The Letters of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

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I was yesterday at Mr. Miller's to dinner, for the first time. My
reception was quite to my mind: from the lady of the house quite
flattering. She sometimes hits on a couplet or two, _impromptu_. She
repeated one or two to the admiration of all present. My suffrage as a
professional man was expected: I for once went agonising over the belly
of my conscience. Pardon me, ye, my adored household gods, independence
of spirit, and integrity of soul! In the course of conversation,
_Johnsorfs Musical Museum_, a collection of Scottish songs with the
music, was talked of. We got a song on the harpsichord, beginning

Raving winds around her blowing.

The air was much admired: the lady of the house asked me whose were the
words. "Mine, Madam--they are indeed my very best verses;" she took not
the smallest notice of them! The old Scottish proverb says well, "King's
caff is better than ither folks' corn." I was going to make a New
Testament quotation about "casting pearls," but that would be too
virulent, for the lady is actually a woman of sense and taste.

After all that has been said on the other side of the question, man is
by no means a happy creature. I do not speak of the selected few,
favoured by partial heaven, whose souls are tuned to gladness amidst
riches and honours, and prudence and wisdom. I speak of the neglected
many, whose nerves, whose sinews, whose days are sold to the minions
of fortune.

If I thought you had never seen it, I would transcribe for you a stanza
of an old Scottish ballad, called "The Life and Age of Man;"
beginning thus:--

'Twas in the sixteenth hundred year
Of God and fifty-three
Frae Christ was born, that bought us dear,
As writings testifie.

I had an old grand-uncle, with whom my mother lived a while in her
girlish years; the good old man, for such he was, was long blind ere he
died, during which time his highest enjoyment was to sit down and cry,
while my mother would sing the simple old song of "The Life and Age
of Man."

It is this way of thinking; it is these melancholy truths, that make
religion so precious to the poor, miserable children of men. If it is a
mere phantom, existing only in the heated imagination of enthusiasm,

What truth on earth so precious as the lie?

My idle reasonings sometimes make me a little sceptical, but the
necessities of my heart always give the cold philosophisings the lie.
Who looks for the heart weaned from earth; the soul affianced to her
God; the correspondence fixed with heaven; the pious supplication and
devout thanksgiving, constant as the vicissitudes of even and morn; who
thinks to meet with these in the court, the palace, in the glare of
public life? No; to find them in their precious importance and divine
efficacy, we must search among the obscure recesses of disappointment,
affliction, poverty, and distress.

I am sure, dear Madam, you are now more than pleased with the length of
my letters. I return to Ayrshire middle of next week: and it quickens my
pace to think that there will be a letter from you waiting me there. I
must be here again very soon for my harvest.

R. B.

* * * *

CI.--To MR. BEUGO, ENGRAVER, EDINBURGH.

ELLISLAND, 9_th Sept._ 1788.

MY DEAR SIR,--There is not in Edinburgh above the number of the graces
whose letters would have given so much pleasure as yours of the 3rd
instant, which only reached me yesternight.

I am here on my farm, busy with my harvest; but for all that most
pleasurable part of life called SOCIAL COMMUNICATION, I am here at the
very elbow of existence. The only things that are to be found in this
country, in any degree of perfection, are stupidity and canting. Prose
they only know in graces, prayers, etc., and the value of these they
estimate, as they do their plaiding webs, by the ell! As for the muses,
they have as much an idea of a rhinoceros as of a poet. For my old,
capricious, but good-natured hussy of a muse,

By banks of Nith I sat and wept
When Coila I thought on,
In midst thereof I hung my harp
The willow trees upon.

I am generally about half my time in Ayrshire with my "darling Jean,"
and then I, at lucid intervals, throw my horny fist across my
becobwebbed lyre, much in the same manner as an old wife throws her hand
across the spokes of her spinning-wheel.

I will send you the "Fortunate Shepherdess" as soon as I return to
Ayrshire, for there I keep it with other precious treasure. I shall send
it by a careful hand, as I would not for anything it should be mislaid
or lost. I do not wish to serve you from any benevolence, or other grave
Christian virtue; 'tis purely a selfish gratification of my own feelings
whenever I think of you.

