I read a book, I mean a book in our own trade, Madam, a poetic one,
and when it is my own property, that I take a pencil and mark at the
ends of verses, or note on margins and odd paper, little criticisms of
approbation or disapprobation as I peruse along. I will make no
apology for presenting you with a few unconnected thoughts that
occurred to me in my repeated perusals of your poem. I want to show
you that I have honesty enough to tell you what I take to be truths,
even when they are not quite on the side of approbation; and I do it
in the firm faith that you have equal greatness of mind to hear them
with pleasure.
I had lately the honour of a letter from Dr. Moore, where he tells me
that he has sent me some books: they are not yet come to hand, but I
hear they are on the way.
Wishing you all success in your progress in the path of fame; and that
you may equally escape the danger of stumbling through incautious
speed, or losing ground through loitering neglect.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXX.
TO MR. JOHN LOGAN.
[The Kirk's Alarm, to which this letter alludes, has little of the
spirit of malice and drollery, so rife in his earlier controversial
compositions.]
_Ellisland, near Dumfries, 7th Aug. 1789._
DEAR SIR,
I intended to have written you long ere now, and as I told you, I had
gotten three stanzas and a half on my way in a poetic epistle to you;
but that old enemy of all _good works_, the devil, threw me into a
prosaic mire, and for the soul of me I cannot get out of it. I dare
not write you a long letter, as I am going to intrude on your time
with a long ballad. I have, as you will shortly see, finished "The
Kirk's Alarm;" but now that it is done, and that I have laughed once
or twice at the conceits in some of the stanzas, I am determined not
to let it get into the public; so I send you this copy, the first that
I have sent to Ayrshire, except some few of the stanzas, which I wrote
off in embryo for Gavin Hamilton, under the express provision and
request that you will only read it to a few of us, and do not on any
account give, or permit to be taken, any copy of the ballad. If I
could be of any service to Dr. M'Gill, I would do it, though it should
be at a much greater expense than irritating a few bigoted priests,
but I am afraid serving him in his present _embarras_ is a task too
hard for me. I have enemies enow, God knows, though I do not wantonly
add to the number. Still as I think there is some merit in two or
three of the thoughts, I send it to you as a small, but sincere
testimony how much, and with what respectful esteem,
I am, dear Sir,
Your obliged humble servant,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXXI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The poetic epistle of worthy Janet Little was of small account: nor
was the advice of Dr. Moore, to abandon the Scottish stanza and
dialect, and adopt the measure and language of modern English poetry,
better inspired than the strains of the milkmaid, for such was Jenny
Little.]
_Ellisland, 6th Sept., 1789._
DEAR MADAM,
I have mentioned in my last my appointment to the Excise, and the
birth of little Frank; who, by the bye, I trust will be no discredit
to the honourable name of Wallace, as he has a fine manly countenance,
and a figure that might do credit to a little fellow two months older;
and likewise an excellent good temper, though when he pleases he has a
pipe, only not quite so loud as the horn that his immortal namesake
blew as a signal to take out the pin of Stirling bridge.
I had some time ago an epistle, part poetic, and part prosaic, from
your poetess, Mrs. J. Little, a very ingenious, but modest
composition. I should have written her as she requested, but for the
hurry of this new business. I have heard of her and her compositions
in this country; and I am happy to add, always to the honour of her
character. The fact is, I know not well how to write to her: I should
sit down to a sheet of paper that I knew not how to stain. I am no dab
at fine-drawn letter-writing; and, except when prompted by friendship
or gratitude, or, which happens extremely rarely, inspired by the muse
(I know not her name) that presides over epistolary writing, I sit
down, when necessitated to write, as I would sit down, to beat hemp.
Some parts of your letter of the 20th August, struck me with the most
melancholy concern for the state of your mind at present.
Would I could write you a letter of comfort, I would sit down to it
with as much pleasure, as I would to write an epic poem of my own
composition that should equal the _Iliad._ Religion, my dear friend,
is the true comfort! A strong persuasion in a future state of
existence; a proposition so obviously probable, that, setting
revelation aside, every nation and people, so far as investigation has
reached, for at least near four thousand years, have, in some mode or
other, firmly believed it. In vain would we reason and pretend to
doubt. I have myself done so to a very daring pitch; but, when I
reflected, that I was opposing the most ardent wishes, and the most
darling hopes of good men, and flying in the face of all human belief,
in all ages, I was shocked at my own conduct.
