The Letters of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

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I have often wished, and will certainly endeavour, to form a kind of
common acquaintance among all the genuine sons of Caledonian song. The
world, busy in low prosaic pursuits, may overlook most of us; but
"reverence thyself." The world is not our _peers_ so we challenge the
jury. We can lash that world, and find ourselves a very great source of
amusement and happiness independent of that world.

There is a work[53] going on in Edinburgh, just now, which claims your
best assistance. An engraver in this town has set about collecting and
publishing all the Scotch songs, with the music, that can be found.
Songs in the English language, if by Scotchmen, are admitted, but the
music must all be Scotch. Drs. Beattie and Blacklock are lending a hand,
and the first musician in town presides over that department. I have
been absolutely crazed about it, collecting old stanzas, and every
information remaining respecting their origin, authors, etc., etc. This
last is but a very fragment business; but at the end of his second
number--the first is already published--a small account will be given
of the authors, particularly to preserve those of latter times. Your
three songs, "Tullochgorum," "John of Badenyon," and "Ewie wi' the
crookit Horn," go in this second number. I was determined, before I got
your letter, to write you, begging that you would let me know where the
editions of these pieces may be found as you would wish them to continue
in future times: and if you would be so kind to this undertaking as send
any songs, of your own or others, that you would think proper to
publish, your name will be inserted among the other authors. "Nill ye,
will ye," one-half of Scotland already give your songs to other authors.
Paper is done. I beg to hear from you; the sooner the better, as I leave
Edinburgh in a fortnight or three weeks.--I am, with the warmest
sincerity, Sir, your obliged humble Servant, R. B.

[Footnote 53: Johnson's _Musical Museum_.]

* * * *

LXIV.--To Miss MARGARET CHALMERS, HARVIESTON.
(AFTERWARDS MRS. HAY, OF EDINBURGH.)

_Oct_. 26, 1787.

I send Charlotte the first number of the songs; I would not wait for the
second number; I hate delays in little marks of friendship, as I hate
dissimulation in the language of the heart. I am determined to pay
Charlotte a poetic compliment, if I could hit on some glorious old
Scotch air, in number second.[54] You will see a small attempt on a
shred of paper in the book; but though Dr. Blacklock commended it very
highly, I am not just satisfied with it myself. I intend to make it a
description of some kind: the whining cant of love, except in real
passion, and by a masterly hand, is to me as insufferable as the
preaching cant of old Father Smeaton, whig-minister at Kilmaurs. Darts,
flames, cupids, loves, graces, and all that farrago, are just a
Mauchline--a senseless rabble.

I got an excellent poetic epistle yesternight from the old, venerable
author of "Tullochgorum," "John of Badenyon," etc. I suppose you know he
is a clergyman. It is by far the finest poetic compliment I ever got. I
will send you a copy of it.

I go on Thursday or Friday to Dumfries, to wait on Mr. Miller about his
farms. Do tell that to Lady Mackenzie, that she may give me credit for a
little wisdom. "I, Wisdom, dwell with Prudence." What a blessed
fireside! How happy should I be to pass a winter evening under their
venerable roof! and smoke a pipe of tobacco, or drink water-gruel with
them! What solemn, lengthened, laughter-quashing gravity of phiz! What
sage remarks on the good-for-nothing sons and daughters of indiscretion
and folly! And what frugal lessons, as we straitened the fireside
circle, on the uses of the poker and tongs!

Miss N. is very well, and begs to be remembered in the old way to you. I
used all my eloquence, all the persuasive flourishes of the hand, and
heart-melting modulation of periods in my power, to urge her out to
Harvieston, but all in vain. My rhetoric seems quite to have lost its
effect on the lovely half of mankind. I have seen the day--but this is
"a tale of other years." In my conscience I believe that my heart has
been so oft on fire that it is absolutely vitrified. I look on the sex
with something like the admiration with which I regard the starry sky in
a frosty December night. I admire the beauty of the Creator's
workmanship; I am charmed with the wild but graceful eccentricity of
their motions, and--wish them good-night. I mean this with respect to a
certain passion _dont j'at eu l'honneur d'etre un miserable esclave_. As
for friendship, you and Charlotte have given me pleasure, permanent
pleasure, "which the world cannot give, nor take away," I hope, and
which will outlast the heavens and the earth.

