,
virtue, magnanimity, generosity, humanity and justice, be aught but empty
sounds; then the man who may be said to live only for others, for the
beloved, honourable female, whose tender faithful embrace endears life, and
for the helpless little innocents who are to be the men and women, the
worshippers of his God, the subjects of his king, and the support, nay the
vital existence of his COUNTRY in the ensuing age;--compare such a man with
any fellow whatever, who, whether he bustle and push in business among
labourers, clerks, statesmen; or whether he roar and rant, and drink and
sing in taverns--a fellow over whose grave no one will breathe a single
heigh-ho, except from the cobweb-tie of what is called good-fellowship--who
has no view nor aim but what terminates in himself--if there be any
grovelling earth-born wretch of our species, a renegado to common sense,
who would fain believe that the noble creature man, is no better than a
sort of fungus, generated out of nothing, nobody knows how, and soon
dissipated in nothing, nobody knows where; such a stupid beast, such a
crawling reptile, might balance the foregoing unexaggerated comparison, but
no one else would have the patience.
Forgive me, my dear Sir, for this long silence. _To make you amends_,
I shall send you soon, and more encouraging still, without any
postage, one or two rhymes of my later manufacture.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXVI.
TO MR. M'MURDO.
[John M'Murdo has been already mentioned as one of Burns's firmest
friends: his table at Drumlanrig was always spread at the poet's
coming: nor was it uncheered by the presence of the lady of the house
and her daughters.]
_Ellisland, 19th June, 1789._
SIR,
A poet and a beggar are, in so many points of view, alike, that one
might take them for the same individual character under different
designations; were it not that though, with a trifling poetic license,
most poets may be styled beggars, yet the converse of the proposition
does not hold, that every beggar is a poet. In one particular,
however, they remarkably agree; if you help either the one or the
other to a mug of ale, or the picking of a bone, they will very
willingly repay you with a song. This occurs to me at present, as I
have just despatched a well-lined rib of John Kirkpatrick's
Highlander; a bargain for which I am indebted to you, in the style of
our ballad printers, "Five excellent new songs." The enclosed is
nearly my newest song, and one that has cost me some pains, though
that is but an equivocal mark of its excellence. Two or three others,
which I have by me, shall do themselves the honour to wait on your
after leisure: petitioners for admittance into favour must not harass
the condescension of their benefactor.
You see, Sir, what it is to patronize a poet. 'Tis like being a
magistrate in a petty borough; you do them the favour to preside in
their council for one year, and your name bears the prefatory stigma
of Bailie for life.
With, not the compliments, but the best wishes, the sincerest prayers
of the season for you, that you may see many and happy years with Mrs.
M'Murdo, and your family; two blessings by the bye, to which your rank
does not, by any means, entitle you; a loving wife and fine family
being almost the only good things of this life to which the farm-house
and cottage have an exclusive right,
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your much indebted and very humble servant,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXVII.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The devil, the pope, and the Pretender darkened the sermons, for more
than a century, of many sound divines in the north. As a Jacobite,
Burns disliked to hear Prince Charles called the Pretender, and as a
man of a tolerant nature, he disliked to hear the Pope treated unlike
a gentleman: his notions regarding Satan are recorded in his
inimitable address.]
_Ellisland, 21st June, 1789._
DEAR MADAM,
Will you take the effusions, the miserable effusions of low spirits,
just as they flow from their bitter spring? I know not of any
particular cause for this worst of all my foes besetting me; but for
some time my soul has been beclouded with a thickening atmosphere of
evil imaginations and gloomy presages.