I know not whether I have ever sent you the following lines, or if you
have ever seen them; but it is one of my favourite quotations, which I
keep constantly by me in my progress through life, in the language of
the book of Job,
"Against the day of battle and of war"--
spoken of religion:
"'Tis _this_, my friend, that streaks our morning bright,
'Tis _this_, that gilds the horror of our night.
When wealth forsakes us, and when friends are few,
When friends are faithless, or when foes pursue;
Tis this that wards the blow, or stills the smart,
Disarms affliction, or repels his dart;
Within the breast bids purest raptures rise,
Bids smiling conscience spread her cloudless skies."
I have been busy with _Zeluco._ The Doctor is so obliging as to
request my opinion of it; and I have been revolving in my mind some
kind of criticisms on novel-writing, but it is a depth beyond my
research. I shall however digest my thoughts on the subject as well as
I can. _Zeluco_ is a most sterling performance.
Farewell! _A Dieu, le bon Dieu, je vous commende._
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXXII.
TO CAPTAIN RIDDEL,
CARSE.
[The Whistle alluded to in this letter was contended for on the 16th
of October, 1790--the successful competitor, Fergusson, of
Craigdarroch, was killed by a fall from his horse, some time after the
"jovial contest."]
_Ellisland, 16th Oct., 1789._
SIR,
Big with the idea of this important day at Friars-Carse, I have
watched the elements and skies in the full persuasion that they would
announce it to the astonished world by some phenomena of terrific
portent.--Yesternight until a very late hour did I wait with anxious
horror, for the appearance of some comet firing half the sky; or
aerial armies of sanguinary Scandinavians, darting athwart the
startled heavens, rapid as the ragged lightning, and horrid as those
convulsions of nature that bury nations.
The elements, however, seem to take the matter very quietly: they did
not even usher in this morning with triple suns and a shower of blood,
symbolical of the three potent heroes, and the mighty claret-shed of
the day.--For me, as Thomson in his Winter says of the storm--I shall
"Hear astonished, and astonished sing"
The whistle and the man; I sing
The man that won the whistle, &c.
Here are we met, three merry boys,
Three merry boys I trow are we;
And mony a night we've merry been,
And mony mae we hope to be.
Wha first shall rise to gang awa,
A cuckold coward loun is he:
Wha _last_ beside his chair shall fa',
He is the king amang us three.
To leave the heights of Parnassus and come to the humble vale of
prose.--I have some misgivings that I take too much upon me, when I
request you to get your guest, Sir Robert Lowrie, to frank the two
enclosed covers for me, the one of them to Sir William Cunningham, of
Robertland, Bart. at Kilmarnock,--the other to Mr. Allan Masterton,
Writing-Master, Edinburgh. The first has a kindred claim on Sir
Robert, as being a brother Baronet, and likewise a keen Foxite; the
other is one of the worthiest men in the world, and a man of real
genius; so, allow me to say, he has a fraternal claim on you. I want
them franked for to-morrow, as I cannot get them to the post
to-night.--I shall send a servant again for them in the evening.
Wishing that your head may be crowned with laurels to-night, and free
from aches to-morrow,
I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your deeply indebted humble Servant,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXXIII.
TO CAPTAIN RIDDEL.
[Robert Riddel kept one of those present pests of society--an
album--into which Burns copied the Lines on the Hermitage, and the
Wounded Hare.]
_Ellisland, 1789._
SIR,
I wish from my inmost soul it were in my power to give you a more
substantial gratification and return for all the goodness to the poet,
than transcribing a few of his idle rhymes.--However, "an old song,"
though to a proverb an instance of insignificance, is generally the
only coin a poet has to pay with.
If my poems which I have transcribed, and mean still to transcribe
into your book, were equal to the grateful respect and high esteem I
bear for the gentleman to whom I present them, they would be the
finest poems in the language.--As they are, they will at least be a
testimony with what sincerity I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your devoted humble Servant,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXXIV.
TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.
[The ignominy of a poet becoming a gauger seems ever to have been
present to the mind of Burns--but those moving things ca'd wives and
weans have a strong influence on the actions of man.]
