in your composition, and you have as often disavowed it; even perhaps
while your opinions were, at the moment, irrefragably proving it. Could
any thing estrange me from a friend such as you?--No! To-morrow I shall
have the honour of waiting on you.
Farewell, thou first of friends, and most accomplished of women I even
with all thy little caprices!
R B.
* * * * *
CXC.--To MRS. RIDDEL.
Madam,--I return your commonplace book. I have perused it with much
pleasure, and would have continued my criticisms, but as it seems the
critic has forfeited your esteem, his strictures must lose their value.
If it is true that "offences come only from the heart," before you I am
guiltless. To admire, esteem, and prize you as the most accomplished of
women, and the first of friends--if these are crimes, I am the most
offending thing alive.
In a face where I used to meet the kind complacency of friendly
confidence, _now_ to find cold neglect and contemptuous scorn--is a
wrench that my heart can ill bear. It is, however, some kind of
miserable good luck, that while _de-haut-en-bas_ rigour may depress an
unoffending wretch to the ground, it has a tendency to rouse a stubborn
something in his bosom, which, though it cannot heal the wounds of his
soul, is at least an opiate to blunt their poignancy.
With the profoundest respect for your abilities, the most sincere esteem
and ardent regard for your gentle heart and amiable manners, and the
most fervent wish and prayer for your welfare, peace, and bliss, I have
the honour to be, Madam, your most devoted humble servant.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXCI.--TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.
25_th February_ 1794.
Canst thou minister to a mind diseased? Canst thou speak peace and rest
to a soul tost on a sea of troubles, without one friendly star to guide
her course, and dreading that the next surge may overwhelm her? Canst
thou give to a frame, tremblingly alive to the tortures of suspense, the
stability and hardihood of the rock that braves the blast? If thou canst
not do the least of these, why wouldst thou disturb me in my miseries,
with thy inquiries after me?
For these two months I have not been able to lift a pen. My constitution
and frame were, _ab origine_, blasted with a deep incurable taint of
hypochondria, which poisons my existence. Of late a number of domestic
vexations, and some pecuniary share in the ruin of these cursed times;
losses which, though trifling, were yet what I could ill bear, have so
irritated me, that my feelings at times could only be envied by a
reprobate spirit listening to the sentence that dooms it to perdition.
Are you deep in the language of consolation? I have exhausted in
reflection every topic of comfort. _A heart at ease_ would have been
charmed with my sentiments and reasonings; but as to myself, I was like
Judas Iscariot preaching the gospel; he might melt and mould the hearts
of those around him, but his own kept its native incorrigibility.
Still there are two great pillars that bear us up, amid the wreck of
misfortune and misery. The ONE is composed of the different
modifications of a certain noble, stubborn something in a man, known by
the names of courage, fortitude, magnanimity. The OTHER is made up of
those feelings and sentiments, which, however the sceptic may deny them,
or the enthusiast disfigure them, are yet, I am convinced, original and
component parts of the human soul; those _senses of the mind_ if I may
be allowed the expression, which connect us with, and link us to, those
awful obscure realities--an all-powerful, and equally beneficent God;
and a world to come, beyond death and the grave. The first gives the
nerve of combat, while a ray of hope beams on the field: the last pours
the balm of comfort into the wounds which time can never cure.
I do not remember, my dear Cunningham, that you and I ever talked on the
subject of religion at all. I know some who laugh at it, as the trick of
the crafty FEW, to lead the undiscerning MANY; or at most, as an
uncertain obscurity which mankind can never know anything of, and with
which they are fools if they give themselves much to do. Nor would I
quarrel with a man for his irreligion, any more than I would for his
want of a musical ear, I would regret that he was shut out from what, to
me and to others, were such superlative sources of enjoyment. It is in
this point of a view, and for this reason, that I will deeply imbue the
mind of every child of mine with religion. If my son should happen to be
a man of feeling, sentiment, and taste, I shall thus add largely to his
enjoyments. Let me flatter myself that this sweet little fellow, who is
just now running about my desk, will be a man of a melting, ardent,
glowing heart; and an imagination, delighted with the painter, and rapt
with the poet. Let me figure him wandering out in a sweet evening, to
inhale the balmy gales, and enjoy the glowing luxuriance of the spring;
himself the while in the blooming youth of life. He looks abroad on all
nature, and through nature up to nature's God. His soul, by swift
delighting degrees, is rapt above this sublunary sphere until he can be
silent no longer, and bursts out into the glorious enthusiasm
of Thomson,
These, as they change, Almighty Father, these
Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Is full of thee.