If your better functions would give you leisure to write me, I should be
extremely happy; that is to say, if you neither keep nor look for a
regular correspondence. I hate the idea of being obliged to write a
letter. I sometimes write a friend twice a week; at other times once
a quarter.

I am exceedingly pleased with your fancy in making the author you
mention place a map of Iceland, instead of his portrait, before his
works; 'twas a glorious idea.

Could you conveniently do me one thing?--whenever you finish any head, I
should like to have a proof copy of it. I might tell you a long story
about your fine genius; but, as what everybody knows cannot have escaped
you, I shall not say one syllable about it.

R. B.

* * * * *

CII.--To MR. ROBERT GRAHAM, OF FINTRAY.

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
Shakespeare, 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 the Excise. I have, according to form, been
examined by a supervisor, and today 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 patronising 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.

* * * * * *

CII.--To His WIFE, AT MAUCHLINE.

ELLISLAND, _Friday_, 12_th Sep._ 1788.

MY DEAR LOVE,--I received your kind letter with a pleasure which no
letter but one from you could have given me. I dreamed of you the whole
night last; but alas! I fear it will be three weeks yet ere I can hope
for the happiness of seeing you. My harvest is going on. I have some to
cut down still, but I put in two stacks to-day, so I'm as tired as
a dog.

You might get one of Gilbert's sweet-milk cheeses, and send it to.... On
second thoughts I believe you had best get the half of Gilbert's web of
table linen and make it up; though I think it damnable dear, but it is
no outlaid money to us, you know. I have just now consulted my old
landlady about table linen, and she thinks I may have the best for two
shillings a yard; so, after all, let it alone till I return; and some
day soon I will be in Dumfries and ask the price there. I expect your
new gowns will be very forward or ready to make, against I be home to
get the _baiveridge._[88]

I have written my long-thought-on letter to Mr. Graham, the Commissioner
of Excise; and have sent a sheetful of poetry besides.

[Footnote 88: On her first appearance in public in a new dress a
young woman was subject to this tax, if claimed by the young man who
happened first to meet her. ]

* * * * *

CIV.--To Miss CHALMERS, EDINBURGH.

ELLISLAND, NEAR DUMFRIES, _Sept_. 16_th_, 1788.

Where are you? and how are you? and is Lady Mackenzie recovering her
health? for I have had but one solitary letter from you. I will not
think you have forgot me, Madam and, for my part,

When thee, Jerusalem, I forget,
Skill part from my right hand!

"My heart is not of that rock, nor my soul careless as that sea." I do
not make my progress among mankind as a bowl does among its
fellows-rolling through the crowd without bearing away any mark or
impression, except where they hit in hostile collision.

I am here, driven in with my harvest-folks by bad weather; and as you
and your sister once did me the honour of interesting yourselves much _à
l' egard de moi_, I sit down to beg the continuation of your goodness. I
can truly say that, all the exterior of life apart, I never saw two
whose esteem flattered the nobler feelings of my soul--I will not say
more, but so much, as Lady Mackenzie and Miss Chalmers. When I think of
you--hearts the best, minds the noblest of human kind--unfortunate even
in the shades of life--when I think I have met with you, and have lived
more of real life with you in eight days than I can do with almost
anybody I meet with in eight years--when I think on the improbability
of meeting you in this world again--I could sit down and cry like a
child! If ever you honoured me with a place in your esteem, I trust I
can now plead more desert. I am secure against that crushing grip of
iron poverty, which, alas! is less or more fatal to the native worth and
purity of, I fear, the noblest souls; and a late important step in my
life has kindly taken me out of the way of those ungrateful iniquities,
which, however overlooked in fashionable licence, or varnished in
fashionable phrase, are indeed but lighter and deeper shades
of villainy.

