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!_
[Footnote 104: A maid servant at Loudon house.]
* * * * *
CXXXVIL--To CAPTAIN RIDDEL, FRIARS CARSE.
ELLISLAND, _16th October_ 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[105] 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, etc.
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 Lawrie, to frank the two inclosed 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.
[Footnote 105: Sir Robert Lawrie of Maxwellton, the holder of the
Whistle, Alexander Fergusson of Craigdarroch, and Captain Riddel.
_See_ the Poem. Burns was apparently absent.]
* * * * *
CXXXVIII--To MR. ROBERT AINSLIE, W.S.
ELLISLAND, 1_st Nov_. 1789.
My Dear Friend,--I had written you 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.
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, etc.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXXXIX.--To MR. RICHARD BROWN, PORT-GLASGOW.
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 connections consequent on the tender and venerable names
of husband and father! I have indeed been extremely lucky in getting an
additional income of £50 a-year, while, at the same time, the
appointment will not cost me above £10 or £12 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 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
bed-fellows, 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.
* * * * *
CXL.--To MR. R. GRAHAM, OF FINTRY.
_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
connection 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.
Mitchell, 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 inclose 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 inclosed 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.[106]
The election ballad,[107] 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[108] who has it in his power to be the father of a
country, and who is only known to that country by the mischiefs he does
in it, is a character that one cannot speak of with patience.
Sir J. J. does "what man can do," but yet I doubt his fate.
R. B.
[Footnote 106: The Kirk's Alarm.]
[Footnote 107: _The Five Carlines._]
[Footnote 108: Duke of Queensbury.]
* * * * *
CXLL--To MRS. DUNLOP.
ELLISLAND, _13th December_ 1789.
Many thanks, dear Madam, for your sheetful 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 headache, that I have been obliged for a time to give up
my excise-books, being scare 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.
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.
* * * * *
CXLII.--To LADY WINIFRED M. CONSTABLE.
ELLISLAND, 16th DECEMBER 1789.
My Lady,--In vain have I from day to day expected to hear from Mis.
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 Currachan, 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 sufferings, 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. This language and the inclosed 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.
* * * * *
CXLIII.--To MR. CHARLES K. SHARPE, OF HODDAM.
_Under a fictitious Signature, inclosing a Ballad, 1790 or 1791._[109]
It is true, Sir, you are a gentleman of rank and fortune, and I am a
poor devil; you are a feather in the cap of society, and I am a very
hobnail in his shoes; yet I have the honour to belong to the same family
with you, and on that score I now address you. You will perhaps suspect
that I am going to claim affinity with the ancient and honourable house
of Kirkpatrick. No, no, Sir. I cannot indeed be properly said to belong
to any house, or even any province or kingdom; as my mother, who for
many years was spouse to a marching regiment, gave me into this bad
world, aboard the packet-boat, somewhere between Donaghadee and
Portpatrick. By our common family, I mean, Sir, the family of the Muses.
I am a fiddler and a poet; and you, I am told, play an exquisite violin,
and have a standard taste in the belles lettres. The other day, a
brother catgut gave me a charming Scots air of your composition. If I
was pleased with the tune, I was in raptures with the title you have
given it, and, taking up the idea, I have spun it into the three stanzas
inclosed. Will you allow me, Sir, to present you them, as the dearest
offering that a misbegotten son of poverty and rhyme has to give? I have
a longing to take you by the hand and unburden my heart by saying, "Sir,
I honour you as a man who supports the dignity of human nature, amid an
age when frivolity and avarice have, between them, debased us below the
brutes that perish!" But, alas, Sir! to me you are unapproachable. It is
true, the Muses baptised me in Castalian streams; but the thoughtless
gipsies forgot to give me a name. As the sex have served many a good
fellow, the Nine have given me a great deal of pleasure; but, bewitching
jades! they have beggared me. Would they but spare me a little of their
cast-linen! Were it only to put it in my power to say, that I have a
shirt on my back! But the idle wenches, like Solomon's lilies, "they
toil not, neither do they spin;" so I must e'en continue to tie my
remnant of a cravat, like the hangman's rope, round my naked throat, and
coax my galligaskins to keep together their many-coloured fragments. As
to the affair of shoes, I have given that up. My pilgrimages in my
ballad-trade, from town to town, and on your stony-hearted turnpikes
too, are not what even the hide of Job's behemoth could bear. The coat
on my back is no more: I shall not speak evil of the dead. It would be
equally unhandsome and ungrateful to find fault with my old surtout,
which so kindly supplies and conceals the want of that coat. My hat,
indeed, is a great favourite; and though I got it literally for an old
song, I would not exchange it for the best beaver in Britain. I was,
during several years, a kind of fac-totum servant to a country
clergyman, where I picked up a good many scraps of learning,
particularly--in some branches of the mathematics. Whenever I feel
inclined to rest myself on my way, I take my seat under a hedge, laying
my poetic wallet on the one side, and my fiddle-case on the other, and
placing my hat between my legs, I can by means of its brim, or rather
brims, go through the whole doctrine of the Conic Sections. However,
Sir, don't let me mislead you, as if I would interest your pity. Fortune
has so much forsaken me, that she has taught me to live without her;
and, amid all my rags and poverty, I am as independent, and much more
happy than a monarch of the world. According to the hackneyed metaphor,
I value the several actors in the great drama of life, simply as they
act their parts. I can look on a worthless fellow of a duke with
unqualified contempt, and can regard an honest scavenger with sincere
respect. As you, Sir, go through your role with such distinguished
merit, permit me to make one in the chorus of universal applause, and
assure you that with the highest respect, I have the honour to be, etc.