R. B.

[Footnote 54: Of the Scots _Musical Museum_.]

* * * *

LXV.--To MRS. DUNLOP OF DUNLOP HOUSE, STEWARTON.

Edin., 4_th Nov_. 1787.

Madam,--... When you talk of correspondence and friendship to me, you
do me too much honour; but, as I shall soon be at my wonted leisure and
rural occupation, if any remark on what I have read or seen, or any new
rhyme that I may twist, be worth the while ... you shall have it with
all my heart and soul. It requires no common exertion of good sense and
philosophy in persons of elevated rank to keep a friendship properly
alive with one much their inferior. Externals, things wholly extraneous
of the man, steal upon the hearts and judgments of almost, if not
altogether, all mankind; nor do I know more than one instance of a man
who fully regards all the world as a stage and all the men and women
merely players, and who (the dancing-school bow excepted) only values
these players, the _dramatis personæ_ who build cities and who rear
hedges, who govern provinces or superintend flocks, _merely as they act
their parts_. For the honour of Ayrshire this man is Professor Dugald
Stewart of Catrine. To him I might perhaps add another instance, a
Popish bishop, Geddes of Edinburgh.... I ever could ill endure those ...
beasts of prey who foul the hallowed ground of religion with their
nocturnal prowlings; and if the prosecution against my worthy friend,
Dr. McGill, goes on, I shall keep no measure with the savages, but fly
at them with the _faucons_ of ridicule, or run them down with the
bloodhounds of satire as lawful game wherever I start them.

I expect to leave Edinburgh in eight or ten days, and shall certainly do
myself the honour of calling at Dunlop House as I return to Ayrshire.--I
have the honour to be, Madam, your obliged humble Servant,

ROBERT BURNS.

* * * *

LXVI.--To MR. JAMES HOY,[55] GORDON CASTLE.

Edinburg, 6_th November_ 1787.

Dear Sir,--I would have wrote you immediately on receipt of your kind
letter, but a mixed impulse of gratitude and esteem whispered to me that
I ought to send you something by way of return. When a poet owes
anything, particularly when he is indebted for good offices, the payment
that usually recurs to him--the only coin, indeed, in which he is
probably conversant--is rhyme. Johnson sends the books by the fly, as
directed, and begs me to inclose his most grateful thanks: my return I
intended should have been one or two poetic bagatelles which the world
have not seen, or, perhaps, for obvious seasons, cannot see. These I
shall send you before I leave Edinburgh. They may make you laugh a
little, which, on the whole, is no bad way of spending one's precious
hours and still more precious breath. At any rate, they will be, though
a small, yet a very sincere mark of my respectful esteem for a gentleman
whose farther acquaintance I should look upon as a peculiar obligation.

The Duke's song, independent totally of his dukeship, charms me. There
is I know not what of wild happiness of thought and expression
peculiarly beautiful in the old Scottish song style, of which his Grace,
old venerable Skinner, the author of "Tullochgorum," etc., and the late
Ross, at Lochlee, of true Scottish poetic memory, are the only modern
instances that I recollect, since Ramsay, with his contemporaries, and
poor Bob Fergusson, went to the world of deathless existence and truly
immortal song. The mob of mankind, that many-headed beast, would laugh
at so serious a speech about an old song; but, as Job says, "O that mine
adversary had written a book!" Those who think that composing a Scotch
song is a trifling business--let them try.