_Monday Evening._
I have just heard Mr. Kirkpatrick preach a sermon. He is a man famous
for his benevolence, and I revere him; but from such ideas of my
Creator, good Lord deliver me! Religion, my honoured friend, is surely
a simple business, as it equally concerns the ignorant and the
learned, the poor and the rich. That there is an incomprehensible
Great Being, to whom I owe my existence, and that he must be
intimately acquainted with the operations and progress of the internal
machinery, and consequent outward deportment of this creature which he
has made; these are, I think, self-evident propositions. That there is
a real and eternal distinction between virtue and vice, and
consequently, that I am an accountable creature; that from the seeming
nature of the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfection,
nay, positive injustice, in the administration of affairs, both in the
natural and moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene of
existence beyond the grave; must, I think, be allowed by every one who
will give himself a moment's reflection. I will go farther, and affirm
that from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of his doctrine and
precepts, unparalleled by all the aggregated wisdom and learning of
many preceding ages, though, _to appearance_, he himself was the
obscurest and most illiterate of our species; therefore Jesus Christ
was from God.
Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others,
this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at
large, or any individual in it, this is my measure of iniquity.
What think you, madam, of my creed? I trust that I have said nothing
that will lessen me in the eye of one, whose good opinion I value
almost next to the approbation of my own mind.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXVIII.
TO MR. ----.
[The name of the person to whom the following letter is addressed is
unknown: he seems, from his letter to Burns to have been intimate with
the unfortunate poet, Robert Fergusson, who, in richness of
conversation and plenitude of fancy, reminded him, he said, of Robert
Burns.]
1789.
MY DEAR SIR,
The hurry of a farmer in this particular season, and the indolence of
a poet at all times and seasons, will, I hope, plead my excuse for
neglecting so long to answer your obliging letter of the 5th of
August.
That you have done well in quitting your laborious concern in * * * *, I
do not doubt; the weighty reasons you mention, were, I hope, very, and
deservedly indeed, weighty ones, and your health is a matter of the
last importance; but whether the remaining proprietors of the paper
have also done well, is what I much doubt. The * * * *, so far as I was a
reader, exhibited such a brilliancy of point, such an elegance of
paragraph, and such a variety of intelligence, that I can hardly
conceive it possible to continue a daily paper in the same degree of
excellence: but if there was a man who had abilities equal to the
task, that man's assistance the proprietors have lost.
When I received your letter I was transcribing for * * * *, my letter to
the magistrates of the Canongate, Edinburgh, begging their permission
to place a tombstone over poor Fergusson, and their edict in
consequence of my petition, but now I shall send them to * * * * * *. Poor
Fergusson! If there be a life beyond the grave, which I trust there
is; and if there be a good God presiding over all nature, which I am
sure there is; thou art now enjoying existence in a glorious world,
where worth of the heart alone is distinction in the man; where
riches, deprived of all their pleasure-purchasing powers, return to
their native sordid matter; where titles and honours are the
disregarded reveries of an idle dream; and where that heavy virtue,
which is the negative consequence of steady dulness, and those
thoughtless, though often destructive follies which are unavoidable
aberrations of frail human nature, will be thrown into equal oblivion
as if they had never been!
Adieu my dear sir! So soon as your present views and schemes are
concentered in an aim, I shall be glad to hear from you; as your
welfare and happiness is by no means a subject indifferent to
Yours,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXIX.
TO MISS WILLIAMS.
[Helen Maria Williams acknowledged this letter, with the critical
pencilling, on her poem on the Slave Trade, which it enclosed: she
agreed, she said, with all his objections, save one, but considered
his praise too high.]
_Ellisland, 1789._
MADAM,
Of the many problems in the nature of that wonderful creature, man,
this is one of the most extraordinary, that he shall go on from day to
day, from week to week, from month to month, or perhaps from year to
year, suffering a hundred times more in an hour from the impotent
consciousness of neglecting what he ought to do, than the very doing
of it would cost him. I am deeply indebted to you, first for a most
elegant poetic compliment; then for a polite, obliging letter; and,
lastly, for your excellent poem on the Slave Trade; and yet, wretch
that I am! though the debts were debts of honour, and the creditor a
lady, I have put off and put off even the very acknowledgment of the
obligation, until you must indeed be the very angel I take you for, if
you can forgive me.