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 or
honour: I take it to be, in some, why or other, an imperfection in the
mental sight; or, metaphor apart, some modification of dulness.
compliment to my ingenuousness, or to hint that the defect is in
consequence of the unsuspicious simplicity of conscious truth or
honour: I take it to be, in some, why or other, an imperfection in the
mental sight; or, metaphor apart, some modification of dulness.
Robert Burns
_
I have not delayed so long to write you, my much respected friend,
because I thought no farther of my promise. I have long since give up
that kind of formal correspondence, where one sits down irksomely to
write a letter, because we think we are in duty bound so to do.
I have been roving over the country, as the farm I have taken is forty
miles from this place, hiring servants and preparing matters; but most
of all I am earnestly busy to bring about a revolution in my own mind.
As, till within these eighteen months, I never was the wealthy master
of 10 guineas, my knowledge of business is to learn; add to this my
late scenes of idleness and dissipation have enervated my mind to an
alarming degree. Skill in the sober science of life is my most serious
and hourly study. I have dropt all conversation and all reading (prose
reading) but what tends in some way or other to my serious aim. Except
one worthy young fellow, I have not one single correspondent in
Edinburgh. You have indeed kindly made me an offer of that kind. The
world of wits, and _gens comme il faut_ which I lately left, and with
whom I never again will intimately mix--from that port, Sir, I expect
your Gazette: what _Les beaux esprit_ are saying, what they are doing,
and what they are singing. Any sober intelligence from my sequestered
walks of life; any droll original; any passing reward, important
forsooth, because it is mine; any little poetic effort, however
embryoth; these, my dear Sir, are all you have to expect from me. When
I talk of poetic efforts, I must have it always understood, that I
appeal from your wit and taste to your friendship and good nature. The
first would be my favourite tribunal, where I defied censure; but the
last, where I declined justice.
I have scarcely made a single distich since I saw you. When I meet
with an old Scots air that has any facetious idea in its name, I have
a peculiar pleasure in following out that idea for a verse or two.
I trust that this will find you in better health than I did last time
I called for you. A few lines from you, directed to me at Mauchline,
were it but to let me know how you are, will set my mind a good deal
[at rest. ] 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.
* * * * *
CXIII.
TO MISS CHALMERS.
[The sacrifice referred to by the poet, was his resolution to unite
his fortune with Jean Armour. ]
_Mauchline, 7th April, 1788. _
I am indebted to you and Miss Nimmo for letting me know Miss Kennedy.
Strange! how apt we are to indulge prejudices in our judgments of one
another! Even I, who pique myself on my skill in marking
characters--because I am too proud of my character as a man, to be
dazzled in my judgment for glaring wealth; and too proud of my
situation as a poor man to be biased against squalid poverty--I was
unacquainted with Miss K. 's very uncommon worth.
I am going on a good deal progressive in _mon grand but_, the sober
science of life. I have lately made some sacrifices, for which, were I
_viva voce_ with you to paint the situation and recount the
circumstances, you should applaud me.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXIV.
TO MISS CHALMERS.
[The hint alluded to, was a whisper of the insolvency of Creech; but
the bailie was firm as the Bass. ]
_No date. _
Now for that wayward, unfortunate thing, myself. I have broke measures
with Creech, and last week I wrote him a frosty, keen letter. He
replied in terms of chastisement, and promised me upon his honour that
I should have the account on Monday; but this is Tuesday, and yet I
have not heard a word from him. God have mercy on me! a poor d--mned,
incautious, duped, unfortunate fool! The sport, the miserable victim
of rebellious pride, hypochondriac imagination, agonizing sensibility,
and bedlam passions?
"I wish that I were dead, but I'm no like to die! " I had lately "a
hair-breadth 'scape in th' imminent deadly breach" of love too. Thank my
stars, I got off heart-whole, "waur fleyd than hurt. "--Interruption.
I have this moment got a hint: I fear I am something like--undone--but
I hope for the best. Come, stubborn pride and unshrinking resolution;
accompany me through this, to me, miserable world! You must not desert
me! Your friendship I think I can count on, though I should date my
letters from a marching regiment. Early in life, and all my life I
reckoned on a recruiting drum as my forlorn hope. Seriously though,
life at present presents me with but a melancholy path: but--my limb
will soon be sound, and I shall struggle on.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXV.
TO MISS CHALMERS.
[Although Burns gladly grasped at a situation in the Excise, he wrote
many apologies to his friends, for the acceptance of a place, which,
though humble enough, was the only one that offered. ]
_Edinburgh, Sunday. _
To-morrow, my dear madam, I leave Edinburgh. I have altered all my
plans of future life. A farm that I could live in, I could not find;
and, indeed, after the necessary support my brother and the rest of
the family required, I could not venture on farming in that style
suitable to my feelings. You will condemn me for the next step I have
taken. I have entered into the Excise. I stay in the west about three
weeks, and then return to Edinburgh, for six weeks' instructions:
afterwards, for I get employ instantly, I go _ou il plait a
Dieu_,--_et mon Roi. _ I have chosen this, my dear friend, after mature
deliberation. The question is not at what door of fortune's palace
shall we enter in; but what doors does she open to us? I was not
likely to get anything to do. I wanted _un but_, which is a dangerous,
an unhappy situation. I got this without any hanging on, or mortifying
solicitation; it is immediate bread, and though poor in comparison of
the last eighteen months of my existence, 'tis luxury in comparison
of all my preceding life: besides, the commissioners are some of them
my acquaintances, and all of them my firm friends.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXVI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The Tasso, with the perusal of which Mrs. Dunlop indulged the poet,
was not the line version of Fairfax, but the translation of Hoole--a
far inferior performance. ]
_Mauchline, 28th April, 1788. _
MADAM,
Your powers of reprehension must be great indeed, as I assure you they
made my heart ache with penitential pangs, even though I was really
not guilty. As I commence farmer at Whit-Sunday, 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, ca 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 Whit-sunday. 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, &c. 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 vraisemblable_; 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.
