called for you. A few lines from you, directed to me, at Mauchline, were
it but to let me know how you are, will settle my mind a good deal. Now,
never shun the idea of writing me because, perhaps, you may be out of
humour or spirits. I could give you a hundred good consequences
attending a dull letter; one, for example, and the remaining ninety-nine
some other time--it will always serve to keep in countenance, my much
respected Sir, your obliged friend and humble servant, R. B.
[Footnote 76: Ellisland, near Dumfries.]
[Footnote 77: Robert Ainslie, W.S.]
* * * *
LXXXVI.--To MRS. DUNLOP.
MAUCHLINE, 28_th April_ 1788.
MADAM,--Your powers of reprehension must be great indeed, as I assure
you they make my heart ache with penitential pangs, even though I was
really not guilty. As I commence farming at Whitsunday, you will easily
guess I must be pretty busy; but that is not all. As I got the offer of
the Excise business without solicitation, and as it costs me only six
months' attendance for instructions, to entitle me to a commission
--which commission lies by me, and at any future period, on my simple
petition, can be resumed--I thought five-and-thirty pounds a-year was no
bad _dernier ressort_ for a poor poet, if Fortune in her jade tricks
should kick him down from the little eminence to which she has lately
helped him up.
For this reason, I am at present attending these instructions, to have
them completed before Whitsunday. Still, Madam, I prepared with the
sincerest pleasure to meet you at the Mount, and came to my brother's on
Saturday night, to set out on Sunday; but for some nights preceding I
had slept in an apartment, where the force of the winds and rains was
only mitigated by being sifted through numberless apertures in the
windows, walls, etc. In consequence I was on Sunday, Monday, and part of
Tuesday, unable to stir out of bed, with all the miserable effects of a
violent cold.
You see, Madam, the truth of the French maxim, _le vrai n'est pas
toujours le vrai-semblable;_ your last was so full of expostulation, and
was something so like the language of an offended friend, that I began
to tremble for a correspondence, which I had with grateful pleasure set
down as one of the greatest enjoyments of my future life.
Your books have delighted me; Virgil, Dryden, and Tasso were all equally
strangers to me; but of this more at large in my next. R. B.
* * * *
LXXXVII.--To MR. JAMES SMITH, AVON PRINTFIELD, LINLITHGOW.
MAUCHLINE, _April_ 28_th_, 1788.
Beware of your Strasburgh, my good Sir! Look on this as the opening of a
correspondence, like the opening of a twenty-four gun battery!
There is no understanding a man properly, without knowing something of
his previous ideas; that is to say, if the man has any ideas; for I know
many who, in the animal-muster, pass for men, that are the scanty
masters of only one idea on any given subject, and by far the greatest
part of your acquaintances and mine can barely boast of ideas,
1.25--1.5--1.75 (or some such fractional matter); so to let you a little
into the secrets of my pericranium, there is, you must know, a certain
clean-limbed, handsome, bewitching young hussy of your acquaintance, to
whom I have lately and privately given a matrimonial title to my corpus.
Bode a robe and wear it,
Bode a pock and bear it,
says the wise old Scots adage! I hate to presage ill-luck; and as my
girl has been doubly kinder to me than even the best of women usually
are to their partners of our sex, in similar circumstances, I reckon on
twelve times a brace of children against I celebrate my twelfth
wedding-day: these twenty-four will give me twenty-four gossipings,
twenty-four christenings (I mean one equal to two), and I hope, by the
blessing of the God of my fathers, to make them twenty-four dutiful
children to their parents, twenty-four useful members of society, and
twenty-four approved servants of their God....
"Light's heartsome," quo' the wife when she was stealing sheep. You see
what a lamp I have hung up to lighten your paths, when you are idle
enough to explore the combinations and relations of my ideas. 'Tis now
as plain as a pike-staff, why a twenty-four gun battery was a metaphor I
could readily employ.
Now for business. I intend to present Mrs. Burns with a printed shawl,
an article of which I dare say you have variety: 'tis my first present
to her since I have irrevocably called her mine, and I have a kind of
whimsical wish to get her the first said present from an old and
much-valued friend of hers and mine, a trusty Trojan, on whose
friendship I count myself possessed of as a life-rent lease.
