The Letters of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

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In the affair of a livelihood, I think myself tolerably secure: I have
good hopes of my farm, but should they fail, I have an excise
commission, which, on my simple petition, will, at any time, procure me
bread. There is a certain stigma affixed to the character of an excise
officer, but I do not pretend to borrow honour from my profession; and
though the salary be comparatively small, it is luxury to anything that
the first twenty-five years of my life taught me to expect.

Thus, with a rational aim and method in life, you may easily guess, my
reverend and much-honoured friend, that my characteristical trade is not
forgotten. I am, if possible, more than ever an enthusiast to the Muses.
I am determined to study man and nature, and in that view incessantly;
and to try if the ripening and corrections of years can enable me to
produce something worth preserving.

You will see in your book, which I beg your pardon for detaining so
long, that I have been tuning my lyre on the banks of Nith. Some large
poetic plans that are floating in my imagination, or partly put in
execution, I shall impart to you when I have the pleasure of meeting
with you; which, if you are then in Edinburgh, I shall have about the
beginning of March.

That acquaintance, worthy Sir, with which you were pleased to honour me,
you must still allow me to challenge; for, with whatever unconcern I
give up my transient connection with the merely great, I cannot lose the
patronising notice of the learned and good without the bitterest regret.

R. B.

* * * * *

CXIX.--TO MR. JAMES BURNESS.

ELLISLAND, _9th Feb_. 1789.

MY DEAR SIR,--Why I did not write to you long ago is what, even on the
rack, I could not answer. If you can in your mind form an idea of
indolence, dissipation, hurry, cares, change of country, entering on
untried scenes of life, all combined, you will save me the trouble of a
blushing apology. It could not be want of regard for a man for whom I
had a high esteem before I knew him--an esteem which has much increased
since I did know him; and this caveat entered, I shall plead guilty to
any other indictment with which you shall please to charge me.

After I parted from you, for many months my life was one continued scene
of dissipation. Here at last I am become stationary, and have taken a
farm and--a wife.

The farm is beautifully situated on the Nith, a large river that runs by
Dumfries, and falls into the Solway frith. I have gotten a lease of my
farm as long as I please; but how it may turn out is just a guess, and
it is yet to improve and inclose, etc.; however, I have good hopes of my
bargain on the whole.

My wife is my Jean, with whose story you are partly acquainted. I found
I had a much-loved fellow-creature's happiness or misery among my hands,
and I durst not trifle with so sacred a deposit. Indeed, I have not any
reason to repent the step I have taken, as I have attached myself to a
very good wife, and have shaken myself loose of every bad failing.

I have found my book a very profitable business, and with the profits of
it I have begun life pretty decently. Should fortune not favour me in
farming, as I have no great faith in her fickle ladyship, I have
provided myself in another resource, which, however some folks may
affect to despise it, is still a comfortable shift in the day of
misfortune. In the hey-day of my fame, a gentleman, whose name at least
I daresay you know, as his estate lies somewhere near Dundee, Mr.
Graham, of Fintry, one of the commissioners of Excise, offered me the
commission of an excise officer. I thought it prudent to accept the
offer; and, accordingly, I took my instructions, and have my commission
by me. Whether I may ever do duty, or be a penny the better for it, is
what I do not know; but I have the comfortable assurance that, come
whatever ill fate will, I can, on my simple petition to the Excise
Board, get into employ.

We have lost poor uncle Robert this winter. He has long been very weak,
and with very little alteration on him; he expired 3rd January.

His son William has been with me this winter, and goes in May to be an
apprentice to a mason. His other son, the eldest, John, comes to me I
expect in summer. They are both remarkably stout young fellows, and
promise to do well. His only daughter, Fanny, has been with me ever
since her father's death, and I purpose keeping her in my family till
she is woman grown, and fit for better service. She is one of the
cleverest girls, and has one of the most amiable dispositions I have
ever seen.

All friends in this country and Ayrshire are well. Remember me to all
friends in the north. My wife joins me in compliments to Mrs. B. and
family.--I am ever, my dear cousin, yours sincerely,

R. B.[95]

[Footnote 95: "Fanny Burns, the Poet's relation, merited all the
commendations he has here bestowed. I remember her while she lived at
Ellisland, and better still as the wife of Adam Armour, the brother
of bonnie Jean."--CUNNINGHAM.]

* * * * *

CXX.-To MRS. DUNLOP.