* * * * *
CXVII.
TO MR. JAMES SMITH,
AVON PRINTFIELD, LINLITHGOW.
[James Smith, as this letter intimates, had moved from Mauchline to
try to mend his fortunes at Avon Printfield, near Linlithgow. ]
_Mauchline, April 28, 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 services 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.
* * * * *
CXVIII.
TO PROFESSOR DUGALD STEWART.
[Dugald Stewart loved the poet, admired his works, and enriched the
biography of Currie with some genuine reminiscences of his earlier
days. ]
_Mauchline, 3d 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 visits 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.
* * * * *
CXIX.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[A poem, something after the fashion of the Georgics, was long present
to the mind of Burns: had fortune been more friendly he might have, in
due time, produced it. ]
_Mauchline, 4th 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 I 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.
* * * * *
CXX.
TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.
[I have heard the gentleman say, to whom this brief letter is
addressed, how much he was pleased with the intimation, that the poet
had reunited himself with Jean Armour, for he know his heart was with
her. ]
_Mauchline, May 26, 1788. _
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I am two kind letters in your debt, but I have been from home, and
horribly 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.
* * * * *
CXXI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[This letter, on the hiring season, is well worth the consideration of
all masters, and all servants. In England, servants are engaged by the
month; in Scotland by the half-year, and therefore less at the mercy
of the changeable and capricious. ]
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.
* * * * *
CXXII.
TO MRS. DUNLOP,
AT MR DUNLOP'S, HADDINGTON.
[In this, the poet's first letter from Ellisland, he lays down his
whole system of in-door and out-door economy: while his wife took care
of the household, he was to manage the farm, and "pen a stanza" during
his hours of leisure. ]
_Ellisland, 13th 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 lengthening chain. "
GOLDSMITH.
This is the second day, my honoured friend, that I have been on my
farm. A solitary inmate of an old smoky spense; 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 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? " &c.
Your surmise, Madam, is just; I am indeed a husband.
* * * * *
To jealousy or infidelity I am an equal stranger. My preservative from
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.
In housewife 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.
I found a once much-loved and still much-loved female, literally and
truly cast out to the mercy of the naked elements; but I enabled her to
_purchase_ a shelter;--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 commonly 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 Testament, nor have danced in a brighter
assembly than a penny pay-wedding.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXXIII.
TO ROBERT AINSLIE, ESQ.
[Had Burns written his fine song, beginning "Contented wi' little and
cantie wi' mair," when he penned this letter, the prose might have
followed as a note to the verse; he calls the Excise a luxury. ]
_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 or
honour: I take it to be, in some, why or other, an imperfection in the
mental sight; or, metaphor apart, some modification of dulness. In two
or three small 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 realize
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. As it is I look to the
Excise scheme as a certainty of maintenance! --luxury to what either
Mrs. Burns or I were born to.
Adieu.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXXIV.
TO ROBERT AINSLIE, ESQ.
[The kindness of Field, the profilist, has not only indulged me with a
look at the original, from which the profile alluded to in the letter
was taken, but has put me in possession of a capital copy. ]
_Mauchline, 23d June, 1788. _
This letter, my dear Sir, is only a business scrap. Mr. Miers, profile
painter in your town, has executed a profile of Dr. Blacklock for me:
do me the favour to call for it, and sit to him yourself for me, which
put in the same size as the doctor's. The account of both profiles
will be fifteen shillings, which I have given to James Connell, our
Mauchline carrier, to pay you when you give him the parcel. You must
not, my friend, refuse to sit. The time is short: when I sat to Mr.
Miers, I am sure he did not exceed two minutes. I propose hanging Lord
Glencairn, the Doctor, and you in trio over my new chimney-piece that
is to be.
Adieu.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXXV.
TO ROBERT AINSLIE, ESQ.
["There is a degree of folly," says Burns in this letter, "in talking
unnecessarily of one's private affairs. " The folly is scarcely less to
write about them, and much did the poet and his friend write about
their own private affairs as well as those of others. ]
_Ellisland, June 30th, 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. 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 has 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 in 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 whoreson 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 fifteen
shillings to him, I would rather enclose 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, spend-thrifts, 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 latitudes 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 sermonize 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.
* * * * *
CXXVI.
TO MR. GEORGE LOCKHART,
MERCHANT, GLASGOW.
[Burns, more than any poet of the age, loved to write out copies of
his favourite poems, and present them to his friends: he sent "The
Falls of Bruar" to Mr. Lockhart. ]
_Mauchline, 18th July, 1788. _
MY DEAR SIR,
I am just going for Nithsdale, else I would certainly have transcribed
some of my rhyming things for you. The Miss Baillies I have seen in
Edinburgh. "Fair and lovely are thy works, Lord God Almighty! Who
would not praise thee for these thy gifts in thy goodness to the sons
of men! " It needed not your fine taste to admire them. I declare, one
day I had the honour of dining at Mr. Baillie's, I was almost in the
predicament of the children of Israel, when they could not look on
Moses' face for the glory that shone in it when he descended from
Mount Sinai.