And so on, in all the spirit and ardour of that charming hymn. These are
no ideal pleasures, they are real delights; and I ask, what of the
delights among the sons of men are superior, not to say equal to them?
And they have this precious, vast addition, that conscious virtue stamps
them for her own; and lays hold on them to bring herself into the
presence of a witnessing, judging, and approving God.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXCII.--To MRS. DUNLOP.
CASTLE DOUGLAS, _25th June 1794._
Here in a solitary inn, in a solitary village, am I set by myself, to
amuse my brooding fancy as I may. Solitary confinement, you know, is
Howard's favourite idea of reclaiming sinners; so let me consider by
what fatality it happens, that I have so long been exceeding sinful as
to neglect the correspondence of the most valued friend I have on earth.
To tell you that I have been in poor health will not be excuse enough,
though it is true. I am afraid that I am about to suffer for the follies
of my youth. My medical friends threaten me with a flying gout; but I
trust they are mistaken.
I am just going to trouble your critical patience with the first sketch
of a stanza I have been framing, as I passed along the road. The subject
is Liberty: you know, my honoured friend, how dear the theme is to me. I
design it an irregular ode for General Washington's birth-day. After
having mentioned the degeneracy of other kingdoms I come to
Scotland thus:
Thee, Caledonia, thy wild heaths among,
Thee, famed for martial deed and sacred song,
To thee I turn with swimming eyes;
Where is that soul of freedom fled?
Immingled with the mighty dead!
Beneath the hallowed turf where Wallace lies!
Hear it not, Wallace, in thy bed of death;
Ye babbling winds, in silence sweep,
Disturb ye not the hero's sleep.
You will probably have another scrawl from me in a stage or two.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXCIII.--To MR. JAMES JOHNSON.
DUMFRIES, 1794.
My Dear Friend,--You should have heard from me long ago; but over and
above some vexatious share in the pecuniary losses of these accursed
times, I have all this winter been plagued with low spirits and blue
devils, so that _I have almost hung my harp on the willow trees_.
I am just now busy correcting a new edition of my poems, and this, with
my ordinary business, finds me in full employment.
I send you by my friend, Mr. Wallace, forty-one songs for your fifth
volume; if we cannot finish it any other way, what would you think of
Scotch words to some beautiful Irish airs? In the meantime, at your
leisure, give a copy of the _Museum_ to my worthy friend, Mr. Peter
Hill, bookseller, to bind for me, interleaved with blank leaves, exactly
as he did the Laird of Glenriddel's, that I may insert every anecdote I
can learn, together with my own criticisms and remarks on the songs. A
copy of this kind I shall leave with you, the editor, to publish at some
after period, by way of making the _Museum_ a book famous to the end of
time, and you renowned for ever.
I have got a highland dirk, for which I have great veneration, as it
once was the dirk of _Lord Balmerino_. It fell into bad hands, who
stripped it of the silver mounting, as well as the knife and fork. I
have some thoughts of sending it to your care, to get it mounted
anew.--Yours, etc.,
R. B.
* * * * *
CXCIV.--To MR. PETER MILLER, JUN., OF DALSWINION.[131]
DUMFRIES, _Nov. 1794._
Dear Sir,--Your offer is indeed truly generous, and sincerely do I thank
you for it; but in my present situation, I find that I dare not accept
it. You well know my political sentiments; and were I an insular
individual, unconnected with a wife and a family of children, with the
most fervid enthusiasm I would have volunteered my services; I then
could and would have despised all consequences that might have ensued.
My prospect in the Excise is something; at least, it is--encumbered as
I am with the welfare, the very existence, of near half-a-score of
helpless individuals--what I dare not sport with.
In the meantime, they are most welcome to my Ode; only, let them insert
it as a thing they have met with by accident and unknown to me. Nay, if
Mr. Perry, whose honour, after your character of him, I cannot doubt, if
he will give me an address and channel by which anything will come safe
from those spies with which he may be certain that his correspondence is
beset, I will now and then send him any bagatelle that I may write. In
the present hurry of Europe, nothing but news and politics will be
regarded; but against the days of peace, which Heaven send soon, my
little assistance may perhaps fill up an idle column of a newspaper. I
have long had it in my head to try my hand in the way of little prose
essays, which I propose sending into the world through the medium of
some newspaper; and should these be worth his while, to these Mr. Perry
shall be welcome; and all my reward shall be, his treating me with his
paper, which, by-the-by, to anybody who has the least relish for wit, is
a high treat indeed.