Shortly after my last return to Ayrshire, I married "my Jean." This was
not in consequence of the attachment of romance, perhaps; but I had a
long and much-loved fellow-creature's happiness or misery in my
determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a deposit. Nor
have I any cause to repent it. If I have not got polite tattle, modish
manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with the
multiform curse of boarding-school affectation; and I have got the
handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and
the kindest heart in the county. Mrs. Burns believes, as firmly as her
creed, that I am _le plus bel esprit, et le plus honnête homme_ in the
universe; although she scarcely ever in her life, except the Scriptures
of the old and New Testament, and the Psalms of David in metre, spent
five minutes together on either prose or verse. I must except also from
this last a certain late publication of Scots poems, which she has
perused very devoutly; and all the ballads in the country, as she has (O
the partial lover! you will cry) the finest "wood note wild" I ever
heard. I am the more particular in this lady's character, as I know she
will henceforth have the honour of a share in your best wishes. She is
still at Mauchline, as I am building my house; for this hovel that I
shelter in, while occasionally here, is pervious to every blast that
blows, and every shower that falls; and I am only preserved from being
chilled to death, by being suffocated with smoke. I do not find my farm
that pennyworth I was taught to expect, but I believe, in time, it may
be a saving bargain. You will be pleased to hear that I have laid aside
the idle _éclat_, and bind every day after my reapers.

To save me from that horrid situation of at any time
going down, in a losing bargain of a farm, to misery, I
have taken my Excise instructions, and have my commission
in my pocket for any emergency of fortune. If I could set
all before your view, whatever disrespect you, in common
with the world, have for this business, I know you would
approve of my idea.

I will make no apology, dear Madam, for this egotistic detail; I know
you and your sister will be interested in every circumstance of it. What
signify the silly, idle gew-gaws of wealth, or the ideal trumpery of
greatness! When fellow-partakers of the same nature fear the same God,
have the same benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul, the same
detestation at everything dishonest, and the same scorn at everything
unworthy--if they are not in the dependence of absolute beggary, in the
name of common sense, are they not equals? And if the bias, the
instinctive bias of their souls run the same way, why may they not
be friends?

When I may have an opportunity of sending you this, Heaven only knows.
Shenstone says, "When one is confined idle within doors by bad weather,
the best antidote against _ennui_ is to read the letters of, or write
to, one's friends;" in that case then, if the weather continues thus, I
may scrawl you half a quire.

I very lately--to wit, since harvest began--wrote a poem, not in
imitation, but in the manner of Pope's Moral Epistles. It is only a
short essay, just to try the strength of my Muse's pinion in that way. I
will send you a copy of it, when once I have heard from you. I have
likewise been laying the foundation of some pretty large poetic works;
how the superstructure will come on, I leave to that great maker and
marrer of projects, time. Johnson's collection of Scots songs is going
on in the third volume; and, of consequence, finds me a consumpt for a
great deal of idle metre. One of the most tolerable things I have done
in that way, is two stanzas I made to an air a musical gentleman of my
acquaintance composed for the anniversary of his wedding-day, which
happens on the seventh of November. Take it as follows:--

The day returns--my bosom burns--
The blissful day we twa did meet, etc.

I shall give over this letter for shame. If I should be seized with a
scribbling fit, before this goes away, I shall make it another letter;
and then you may allow your patience a week's respite between the two. I
have not room for more than the old, kind, hearty farewell!

* * * * *

To make some amends, _mes chères Mesdames_, for dragging you on to this
second sheet; and to relieve a little the tiresomeness of my unstudied
and uncorrectible prose, I shall transcribe you some of my late poetic
bagatelles; though I have, these eight or ten months, done very little
that way. One day, in a hermitage on the banks of Nith, belonging to a
gentleman in my neighbourhood, who is so good as give me a key at
pleasure, I wrote as follows; supposing myself the sequestered,
venerable inhabitant of the lonely mansion.

LINES WRITTEN IN FRIARS-CARSE HERMITAGE.

Thou whom chance may hither lead,
Be thou clad in russet weed, etc.

R. B.

* * * *

CV.--To MR. MORISON, WRIGHT, MAUCHLINE.

Ellisland, _September_ 22_nd_ 1788.

