The Letters of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

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I can easily enter into the _embarras_ of your present situation. You
know my favourite quotation from Young--

On Reason build RESOLVE!
That column of true majesty in man,--

and that other favourite one from Thomson's "Alfred"--

What proves the hero truly GREAT,
Is, never, never to despair.

Or, shall I quote you an author of your acquaintance?--

Whether DOING, SUFFERING, or FORBEARING,
You may do miracles by--PERSEVERING.

I have nothing new to tell you. The few friends we have are going on in
the old way. I sold my crop on this day se'ennight, and sold it very
well. A guinea an acre, on an average, above value. But such a scene of
drunkenness was hardly ever seen in this country. After the roup was
over, about thirty people engaged in a battle, every man for his own
hand, and fought it out for three hours. Nor was the scene much better
in the house. No fighting, indeed, but folks lying drunk on the floor,
and decanting, until both my dogs got so drunk by attending them, that
they could not stand. You will easily guess how I enjoyed the scene, as
I was no farther over than you used to see me.

Mrs. B. and family have been in Ayrshire these many weeks.

Farewell! and God bless you, my dear Friend! R.B.

[Footnote 122: Of Wanlockhead. Burns got to know him during his
frequent journeys between Ellisland and Mauchline in 1788-9.]

* * * * *

CLXVII--TO MR. AINSLIE.

ELLISLAND, 1791.

My Dear Ainslie,--Can you minister to a mind diseased? can you, amid the
horrors of penitence, regret, remorse, head-ache, nausea, and all the
rest of the damn'd hounds of hell that beset a poor wretch who has been
guilty of the sin of drunkenness--can you speak peace to a
troubled soul?

_Miserable perdu_ that I am, I have tried every thing that used to amuse
me, but in vain; here must I sit, a monument of the vengeance laid up in
store for the wicked, slowly counting every click of the clock as it
slowly, slowly numbers over these lazy scoundrels of hours, who, damn
them, are ranked up before me, every one at his neighbour's backside,
and every one with a burthen of anguish on his back, to pour on my
devoted head--and there is none to pity me. My wife scolds me, my
business torments me, and my sins come staring me in the face, every one
telling a more bitter tale than his fellow.--When I tell you even ----
has lost its power to please, you will guess something of my hell
within, and all around me.--I began _Elibanks and Elibraes_, but the
stanzas fell unenjoyed and unfinished from my listless tongue: at last I
luckily thought of reading over an old letter of yours, that lay by me
in my bookcase, and I felt something for the first time since I opened
my eyes, of pleasurable existence.----Well--I begin to breathe a little,
since I began to write to you. How are you, and what are you doing? How
goes Law? Apropos, for correction's sake do not address to me
supervisor, for that is an honour I cannot pretend to--I am on the list,
as we call it, for a supervisor, and will be called out by-and-by to act
as one; but at present I am a simple gauger, tho' t'other day I got an
appointment to an excise division of £25 _per annum_ better than the
rest. My present income, down money, is £70 _per annum_.

I have one or two good fellows here whom you would be glad to know.

R. B.

* * * * *

CLXVIII.--TO MISS DAVIES.

It is impossible, Madam, that the generous warmth and angelic purity of
your youthful mind can have any idea of that moral disease under which I
unhappily must rank as the chief of sinners; I mean a torpitude of the
moral powers that may be called a lethargy of conscience. In vain
Remorse rears her horrent crest, and rouses all her snakes: beneath the
deadly-fixed eye and leaden hand of Indolence their wildest ire is
charmed into the torpor of the bat, slumbering out the rigours of winter
in the chink of a ruined wall. Nothing less, Madam, could have made me
so long neglect your obliging commands. Indeed, I had one apology--the
bagatelle was not worth presenting. Besides, so strongly am I interested
in Miss Davies's fate and welfare in the serious business of life, amid
its chances and changes, that to make her the subject of a silly ballad
is downright mockery of these ardent feelings; 'tis like an impertinent
jest to a dying friend.

Gracious Heaven! why this disparity between our wishes and our powers?
Why is the most generous wish to make others blest impotent and
ineffectual as the idle breeze that crosses the pathless desert? In my
walks of life I have met with a few people to whom how gladly would I
have said--"Go, be happy! I know that your hearts have been wounded by
the scorn of the proud, whom accident has placed above you; or worse
still, in whose hands are, perhaps, placed many of the comforts of your
life. But there! ascend that rock, Independence, and look justly down on
their littleness of soul. Make the worthless tremble under your
indignation, and the foolish sink before your contempt; and largely
impart that happiness to others which, I am certain, will give
yourselves so much pleasure to bestow."

