are now my pride. I know that a very great deal of my late éclat 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 inclose 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 Fintry, 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 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?[93]
I believe I shall, in whole, £100 copyright included, clear about £400,
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 £180 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, etc.
Thus, secure of a livelihood, "to thee, sweet poetry, delightful
maid,"[94] I would consecrate my future days.
R. B.
[Footnote 93: Creech; remarkable for his reluctance to settle
accounts.]
[Footnote 94: Goldsmith's "Deserted Village."]
* * * * *
CXV.--TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.
ELLISLAND, _January_ 6_th_, 1789.
Many happy returns of the season to you, my dear Sir! May you be
comparatively happy, up to your comparative worth among the sons of men;
which wish would, I am sure, make you one of the most blessed of the
human race.
I do not know if passing a "Writer to the Signet" be a trial of
scientific merit, or a mere business of friends and interest. However it
be, let me quote you my two favourite passages, which, though I have
repeated them ten thousand times, still they rouse my manhood and steel
my resolution like inspiration.
On Reason build resolve.
That column of true majesty in man.
YOUNG.
Hear, Alfred, hero of the slate,
Thy genius heaven's high will declare;
The triumph of the truly great,
Is never, never to despair!
Is never to despair!
MASQUE OF ALFRED.
I grant you enter the lists of life, to struggle for bread, business,
notice, and distinction, in common with hundreds. But who are they? Men
like yourself, and of that aggregate body your compeers, seven-tenths of
them come short of your advantages, natural and accidental; while two of
those that remain, either neglect their parts, as flowers blooming in a
desert, or misspend their strength like a bull goring a bramble bush.
But to change the theme: I am still catering for Johnson's publication;
and among others, I have brushed up the following old favourite song a
little, with a view to your worship. I have only altered a word here and
there; but if you like the humour of it, we shall think of a stanza or
two to add to it. R. B.
* * * * *
CXVI.--TO PROFESSOR DUGALD STEWART.
ELLISLAND, 20_th Jan_. 1789.
Sir,--The inclosed sealed packet I sent to Edinburgh, a few days after I
had the happiness of meeting you in Ayrshire, but you were gone for the
Continent. I have now added a few more of my productions, those for
which I am indebted to the Nithsdale Muses. The piece inscribed to R.
G., Esq., is a copy of verses I sent Mr. Graham, of Fintry, accompanying
a request for his assistance in a matter to me of very great moment. To
that gentleman I am already doubly indebted; for deeds of kindness of
serious import to my dearest interests, done in a manner grateful to the
delicate feelings of sensibility. This poem is a species of composition
new to me, but I do not intend it shall be my last essay of the kind, as
you will see by the "Poet's Progress." These fragments, if my design
succeed, are but a small part of the intended whole. I propose it shall
be the work of my utmost exertions, ripened by years; of course I do not
wish it much known. The fragment beginning "A little upright, pert,
tart," etc., I have not shown to man living, till I now send it you. It
forms the postulata, the axioms, the definition of a character, which,
if it appear at all, shall be placed in a variety of lights. This
particular part I send you merely as a sample of my hand at
portrait-sketching; but, lest idle conjecture should pretend to point
out the original, please to let it be for your single, sole inspection.
Need I make any apology for this trouble, to a gentleman who has treated
me with such marked benevolence and peculiar kindness; who has entered
into my interests with so much zeal, and on whose critical decisions I
can so fully depend? A poet as I am by trade, these decisions are to me
of the last consequence. My late transient acquaintance among some of
the mere rank and file of greatness, I resign with ease; but to the
distinguished champions of genius and learning, I shall be ever
ambitious of being known. The native genius and accurate discernment in
Mr. Stewart's critical strictures; the justness (iron justice, for he
has no bowels of compassion for a poor poetic sinner) of Dr. Gregory's
remarks, and the delicacy of Professor Dalzel's taste, I shall
ever revere.
I shall be in Edinburgh some time next month.--I have the honour to be,
Sir, your highly obliged, and very humble servant, R. B.
* * * * *
CXVII.--TO MR. ROBERT CLEGHORN, SAUGHTON MILLS.
ELLISLAND, 23_rd Jan_. 1789.
I must take shame and confusion of face to myself, my dear friend and
brother Farmer, that I have not written you much sooner. The truth is I
have been so tossed about between Ayrshire and Nithsdale that, till now
I have got my family here, I have had time to think of nothing except
now and then a stanza or so as I rode along. Were it not for our
gracious monarch's cursed tax of postage I had sent you one or two
pieces of some length that I have lately done. I have no idea of the
_Press_. I am more able to support myself and family, though in a
humble, yet an independent way; and I mean, just at my leisure, to pay
court to the tuneful sisters in the hope that they may one day enable me
to carry on a work of some importance. The following are a few verses
which I wrote in a neighbouring gentleman's _hermitage_ to which he is
so good as let me have a key.