I did once write a poetic address from the Falls of Bruar to his Grace
of Athole, when I was in the Highlands. When you return to Scotland,
let me know, and I will send such of my pieces as please myself best.
I return to Mauchline in about ten days.
My compliments to Mr. Purdon. I am in truth, but at present in haste,
Yours,--R. B.
* * * * *
CXXVII.
TO MR. PETER HILL.
[Peter Hill was a bookseller in Edinburgh: David Ramsay, printer of
the Evening Courant: William Dunbar, an advocate, and president of a
club of Edinburgh wits; and Alexander Cunningham, a jeweller, who
loved mirth and wine. ]
MY DEAR HILL,
I shall say nothing to your mad present--you have so long and often
been of important service to me, and I suppose you mean to go on
conferring obligations until I shall not be able to lift up my face
before you. In the mean time, as Sir Roger de Coverley, because it
happened to be a cold day in which he made his will, ordered his
servants great coats for mourning, so, because I have been this week
plagued with an indigestion, I have sent you by the carrier a fine old
ewe-milk cheese.
Indigestion is the devil: nay, 'tis the devil and all. It besets a man
in every one of his senses. I lose my appetite at the sight of
successful knavery, and sicken to loathing at the noise and nonsense
of self-important folly. When the hollow-hearted wretch takes me by
the hand, the feeling spoils my dinner: the proud man's wine so
offends my palate that it chokes me in the gullet; and the
_pulvilised_, feathered, pert coxcomb is so disgustful in my nostril
that my stomach turns.
If ever you have any of these disagreeable sensations, let me
prescribe for you patience; and a bit of my cheese. I know that you
are no niggard of your good things among your friends, and some of
them are in much need of a slice. There, in my eye is our friend
Smellie; a man positively of the first abilities and greatest strength
of mind, as well as one of the best hearts and keenest wits that I
have ever met with; when you see him, as, alas! he too is smarting at
the pinch of distressful circumstances, aggravated by the sneer of
contumelious greatness--a bit of my cheese alone will not cure him,
but if you add a tankard of brown stout, and superadd a magnum of
right Oporto, you will see his sorrows vanish like the morning mist
before the summer sun.
Candlish, the earliest friend, except my only brother, that I have on
earth, and one of the worthiest fellows that ever any man called by
the name of friend, if a luncheon of my cheese would help to rid him
of some of his super-abundant modesty, you would do well to give it
him.
David,[184] with his _Courant_, comes, too, across my recollection, and
I beg you will help him largely from the said ewe-milk cheese, to
enable him to digest those bedaubing paragraphs with which he is
eternally larding the lean characters of certain great men in a
certain great town. I grant you the periods are very well turned; so,
a fresh egg is a very good thing, but when thrown at a man in a
pillory, it does not at all improve his figure, not to mention the
irreparable loss of the egg.
My facetious friend Dunbar I would wish also to be a partaker: not to
digest his spleen, for that he laughs off, but to digest his last
night's wine at the last field-day of the Crochallan corps. [185]
Among our common friends I must not forget one of the dearest of
them--Cunningham. The brutality, insolence, and selfishness of a world
unworthy of having such a fellow as he is in it, I know sticks in his
stomach, and if you can help him to anything that will make him a
little easier on that score, it will be very obliging.
As to honest J---- S----e, he is such a contented, happy man, that I
know not what can annoy him, except, perhaps, he may not have got the
better of a parcel of modest anecdotes which a certain poet gave him
one night at supper, the last time the said poet was in town.
Though I have mentioned so many men of law, I shall have nothing to do
with them professedly--the faculty are beyond my prescription. As to
their clients, that is another thing; God knows they have much to
digest!
The clergy I pass by; their profundity of erudition, and their
liberality of sentiment; their total want of pride, and their
detestation of hypocrisy, are so proverbially notorious as to place
them far, far above either my praise or censure.
I was going to mention a man of worth whom I have the honour to call
friend, the Laird of Craigdarroch; but I have spoken to the landlord
of the King's-Arms inn here, to have at the next county meeting a
large ewe-milk cheese on the table, for the benefit of the
Dumfries-shire Whigs, to enable them to digest the Duke of
Queensberry's late political conduct.
I have just this moment an opportunity of a private hand to Edinburgh,
as perhaps you would not digest double postage.
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 184: Printer of the _Edinburgh Evening Courant. _]
[Footnote 185: A club of choice spirits. ]
* * * * *
CXXVIII.
TO ROBERT GRAHAM, ESQ. ,
OF FINTRAY.
[The filial and fraternal claims alluded to in this letter were
satisfied with about three hundred pounds, two hundred of which went
to his brother Gilbert--a sum which made a sad inroad on the money
arising from the second edition of his Poems. ]
SIR,
When I had the honour of being introduced to you at Athole-house, I
did not think so soon of asking a favour of you. When Lear, in
Shakspeare, asked Old Kent why he wished to be in his service, he
answers, "Because you have that in your face which I would fain call
master. " For some such reason, Sir, do I now solicit your patronage.