Look on this letter as a "beginning of sorrows;" I will write you till
your eyes ache reading nonsense.
Mrs. Burns ('tis only her private designation) begs her best compliments
to you. R. B.
* * * *
LXXXVIII--To PROFESSOR DUGALD STEWART.
MAUCHLINE, 3_rd May_ 1788.
SIR,--I enclose you one or two more of my bagatelles. If the fervent
wishes of honest gratitude have any influence with that great unknown
Being who frames the chain of causes and events, prosperity and
happiness will attend your visit to the Continent, and return you safe
to your native shore.
Wherever I am, allow me, Sir, to claim it as my privilege to acquaint
you with my progress in my trade of rhymes; as I am sure I could say it
with truth, that, next to my little fame, and the having it in my power
to make life more comfortable to those whom nature has made dear to me,
I shall ever regard your countenance, your patronage, your friendly good
offices, as the most valued consequence of my late success in life.
R. B.
* * * *
LXXXIX.--To MRS. DUNLOP.
MAUCHLINE, 4_th May_ 1788.
MADAM,--Dryden's Virgil has delighted me. I do not know whether the
critics will agree with me, but the Georgics are to me by far the best
of Virgil. It is indeed a species of writing entirely new to me, and has
filled my head with a thousand fancies of emulation; but, alas! when I
read the Georgics, and then survey my own powers, 'tis like the idea of
a Shetland pony, drawn up by the side of a thorough-bred hunter, to
start for the plate. I own I am disappointed in the AEneid. Faultless
correctness may please, and does highly please, the lettered critic; but
to that awful character T have not the most distant pretensions. I do
not know whether I do not hazard my pretensions to be a critic of any
kind, when I say that I think Virgil, in many instances, a servile
copier of Homer. If I had the Odyssey by me, I could parallel many
passages where Virgil has evidently copied, but by no means improved,
Homer. Nor can I think there is anything of this owing to the
translators; for, from everything I have seen of Dryden, I think him, in
genius and fluency of language, Pope's master. I have not perused Tasso
enough to form an opinion: in some future letter you shall have my ideas
of him; though I am conscious my criticisms must be very inaccurate and
imperfect, as there I have ever felt and lamented my want of learning
most. R. B.
* * * *
XC.--To MR. SAMUEL BROWN, KIRKOSWALD.
MOSSGIEL, 4_th May_ 1788.
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[78] 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 engaged in a smuggling trade,
and no poor man ever 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,
ROBERT BURNS.
[Footnote 78: A well-known rock in the Firth of Clyde, frequented by
innumerable sea-fowl.]
* * * *
XCI.--To MR. JAMES JOHNSON, ENGRAVER, EDINBURGH.
MAUCHLINE, 25_th May_ 1788.
MY DEAR SIR,--I am really uneasy about that money which Mr. Creech owes
me per note in your hand, and I want it much at present, as I am
engaging in business pretty deeply both for myself and my brother. A
hundred guineas can be but a trifling affair to him, and'tis a matter of
most serious importance to me.[79] To-morrow I begin my operations as a
farmer, and so God speed the plough!
I am so enamoured of a certain girl.... To be serious, I found I had a
long and much-loved fellow-creature's happiness or misery in my hands;
and though pride and seeming justice were murderous king's advocates on
the one side, yet humanity, generosity, and forgiveness were such
powerful, such irresistible counsel on the other, that a jury of all
endearments and new attachments brought in a unanimous verdict of _not
guilty_. And the panel, be it known unto all whom it concerns, is
installed and instated into all the rights, privileges, etc., that
belong to the name, title, and designation of wife.
[Footnote 79: Creech paid the amount five days after the date of this
letter.]
* * * *
XCII.--To MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.
MAUCHLINE, _May_ 26_th_, 1788.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I am two kind letters in your debt; but I have been
from home, and horridly busy, buying and preparing for my farming
business, over and above the plague of my Excise instructions, which
this week will finish.