With the most grateful esteem, I am ever, Dear Sir,
R. B.
[Footnote 131: He had offered Burns a post on the staff of _The
Morning Chronicle_, of which newspaper Mr. Perry was proprietor.]
* * * * *
CXCV.--To MRS, RIDDEL,
Madam,--I dare say that this is the first epistle you ever received from
this nether world. I write you from the regions of hell, amid the
horrors of the damn'd. The time and manner of my leaving your earth I do
not exactly know, as I took my departure in the heat of a fever of
intoxication, contracted at your too hospitable mansion; but, on my
arrival here, I was fairly tried, and sentenced to endure the
purgatorial tortures of this infernal confine for the space of
ninety-nine years, eleven months, and twenty-nine days, and all on
account of the impropriety of my conduct yesternight under your roof.
Here am I, laid on a bed of pitiless furze, with my aching head reclined
on a pillow of ever-piercing thorn, while an infernal tormentor,
wrinkled, and old, and cruel--his name I think is _Recollection_--with
a whip of scorpions, forbids peace or rest to approach me, and keeps
anguish eternally awake. Still, Madam, if I could in any measure be
reinstated in the good opinion of the fair circle whom my conduct last
night so much injured, I think it would be an alleviation to my
torments. For this reason I trouble you with this letter. To the men of
the company I will make no apology.--Your husband, who insisted on my
drinking more than I chose, has no right to blame me, and the other
gentlemen were partakers of my guilt. But to you, Madam, I have much to
apologise. Your good opinion I valued as one of the greatest
acquisitions I had made on earth, and I was truly a beast to forfeit it.
There was a Miss I---too, a woman of fine sense, gentle and unassuming
manners--do make, on my part, a miserable damn'd wretch's best apology
to her. A Mrs. G--, a charming woman, did me the honour to be prejudiced
in my favour; this makes me hope that I have not outraged her beyond all
forgiveness.--To all the other ladies please present my humblest
contrition for my conduct, and my petition for their gracious pardon. O
all ye powers of decency and decorum! whisper to them that my errors,
though great, were involuntary--that an intoxicated man is the vilest of
beasts--that it was not in my nature to be brutal to any one--that to be
rude to a woman, when in my senses, was impossible with me--but--
Regret! Remorse! Shame! ye three hell hounds that ever dog my steps and
bay at my heels, spare me! spare me!
Forgive the offences, and pity the perdition of, Madam, your humble
slave,
R. B.
* * * * *
CXCVI.--To MRS. DUNLOP.
_15th December 1795._
My Dear Friend,--As I am in a complete Decemberish humour, gloomy,
sullen, stupid, as even the Deity of Dulness herself could wish, I shall
not drawl out a heavy letter with a number of heavier apologies for my
late silence. Only one I shall mention, because I know you will
sympathise with it: these four months, a sweet little girl, my youngest
child, has been so ill, that every day a week or less threatened to
terminate her existence. There had much need be many pleasures annexed
to the states of husband and father, for, God knows, they have many
peculiar cares. I cannot describe to you the anxious, sleepless hours
these ties frequently give me. I see a train of helpless little folks;
me and my exertions all their stay: and on what a brittle thread does
the life of man hang! If I am nipt off at the command of fate! even in
all the vigour of manhood as I am--such things happen every day
--Gracious God! what would become of my little flock! 'Tis here that I
envy your people of fortune. A father on his deathbed, taking an
everlasting leave of his children, has indeed woe enough; but the man of
competent fortune leaves his sons and daughters independency and
friends; while I--but I shall run distracted if I think any longer on
the subject!
To leave talking of the matter so gravely, I shall sing with the old
Scots ballad--
O that I had ne'er been married,
I would never had nae care;
Now I've gotten wife and bairns,
They cry crowdie evermair.
Crowdie ance, crowdie twice:
Crowdie three times in a day:
An ye crowdie ony mair,
Ye'll crowdie a' my meal away.
_25th, Christmas Morning._
This, my much-loved friend, is a morning of wishes; accept mine--so
Heaven hear me as they are sincere! that blessings may attend your
steps, and affliction know you not! In the charming words of my
favourite author--"The Man of Feeling," "May the Great Spirit bear up
the weight of thy grey hairs, and blunt the arrow that brings
them rest!"