I wish my Lord Duke would pay a proper attention to the Christian
admonition, "Hide not your candle under a bushel," but "let your light
shine before men." I could name half-a-dozen Dukes that I guess are a
deal worse employed; nay, I question if there are half-a-dozen better:
perhaps there are not half that scanty number whom Heaven has favoured
with the tuneful, happy, and, I will say, glorious gift.--I am, dear
Sir, your obliged humble servant, R. B.

[Footnote 55: Librarian to the Duke of Gordon.]

* * * *

LXVII.-To THE EARL OF GLENCAIRN.

Edinburg, (_End of_ 1787.)

My Lord,--I know your lordship will disapprove of my ideas in a request
I am going to make to you; but I have weighed, long and seriously
weighed, my situation, my hopes, and turn of mind, and am fully fixed to
my scheme, if I can possibly effectuate it. I wish to get into the
Excise: I am told that your lordship's interest will easily procure me
the grant from the commissioners; and your lordship's patronage and
goodness, which have already rescued me from obscurity, wretchedness,
and exile, embolden me to ask that interest. You have likewise put it in
my power to save the little tie of home that sheltered an aged mother,
two brothers, and three sisters from destruction. There, my lord, you
have bound me over to the highest gratitude.

My brother's farm is but a wretched lease, but I think he will probably
weather out the remaining seven years of it; and after the assistance
which I have given, and will give him, to keep the family together, I
think, by my guess, I shall have rather better than two hundred pounds,
and instead of seeking, what is almost impossible at present to find, a
farm that I can certainly live by, with so small a stock, I shall lodge
this sum in a banking-house, a sacred deposit, excepting only the calls
of uncommon distress or necessitous old age.

These, my lord, are my views: I have resolved from the maturest
deliberation; and now I am fixed, I shall leave no stone unturned to
carry my resolve into execution. Your lordship's patronage is the
strength of my hopes; nor have I yet applied to anybody else. Indeed my
heart sinks within me at the idea of applying to any other of the great
who have honoured me with their countenance. I am ill-qualified to dog
the heels of greatness with the impertinence of solicitation, and
tremble nearly as much at the thought of the cold promise as the cold
denial; but to your lordship I have not only the honour, the comfort,
but the pleasure of being your lordship's much obliged and deeply
indebted humble servant,

R. B.

* * * *

LXVIII--To Miss CHALMERS.

Edinburgh, _Nov_. 21, 1787.

I have one vexatious fault to the kindly, welcome, well-filled sheet
which I owe to your and Charlotte's goodness--it contains too much
sense, sentiment, and good spelling. It is impossible that even you two,
whom, I declare to my God, I will give credit for any degree of
excellence the sex are capable of attaining-it is impossible you can go
on to correspond at that rate; so, like those who, Shenstone says,
retire because they have made a good speech, I shall, after a few
letters, hear no more of you. I insist that you shall write whatever
comes first--what you see, what you read, what you hear, what you
admire, what you dislike, trifles, bagatelles, nonsense; or, to fill up
a corner, e'en put down a laugh at full length. Now, none of your polite
hints about flattery; I leave that to your lovers, if you have or shall
have any; though, thank heaven, I have found at last two girls who can
be luxuriantly happy in their own minds and with one another, without
that commonly necessary appendage to female bliss--A LOVER.

Charlotte and you are just two favourite resting-places for my soul in
her wanderings through the weary, thorny wilderness of this world. God
knows, I am ill-fitted for the struggle: I glory in being a poet, and I
want to be thought a wise man--I would fondly be generous, and I wish to
be rich. After all, I am afraid I am a lost subject. "Some folk hae a
hantle o' faults, and I'm but a ne'er-do-well".

_Afternoon_.--To close the melancholy reflections at the end of last
sheet, I shall just add a piece of devotion, commonly known in Carrick
by the title of the "Wabster's grace":--

Some say we're thieves, and e'en sae are we,
Some say we lie, and e'en sae do we!
Gude forgie us, and I hope sae will he!
Up and to your looms, lads.

R. B.

* * * *

LXIX.--TO MISS CHALMERS.

Edinburgh, _Dec_. 12, 1787.