MY DEAR SIR,--Necessity obliges me to go into my new house, even before
it be plastered. I will inhabit the one end until the other is finished.
About three weeks more, I think, will at farthest be my time, beyond
which I cannot stay in this present house. If ever you wish to deserve
the blessing of him that was ready to perish; if ever you were in a
situation that a little kindness would have rescued you from many evils;
if ever you hope to find rest in future states of untried being-get
these matters of mine ready.[89] My servant will be out in the beginning
of next week for the clock. My compliments to Mrs. Morison. --I am,
after all my tribulation, Dear Sir, yours,

R. B.

[Footnote 89: The letter refers to chairs and other articles of
furniture which the Poet had ordered.]

* * * *

CVI.--To MRS. DUNLOP, OF DUNLOP.

Mauchline, 27_th Sept_. 1788.

I have received twins, dear Madam, more than once; but scarcely ever
with more pleasure than when I received yours of the 12th instant. To
make myself understood; I had wrote to Mr. Graham, enclosing my poem
addressed to him, and the same post which favoured me with yours brought
me an answer from him. It was dated the very day he had received mine;
and I am quite at a loss to say whether it was most polite or kind.

Your criticisms, my honoured benefactress, are truly the work of a
friend. They are not the blasting depredations of a canker-toothed,
caterpillar critic; nor are they the fair statement of cold
impartiality, balancing with unfeeling exactitude the _pro_ and _con_ of
an author's merits; they are the judicious observations of animated
friendship, selecting the beauties of the piece. I am just arrived from
Nithsdale, and will be here a fortnight. I was on horseback this morning
by three o'clock; for between my wife and my farm is just forty-six
miles. As I jogged on in the dark, I was taken with a poetic fit,
as follows:

"Mrs. Ferguson of Craigdarroch's lamentation for the death of her son;
an uncommonly promising youth of eighteen or nineteen years of age:--

Fate gave the word--the arrow sped,
And pierced my darling's heart,"(_etc_.)

You will not send me your poetic rambles, but, you see, I am no niggard
of mine. I am sure your impromptus give me double pleasure; what falls
from your pen can neither be unentertaining in itself, nor
indifferent to me.

The one fault you found is just: but I cannot please myself in an
emendation.

What a life of solicitude is the life of a parent! You interested me
much in your young couple.

I would not take my folio paper for this epistle, and now I repent it. I
am so jaded with my dirty long journey, that I was afraid to drawl into
the essence of dulness with anything larger than a quarto, and so I must
leave out another rhyme of this morning's manufacture.

I will pay the sapientipotent George most cheerfully, to hear from you
ere I leave Ayrshire. R. B.

* * * *

CVII--To MR. PETER HILL.

Mauchline, 1_st October_ 1788.

I have been here in this country about three days, and all that time my
chief reading has been the "Address to Lochlomond" you were so obliging
as to send to me. Were I impanneled one of the author's jury, to
determine his criminality respecting the sin of poesy, my verdict should
be "Guilty! A poet of nature's making!" It is an excellent method for
improvement, and what I believe every poet does, to place some favourite
classic author in his walks of study and composition before him as a
model. Though your author had not mentioned the name, I could have, at
half a glance, guessed his model to be Thomson. Will my brother-poet
forgive me if I venture to hint that his imitation of that immortal bard
is, in two or three places, rather more servile than such a genius as
his required:--_e.g._

To soothe the maddening passions all to peace.
ADDRESS.
To soothe the throbbing passions into peace.
THOMSON.

I think the "Address" is in simplicity, harmony, and elegance of
versification, fully equal to the "Seasons." Like Thomson, too, he has
looked into nature for himself: you meet with no copied description. One
particular criticism I made at first reading; in no one instance has he
said too much. He never flags in his progress, but, like a true poet of
nature's making, kindles in his course. His beginning is simple and
modest, as if distrustful of the strength of his passion; only, I do not
altogether like--

Truth,
The soul of every song that's nobly great.

Fiction is the soul of many a song that is nobly great. Perhaps I am
wrong: this may be but a prose criticism. Is not the phrase, in line 7,
page 6, "Great lake," too much vulgarised by every-day language for so
sublime a poem?

Great mass of waters, theme for nobler song,

is perhaps no emendation. His enumeration of a comparison with other
lakes is at once harmonious and poetic. Every reader's ideas must
sweep the

Winding margin of a hundred miles.