Why, dear Madam, must I wake from this delightful reverie, and find it
all a dream? Why, amid my generous enthusiasm, must I find myself poor
and powerless, incapable of wiping one tear from the eye of pity, or of
adding one comfort to the friend I love? Out upon the world! say I, that
its affairs are administered so ill! They talk of reform;--good Heaven!
what a reform would I make among the sons, and even the daughters of
men! Down, immediately, should go fools from the high places where
misbegotten chance has perked them up, and through life should they
skulk, ever haunted by their native insignificance, as the body marches
accompanied by its shadow. As for a much more formidable class, the
knaves, I am at a loss what to do with them: had I a world, there should
not be a knave in it.

But the hand that could give, I would liberally fill: and I would pour
delight on the heart that could kindly forgive, and generously love.

Still the inequalities of life are, among men, comparatively tolerable;
but there is a delicacy, a tenderness, accompanying every view in which
we can place lovely Woman, that are grated and shocked at the rude,
capricious distinctions of Fortune. Woman is the blood-royal of life:
let there be slight degrees of precedency among them--but let them be
ALL sacred. Whether this last sentiment be right or wrong, I am not
accountable; it is an original component feature of my mind.

R. B.

* * * * *

CLXIX.--To MRS. DUNLOP.

_5th January_ 1792.

You see my hurried life, Madam: I can only command starts of time;
however, I am glad of one thing; since I finished the other sheet, the
political blast that threatened my welfare is overblown. I have
corresponded with Commissioner Graham, for the Board had made me the
subject of their animadversions; and now I have the pleasure of
informing you that all is set to rights in that quarter. Now as to these
informers, may the devil be let loose to--but, hold! I was praying most
fervently in my last sheet, and I must not so soon fall a swearing
in this.

Alas! how little do the wantonly or idly officious think what mischief
they do by their malicious insinuations, indirect impertinence, or
thoughtless babblings. What a difference there is in intrinsic worth,
candour, benevolence, generosity, kindness,--in all the charities and
all the virtues--between one class of human beings and another!

For instance, the amiable circle I so lately mixed with in the
hospitable hall of Dunlop, their generous hearts--their uncontaminated
dignified minds--their informed and polished understandings--what a
contrast, when compared--if such comparing were not downright
sacrilege--with the soul of the miscreant who can deliberately plot the
destruction of an honest man that never offended him, and with a grin of
satisfaction see the unfortunate being, his faithful wife, and prattling
innocents, turned over to beggary and ruin!

Your cup, my dear Madam, arrived safe. I had two worthy fellows dining
with me the other day, when I, with great formality, produced my
whigmeleerie cup, and told them that it had been a family-piece among
the descendants of William Wallace, This roused such an enthusiasm, that
they insisted on bumpering the punch round in it; and by-and-by, never
did your great ancestor lay a _Southron_ more completely to rest than
for a time did your cup my two friends. Apropos, this is the season of
wishing. May God bless you, my dear friend, and bless me, the humblest
and sincerest of your friends, by granting you yet many returns of the
season! May all good things attend you and yours wherever they are
scattered over the earth!

R.B.

* * * * *

CLXX.--TO MR. WILLIAM SMELLIE, PRINTER.

DUMFRIES, _22nd January_ 1792.

I sit down, my dear Sir, to introduce a young lady[123] to you, and a
lady in the first ranks of fashion, too. What a task! to you--who care
no more for the herd of animals called young ladies than you do for the
herd of animals called young gentlemen; to you--who despise and detest
the groupings and combinations of fashion, as an idiot painter that
seems industrious to place staring fools and unprincipled knaves in the
foreground of his picture, while men of sense and honesty are too often
thrown in the dimmest shades. Mrs. Riddell, who will take this letter to
town with her, and send it to you, is a character that, even in your own
way as a naturalist and a philosopher, would be an acquisition to your
acquaintance. The lady, too, is a votary of the muses; and as I think
myself somewhat of a judge in my own trade, I assure you that her
verses, always correct, and often elegant, are much beyond the common
run of the _lady poetesses_ of the day. She is a great admirer of your
book; and, hearing me say that I was acquainted with you, she begged to
be known to you, as she is just going to pay her first visit to our
Caledonian capital. I told her that her best way was to desire her near
relation, and your intimate friend, Craigdarroch, to have you at his
house while she was there; and lest you might think of a lively West
Indian girl of eighteen, as girls of eighteen too often deserve to be
thought of, I should take care to remove that prejudice. To be
impartial, however, in appreciating the lady's merits, she has one
unlucky failing--a failing which you will easily discover, as she seems
rather pleased with indulging in it; and a failing that you will easily
pardon, as it is a sin which very much besets yourself;--where she
dislikes, or despises, she is apt to make no more a secret of it, than
where she esteems and respects.