_Ellisland, 1st Nov. 1789._
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I had written you long ere now, could I have guessed where to find
you, for I am sure you have more good sense than to waste the precious
days of vacation time in the dirt of business and Edinburgh.--Wherever
you are, God bless you, and lead you not into temptation, but deliver
you from evil!
I do not know if I have informed you that I am now appointed to an
excise division, in the middle of which my house and farm lie. In this
I was extremely lucky. Without ever having been an expectant, as they
call their journeymen excisemen, I was directly planted down to all
intents and purposes an officer of excise; there to flourish and bring
forth fruits--worthy of repentance.
I know not how the word exciseman, or still more opprobrious, gauger,
will sound in your ears. I too have seen the day when my auditory
nerves would have felt very delicately on this subject; but a wife and
children are things which have a wonderful power in blunting these
kind of sensations. Fifty pounds a year for life, and a provision for
widows and orphans, you will allow is no bad settlement for a _poet._
For the ignominy of the profession, I have the encouragement which I
once heard a recruiting sergeant give to a numerous, if not a
respectable audience, in the streets of Kilmarnock.--"Gentlemen, for
your further and better encouragement, I can assure you that our
regiment is the most blackguard corps under the crown, and
consequently with us an honest fellow has the surest chance for
preferment."
You need not doubt that I find several very unpleasant and
disagreeable circumstances in my business; but I am tired with and
disgusted at the language of complaint against the evils of life.
Human existence in the most favourable situations does not abound with
pleasures, and has its inconveniences and ills; capricious foolish man
mistakes these inconveniences and ills as if they were the peculiar
property of his particular situation; and hence that eternal
fickleness, that love of change, which has ruined, and daily does ruin
many a fine fellow, as well as many a blockhead, and is almost,
without exception, a constant source of disappointment and misery.
I long to hear from you how you go on--not so much in business as in
life. Are you pretty well satisfied with your own exertions, and
tolerably at ease in your internal reflections? 'Tis much to be a
great character as a lawyer, but beyond comparison more to be a great
character as a man. That you may be both the one and the other is the
earnest wish, and that you _will_ be both is the firm persuasion of,
My dear Sir, &c.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXXV.
TO MR. RICHARD BROWN.
[With this letter closes the correspondence of Robert Burns and
Richard Brown.]
_Ellisland, 4th November, 1789._
I have been so hurried, my ever dear friend, that though I got both
your letters, I have not been able to command an hour to answer them
as I wished; and even now, you are to look on this as merely
confessing debt, and craving days. Few things could have given me so
much pleasure as the news that you were once more safe and sound on
terra firma, and happy in that place where happiness is alone to be
found, in the fireside circle. May the benevolent Director of all
things peculiarly bless you in all those endearing connexions
consequent on the tender and venerable names of husband and father! I
have indeed been extremely lucky in getting an additional income of
L50 a year, while, at the same time, the appointment will not cost me
above L10 or L12 per annum of expenses more than I must have
inevitably incurred. The worst circumstance is, that the excise
division which I have got is so extensive, no less than ten parishes
to ride over; and it abounds besides with so much business, that I can
scarcely steal a spare moment. However, labour endears rest, and both
together are absolutely necessary for the proper enjoyment of human
existence. I cannot meet you anywhere. No less than an order from the
Board of Excise, at Edinburgh, is necessary before I can have so much
time as to meet you in Ayrshire. But do you come, and see me. We must
have a social day, and perhaps lengthen it out with half the half the
night before you go again to sea. You are the earliest friend I now
have on earth, my brothers excepted; and is not that an endearing
circumstance? When you and I first met, we were at the green period of
human life. The twig would easily take a bent, but would as easily
return to its former state. You and I not only took a mutual bent, but
by the melancholy, though strong influence of being both of the family
of the unfortunate, we were entwined with one another in our growth
towards advanced age; and blasted be the sacrilegious hand that shall
attempt to undo the union! You and I must have one bumper to my
favourite toast, "May the companions of our youth be the friends of
our old age!" Come and see me one year; I shall see you at Port
Glasgow the next, and if we can contrive to have a gossiping between
our two bedfellows, it will be so much additional pleasure. Mrs.
Burns joins me in kind compliments to you and Mrs. Brown. Adieu!
I am ever, my dear Sir, yours,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXXVI.
TO R. GRAHAM, ESQ.