The perspective that follows mountains blue--the imprisoned billows
beating in vain--the wooded isles--the digression on the
yew-tree--"Benlomond's lofty, cloud-envelop'd head," etc., are
beautiful. A thunder-storm is a subject which has been often tried, yet
our poet, in his grand picture, has interjected a circumstance, so far
as I know, entirely original in

the gloom
Deep seam'd with frequent streaks of moving fire.

In his preface to the Storm, "the glens how dark between," is noble
highland landscape! The "rain ploughing the red mould," too, is
beautifully fancied. "Benlomond's lofty, pathless top," is a good
expression; and the surrounding view from it is truly great: the

silver mist,
Beneath the beaming sun,

is well described; and here he has contrived to enliven his poem with a
little of that passion which bids fair, I think, to usurp the modern
muses altogether. I know not how far this episode is a beauty on the
whole, but the swain's wish to carry "some faint idea of the vision
bright," to entertain her "partial listening ear," is a pretty thought.
But, in my opinion, the most beautiful passages in the whole poem are
the fowls crowding, in wintry frosts, to Lochlomond's "hospitable
flood;" their wheeling round; their lighting, mixing, diving, etc.; and
the glorious description of the sportsman. This last is equal to
anything in the "Seasons." The idea of "the floating tribes distant
seen, far glistering to the moon," provoking his eye as he is obliged to
leave them, is a noble ray of poetic genius.

The "howling winds," the "hideous roar" of "the white cascades," are all
in the same style.

I forget that while I am thus holding forth, with the heedless warmth of
an enthusiast, I am perhaps tiring you with nonsense. I must, however,
mention that the last verse of the sixteenth page is one of the most
elegant compliments I have ever seen. I must likewise notice that
beautiful paragraph beginning "The gleaming lake," etc. I dare not go
into the particular beauties of the last two paragraphs, but they are
admirably fine, and truly Ossianic. I must beg your pardon for this
lengthened scrawl. I had no idea of it when I began--I should like to
know who the author is; but, whoever he be, please present him with my
grateful thanks for the entertainment he has afforded me.[90]

A friend of mine desired me to commission for him two books, _Letters on
the Religion essential to Man_, a book you sent me before; and _The
World Unmasked, or the Philosopher the greatest Cheat_. Send me them by
the first opportunity. The Bible you sent me is truly elegant; I only
wish it had been in two volumes. R. B.

[Footnote 90: The poem, entitled "An Address to Lochlomond," is said
to have been written by one of the masters of the High School of
Edinburgh.]

* * * * *

CVIIL--To THE EDITOR OF THE "STAR".

_November_ 8_th_, 1788.

Sir,--Notwithstanding the opprobrious epithets with which some of our
philosophers and gloomy sectarians have branded our nature--the
principle of universal selfishness, the proneness to all evil, they have
given us--still, the detestation in which inhumanity to the distressed,
or insolence to the fallen, are held by all mankind, shows that they are
not natives of the human heart. Even the unhappy partner of our kind who
is undone, the bitter consequence of his follies or his crimes--who
but sympathises with the miseries of this ruined profligate brother? We
forget the injuries, and feel for the man.

I went, last Wednesday, to my parish church, most cordially to join in
grateful acknowledgment to the AUTHOR OF ALL GOOD for the consequent
blessings of the glorious Revolution. To that auspicious event we owe no
less than our liberties, civil and religious; to it we are likewise
indebted for the present Royal Family, the ruling features of whose
administration have ever been mildness to the subject, and tenderness of
his rights.

Bred and educated in revolution principles, the principles of reason and
common sense, it could not be any silly political prejudice which made
my heart revolt at the harsh, abusive manner in which the reverend
gentleman mentioned the House of Stuart, and which, I am afraid, was too
much the language of the day. We may rejoice sufficiently in our
deliverance from past evils, without cruelly raking up the ashes of
those whose misfortune it was, perhaps as much as their crime, to be the
authors of those evils; and we may bless GOD for all His goodness to us
as a nation, without, at the same time, cursing a few ruined, powerless
exiles, who only harboured ideas, and made attempts, that most of us
would have done, had we been in their situation.

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