I am here under the care of a surgeon, with a bruised limb extended on a
cushion, and the tints of my mind vieing with the livid horror preceding
a midnight thunderstorm. A drunken coachman was the cause of the first,
and incomparably the lightest evil; misfortune, bodily constitution,
hell, and myself have formed a "quadruple alliance" to guarantee the
other. I got my fall on Saturday, and am getting slowly better.

I have taken tooth and nail to the Bible, and am got through the five
books of Moses, and half way in Joshua. It is really a glorious book. I
sent for my bookbinder today, and ordered him to get me an octavo Bible
in sheets, the best paper and print in town, and bind it with all the
elegance of his craft.

I would give my best song to my worst enemy--I mean the merit of making
it--to have you and Charlotte by me. You are angelic creatures, and
would pour oil and wine into my wounded spirit.

I inclose you a proof copy of the "Banks of the Devon", which present
with my best wishes to Charlotte. The "Ochil Hills"[56] you shall
probably have next week for yourself. None of your fine speeches!

R. B.

[Footnote 56: The song in honour of Miss Chalmers, beginning, "Where,
braving angry winter's storms".]

* * * *

LXX.--TO MISS CHALMERS.

Edinburgh, 19_th Dec_. 1787.

I begin this letter in answer to yours of the 17th current, which is not
yet cold since I read it. The atmosphere of my soul is vastly clearer
than when I wrote you last. For the first time, yesterday I crossed the
room on crutches. It would do your heart good to see my hardship, not on
my poetic, but on my oaken stilts; throwing my best leg with an air! and
with as much hilarity in my gait and countenance, as a May frog leaping
across the newly-harrowed ridge, enjoying the fragrance of the refreshed
earth, after the long-expected shower!

I can't say I am altogether at my ease when I see anywhere in my path
that meagre, squalid, famine-faced spectre, poverty; attended as he
always is, by iron-fisted oppression, and leering contempt; but I have
sturdily withstood his buffetings many a hard-laboured day already, and
still my motto is--I DARE! My worst enemy is _moi même_. I lie so
miserably open to the inroads and incursions of a mischievous,
light-armed, well-mounted banditti, under the banners of imagination,
whim, caprice, and passion; and the heavy-armed veteran regulars of
wisdom, prudence, and forethought move so very, very slow, that I am
almost in a state of perpetual warfare, and, alas! frequent defeat.
There are just two creatures I would envy, a horse in his wild state
traversing the forests of Asia, or an oyster on some of the desert
shores of Europe. The one has not a wish without enjoyment, the other
has neither wish nor fear.

R. B.

* * * *

LXXI.--TO MR. RICHARD BROWN, IRVINE.

Edinburgh, 30_th Dec_. 1787.

My Dear Sir,--I have met with few things in life which have given me
more pleasure, than Fortune's kindness to you since those days in which
we met in the vale of misery; as I can honestly say, that I never knew a
man who more truly deserved it, or to whom my heart more truly wished
it. I have been much indebted, since that time, to your story and
sentiments for steeling my mind against evils, of which I have had a
pretty decent share. My will-o'-wisp fate you know: do you recollect a
Sunday we spent together in Eglinton woods? You told me, on my repeating
some verses to you, that you wondered I could resist the temptation of
sending verses of such merit to a magazine. It was from this remark I
derived that idea of my own pieces, which encouraged me to endeavour at
the character of a poet. I am happy to hear that you will be two or
three months at home. As soon as a bruised limb will permit me I shall
return to Ayrshire, and we shall meet; "and faith, I hope we'll not sit
dumb, nor yet cast out!"