ELLISLAND, 4_th March_ 1789.

Here am I, my honoured friend, returned safe from the capital. To a man
who has a home, however humble or remote--if that home is like mine, the
scene of domestic comfort--the bustle of Edinburgh will soon be a
business of sickening disgust.

Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate you!

When I must skulk into a corner, lest the rattling equipage of some
gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to
exclaim--"What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some
state of pre-existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with
the sceptre of rule, and the key of riches in his puny fist, and I am
kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?" I
have read somewhere of a monarch (in Spain I think it was) who was so
out of humour with the Ptolemean system of astronomy, that he said, had
he been of the Creator's council, he could have saved him a great deal
of labour and absurdity. I will not defend this blasphemous speech; but
often, as I have glided with humble stealth through the pomp of Princes
Street, it has suggested itself to me, as an improvement on the present
human figure, that a man, in proportion to his own conceit of his
consequence in the world, could have pushed out the longitude of his
common size, as a snail pushes out his horns, or as we draw out a
perspective. This trifling alteration, not to mention the prodigious
saving it would be in the tear and wear of the neck and limb-sinews of
many of his majesty's liege-subjects, in the way of tossing the head and
tip-toe strutting, would evidently turn out a vast advantage, in
enabling us at once to adjust the ceremonials in making a bow, or making
way to a great man, and that too within a second of the precise
spherical angle of reverence, or an inch of the particular point of
respectful distance, which the important creature itself requires, as a
measuring-glance at its towering altitude would determine the affair
like instinct.

You are right, Madam, in your idea of poor Mylne's poem, which he has
addressed to me. The piece has a good deal of merit, but it has one
great fault--it is, by far, too long. Besides, my success has encouraged
such a shoal of ill-spawned monsters to crawl into public notice, under
the title of Scottish Poets, that the very term Scottish Poetry borders
on the burlesque. When I write to Mr. Carfrae, I shall advise him rather
to try one of his deceased friend's English pieces. I am prodigiously
hurried with my own matters, else I would have requested a perusal of
all Mylne's poetic performances, and would have offered his friends my
assistance in either selecting or correcting what would be proper for
the press. What it is that occupies me so much, and perhaps a little
oppresses my present spirits, shall fill up a paragraph in some future
letter. In the meantime, allow me to close this epistle with a few lines
done by a friend of mine.... I give you them, that, as you have seen the
original, you may guess whether one or two alterations I have ventured
to make in them, be any real improvement.

Like the fair plant that from our touch withdraws,
Shrink, mildly fearful, even from applause,
Be all a mother's fondest hope can dream,
And all you are, my charming Rachel, seem.
Straight as the fox-glove, ere her bells disclose,
Mild as the maiden-blushing hawthorn blows,
Fair as the fairest of each lovely kind,
Your form shall be the image of your mind;
Your manners shall so true your soul express,
That all shall long to know the worth they guess;
Congenial hearts shall greet with kindred love,
And even sick'ning envy must approve.[96]

R. B.

[Footnote 96: These lines are Mrs. Dunlop's own, addressed to her
daughter.]

* * * * *

CXXI.--TO MRS. M'LEHOSE (FORMERLY CLARINDA).

ELLISLAND, _Mar. 9th_, 1789.

Madam,--The letter you wrote me to Heron's carried its own answer. You
forbade me to write you unless I was willing to plead guilty to a
certain indictment you were pleased to bring against me. As I am
convinced of my own innocence, and, though conscious of high imprudence
and egregious folly, can lay my hand on my breast and attest the
rectitude of my heart, you will pardon me, Madam, if I do not carry my
complaisance so far as humbly to acquiesce in the name of "Villain"
merely out of compliment to your opinion, much as I esteem your judgment
and warmly as I regard your worth.

I have already told you, and I again aver it, that, at the time alluded
to, I was not under the smallest moral tie to Mrs. Burns; nor did I, nor
could I, then know all the powerful circumstances that omnipotent
necessity was busy laying in wait for me. When you call over the scenes
that have passed between us, you will survey the conduct of an honest
man struggling successfully with temptations the most powerful that ever
beset humanity, and preserving untainted honour in situations where the
austerest virtue would have forgiven a fall; situations that, I will
dare to say not a single individual of all his kind, even with half his
sensibility and passion, could have encountered without ruin; and I
leave you, Madam, to guess how such a man is likely to digest an
accusation of "perfidious treachery."