* * * * *
CXVIII.--To BISHOP GEDDES, EDINBURGH.
ELLISLAND, _3rd Feb_. 1789.
VENERABLE FATHER,--As I am conscious that wherever I am, you do me the
honour to interest yourself in my welfare, it gives me pleasure to
inform you, that I am here at last, stationary in the serious business
of life, and have now not only the retired leisure, but the hearty
inclination, to attend to those great and important questions,--what I
am? where I am? and for what I am destined.
In that first concern, the conduct of the man, there was ever but one
side on which I was habitually blameable, and there I have secured
myself in the way pointed out by nature and nature's God. I was sensible
that, to so helpless a creature as a poor poet, a wife and family were
incumbrances, which a species of prudence would bid him shun; but when
the alternative was, being at eternal warfare with myself, on account of
habitual follies, to give them no worse name, which no general example,
no licentious wit, no sophistical infidelity, would, to me, ever
justify, I must have been a fool to have hesitated, and a madman to have
made another choice. Besides, I had in "my Jean" a long and much-loved
fellow-creature's happiness or misery among my hands, and who could
trifle with such a deposit?
In the affair of a livelihood, I think myself tolerably secure: I have
good hopes of my farm, but should they fail, I have an excise
commission, which, on my simple petition, will, at any time, procure me
bread. There is a certain stigma affixed to the character of an excise
officer, but I do not pretend to borrow honour from my profession; and
though the salary be comparatively small, it is luxury to anything that
the first twenty-five years of my life taught me to expect.
Thus, with a rational aim and method in life, you may easily guess, my
reverend and much-honoured friend, that my characteristical trade is not
forgotten. I am, if possible, more than ever an enthusiast to the Muses.
I am determined to study man and nature, and in that view incessantly;
and to try if the ripening and corrections of years can enable me to
produce something worth preserving.
You will see in your book, which I beg your pardon for detaining so
long, that I have been tuning my lyre on the banks of Nith. Some large
poetic plans that are floating in my imagination, or partly put in
execution, I shall impart to you when I have the pleasure of meeting
with you; which, if you are then in Edinburgh, I shall have about the
beginning of March.
That acquaintance, worthy Sir, with which you were pleased to honour me,
you must still allow me to challenge; for, with whatever unconcern I
give up my transient connection with the merely great, I cannot lose the
patronising notice of the learned and good without the bitterest regret.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXIX.--TO MR. JAMES BURNESS.
ELLISLAND, _9th Feb_. 1789.
MY DEAR SIR,--Why I did not write to you long ago is what, even on the
rack, I could not answer. If you can in your mind form an idea of
indolence, dissipation, hurry, cares, change of country, entering on
untried scenes of life, all combined, you will save me the trouble of a
blushing apology. It could not be want of regard for a man for whom I
had a high esteem before I knew him--an esteem which has much increased
since I did know him; and this caveat entered, I shall plead guilty to
any other indictment with which you shall please to charge me.
After I parted from you, for many months my life was one continued scene
of dissipation. Here at last I am become stationary, and have taken a
farm and--a wife.
The farm is beautifully situated on the Nith, a large river that runs by
Dumfries, and falls into the Solway frith. I have gotten a lease of my
farm as long as I please; but how it may turn out is just a guess, and
it is yet to improve and inclose, etc.; however, I have good hopes of my
bargain on the whole.
My wife is my Jean, with whose story you are partly acquainted. I found
I had a much-loved fellow-creature's happiness or misery among my hands,
and I durst not trifle with so sacred a deposit. Indeed, I have not any
reason to repent the step I have taken, as I have attached myself to a
very good wife, and have shaken myself loose of every bad failing.
I have found my book a very profitable business, and with the profits of
it I have begun life pretty decently. Should fortune not favour me in
farming, as I have no great faith in her fickle ladyship, I have
provided myself in another resource, which, however some folks may
affect to despise it, is still a comfortable shift in the day of
misfortune. In the hey-day of my fame, a gentleman, whose name at least
I daresay you know, as his estate lies somewhere near Dundee, Mr.
Graham, of Fintry, one of the commissioners of Excise, offered me the
commission of an excise officer. I thought it prudent to accept the
offer; and, accordingly, I took my instructions, and have my commission
by me. Whether I may ever do duty, or be a penny the better for it, is
what I do not know; but I have the comfortable assurance that, come
whatever ill fate will, I can, on my simple petition to the Excise
Board, get into employ.