I have much to tell you "of men, their manners, and their ways," perhaps
a little of the other sex. Apropos, I beg to be remembered to Mrs.
Brown. There, I doubt not, my dear friend, but you have found
substantial happiness. I expect to find you something of an altered but
not a different man; the wild, bold, generous young fellow composed into
the steady affectionate husband, and the fond careful parent. For me, I
am just the same will-o'-wisp being I used to be. About the first and
fourth quarters of the moon, I generally set in for the trade wind of
wisdom; but about the full and change, I am the luckless victim of mad
tornadoes, which blow me into chaos. Almighty love still reigns and
revels in my bosom; and I am at this moment ready to hang myself for a
young Edinburgh widow,[57]who has wit and wisdom more murderously fatal
than the assassinating stiletto of the Sicilian bandit, or the poisoned
arrow of the savage African. My Highland dirk, that used to hang beside
my crutches, I have gravely removed into a neighbouring closet, the key
of which I cannot command, in case of spring-tide paroxysms. My best
compliments to our friend Allan. Adieu!

R. B.

[Footnote 57: The earliest allusion to Clarinda (Mrs. M'Lehose). Her
husband was alive, in the West Indies.]

* * * *

LXXII--TO MRS. DUNLOP.

Edinburg, _January_ 21, 1788.

After six weeks' confinement, I am beginning to walk across the room.
They have been six horrible weeks; anguish and low spirits made me unfit
to read, write, or think.

I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an officer
resigns a commission; for I would not take in any poor, ignorant wretch
by selling out. Lately I was a sixpenny private, and, God knows, a
miserable soldier enough; now I march to the campaign, a starving cadet;
a little more conspicuously wretched.

I am ashamed of all this; for though I do want bravery for the warfare
of life, I could wish, like some other soldiers, to have as much
fortitude or cunning as to dissemble or conceal my cowardice.

As soon as I can bear the journey, which will be, I suppose, about the
middle of next week, I leave Edinburgh; and soon after I shall pay my
grateful duty at Dunlop House. R. B.

* * * * *

LXXIII.--TO MRS. DUNLOP.

EDINBURGH, _February_ 12, 1788.

Some things in your late letters hurt me--not that _you say them_, but
that _you mistake me_. Religion, my honoured Madam, has not only been
all my life my chief dependance, but my dearest enjoyment. I have,
indeed, been the luckless victim of wayward follies; but, alas! I have
ever been "more fool than knave." A mathematician without religion is a
probable character; an irreligious poet is a monster.

R. B.

* * * * *

LXXIV.--TO THE REV. JOHN SKINNER.

EDINBURGH, 14_th February_ 1788.

Reverend and Dear Sir,--I have been a cripple now near three months,
though I am getting vastly better, and have been very much hurried
beside, or else I would have wrote you sooner. I must beg your pardon
for the epistle you sent me appearing in the Magazine. I had given a
copy or two to some of my intimate friends, but did not know of the
printing of it till the publication of the Magazine. However, as it does
great honour to us both, you will forgive it.

The second volume of the songs I mentioned to you in my last is
published to-day. I send you a copy, which I beg you will accept as a
mark of the veneration I have long had, and shall ever have, for your
character, and of the claim I make to your continued acquaintance. Your
songs appear in the third volume, with your name in the index; as I
assure you, Sir, I have heard your "Tullochgorum," particularly among
our west-country folks, given to many different names, and most commonly
to the immortal author of "The Minstrel," who, indeed, never wrote any
thing superior to "Gie's a sang, Montgomery cried." Your brother[58] has
promised me your verses to the Marquis of Huntley's reel, which
certainly deserve a place in the collection. My kind host, Mr.
Cruikshank, of the High School here, and said to be one of the best
Latins in this age, begs me to make you his grateful acknowledgments for
the entertainment he has got in a Latin publication of yours, that I
borrowed for him from your acquaintance and much-respected friend in
this place, the Rev. Dr. Webster. Mr. Cruikshank maintains that you
write the best Latin since Buchanan. I leave Edinburgh to-morrow, but
shall return in three weeks. Your song you mentioned in your last, to
the tune of "Dumbarton Drums," and the other, which you say was done by
a brother in trade of mine, a ploughman, I shall thank you for a copy of
each. I am ever, Reverend Sir, with the most respectful esteem and
sincere veneration, yours, R. B.