[The poet enclosed in this letter to his patron in the Excise the
clever verses on Captain Grose, the Kirk's Alarm, and the first ballad
on Captain Miller's election.]
_9th December, 1789._
SIR,
I have a good while had a wish to trouble you with a letter, and had
certainly done it long ere now--but for a humiliating something that
throws cold water on the resolution, as if one should say, "You have
found Mr. Graham a very powerful and kind friend indeed, and that
interest he is so kindly taking in your concerns, you ought by
everything in your power to keep alive and cherish." Now though since
God has thought proper to make one powerful and another helpless, the
connexion of obliger and obliged is all fair; and though my being
under your patronage is to me highly honourable, yet, Sir, allow me to
flatter myself, that, as a poet and an honest man you first interested
yourself in my welfare, and principally as such, still you permit me
to approach you.
I have found the excise business go on a great deal smoother with me
than I expected; owing a good deal to the generous friendship of Mr.
Mitchel, my collector, and the kind assistance of Mr. Findlater, my
supervisor. I dare to be honest, and I fear no labour. Nor do I find
my hurried life greatly inimical to my correspondence with the muses.
Their visits to me, indeed, and I believe to most of their
acquaintance, like the visits of good angels, are short and far
between: but I meet them now and then as I jog through the hills of
Nithsdale, just as I used to do on the banks of Ayr. I take the
liberty to enclose you a few bagatelles, all of them the productions
of my leisure thoughts in my excise rides.
If you know or have ever seen Captain Grose, the antiquarian, you will
enter into any humour that is in the verses on him. Perhaps you have
seen them before, as I sent them to a London newspaper. Though I dare
say you have none of the solemn-league-and-covenant fire, which shone
so conspicuous in Lord George Gordon, and the Kilmarnock weavers, yet
I think you must have heard of Dr. M'Gill, one of the clergymen of
Ayr, and his heretical book. God help him, poor man! Though he is one
of the worthiest, as well as one of the ablest of the whole priesthood
of the Kirk of Scotland, in every sense of that ambiguous term, yet
the poor Doctor and his numerous family are in imminent danger of
being thrown out to the mercy of the winter-winds. The enclosed ballad
on that business is, I confess, too local, but I laughed myself at
some conceits in it, though I am convinced in my conscience that there
are a good many heavy stanzas in it too.
The election ballad, as you will see, alludes to the present canvass
in our string of boroughs. I do not believe there will be such a
hard-run match in the whole general election.
I am too little a man to have any political attachments; I am deeply
indebted to, and have the warmest veneration for, individuals of both
parties; but a man who has it in his power to be the father of his
country, and who * * * * *, is a character that one cannot speak of
with patience.
Sir J. J. does "what man can do," but yet I doubt his fate.
* * * * *
CLXXVII.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[Burns was often a prey to lowness of spirits: at this some dull men
have marvelled; but the dull have no misgivings: they go blindly and
stupidly on, like a horse in a mill, and have none of the sorrows or
joys which genius is heir to.]
_Ellisland, 13th December, 1789._
Many thanks, dear Madam, for your sheet-full of rhymes. Though at
present I am below the veriest prose, yet from you everything pleases.
I am groaning under the miseries of a diseased nervous system; a
system, the state of which is most conducive to our happiness--or the
most productive of our misery. For now near three weeks I have been so
ill with a nervous head-ache, that I have been obliged for a time to
give up my excise-books, being scarce able to lift my head, much less
to ride once a week over ten muir parishes. What is man?--To-day in
the luxuriance of health, exulting in the enjoyment of existence; in a
few days, perhaps in a few hours, loaded with conscious painful being,
counting the tardy pace of the lingering moments by the repercussions
of anguish, and refusing or denied a comforter. Day follows night, and
night comes after day, only to curse him with life which gives him no
pleasure; and yet the awful, dark termination of that life is
something at which he recoils.