You know, I dare say, of an application I lately made to your Board to
be admitted an officer of Excise. I have, according to form, been
examined by a supervisor, and to-day I gave in his certificate, with a
request for an order for instructions. In this affair, if I succeed, I
am afraid I shall but too much need a patronizing friend. Propriety of
conduct as a man, and fidelity and attention as an officer, I dare
engage for; but with anything like business, except manual labour, I
am totally unacquainted.
I had intended to have closed my late appearance on the stage of life,
in the character of a country farmer; but after discharging some
filial and fraternal claims, I find I could only fight for existence
in that miserable manner, which I have lived to see throw a venerable
parent into the jaws of a jail; whence death, the poor man's last and
often best friend, rescued him.
I know, Sir, that to need your goodness, is to have a claim on it; may
I, therefore, beg your patronage to forward me in this affair, till I
be appointed to a division; where, by the help of rigid economy, I
will try to support that independence so dear to my soul, but which
has been too often so distant from my situation.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXXIX.
TO WILLIAM CRUIKSHANK.
[The verses which this letter conveyed to Cruikshank were the lines
written in Friars-Carse Hermitage: "the first-fruits," says the poet,
elsewhere, "of my intercourse with the Nithsdale muse. "]
_Ellisland, August, 1788. _
I have not room, my dear friend, to answer all the particulars of your
last kind letter. I shall be in Edinburgh on some business very soon;
and as I shall be two days, or perhaps three, in town, we shall
discuss matters _viva voce. _ My knee, I believe, will never be
entirely well; and an unlucky fall this winter has made it still
worse. I well remember the circumstance you allude to, respecting
Creech's opinion of Mr. Nicol; but, as the first gentleman owes me
still about fifty pounds, I dare not meddle in the affair.
It gave me a very heavy heart to read such accounts of the consequence
of your quarrel with that puritanic, rotten-hearted, hell-commissioned
scoundrel A----. If, notwithstanding your unprecedented industry in
public, and your irreproachable conduct in private life, he still has
you so much in his power, what ruin may he not bring on some others I
could name?
Many and happy returns of seasons to you, with your dearest and
worthiest friend, and the lovely little pledge of your happy union.
May the great Author of life, and of every enjoyment that can render
life delightful, make her that comfortable blessing to you both, which
you so ardently wish for, and which, allow me to say, you so well
deserve! Glance over the foregoing verses, and let me have your blots.
Adieu.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXXX.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The lines on the Hermitage were presented by the poet to several of
his friends, and Mrs. Dunlop was among the number. ]
_Mauchline, August 2, 1788. _
HONOURED MADAM,
Your kind letter welcomed me, yesternight, to Ayrshire. I am, indeed,
seriously angry with you at the quantum of your luckpenny; but, vexed
and hurt as I was, I could not help laughing very heartily at the
noble lord's apology for the missed napkin.
I would write you from Nithsdale, and give you my direction there, but
I have scarce an opportunity of calling at a post-office once in a
fortnight. I am six miles from Dumfries, am scarcely ever in it
myself, and, as yet, have little acquaintance in the neighbourhood.
Besides, I am now very busy on my farm, building a dwelling-house; as
at present I am almost an evangelical man in Nithsdale, for I have
scarce "where to lay my head. "
There are some passages in your last that brought tears in my eyes.
"The heart knoweth its own sorrows, and a stranger intermeddleth not
therewith. " The repository of these "sorrows of the heart" is a kind
of _sanctum sanctorum:_ and 'tis only a chosen friend, and that, too,
at particular sacred times, who dares enter into them:--
"Heaven oft tears the bosom-chords
That nature finest strung. "
You will excuse this quotation for the sake of the author. Instead of
entering on this subject farther, I shall transcribe you a few lines I
wrote in a hermitage, belonging to a gentleman in my Nithsdale
neighbourhood. They are almost the only favours the muses have
conferred on me in that country:--
Thou whom chance may hither lead. [186]
Since I am in the way of transcribing, the following were the
production of yesterday as I jogged through the wild hills of New
Cumnock. I intend inserting them, or something like them, in an
epistle I am going to write to the gentleman on whose friendship my
Excise hopes depend, Mr. Graham, of Fintray, one of the worthiest and
most accomplished gentlemen not only of this country, but, I will dare
to say it, of this age. The following are just the first crude
thoughts "unhousel'd, unanointed, unanneal'd:"--
* * * * *
Pity the tuneful muses' helpless train;
Weak, timid landsmen on life's stormy main:
The world were blest, did bliss on them depend;
Ah, that "the friendly e'er should want a friend! "
The little fate bestows they share as soon;
Unlike sage, proverb'd, wisdom's hard-wrung boon.
Let Prudence number o'er each sturdy son,
Who life and wisdom at one race begun;
Who feel by reason and who give by rule;
Instinct's a brute and sentiment a fool!
Who make poor _will do_ wait upon _I should_;
We own they're prudent, but who owns they're good?
Ye wise ones, hence! ye hurt the social eye;
God's image rudely etch'd on base alloy!
But come * * * * * *
Here the muse left me. I am astonished at what yon tell me of
Anthony's writing me. I never received it. Poor fellow! you vex me
much by telling me that he is unfortunate. I shall be in Ayrshire ten
days from this date. I have just room for an old Roman farewell.
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 186: See Poems LXXXIX and XC]
* * * * *
CXXXI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[This letter has been often cited, and very properly, as a proof of
the strong attachment of Burns to one who was, in many respects,
worthy. ]
_Mauchline, August 10, 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 old 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 _eclatant_ 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?