* * * * *

When I shall have regained your good opinion, perhaps I may venture to
solicit your friendship; but, be that as it may, the first of her sex I
ever knew shall always be the object of my warmest good wishes.

ROBT. BURNS.

* * * * *

CXXIL--TO DR. MOORE.

ELLISLAND, _23rd March_ 1789.

Sir,--The gentleman who will deliver you this is a Mr. Nielson, a worthy
clergyman in my neighbourhood, and a very particular acquaintance of
mine. As I have troubled him with this packet, I must turn him over to
your goodness, to recompense him for it in a way in which he much needs
your assistance, and where you can effectually serve him. Mr. Nielson is
on his way for France, to wait on his Grace of Queensberry, on some
little business of a good deal of importance to him, and he wishes for
your instructions respecting the most eligible mode of travelling, etc.,
for him, when he has crossed the channel. I should not have dared to
take this liberty with you, but that I am told, by those who have the
honour of your personal acquaintance, that to be a poor honest Scotsman
is a letter of recommendation to you, and that to have it in your power
to serve such a character, gives you much pleasure.

The inclosed ode is a compliment to the memory of the late Mrs. Oswald
of Auchencruive. You probably knew her personally, an honour of which I
cannot boast; but I spent my early years in the neighbourhood, and among
her servants and tenants. I know that she was detested with the most
heartfelt cordiality. However, in the particular part of her conduct
which roused my poetic wrath, she was much less blameable. In January
last, on my road to Ayrshire, I had put up at Bailie Whigham's, in
Sanquhar, the only tolerable inn in the place. The frost was keen, and
the grim evening and howling wind were ushering in a night of snow and
drift. My horse and I were both much fatigued with the labours of the
day, and just as my friend the Bailie and I were bidding defiance to the
storm, over a smoking bowl, in wheels the funeral pageantry of the late
great Mrs. Oswald, and poor I am forced to brave all the horrors of the
tempestuous night, and jade my horse, my young favourite horse, whom I
had just christened Pegasus, twelve miles farther on, through the
wildest moors and hills of Ayrshire, to New Cumnock, the next inn. The
powers of poesy and prose sink under me, when I would describe what I
felt. Suffice it to say, that when a good fire at New Cumnock had so far
recovered my frozen sinews, I sat down and wrote the inclosed ode.

I was at Edinburgh lately, and settled finally with Mr. Creech; and I
must own, that at last, he has been amicable and fair with me.

R. B.

* * * * *

CXXIII.--To HIS BROTHER, MR. WILLIAM BURNS.

ISLE, March 25th 1789.

I have stolen from my corn-sowing this minute to write a line to
accompany your shirt and hat, for I can no more. Your sister Nannie
arrived yesternight, and begs to be remembered to you. Write me every
opportunity--never mind postage. My head, too, is as addle as an egg
this morning, with dining abroad yesterday. I received yours by the
mason. Forgive me this foolish looking scrawl of an epistle.--I am ever,
my dear William, yours,

R. B.

P.S.--If you are not then gone from Longtown, I'll write you a long
letter by this day se'ennight. If you should not succeed in your tramps,
don't be dejected, or take any rash step--return to us in that case, and
we will court Fortune's better humour. Remember this, I charge you.

R. B.

* * * * *

CXXIV.--To MR. HILL, BOOKSELLER, EDINBURGH.

ELLISLAND, _2nd April_ 1789.

I will make no excuse, my dear Bibliopolus (God forgive me for murdering
language!) that I have sat down to write you on this vile paper.

It is economy, Sir; it is that cardinal virtue, prudence; so I beg you
will sit down, and either compose or borrow a panegyric. If you are
going to borrow, apply to[97] ... to compose, or rather to compound,
something very clever on my remarkable frugality; that I write to one of
my most esteemed friends on this wretched paper, which was originally
intended for the venal fist of some drunken exciseman, to take dirty
notes in a miserable vault of an ale-cellar.