I will not present you with the unmeaning _compliments of the season_,
but I will send you my warmest wishes and most ardent prayers, that
Fortune may never throw your subsistence to the mercy of a knave, or set
your character on the judgment of a fool; but that, upright and erect,
you may walk to an honest grave, where men of letters shall say, here
lies a man who did honour to science, and men of worth shall say, here
lies a man who did honour to human nature.

R. B.

[Footnote 123: Maria Riddell, a gay, clever, young Creole, wife of
Walter, brother of Captain Riddell.]

* * * * *

CLXXL--TO MR. WILLIAM NICOL.

20_th February_ 1792.

O thou wisest among the wise, meridian blaze of prudence, full moon of
discretion, and chief of many counsellors! How infinitely is thy
puddle-headed, rattleheaded, wrong-headed, round-headed slave indebted
to thy super-eminent goodness, that from the luminous path of thy own
right-lined rectitude, thou lookest benignly down on an erring wretch,
of whom the zig-zag wanderings defy all the powers of calculation, from
the simple copulation of units, up to the hidden mysteries of fluxions!
May one feeble ray of that light of wisdom which darts from thy
sensorium, straight as the arrow of heaven, and bright as the meteor of
inspiration, may it be my portion, so that I may be less unworthy of the
face and favour of that father of proverbs and master of maxims, that
antipode of folly, and magnet among the sages, the wise and witty Willie
Nicol! Amen! Amen! Yea, so be it!

For me! I am a beast, a reptile, and know nothing! From the cave of my
ignorance, amid the fogs of my dulness, and pestilential fumes of my
political heresies, I look up to thee, as doth a toad through the
iron-barred lucarne of a pestiferous dungeon, to the cloudless glory of
a summer sun! Sorely sighing in bitterness of soul, I say, When shall my
name be the quotation of the wise, and my countenance be the delight of
the godly, like the illustrious lord of Laggan's many hills?[124] As for
him, his works are perfect: never did the pen of calumny blur the fair
page of his reputation, nor the bolt of hatred fly at his dwelling.

Thou mirror of purity, when shall the elfin lamp of my glimmerous
understanding, purged from sensual appetites and gross desires, shine
like the constellation of thy intellectual powers. As for thee, thy
thoughts are pure and thy lips are holy. Never did the unhallowed breath
of the powers of darkness, and the pleasures of darkness, pollute the
sacred flame of thy sky-descended and heaven-bound desires: never did
the vapours of impurity stain the unclouded serene of thy cerulean
imagination. O that like thine were the tenor of my life, like thine the
tenor of my conversation! then should no friend fear for my strength, no
enemy rejoice in my weakness! Then should I lie down and rise up, and
none to make me afraid. May thy pity and thy prayer be exercised for, O
thou lamp of wisdom and mirror of morality! thy devoted slave,

R. B.

[Footnote 124: Mr. Nicol had purchased a small piece of ground called
Laggan, on the Nith. There took place the Bacchanalian scene which
called forth "Willie brew'd a peck o' Maat."]

* * * * *

CLXXIL.--TO MR. FRANCIS GROSE, F.S A.

DUMFRIES, 1792.

Among the many witch stories I have heard, relating to Alloway Kirk, I
distinctly remember only two or three.

Upon a stormy night, amid whistling squalls of wind, and bitter blasts
of hail; in short, on such a night as the devil would choose to take the
air in; a farmer or farmer's servant was plodding and plashing homeward
with his plough-irons on his shoulder, having been getting some repairs
on them at a neighbouring smithy. His way lay by the kirk of Alloway,
and being rather on the anxious look out in approaching a place so well
known to be a favourite haunt of the devil and the devil's friends and
emissaries, he was struck aghast by discovering through the horrors of
the storm and stormy night, a light, which on his nearer approach
plainly showed itself to proceed from the haunted edifice. Whether he
had been fortified from above on his devout supplication, as is
customary with people when they suspect the immediate presence of Satan;
or whether, according to another custom, he got courageously drunk at
the smithy, I will not pretend to determine; but so it was that he
ventured to go up to, nay, into the very kirk. As luck would have it his
temerity came off unpunished.