[Footnote 109: "Here Burns plays high Jacobite to that singular old
curmudgeon, Lady Constable. I imagine his Jacobitism, like my own,
belonged to the fancy rather than the reason."--Scott.]
* * * * *
CXLIV.--To HIS BROTHER, GILBERT BURNS, MOSSGIEL.
ELLISLAND, _11th January 1790_.
Dear Brother,--I mean to take advantage of the frank, though I have not
in my present frame of mind much appetite for exertion in writing. My
nerves are in a cursed state. I feel that horrid hypochondria pervading
every atom of both body and soul. This farm has undone my enjoyment of
myself. It is a ruinous affair on all hands. But let it go to hell! I'll
fight it out and be off with it.
We have gotten a set of very decent players here just now. I have seen
them an evening or two. David Campbell, in Ayr, wrote to me by the
manager of the company, a Mr. Sutherland, who is a man of apparent
worth. On New-year-day evening I gave him the following prologue, which
he spouted to his audience with applause:--
No song nor dance I bring from yon great city, etc.
I can no more. If once I was clear of this curst farm, I should respire
more at ease.
* * * * *
CXLV.--To MR. WILLIAM DUNBAR, W.S.
ELLISLAND, 14th Jan. 1790.
Since we are here creatures of a day, since "a few summer days, a few
winter nights, and the life of man is at an end," why, my dear much
esteemed Sir, should you and I let negligent indolence, for I know it is
nothing worse, step in between us and bar the enjoyment of a mutual
correspondence? We are not shapen out of the common, heavy, methodical
clod, the elemental stuff of the plodding selfish race, the sons of
Arithmetic and Prudence; our feelings and hearts are not benumbed and
poisoned by the cursed influence of riches, which, whatever blessing
they may be in other respects, are no friends to the nobler qualities of
the heart; in the name of random sensibility, then, let never the moon
change on our silence any more. I have had a tract of bad health the
most part of this winter, else you had heard from me long ere now. Thank
heaven, I am now got so much better as to be able to partake a little in
the enjoyments of life.
Our friend, Cunningham, will perhaps have told you of my going into the
Excise. The truth is, I found it a very convenient business to have £50
per annum, nor have I yet felt any of these mortifying circumstances in
it that I was led to fear.
_Feb. 2nd._--I have not for sheer hurry of business been able to spare
five minutes to finish my letter. Besides my farm business, I ride on my
Excise matters at least two hundred miles every week. I have not by any
means given up the Muses. You will see in the third volume of Johnson's
Scots songs that I have contributed my mite there.
But, my dear Sir, little ones that look up to you for paternal
protection are an important charge. I have already two fine healthy
stout little fellows, and I wish to throw some light upon them. I have a
thousand reveries and schemes about them, and their future destiny. Not
that I am an Utopian projector in these things. I am resolved never to
breed up a son of mine to any of the learned professions. I know the
value of independence; and since I cannot give my sons an independent
fortune, I shall give them an independent line of life. What a chaos of
hurry, chance, and changes is this world, when one sits soberly down to
reflect on it! To a father, who himself knows the world, the thought
that he shall have sons to usher into it, must fill him with dread; but
if he have daughters, the prospect in a thoughtful moment is apt to
shock him.