As I flatter my wishes that I foresee many future years' correspondence
between us, 'tis foolish to talk of excusing dull epistles! a dull
letter may be a very kind one. I have the pleasure to tell you that I
have been extremely fortunate in all my buyings and bargainings
hitherto, Mrs. Burns not excepted; which title I now avow to the world.
I am truly pleased with this last affair. It has indeed added to my
anxieties for futurity, but it has given a stability to my mind and
resolutions unknown before; and the poor girl has the most sacred
enthusiasm of attachment to me, and has not a wish but to gratify my
every idea of her deportment. I am interrupted. Farewell! my dear
Sir. R. B.
* * * * *
XCIII.--To MRS. DUNLOP.
27_th_ _May _1788.
MADAM,--I have been torturing my philosophy to no purpose to account for
that kind partiality of yours, which has followed me, in my return to
the shade of life, with assiduous benevolence. Often did I regret, in
the fleeting hours of my late will-o'-wisp appearance, that "here I had
no continuing city;" and, but for the consolation of a few solid
guineas, could almost lament the time that a momentary acquaintance with
wealth and splendour put me so much out of conceit with the sworn
companions of my road through life--insignificance and poverty.
There are few circumstances relating to the unequal distribution of the
good things of this life that give me more vexation (I mean in what I
see around me) than the importance the opulent bestow on their trifling
family affairs, compared with the very same things on the contracted
scale of a cottage. Last afternoon I had the honour to spend an hour or
two at a good woman's fireside, where the planks that composed the floor
were decorated with a splendid carpet, and the gay table sparkled with
silver and china. 'Tis now about term-day, and there has been a
revolution among those creatures who, though in appearance partakers,
and equally noble partakers, of the same nature with Madame, are from
time to time--their nerves, their sinews, their health, strength,
wisdom, experience, genius, time, nay, a good part of their very
thoughts--sold for months and years, not only to the necessities, the
conveniences, but the caprices of the important few. We talked of the
insignificant creatures; nay, notwithstanding their general stupidity
and rascality, did some of the poor devils the honour to commend them.
But light be the turf upon his breast who taught "Reverence thyself!" We
looked down on the unpolished wretches, their impertinent wives, and
clouterly brats, as the lordly bull does on the little dirty ant-hill,
whose puny inhabitants he crushes in the carelessness of his ramble, or
tosses in the air in the wantonness of his pride.
R. B.
* * * * *
XCIV.--TO MRS. DUNLOP, AT MR. DUNLOP'S, HADDINGTON.
ELLISLAND, 13_th June_ 1788.
Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see,
My heart, untravell'd, fondly turns to thee;
Still to my friend it turns with ceaseless pain,
And drags, at each remove, a lengthen'd chain.
GOLDSMITH.
This is the second day, my honoured friend, that I have been on my farm.
A solitary inmate of an old smoky spence; 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 the 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?
Your surmise, Madam, is just: I am indeed a husband.
I found a once much-loved and still much-loved female, literally and
truly cast out to the mercy of the naked elements--but 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
common 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 Testaments, nor have danced in a brighter assembly than a penny
pay wedding.
R. B.
* * * * *
XCV.-TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.
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 and honour: I take it to be,
in some way or other, an imperfection in the mental sight; or, metaphor
apart, some modification of dulness. In two or three 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 realise 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.[80] As it is, I look to
the Excise scheme as a certainty of maintenance; a maintenance!--luxury
to what either Mrs. Burns or I were born to. Adieu.
R. B.
[Footnote 80: This alludes to his marriage.]
* * * *
XCVI.-TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.
ELLISLAND, _30th June_ 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.[81] 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 have 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 to 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 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 15s. to him, I
will rather inclose 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, spendthrifts, 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 latitude 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 sermonise 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.
[Footnote 81: Samuel Mitchelson, W.S., with whom young Ainslie served
his apprenticeship.]
* * * *
XCVII--TO MRS. DUNLOP.
MAUCHLINE, _July_ 10_th_, 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
odd 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 _éclatant_ 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?
To jealousy or infidelity I am an equal stranger. My preservative
against 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. I can easily _fancy_ a more
agreeable companion for my journey of life; but, upon my honour, I have
never _seen_ the individual instance.
In household 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.
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, etc., 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.[82]