I can easily fancy a more agreeable companion for my journey of life;
but, upon my honour, I have never seen the individual instance.
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, &c.
I have not delayed so long to write you, my much respected friend,
because I thought no farther of my promise. I have long since give up
that kind of formal correspondence, where one sits down irksomely to
write a letter, because we think we are in duty bound so to do.
I have been roving over the country, as the farm I have taken is forty
miles from this place, hiring servants and preparing matters; but most
of all I am earnestly busy to bring about a revolution in my own mind.
As, till within these eighteen months, I never was the wealthy master
of 10 guineas, my knowledge of business is to learn; add to this my
late scenes of idleness and dissipation have enervated my mind to an
alarming degree. Skill in the sober science of life is my most serious
and hourly study. I have dropt all conversation and all reading (prose
reading) but what tends in some way or other to my serious aim. Except
one worthy young fellow, I have not one single correspondent in
Edinburgh. You have indeed kindly made me an offer of that kind. The
world of wits, and _gens comme il faut_ which I lately left, and with
whom I never again will intimately mix--from that port, Sir, I expect
your Gazette: what _Les beaux esprit_ are saying, what they are doing,
and what they are singing. Any sober intelligence from my sequestered
walks of life; any droll original; any passing reward, important
forsooth, because it is mine; any little poetic effort, however
embryoth; these, my dear Sir, are all you have to expect from me. When
I talk of poetic efforts, I must have it always understood, that I
appeal from your wit and taste to your friendship and good nature. The
first would be my favourite tribunal, where I defied censure; but the
last, where I declined justice.
I have scarcely made a single distich since I saw you. When I meet
with an old Scots air that has any facetious idea in its name, I have
a peculiar pleasure in following out that idea for a verse or two.
I trust that this will find you in better health than I did last time
I called for you. A few lines from you, directed to me at Mauchline,
were it but to let me know how you are, will set my mind a good deal
[at rest. ] 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.
* * * * *
CXIII.
TO MISS CHALMERS.
[The sacrifice referred to by the poet, was his resolution to unite
his fortune with Jean Armour. ]
_Mauchline, 7th April, 1788. _
I am indebted to you and Miss Nimmo for letting me know Miss Kennedy.
Strange! how apt we are to indulge prejudices in our judgments of one
another! Even I, who pique myself on my skill in marking
characters--because I am too proud of my character as a man, to be
dazzled in my judgment for glaring wealth; and too proud of my
situation as a poor man to be biased against squalid poverty--I was
unacquainted with Miss K. 's very uncommon worth.
I am going on a good deal progressive in _mon grand but_, the sober
science of life. I have lately made some sacrifices, for which, were I
_viva voce_ with you to paint the situation and recount the
circumstances, you should applaud me.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXIV.
TO MISS CHALMERS.
[The hint alluded to, was a whisper of the insolvency of Creech; but
the bailie was firm as the Bass. ]
_No date. _
Now for that wayward, unfortunate thing, myself. I have broke measures
with Creech, and last week I wrote him a frosty, keen letter. He
replied in terms of chastisement, and promised me upon his honour that
I should have the account on Monday; but this is Tuesday, and yet I
have not heard a word from him. God have mercy on me! a poor d--mned,
incautious, duped, unfortunate fool! The sport, the miserable victim
of rebellious pride, hypochondriac imagination, agonizing sensibility,
and bedlam passions?
"I wish that I were dead, but I'm no like to die! " I had lately "a
hair-breadth 'scape in th' imminent deadly breach" of love too. Thank my
stars, I got off heart-whole, "waur fleyd than hurt. "--Interruption.
I have this moment got a hint: I fear I am something like--undone--but
I hope for the best. Come, stubborn pride and unshrinking resolution;
accompany me through this, to me, miserable world! You must not desert
me! Your friendship I think I can count on, though I should date my
letters from a marching regiment. Early in life, and all my life I
reckoned on a recruiting drum as my forlorn hope. Seriously though,
life at present presents me with but a melancholy path: but--my limb
will soon be sound, and I shall struggle on.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXV.
TO MISS CHALMERS.
[Although Burns gladly grasped at a situation in the Excise, he wrote
many apologies to his friends, for the acceptance of a place, which,
though humble enough, was the only one that offered. ]
_Edinburgh, Sunday. _
To-morrow, my dear madam, I leave Edinburgh. I have altered all my
plans of future life. A farm that I could live in, I could not find;
and, indeed, after the necessary support my brother and the rest of
the family required, I could not venture on farming in that style
suitable to my feelings. You will condemn me for the next step I have
taken. I have entered into the Excise. I stay in the west about three
weeks, and then return to Edinburgh, for six weeks' instructions:
afterwards, for I get employ instantly, I go _ou il plait a
Dieu_,--_et mon Roi. _ I have chosen this, my dear friend, after mature
deliberation. The question is not at what door of fortune's palace
shall we enter in; but what doors does she open to us? I was not
likely to get anything to do. I wanted _un but_, which is a dangerous,
an unhappy situation. I got this without any hanging on, or mortifying
solicitation; it is immediate bread, and though poor in comparison of
the last eighteen months of my existence, 'tis luxury in comparison
of all my preceding life: besides, the commissioners are some of them
my acquaintances, and all of them my firm friends.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXVI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The Tasso, with the perusal of which Mrs. Dunlop indulged the poet,
was not the line version of Fairfax, but the translation of Hoole--a
far inferior performance. ]
_Mauchline, 28th April, 1788. _
MADAM,
Your powers of reprehension must be great indeed, as I assure you they
made my heart ache with penitential pangs, even though I was really
not guilty. As I commence farmer at Whit-Sunday, 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, ca 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 Whit-sunday. 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, &c. 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 vraisemblable_; 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.