[Footnote 58: Half-brother, James, a writer to the Signet.]

* * * *

LXXV.--TO MRS. ROSE, OF KILRAVOCK.

EDINBURGH, _February_ 17_th_, 1788.

MADAM,--You are much indebted to some indispensable business I have had
on my hands, otherwise my gratitude threatened such a return for your
obliging favour, as would have tired your patience. It but poorly
expresses my feelings to say, that I am sensible of your kindness: it
may be said of hearts such as yours is, and such, I hope, mine is, much
more justly than Addison applies it,--

Some souls by instinct to each other turn.

There was something in my reception at Kilravock so different from the
cold, obsequious, dancing-school bow of politeness, that it almost got
into my head that friendship had occupied her ground without the
intermediate march of acquaintance. I wish I could transcribe, or rather
transfuse into language, the glow of my heart when I read your letter.
My ready fancy, with colours more mellow than life itself, painted the
beautifully wild scenery of Kilravock--the venerable grandeur of the
castle--the spreading woods--the winding river, gladly leaving his
unsightly, heathy source, and lingering with apparent delight as he
passes the fairy walk at the bottom of the garden;--your late
distressful anxieties--your present enjoyments--your dear little angel,
the pride of your hopes;--my aged friend, venerable in worth and years,
whose loyalty and other virtues will strongly entitle her to the support
of the Almighty Spirit here, and His peculiar favour in a happier state
of existence. You cannot imagine, Madam, how much such feelings delight
me; they are my dearest proofs of my own immortality. Should I never
revisit the north, as probably I never will, nor again see your
hospitable mansion, were I, some twenty years hence, to see your little
fellow's name making a proper figure in a newspaper paragraph, my heart
would bound with pleasure.

I am assisting a friend in a collection of Scottish songs, set to their
proper tunes; every air worth preserving is to be included; among others
I have given "Morag," and some few Highland airs which pleased me most,
a dress which will be more generally known, though far, far inferior in
real merit. As a small mark of my grateful esteem, I beg leave to
present you with a copy of the work, as far as it is printed; the Man of
Feeling, that first of men, has promised to transmit it by the first
opportunity.

I beg to be remembered most respectfully to my venerable friend, and to
your little Highland chieftain. When you see the "two fair spirits of
the hill," at Kildrummie, tell them that I have done myself the honour
of setting myself down as one of their admirers for at least twenty
years to come, consequently they must look upon me as an acquaintance
for the same period; but, as the Apostle Paul says, "this I ask of grace,
not of debt."--I have the honour to be, Madam, etc., ROBERT BURNS.

* * * *

LXXVI-To RICHARD BROWN, GREENOCK.

MOSSGIEL, 24_th February_ 1788.

MY DEAR SIR,--I cannot get the proper direction for my friend in
Jamaica, but the following will do:--To Mr, Jo. Hutchinson, at Jo.
Brownrigg's, Esq., care of Mr. Benjamin Henriquez, merchant, Orange
Street, Kingston. I arrived here, at my brother's, only yesterday, after
fighting my way through Paisley and Kilmarnock, against those old
powerful foes of mine, the devil, the world, and the flesh--so terrible
in the fields of dissipation. I have met with few incidents in my life
which gave me so much pleasure as meeting you in Glasgow. There is a
time of life beyond which we cannot form a tie worth the name of
friendship, "O youth! enchanting stage, profusely blest." Life is a
fairy scene: almost all that deserves the name of enjoyment or pleasure
is only a charming delusion; and in comes repining age, in all the
gravity of hoary wisdom, and wretchedly chases away the bewitching
phantom. When I think of life, I resolve to keep a strict look-out in
the course of economy, for the sake of worldly convenience and
independence of mind; to cultivate intimacy with a few of the companions
of youth, that they may be the friends of age; never to refuse my
liquorish humour a handful of the sweetmeats of life, when they come not
too dear; and, for futurity,--

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