"Tell us, ye dead; will none of you in pity
Disclose the secret -------------------
_What 'tis you are, and we must shortly be?_
------------------------ 'tis no matter:
A little time will make us learn'd as you are."[194]
Can it be possible, that when I resign this frail, feverish being, I
shall still find myself in conscious existence? When the last gasp of
agony has announced that I am no more to those that knew me, and the
few who loved me; when the cold, stiffened, unconscious, ghastly corse
is resigned into the earth, to be the prey of unsightly reptiles, and
to become in time a trodden clod, shall I be yet warm in life, seeing
and seen, enjoying and enjoyed? Ye venerable sages and holy flamens,
is there probability in your conjectures, truth in your stories, of
another world beyond death; or are they all alike, baseless visions,
and fabricated fables? If there is another life, it must be only for
the just, the benevolent, the amiable, and the humane; what a
flattering idea, then, is a world to come! Would to God I as firmly
believed it, as I ardently wish it! There I should meet an aged
parent, now at rest from the many buffetings of an evil world, against
which he so long and so bravely struggled. There should I meet the
friend, the disinterested friend of my early life; the man who
rejoiced to see me, because he loved me and could serve me.--Muir, thy
weaknesses were the aberrations of human nature, but thy heart glowed
with everything generous, manly and noble; and if ever emanation from
the All-good Being animated a human form, it was thine! There should
I, with speechless agony of rapture, again recognise my lost, my ever
dear Mary! whose bosom was fraught with truth, honour, constancy, and
love.
"My Mary, dear departed shade!
Where is thy place of heavenly rest?
Seest thou thy lover lowly laid?
Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?"
Jesus Christ, thou amiablest of characters! I trust thou art no
impostor, and that thy revelation of blissful scenes of existence
beyond death and the grave, is not one of the many impositions which
time after time have been palmed on credulous mankind. I trust that in
thee "shall all the families of the earth be blessed," by being yet
connected together in a better world, where every tie that bound heart
to heart, in this state of existence, shall be, far beyond our present
conceptions, more endearing.
I am a good deal inclined to think with those who maintain, that what
are called nervous affections are in fact diseases of the mind. I
cannot reason, I cannot think; and but to you I would not venture to
write anything above an order to a cobbler. You have felt too much of
the ills of life not to sympathise with a diseased wretch, who has
impaired more than half of any faculties he possessed. Your goodness
will excuse this distracted scrawl, which the writer dare scarcely
read, and which he would throw into the fire, were he able to write
anything better, or indeed anything at all.
Rumour told me something of a son of yours, who was returned from the
East or West Indies. If you have gotten news from James or Anthony, it
was cruel in you not to let me know; as I promise you on the sincerity
of a man, who is weary of one world, and anxious about another, that
scarce anything could give me so much pleasure as to hear of any good
thing befalling my honoured friend.
If you have a minute's leisure, take up your pen in pity to _le pauvre
miserable._
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 194: Blair's Grave.]
* * * * *
CLXXVIII.
TO LADY W[INIFRED] M[AXWELL] CONSTABLE.
[The Lady Winifred Maxwell, the last of the old line of Nithsdale, was
granddaughter of that Earl who, in 1715, made an almost miraculous
escape from death, through the spirit and fortitude of his countess, a
lady of the noble family of Powis.]
_Ellisland, 16th December, 1789._
MY LADY,
In vain have I from day to day expected to hear from Mrs. Young, as
she promised me at Dalswinton that she would do me the honour to
introduce me at Tinwald; and it was impossible, not from your
ladyship's accessibility, but from my own feelings, that I could go
alone. Lately indeed, Mr. Maxwell of Carruchen, in his usual goodness,
offered to accompany me, when an unlucky indisposition on my part
hindered my embracing the opportunity. To court the notice or the
tables of the great, except where I sometimes have had a little matter
to ask of them, or more often the pleasanter task of witnessing my
gratitude to them, is what I never have done, and I trust never shall
do. But with your ladyship I have the honour to be connected by one of
the strongest and most endearing ties in the whole moral world. Common
sufferers, in a cause where even to be unfortunate is glorious, the
cause of heroic loyalty! Though my fathers had not illustrious honours
and vast properties to hazard in the contest, though they left their
humble cottages only to add so many units more to the unnoted crowd
that followed their leaders, yet what they could they did, and what
they had they lost; with unshaken firmness and unconcealed political
attachments, they shook hands with ruin for what they esteemed the
cause of their king and their country. The language and the enclosed
verses are for your ladyship's eye alone. Poets are not very famous
for their prudence; but as I can do nothing for a cause which is now
nearly no more, I do not wish to hurt myself.
I have the honour to be,
My lady,
Your ladyship's obliged and obedient
Humble servant,
R. B.