* * * * *
CXVII.
TO MR. JAMES SMITH,
AVON PRINTFIELD, LINLITHGOW.
[James Smith, as this letter intimates, had moved from Mauchline to
try to mend his fortunes at Avon Printfield, near Linlithgow. ]
_Mauchline, April 28, 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 services 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.
* * * * *
CXVIII.
TO PROFESSOR DUGALD STEWART.
[Dugald Stewart loved the poet, admired his works, and enriched the
biography of Currie with some genuine reminiscences of his earlier
days. ]
_Mauchline, 3d 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 visits 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.
* * * * *
CXIX.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[A poem, something after the fashion of the Georgics, was long present
to the mind of Burns: had fortune been more friendly he might have, in
due time, produced it. ]
_Mauchline, 4th 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 I 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.
* * * * *
CXX.
TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.
[I have heard the gentleman say, to whom this brief letter is
addressed, how much he was pleased with the intimation, that the poet
had reunited himself with Jean Armour, for he know his heart was with
her. ]
_Mauchline, May 26, 1788. _
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I am two kind letters in your debt, but I have been from home, and
horribly 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.
* * * * *
CXXI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[This letter, on the hiring season, is well worth the consideration of
all masters, and all servants. In England, servants are engaged by the
month; in Scotland by the half-year, and therefore less at the mercy
of the changeable and capricious. ]
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.
* * * * *
CXXII.
TO MRS. DUNLOP,
AT MR DUNLOP'S, HADDINGTON.
[In this, the poet's first letter from Ellisland, he lays down his
whole system of in-door and out-door economy: while his wife took care
of the household, he was to manage the farm, and "pen a stanza" during
his hours of leisure. ]
_Ellisland, 13th 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 lengthening chain. "
GOLDSMITH.
This is the second day, my honoured friend, that I have been on my
farm. A solitary inmate of an old smoky spense; 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 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? " &c.
Your surmise, Madam, is just; I am indeed a husband.
* * * * *
To jealousy or infidelity I am an equal stranger. My preservative from
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.
In housewife 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.
I found a once much-loved and still much-loved female, literally and
truly cast out to the mercy of the naked elements; but I enabled her to
_purchase_ a shelter;--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 commonly 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 Testament, nor have danced in a brighter
assembly than a penny pay-wedding.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXXIII.
TO ROBERT AINSLIE, ESQ.
[Had Burns written his fine song, beginning "Contented wi' little and
cantie wi' mair," when he penned this letter, the prose might have
followed as a note to the verse; he calls the Excise a luxury. ]
_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 or
honour: I take it to be, in some, why or other, an imperfection in the
mental sight; or, metaphor apart, some modification of dulness. In two
or three small 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 realize
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. As it is I look to the
Excise scheme as a certainty of maintenance! --luxury to what either
Mrs. Burns or I were born to.
Adieu.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXXIV.
TO ROBERT AINSLIE, ESQ.
[The kindness of Field, the profilist, has not only indulged me with a
look at the original, from which the profile alluded to in the letter
was taken, but has put me in possession of a capital copy. ]
_Mauchline, 23d June, 1788. _
This letter, my dear Sir, is only a business scrap. Mr. Miers, profile
painter in your town, has executed a profile of Dr. Blacklock for me:
do me the favour to call for it, and sit to him yourself for me, which
put in the same size as the doctor's. The account of both profiles
will be fifteen shillings, which I have given to James Connell, our
Mauchline carrier, to pay you when you give him the parcel. You must
not, my friend, refuse to sit. The time is short: when I sat to Mr.
Miers, I am sure he did not exceed two minutes. I propose hanging Lord
Glencairn, the Doctor, and you in trio over my new chimney-piece that
is to be.
Adieu.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXXV.
TO ROBERT AINSLIE, ESQ.
["There is a degree of folly," says Burns in this letter, "in talking
unnecessarily of one's private affairs. " The folly is scarcely less to
write about them, and much did the poet and his friend write about
their own private affairs as well as those of others. ]
_Ellisland, June 30th, 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. 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 has 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 in 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 whoreson 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 fifteen
shillings to him, I would rather enclose 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, spend-thrifts, 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 latitudes 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 sermonize 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.
* * * * *
CXXVI.
TO MR. GEORGE LOCKHART,
MERCHANT, GLASGOW.
[Burns, more than any poet of the age, loved to write out copies of
his favourite poems, and present them to his friends: he sent "The
Falls of Bruar" to Mr. Lockhart. ]
_Mauchline, 18th July, 1788. _
MY DEAR SIR,
I am just going for Nithsdale, else I would certainly have transcribed
some of my rhyming things for you. The Miss Baillies I have seen in
Edinburgh. "Fair and lovely are thy works, Lord God Almighty! Who
would not praise thee for these thy gifts in thy goodness to the sons
of men! " It needed not your fine taste to admire them. I declare, one
day I had the honour of dining at Mr. Baillie's, I was almost in the
predicament of the children of Israel, when they could not look on
Moses' face for the glory that shone in it when he descended from
Mount Sinai.