The members of the infernal junto were all out on some midnight business
or other, and he saw nothing but a kind of kettle or caldron, depending
from the roof, over the fire, simmering some heads of unchristened
children, limbs of executed malefactors, etc., for the business of the
night. It was in for a penny, in for a pound, with the honest ploughman:
so without ceremony he unhooked the caldron from off the fire, and,
pouring out the damn'd ingredients, inverted it on his head, and carried
it fairly home, where it remained long in the family, a living evidence
of the truth of the story.

Another story, which I can prove to be equally authentic, is as follows:

On a market day in the town of Ayr a farmer from Carrick, and
consequently whose way lay by the very gate of Alloway kirk-yard, in
order to cross the river Doon at the old Bridge, which is about two or
three hundred yards farther on than the said gate, had been detained by
his business, till by the time he reached Alloway it was the wizard
hour, between night and morning.

Though he was terrified with a blaze streaming from the kirk, yet as it
is a well-known fact that to turn back on these occasions is running by
far the greatest risk of mischief, he prudently advanced on his road.
When he had reached the gate of the kirk-yard, he was surprised and
entertained, through the ribs and arches of an old gothic window, which
still faces the highway, to see a dance of witches merrily footing it
round their old sooty blackguard master, who was keeping them all alive
with the power of his bagpipe. The farmer stopping his horse to observe
them a little, could plainly descry the faces of many old women of his
acquaintance and neighbourhood. How the gentleman was dressed tradition
does not say; but that the ladies were all in their smocks: and one of
them happening unluckily to have a smock which was considerably too
short to answer all the purpose of that piece of dress, our farmer was
so tickled that he involuntarily burst out with a loud laugh, "Weel
luppen, Maggy wi' the short sark!" and recollecting himself, instantly
spurred his horse to the top of his speed. I need not mention the
universally known fact, that no diabolical power can pursue you beyond
the middle of a running stream. Lucky it was for the poor farmer that
the river Doon was so near, for, notwithstanding the speed of his horse,
which was a good one, against he reached the middle of the arch of the
bridge, and consequently the middle of the stream, the pursuing,
vengeful hags were so close at his heels, that one of them actually
sprung to seize him; but it was too late; nothing was on her side of the
stream but the horse's tail, which immediately gave way at her infernal
grip, as if blasted by a stroke of lightning; but the farmer was beyond
her reach. However, the unsightly, tail-less condition of the vigorous
steed was to the last hour of the noble creature's life, an awful
warning to the Carrick farmers, not to stay too late in Ayr markets.

The last relation I shall give, though equally true, is not so well
identified as the two former, with regard to the scene; but as the best
authorities give it for Alloway, I shall relate it.

On a summer's evening, about the time nature puts on her sables to mourn
the expiry of the cheerful day, a shepherd boy, belonging to a farmer in
the immediate neighbourhood of Alloway kirk, had just folded his charge,
and was returning home. As he passed the kirk, in the adjoining field he
fell in with a crew of men and women, who were busy pulling stems of the
plant ragwort. He observed that as each person pulled a ragwort, he or
she got astride of it, and called out, "Up, horsie!" on which the
ragwort flew off, like Pegasus, through the air with its rider. The
foolish boy likewise pulled his ragwort, and cried with the rest, "Up,
horsie!" and, strange to tell, away he flew with the company. The first
stage at which the cavalcade stopt was a merchant's wine-cellar in
Bourdeaux, where, without saying "By your leave," they quaffed away at
the best the cellar could afford, until the morning, foe to the imps and
works of darkness, threatened to throw light on the matter, and
frightened them from their carousals.

The poor shepherd lad, being equally a stranger to the scene and the
liquor, heedlessly got himself drunk; and when the rest took horse, he
fell asleep, and was found so next day by some of the people belonging
to the merchant. Somebody that understood Scotch, asking him what he
was, he said such a-one's herd in Alloway, and by some means or other
getting home again, he lived long to tell the world the wondrous
tale.[125]

R. B.

[Footnote 125: _Cp._ _Hogg's Witch of Fife._]

* * * * *

CLXXIIL.--TO MRS. DUNLOP.

ANNAN WATER FOOT, 22_nd August_ 1792.