We have lost poor uncle Robert this winter. He has long been very weak,
and with very little alteration on him; he expired 3rd January.
His son William has been with me this winter, and goes in May to be an
apprentice to a mason. His other son, the eldest, John, comes to me I
expect in summer. They are both remarkably stout young fellows, and
promise to do well. His only daughter, Fanny, has been with me ever
since her father's death, and I purpose keeping her in my family till
she is woman grown, and fit for better service. She is one of the
cleverest girls, and has one of the most amiable dispositions I have
ever seen.
All friends in this country and Ayrshire are well. Remember me to all
friends in the north. My wife joins me in compliments to Mrs. B. and
family.--I am ever, my dear cousin, yours sincerely,
R. B.[95]
[Footnote 95: "Fanny Burns, the Poet's relation, merited all the
commendations he has here bestowed. I remember her while she lived at
Ellisland, and better still as the wife of Adam Armour, the brother
of bonnie Jean."--CUNNINGHAM.]
* * * * *
CXX.-To MRS. DUNLOP.
ELLISLAND, 4_th March_ 1789.
Here am I, my honoured friend, returned safe from the capital. To a man
who has a home, however humble or remote--if that home is like mine, the
scene of domestic comfort--the bustle of Edinburgh will soon be a
business of sickening disgust.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate you!
When I must skulk into a corner, lest the rattling equipage of some
gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to
exclaim--"What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some
state of pre-existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with
the sceptre of rule, and the key of riches in his puny fist, and I am
kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?" I
have read somewhere of a monarch (in Spain I think it was) who was so
out of humour with the Ptolemean system of astronomy, that he said, had
he been of the Creator's council, he could have saved him a great deal
of labour and absurdity. I will not defend this blasphemous speech; but
often, as I have glided with humble stealth through the pomp of Princes
Street, it has suggested itself to me, as an improvement on the present
human figure, that a man, in proportion to his own conceit of his
consequence in the world, could have pushed out the longitude of his
common size, as a snail pushes out his horns, or as we draw out a
perspective. This trifling alteration, not to mention the prodigious
saving it would be in the tear and wear of the neck and limb-sinews of
many of his majesty's liege-subjects, in the way of tossing the head and
tip-toe strutting, would evidently turn out a vast advantage, in
enabling us at once to adjust the ceremonials in making a bow, or making
way to a great man, and that too within a second of the precise
spherical angle of reverence, or an inch of the particular point of
respectful distance, which the important creature itself requires, as a
measuring-glance at its towering altitude would determine the affair
like instinct.
You are right, Madam, in your idea of poor Mylne's poem, which he has
addressed to me. The piece has a good deal of merit, but it has one
great fault--it is, by far, too long. Besides, my success has encouraged
such a shoal of ill-spawned monsters to crawl into public notice, under
the title of Scottish Poets, that the very term Scottish Poetry borders
on the burlesque. When I write to Mr. Carfrae, I shall advise him rather
to try one of his deceased friend's English pieces. I am prodigiously
hurried with my own matters, else I would have requested a perusal of
all Mylne's poetic performances, and would have offered his friends my
assistance in either selecting or correcting what would be proper for
the press. What it is that occupies me so much, and perhaps a little
oppresses my present spirits, shall fill up a paragraph in some future
letter. In the meantime, allow me to close this epistle with a few lines
done by a friend of mine.... I give you them, that, as you have seen the
original, you may guess whether one or two alterations I have ventured
to make in them, be any real improvement.
Like the fair plant that from our touch withdraws,
Shrink, mildly fearful, even from applause,
Be all a mother's fondest hope can dream,
And all you are, my charming Rachel, seem.
Straight as the fox-glove, ere her bells disclose,
Mild as the maiden-blushing hawthorn blows,
Fair as the fairest of each lovely kind,
Your form shall be the image of your mind;
Your manners shall so true your soul express,
That all shall long to know the worth they guess;
Congenial hearts shall greet with kindred love,
And even sick'ning envy must approve.[96]
R. B.
[Footnote 96: These lines are Mrs. Dunlop's own, addressed to her
daughter.]
* * * * *
CXXI.--TO MRS. M'LEHOSE (FORMERLY CLARINDA).
ELLISLAND, _Mar. 9th_, 1789.
Madam,--The letter you wrote me to Heron's carried its own answer. You
forbade me to write you unless I was willing to plead guilty to a
certain indictment you were pleased to bring against me. As I am
convinced of my own innocence, and, though conscious of high imprudence
and egregious folly, can lay my hand on my breast and attest the
rectitude of my heart, you will pardon me, Madam, if I do not carry my
complaisance so far as humbly to acquiesce in the name of "Villain"
merely out of compliment to your opinion, much as I esteem your judgment
and warmly as I regard your worth.