O Frugality! thou mother of ten thousand blessings--thou cook of fat
beef and dainty greens!--thou manufacturer of warm Shetland hose, and
comfortable surtouts!--thou old housewife, darning thy decayed
stockings with thy ancient spectacles on thy aged nose!--lead me, hand
me in thy clutching palsied fist, up those heights, and through those
thickets, hitherto inaccessible, and impervious to my anxious, weary
feet:--not those Parnassian crags, bleak and barren, where the hungry
worshippers of fame are, breathless, clambering, hanging between heaven
and hell; but those glittering cliffs of Potosi, where the
all-sufficient, all-powerful deity, wealth, holds his immediate court of
joy and pleasures; where the sunny exposure of plenty, and the hot walls
of profusion, produce those blissful fruits of luxury, exotics in this
world, and natives of paradise!--Thou withered sibyl, my sage
conductress, usher me into thy refulgent, adored presence!--The power,
splendid and potent as he now is, was once the puling nursling of thy
faithful care and tender arms! Call me thy son, thy cousin, thy kinsman,
or favourite, and adjure the god by the scenes of his infant years, no
longer to repulse me as a stranger, or an alien, but to favour me with
his peculiar countenance and protection! He daily bestows his great
kindness on the undeserving and the worthless--assure him that I bring
ample documents of meritorious demerits! Pledge yourself for me, that,
for the glorious cause of lucre, I will do anything, be anything; but
the horse-leech of private oppression, or the vulture of public robbery!

But to descend from heroics.

I want a Shakespeare; I want likewise an English dictionary,--Johnson's,
I suppose, is best. In these and all my prose commissions, the cheapest
is always the best for me. There is a small debt of honour that I owe
Mr. Robert Cleghorn, in Saughton Mills, my worthy friend, and your
well-wisher. Please give him, and urge him to take it, the first time
you see him, ten shillings worth of anything you have to sell, and place
it to my account.

The library scheme that I mentioned to you is already begun under the
direction of Captain Riddel. There is another in emulation of it going
on at Closeburn, under the auspices of Mr. Monteith of Closeburn, which
will be on a greater scale than ours. Captain Riddel gave his infant
society a great many of his old books, else I had written you on that
subject; but, one of these days, I shall trouble you with a commission
for "The Monkland Friendly Society," a copy of _The Spectator_,
_Mirror_, and _Lounger_, _Man of Feeling_, _Man of the World_,
_Guthrie's Geographical Grammar_, with some religious pieces, will
likely be our first order.

When I grow richer, I will write to you on gilt-post, to make amends for
this sheet. At present every guinea has a five guinea errand with, my
dear Sir, your faithful, poor, but honest friend,

R. B.

[Footnote 97: Creech? or Ramsay of _The Courant?_]

* * * * *

CXXV.--TO MRS. M'MURDO, DRUMLANRIG.

ELLISLAND, _2nd May_ 1789.

Madam,--I have finished the piece which had the happy fortune to be
honoured with your approbation; and never did little Miss, with more
sparkling pleasure, show her applauded sampler to partial Mamma, than I
now send my poem to you and Mr. M'Murdo,[98] if he is returned to
Drumlanrig. You cannot easily imagine what thin-skinned animals--what
sensitive plants poor poets are. How do we shrink into the imbittered
corner of self-abasement, when neglected or condemned by those to whom
we look up! and how do we, in erect importance, add another cubit to our
stature on being noticed and applauded by those whom we honour and
respect! My late visit to Drumlanrig has, I can tell you, Madam, given
me a balloon waft up Parnassus, where, on my fancied elevation, I regard
my poetic self with no small degree of complacency. Surely with all
their sins, the rhyming tribe are not ungrateful creatures--I recollect
your goodness to your humble guest--I see Mr. M'Murdo adding to the
politeness of the gentleman, the kindness of a friend, and my heart
swells as it would burst, with warm emotions and ardent wishes! It may
be it is not gratitude--it may be a mixed sensation. That strange,
shifting, doubling animal, MAN, is so generally, at best, but a
negative, often a worthless creature, that we cannot see real goodness
and native worth, without feeling the bosom glow with sympathetic
approbation. With every sentiment of grateful respect, I have the honour
to be, Madam, your obliged and grateful humble servant,

R. B.

[Footnote 98: The piece beginning--There was a lass and she was
fair.]

* * * * *

CXXVI.--TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.

ELL ISLAND, 4_th May_ 1789.

My dear Sir,--Your _duty-free_ favour of the 25th April I received two
days ago; I will not say I perused it with pleasure; that is the cold
compliment of ceremony; I perused it, Sir, with delicious
satisfaction;--in short, it is such a letter, that not you, nor your
friend, but the legislature, by express proviso in their postage laws,
should frank. A letter informed with the soul of friendship is such an
honour to human nature, that they should order it free ingress and
egress to and from their bags and mails, as an encouragement and mark of
distinction to supereminent virtue.