Do not blame me for it, Madam--my own conscience, hackneyed and
weather-beaten as it is, in watching and reproving my vagaries, follies,
indolence, etc., has continued to punish me sufficiently.

Do you think it possible, my dear and honoured friend, that I could be
so lost to gratitude for many favours; to esteem for much worth; and to
the honest, kind, pleasurable tie of, now old acquaintance, and I hope
and am sure of progressive, increasing friendship--as, for a single day,
not to think of you nor to ask the Fates what they are doing and about
to do with my much loved friend and her wide scattered connections, and
to beg of them to be as kind to you and yours as they possibly can?

Apropos! (though how it is apropos I have not leisure to explain) do you
know that I am almost in love with an acquaintance of yours?--Almost!
said I--I _am_ in love, souse! over head and ears, deep as the most
unfathomable abyss of the boundless ocean; but the word Love, owing to
the _intermingledoms_ of the good and the bad, the pure and the impure,
in this world, being rather an equivocal term for expressing one's
sentiments and sensations, I must do justice to the sacred purity of my
attachment. Know, then, that the heart-struck awe the distant humble
approach; the delight we should have in gazing upon and listening to a
Messenger of Heaven, appearing in all the unspotted purity of his
celestial home, among the coarse, polluted, far inferior sons of men, to
deliver to them tidings that make their hearts swim in joy, and their
imaginations soar in transport--such, so delighting and so pure, were
the emotions of my soul on meeting the other day with Miss Lesley
Baillie, your neighbour at Mayfield. Mr. B., with his two daughters,
accompanied by Mr. H. of G., passing through Dumfries a few days ago, on
their way to England, did me the honour of calling on me; on which I
took my horse (though God knows I could ill spare the time), and
accompanied them fourteen or fifteen miles, and dined and spent the day
with them. Twas about nine, I think, when I left them, and, riding home,
I composed the following ballad, of which you will probably think you
have a dear bargain, as it will cost you another groat of postage. You
must know that there is an old ballad beginning with--

My bonnie Lizzie Bailie,
I'll lowe thee in my plaidie, (etc,)

So I parodied it as follows, which is literally the first copy,
"unanointed, unanneal'd," as Hamlet says,--

O saw ye bonny Lesley
As she gaed o'er the border?
She's gane, like Alexander,
To spread her conquests farther, (etc.)

So much for ballads. I regret that you are gone to the east country, as
I am to be in Ayrshire in about a fortnight. This world of ours,
notwithstanding it has many good things in it, yet it has ever had this
curse, that two or three people, who would be the happier the oftener
they met together, are, almost without exception, always so placed as
never to meet but once or twice a-year, which, considering the few years
of a man's life, is a very great "evil under the sun," which I do not
recollect that Solomon has mentioned in his catalogue of the miseries of
man. I hope and believe that there is a state of existence beyond the
grave, where the worthy of this life will renew their former intimacies,
with this endearing addition, that "we meet to part no more"

Tell us, ye dead,
Will none of you in pity disclose the secret
What 'tis you are, and we must shortly be!

A thousand times have I made this apostrophe to the departed sons of
men, but not one of them has ever thought fit to answer the question. "O
that some courteous ghost would blab it out!" but it cannot be; you and
I, my friend, must make the experiment by ourselves, and for ourselves.
However, I am so convinced that an unskaken faith in the doctrines of
religion is not only necessary, by making us better men, but also by
making us happier men, that I shall take every care that your little
godson, and every little creature that shall call me father, shall be
taught them. So ends this heterogeneous letter, written at this wild
place of the world, in the intervals of my labour of discharging a
vessel of rum from Antigua.

R. B.

* * * * *

CLXXIV.--TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.

DUMFRIES, 10_th September_ 1792.

No! I will not attempt an apology. Amid all my hurry of business,
grinding the faces of the publican and the sinner on the merciless
wheels of the Excise; making ballads, and then drinking, and singing
them; and, over and above all, the correcting the press-work of two
different publications; still, still I might have stolen five minutes to
dedicate to one of the first of my friends and fellow-creatures. I might
have done, as I do at present-snatched an hour near "witching time of
night," and scrawled a page or two; I might have congratulated my friend
on his marriage; or I might have thanked the Caledonian archers for the
honour they have done me (though, to do myself justice, I intended to
have done both in rhyme, else I had done both long ere now). Well, then,
here is to your good health! for you must know, I have set a nipperkin
of toddy by me, just by way of spell, to keep away the meikle horned
deil, or any of his subaltern imps who may be on their nightly rounds.

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