I did once write a poetic address from the Falls of Bruar to his Grace
of Athole, when I was in the Highlands. When you return to Scotland,
let me know, and I will send such of my pieces as please myself best.
I return to Mauchline in about ten days.
My compliments to Mr. Purdon. I am in truth, but at present in haste,
Yours,--R. B.
* * * * *
CXXVII.
TO MR. PETER HILL.
[Peter Hill was a bookseller in Edinburgh: David Ramsay, printer of
the Evening Courant: William Dunbar, an advocate, and president of a
club of Edinburgh wits; and Alexander Cunningham, a jeweller, who
loved mirth and wine. ]
MY DEAR HILL,
I shall say nothing to your mad present--you have so long and often
been of important service to me, and I suppose you mean to go on
conferring obligations until I shall not be able to lift up my face
before you. In the mean time, as Sir Roger de Coverley, because it
happened to be a cold day in which he made his will, ordered his
servants great coats for mourning, so, because I have been this week
plagued with an indigestion, I have sent you by the carrier a fine old
ewe-milk cheese.
Indigestion is the devil: nay, 'tis the devil and all. It besets a man
in every one of his senses. I lose my appetite at the sight of
successful knavery, and sicken to loathing at the noise and nonsense
of self-important folly. When the hollow-hearted wretch takes me by
the hand, the feeling spoils my dinner: the proud man's wine so
offends my palate that it chokes me in the gullet; and the
_pulvilised_, feathered, pert coxcomb is so disgustful in my nostril
that my stomach turns.
If ever you have any of these disagreeable sensations, let me
prescribe for you patience; and a bit of my cheese. I know that you
are no niggard of your good things among your friends, and some of
them are in much need of a slice. There, in my eye is our friend
Smellie; a man positively of the first abilities and greatest strength
of mind, as well as one of the best hearts and keenest wits that I
have ever met with; when you see him, as, alas! he too is smarting at
the pinch of distressful circumstances, aggravated by the sneer of
contumelious greatness--a bit of my cheese alone will not cure him,
but if you add a tankard of brown stout, and superadd a magnum of
right Oporto, you will see his sorrows vanish like the morning mist
before the summer sun.
Candlish, the earliest friend, except my only brother, that I have on
earth, and one of the worthiest fellows that ever any man called by
the name of friend, if a luncheon of my cheese would help to rid him
of some of his super-abundant modesty, you would do well to give it
him.
David,[184] with his _Courant_, comes, too, across my recollection, and
I beg you will help him largely from the said ewe-milk cheese, to
enable him to digest those bedaubing paragraphs with which he is
eternally larding the lean characters of certain great men in a
certain great town. I grant you the periods are very well turned; so,
a fresh egg is a very good thing, but when thrown at a man in a
pillory, it does not at all improve his figure, not to mention the
irreparable loss of the egg.
My facetious friend Dunbar I would wish also to be a partaker: not to
digest his spleen, for that he laughs off, but to digest his last
night's wine at the last field-day of the Crochallan corps. [185]
Among our common friends I must not forget one of the dearest of
them--Cunningham. The brutality, insolence, and selfishness of a world
unworthy of having such a fellow as he is in it, I know sticks in his
stomach, and if you can help him to anything that will make him a
little easier on that score, it will be very obliging.
As to honest J---- S----e, he is such a contented, happy man, that I
know not what can annoy him, except, perhaps, he may not have got the
better of a parcel of modest anecdotes which a certain poet gave him
one night at supper, the last time the said poet was in town.
Though I have mentioned so many men of law, I shall have nothing to do
with them professedly--the faculty are beyond my prescription. As to
their clients, that is another thing; God knows they have much to
digest!
The clergy I pass by; their profundity of erudition, and their
liberality of sentiment; their total want of pride, and their
detestation of hypocrisy, are so proverbially notorious as to place
them far, far above either my praise or censure.
I was going to mention a man of worth whom I have the honour to call
friend, the Laird of Craigdarroch; but I have spoken to the landlord
of the King's-Arms inn here, to have at the next county meeting a
large ewe-milk cheese on the table, for the benefit of the
Dumfries-shire Whigs, to enable them to digest the Duke of
Queensberry's late political conduct.
I have just this moment an opportunity of a private hand to Edinburgh,
as perhaps you would not digest double postage.
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 184: Printer of the _Edinburgh Evening Courant. _]
[Footnote 185: A club of choice spirits. ]
* * * * *
CXXVIII.
TO ROBERT GRAHAM, ESQ. ,
OF FINTRAY.
[The filial and fraternal claims alluded to in this letter were
satisfied with about three hundred pounds, two hundred of which went
to his brother Gilbert--a sum which made a sad inroad on the money
arising from the second edition of his Poems. ]
SIR,
When I had the honour of being introduced to you at Athole-house, I
did not think so soon of asking a favour of you. When Lear, in
Shakspeare, asked Old Kent why he wished to be in his service, he
answers, "Because you have that in your face which I would fain call
master. " For some such reason, Sir, do I now solicit your patronage.
You know, I dare say, of an application I lately made to your Board to
be admitted an officer of Excise. I have, according to form, been
examined by a supervisor, and to-day I gave in his certificate, with a
request for an order for instructions. In this affair, if I succeed, I
am afraid I shall but too much need a patronizing friend. Propriety of
conduct as a man, and fidelity and attention as an officer, I dare
engage for; but with anything like business, except manual labour, I
am totally unacquainted.