Now that I talk of authors, how do you like Cowper? Is not the "Task" a
glorious poem? The religion of the "Task," bating a few scraps of
Calvinistic divinity, is the religion of God and Nature; the religion
that exalts, that ennobles man. Were not you to send me your _Zeluco_ in
return for mine? Tell me how you like my marks and notes through the
book. I would not give a farthing for a book, unless I were at liberty
to blot it with my criticisms.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXCVII.--To MRS. DUNLOP, IN LONDON.
DUMFRIES, _2Oth December 1795._
I have been prodigiously disappointed in this London journey of
yours.... Do let me hear from you the soonest possible. As I hope to get
a frank from my friend Captain Miller, I shall, every leisure hour, take
up the pen and gossip away whatever comes first, prose or poetry, sermon
or song. In this last article I have abounded of late. I have often
mentioned to you a superb publication of Scottish songs, which is making
its appearance in our great metropolis, and where I have the honour to
preside over the Scottish verse, as no less a personage than Peter
Pindar does over the English.
_December 29th._
Since I began this letter, I have been appointed to act in the capacity
of supervisor here, and I assure you, what with the load of business,
and what with that business being new to me, I could scarcely have
commanded ten minutes to have spoken to you, had you been in town, much
less to have written you an epistle. This appointment is only temporary,
and during the illness of the present incumbent; but I look forward to
an early period when I shall be appointed in full form: a consummation
devoutly to be wished! My political sins seem to be forgiven me.
This is the season (New Year's day is now my date) of wishing, and mine
are most fervently offered up for you! May life to you be a positive
blessing while it lasts, for your own sake; and that it may yet be
greatly prolonged is my wish for my own sake, and for the sake of the
rest of your friends! What a transient business is life! Very lately I
was a boy; but t'other day I was a young man; and I already begin to
feel the rigid fibre and stiffening joints of old age coming fast o'er
my frame. With all my follies of youth, and, I fear, a few vices of
manhood, still I congratulate myself on having had in early days
religion strongly impressed on my mind. I have nothing to say to any one
as to which sect he belongs to, or what creed he believes: but I look on
the man who is firmly persuaded of infinite Wisdom and Goodness
superintending and directing every circumstance that can happen in his
lot--I felicitate such a man for having a solid foundation for his
mental enjoyment; a firm prop and sure stay, in the hour of difficulty,
trouble, and distress; and a never-failing anchor of hope when he looks
beyond the grave.
R. B.
* * * *
CXVIII.--To THE HON, THE PROVOST, ETC., OF DUMFRIES.
Gentlemen,--The literary taste, and liberal spirit, of your good town
has so ably filled the various departments of your schools, as to make
it a very great object for a parent to have his children educated in
them. Still, to me, a stranger, with my large family, and very stinted
income, to give my young ones the education I wish, at the high-school
fees which a stranger pays, will bear hard upon me.
Some years ago, your good town did me the honour of making me an
honorary Burgess. Will you allow me to request that this mark of
distinction may extend so far, as to put me on a footing of a real
freeman of the town, in the schools?
If you are so very kind as to grant my request, it will certainly be a
constant incentive to me to strain every nerve where I can officially
serve you; and will, if possible, increase that grateful respect with
which I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, your devoted humble servant,
R. B.[132]
[Footnote 132: With the Poet's request the Magistiates of Dumfries
very handsomely complied. He was induced to make the request through
the persuasions of Mr. James Gray and Mr. Thomas White, Masters of
the Grammar School, Dumfries whose memories are still green on the
banks of the Nith.--CUNNINGHAM.]
* * * *
CXCIX.--To MRS. DUNLOP.[133]
DUMFRIES, _3lst January 1796._
These many months you have been two packets in my debt--what sin of
ignorance I have committed against so highly valued a friend I am
utterly at a loss to guess. Alas! Madam, ill can I afford, at this time,
to be deprived of any of the small remnant of my pleasures. I have
lately drunk deep of the cup of affliction. The autumn robbed me of my
only daughter and darling child, and that at a distance too, and so
rapidly, as to put it out of my power to pay the last duties to
her.[133a] I had scarcely begun to recover from that shock, when I
became myself the victim of a most severe rheumatic fever, and long the
die spun doubtful; until after many weeks of a sick bed, it seems to
have turned up life, and I am beginning to crawl across my room, and
once indeed have been before my own door in the street.