I have just put the last hand to a little poem, which I think will be
something to your taste.[99] One morning lately, as I was out pretty
early in the fields, sowing some grass seeds, I heard the burst of a
shot from a neighbouring plantation, and presently a poor little wounded
hare came crippling by me. You will guess my indignation at the inhuman
fellow who could shoot a hare at this season, when all of them have
young ones. Indeed there is something in that business of destroying,
for our sport, individuals in the animal creation that do not injure us
materially, which I could never reconcile to my ideas of virtue.

Let me know how you like my poem. I am doubtful whether it would not be
an improvement to keep out the last stanza but one altogether.

Cruikshank is a glorious production of the author of man. You, he, and
the noble Colonel[100] of the Crochallan Fencibles are to me

Dear as the ruddy drops which warm my heart.

I have got a good mind to make verses on you all, to the tune of "_Three
guid fellows ayont the glen_"

R. B.

[Footnote 99: See the poem on the "Wounded Hare."]

[Footnote 100: That is, William Dunbar, W.S.]

* * * * *

CXXVIL--TO MR. RICHARD BROWN.

MAUCHLINE, _21st May_ 1789.

My Dear Friend,--I was in the country by accident, and hearing of your
safe arrival, I could not resist the temptation of wishing you joy on
your return--wishing you would write to me before you sail
again--wishing that you would always set me down as your bosom
friend--wishing you long life and prosperity, and that every good thing
may attend you--wishing Mrs. Brown and your little ones as free of the
evils of this world as is consistent with humanity--wishing you and she
were to make two at the ensuing lying-in, with which Mrs. B. threatens
very soon to favour me--wishing I had longer time to write to you at
present; and, finally, wishing that if there is to be another state of
existence, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Burns, our little ones of both families, and
you and I, in some snug retreat, may make a jovial party to
all eternity!

My direction is at Ellisland, near Dumfries.--Yours,

R. B.

* * * * *

CXXVIIL--To MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.

ELLISLAND, _8th June_ 1789.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I am perfectly ashamed of myself when I look at the
date of your last. It is not that I forget the friend of my heart and
the companion of my peregrinations; but I have been condemned to
drudgery beyond sufferance, though not, thank God, beyond redemption. I
have had a collection of poems by a lady put into my hands to prepare
them for the press; which horrid task, with sowing corn with my own
hand, a parcel of masons, wrights, plasterers, etc., to attend to,
roaming on business through Ayrshire--all this was against me, and the
very first dreadful article was of itself too much for me.

13th. I have not had a moment to spare from incessant toil since the
8th. Life, my dear Sir, is a serious matter. You know by experience that
a man's individual self is a good deal, but believe me, a wife and
family of children, whenever you have the honour to be a husband and a
father, will show you that your present and most anxious hours of
solitude are spent on trifles. The welfare of those who are very dear to
us, whose only support, hope, and stay we are--this, to a generous mind,
is another sort of more important object of care than any concerns
whatever which centre merely in the individual. On the other hand, let
no young, rakehelly dog among you, make a song of his pretended liberty
and freedom from care. If the relations we stand in to king, country,
kindred, and friends, be anything but the visionary fancies of dreaming
metaphysicians; if religion, virtue, magnanimity, generosity, humanity
and justice, be ought but empty sounds; then the man who may be said to
live only for others, for the beloved, honourable female, whose tender
faithful embrace endears life, and for the helpless little innocents who
are to be the men and women, the worshippers of his God, the subjects of
his king, and the support, nay the very vital existence of his COUNTRY,
in the ensuing age;--compare such a man with any fellow whatever, who,
whether he bustle and push in business among labourers, clerks,
statesmen; or whether he roar and rant, and drink and sing in taverns--a
fellow over whose grave no one will breathe a single heigh-ho, except
from the cobweb-tie of what is called good fellowship--who has no view
nor aim but what terminates in himself--if there be any grovelling
earth-born wretch of our species, a renegade to common sense, who would
fain believe that the noble creature, man, is no better than a sort of
fungus, generated out of nothing, nobody knows how, and soon dissipating
in nothing, nobody knows where; such a stupid beast, such a crawling
reptile, might balance the foregoing unexaggerated comparison, but no
one else would have the patience.

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