I had intended to have closed my late appearance on the stage of life,
in the character of a country farmer; but after discharging some
filial and fraternal claims, I find I could only fight for existence
in that miserable manner, which I have lived to see throw a venerable
parent into the jaws of a jail; whence death, the poor man's last and
often best friend, rescued him.
I know, Sir, that to need your goodness, is to have a claim on it; may
I, therefore, beg your patronage to forward me in this affair, till I
be appointed to a division; where, by the help of rigid economy, I
will try to support that independence so dear to my soul, but which
has been too often so distant from my situation.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXXIX.
TO WILLIAM CRUIKSHANK.
[The verses which this letter conveyed to Cruikshank were the lines
written in Friars-Carse Hermitage: "the first-fruits," says the poet,
elsewhere, "of my intercourse with the Nithsdale muse. "]
_Ellisland, August, 1788. _
I have not room, my dear friend, to answer all the particulars of your
last kind letter. I shall be in Edinburgh on some business very soon;
and as I shall be two days, or perhaps three, in town, we shall
discuss matters _viva voce. _ My knee, I believe, will never be
entirely well; and an unlucky fall this winter has made it still
worse. I well remember the circumstance you allude to, respecting
Creech's opinion of Mr. Nicol; but, as the first gentleman owes me
still about fifty pounds, I dare not meddle in the affair.
It gave me a very heavy heart to read such accounts of the consequence
of your quarrel with that puritanic, rotten-hearted, hell-commissioned
scoundrel A----. If, notwithstanding your unprecedented industry in
public, and your irreproachable conduct in private life, he still has
you so much in his power, what ruin may he not bring on some others I
could name?
Many and happy returns of seasons to you, with your dearest and
worthiest friend, and the lovely little pledge of your happy union.
May the great Author of life, and of every enjoyment that can render
life delightful, make her that comfortable blessing to you both, which
you so ardently wish for, and which, allow me to say, you so well
deserve! Glance over the foregoing verses, and let me have your blots.
Adieu.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXXX.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The lines on the Hermitage were presented by the poet to several of
his friends, and Mrs. Dunlop was among the number. ]
_Mauchline, August 2, 1788. _
HONOURED MADAM,
Your kind letter welcomed me, yesternight, to Ayrshire. I am, indeed,
seriously angry with you at the quantum of your luckpenny; but, vexed
and hurt as I was, I could not help laughing very heartily at the
noble lord's apology for the missed napkin.
I would write you from Nithsdale, and give you my direction there, but
I have scarce an opportunity of calling at a post-office once in a
fortnight. I am six miles from Dumfries, am scarcely ever in it
myself, and, as yet, have little acquaintance in the neighbourhood.
Besides, I am now very busy on my farm, building a dwelling-house; as
at present I am almost an evangelical man in Nithsdale, for I have
scarce "where to lay my head. "
There are some passages in your last that brought tears in my eyes.
"The heart knoweth its own sorrows, and a stranger intermeddleth not
therewith. " The repository of these "sorrows of the heart" is a kind
of _sanctum sanctorum:_ and 'tis only a chosen friend, and that, too,
at particular sacred times, who dares enter into them:--
"Heaven oft tears the bosom-chords
That nature finest strung. "
You will excuse this quotation for the sake of the author. Instead of
entering on this subject farther, I shall transcribe you a few lines I
wrote in a hermitage, belonging to a gentleman in my Nithsdale
neighbourhood. They are almost the only favours the muses have
conferred on me in that country:--
Thou whom chance may hither lead. [186]
Since I am in the way of transcribing, the following were the
production of yesterday as I jogged through the wild hills of New
Cumnock. I intend inserting them, or something like them, in an
epistle I am going to write to the gentleman on whose friendship my
Excise hopes depend, Mr. Graham, of Fintray, one of the worthiest and
most accomplished gentlemen not only of this country, but, I will dare
to say it, of this age. The following are just the first crude
thoughts "unhousel'd, unanointed, unanneal'd:"--
* * * * *
Pity the tuneful muses' helpless train;
Weak, timid landsmen on life's stormy main:
The world were blest, did bliss on them depend;
Ah, that "the friendly e'er should want a friend! "
The little fate bestows they share as soon;
Unlike sage, proverb'd, wisdom's hard-wrung boon.
Let Prudence number o'er each sturdy son,
Who life and wisdom at one race begun;
Who feel by reason and who give by rule;
Instinct's a brute and sentiment a fool!
Who make poor _will do_ wait upon _I should_;
We own they're prudent, but who owns they're good?
Ye wise ones, hence! ye hurt the social eye;
God's image rudely etch'd on base alloy!
But come * * * * * *
Here the muse left me. I am astonished at what yon tell me of
Anthony's writing me. I never received it. Poor fellow! you vex me
much by telling me that he is unfortunate. I shall be in Ayrshire ten
days from this date. I have just room for an old Roman farewell.
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 186: See Poems LXXXIX and XC]
* * * * *
CXXXI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[This letter has been often cited, and very properly, as a proof of
the strong attachment of Burns to one who was, in many respects,
worthy. ]
_Mauchline, August 10, 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 old 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 _eclatant_ 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?
I can easily fancy a more agreeable companion for my journey of life;
but, upon my honour, I have never seen the individual instance.
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, &c.