R. B.
[Footnote 133: Cunningham says--"It seems all but certain that Mrs.
Dunlop regarded the Poet with some little displeasure during the
evening of his days."]
[Footnote 133a: This child died at Mauchline.]
* * * * *
CC.--To MR. JAMES JOHNSON.
DUMFRIES, _4th July 1796._
How are you, my dear friend, and how comes on your fifth volume?[134]
You may probably think that for some time past I have neglected you and
your work; but, alas! the hand of pain, and sorrow, and care has these
many months lain heavy on me! Personal and domestic affliction have
almost entirely banished that alacrity and life with which I used to woo
the rural muse of Scotia.
You are a good, worthy, honest fellow, and have a good right to live in
this world--because you deserve it. Many a merry meeting this
publication has given us, and possibly it may give us more, though,
alas! I fear it. This protracting, slow, consuming illness which hangs
over me will, I doubt much, my dear friend, arrest my sun before he has
well reached his middle career, and will turn over the poet to far more
important concerns than studying the brilliancy of wit, or the pathos of
sentiment! However, hope is the cordial of the human heart, and I
endeavour to cherish it as well as I can.
I am ashamed to ask another favour of you, because you have been so very
good already; but my wife has a very particular friend, a young lady who
sings well, to whom she wishes to present the _Scots Musical Museum_. If
you have a spare copy, will you be so obliging as to send it by the very
first fly, as I am anxious to have it soon.--Yours ever,
R. B.[135]
[Footnote 134: Of the _Musical Museum_.]
[Footnote 135: "In this humble manner did poor Burns ask for a copy
of a work to which he had contributed, gratuitously, not less than
184 original, altered, and collected songs!"--CROMEK.]
* * * * *
CCI--TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.
BROW, _Sea-bathing quarters, 7th July_ 1796.
My Dear Cunningham,--I received yours here this moment, and am indeed
highly flattered with the approbation of the literary circle you
mention; a literary circle inferior to none in the two kingdoms. Alas!
my friend, I fear the voice of the bard will soon be heard among you no
more! For these eight or ten months I have been ailing, sometimes
bedfast and sometimes not; but these last three months I have been
tortured with an excruciating rheumatism, which has reduced me to nearly
the last stage. You actually would not know me if you saw me. Pale,
emaciated, and so feeble, as occasionally to need help from my chair--
my spirits fled! fled!--but I can no more on the subject--only the
medical folks tell me that my last and only chance is bathing and
country quarters, and riding. The deuce of the matter is this--when an
exciseman is off duty, his salary is reduced to £35 instead of £50. What
way, in the name of thrift, shall I maintain myself, and keep a horse in
country quarters, with a wife and five children at home, on 35 pounds? I
mention this, because I had intended to beg your utmost interest, and
that of all the friends you can muster, to move our Commissioners of
Excise to grant me the full salary; I dare say you know them all
personally. If they do not grant it me, I must lay my account with an
exit truly _en poete_; if I die not of disease, I must perish with
hunger.[136]
I have sent you one of the songs; the other my memory does not serve me
with, and I have no copy here, but I shall be at home soon, when I will
send it you. Apropos to being at home, Mrs. Burns threatens in a week or
two to add one more to my paternal charge, which, if of the right
gender, I intend shall be introduced to the world by the respectable
designation of _Alexander Cunningham Burns_. My last was _James
Glencairn_, so you can have no objection to the company of
nobility. Farewell.
R. B.
[Footnote 136: _Not_ granted.]
* * * * *
CCII.--To MR. GILBERT BURNS.
_10th July 1795._
Dear Brother,--It will be no very pleasing news to you to be told that I
am dangerously ill, and not likely to get better. An inveterate
rheumatism has reduced me to such a state of debility, and my appetite
is so totally gone, that I can scarcely stand on my legs. I have been a
week at sea-bathing, and will continue there, or in a friend's house in
the country, all the summer. God keep my wife and children; if I am
taken from their head, they will be poor indeed. I have contracted one
or two serious debts, partly from my illness these many months, partly
from too much thoughtlessness as to expense when I came to town, that
will cut in too much on the little I leave them in your hands. Remember
me to my mother.--Yours,
R. B.
* * * * *
CCIII.--To MRS. BURNS.[137]
BROW, _Thursday._