I have already told you, and I again aver it, that, at the time alluded
to, I was not under the smallest moral tie to Mrs. Burns; nor did I, nor
could I, then know all the powerful circumstances that omnipotent
necessity was busy laying in wait for me. When you call over the scenes
that have passed between us, you will survey the conduct of an honest
man struggling successfully with temptations the most powerful that ever
beset humanity, and preserving untainted honour in situations where the
austerest virtue would have forgiven a fall; situations that, I will
dare to say not a single individual of all his kind, even with half his
sensibility and passion, could have encountered without ruin; and I
leave you, Madam, to guess how such a man is likely to digest an
accusation of "perfidious treachery."
* * * * *
When I shall have regained your good opinion, perhaps I may venture to
solicit your friendship; but, be that as it may, the first of her sex I
ever knew shall always be the object of my warmest good wishes.
ROBT. BURNS.
* * * * *
CXXIL--TO DR. MOORE.
ELLISLAND, _23rd March_ 1789.
Sir,--The gentleman who will deliver you this is a Mr. Nielson, a worthy
clergyman in my neighbourhood, and a very particular acquaintance of
mine. As I have troubled him with this packet, I must turn him over to
your goodness, to recompense him for it in a way in which he much needs
your assistance, and where you can effectually serve him. Mr. Nielson is
on his way for France, to wait on his Grace of Queensberry, on some
little business of a good deal of importance to him, and he wishes for
your instructions respecting the most eligible mode of travelling, etc.,
for him, when he has crossed the channel. I should not have dared to
take this liberty with you, but that I am told, by those who have the
honour of your personal acquaintance, that to be a poor honest Scotsman
is a letter of recommendation to you, and that to have it in your power
to serve such a character, gives you much pleasure.
The inclosed ode is a compliment to the memory of the late Mrs. Oswald
of Auchencruive. You probably knew her personally, an honour of which I
cannot boast; but I spent my early years in the neighbourhood, and among
her servants and tenants. I know that she was detested with the most
heartfelt cordiality. However, in the particular part of her conduct
which roused my poetic wrath, she was much less blameable. In January
last, on my road to Ayrshire, I had put up at Bailie Whigham's, in
Sanquhar, the only tolerable inn in the place. The frost was keen, and
the grim evening and howling wind were ushering in a night of snow and
drift. My horse and I were both much fatigued with the labours of the
day, and just as my friend the Bailie and I were bidding defiance to the
storm, over a smoking bowl, in wheels the funeral pageantry of the late
great Mrs. Oswald, and poor I am forced to brave all the horrors of the
tempestuous night, and jade my horse, my young favourite horse, whom I
had just christened Pegasus, twelve miles farther on, through the
wildest moors and hills of Ayrshire, to New Cumnock, the next inn. The
powers of poesy and prose sink under me, when I would describe what I
felt. Suffice it to say, that when a good fire at New Cumnock had so far
recovered my frozen sinews, I sat down and wrote the inclosed ode.
I was at Edinburgh lately, and settled finally with Mr. Creech; and I
must own, that at last, he has been amicable and fair with me.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXXIII.--To HIS BROTHER, MR. WILLIAM BURNS.
ISLE, March 25th 1789.
I have stolen from my corn-sowing this minute to write a line to
accompany your shirt and hat, for I can no more. Your sister Nannie
arrived yesternight, and begs to be remembered to you. Write me every
opportunity--never mind postage. My head, too, is as addle as an egg
this morning, with dining abroad yesterday. I received yours by the
mason. Forgive me this foolish looking scrawl of an epistle.--I am ever,
my dear William, yours,
R. B.
P.S.--If you are not then gone from Longtown, I'll write you a long
letter by this day se'ennight. If you should not succeed in your tramps,
don't be dejected, or take any rash step--return to us in that case, and
we will court Fortune's better humour. Remember this, I charge you.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXXIV.--To MR. HILL, BOOKSELLER, EDINBURGH.
ELLISLAND, _2nd April_ 1789.
I will make no excuse, my dear Bibliopolus (God forgive me for murdering
language!) that I have sat down to write you on this vile paper.
It is economy, Sir; it is that cardinal virtue, prudence; so I beg you
will sit down, and either compose or borrow a panegyric. If you are
going to borrow, apply to[97] ... to compose, or rather to compound,
something very clever on my remarkable frugality; that I write to one of
my most esteemed friends on this wretched paper, which was originally
intended for the venal fist of some drunken exciseman, to take dirty
notes in a miserable vault of an ale-cellar.