The Letters of Robert Burns
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Robert Burns >> The Letters of Robert Burns
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The election ballad,[107] as you will see, alludes to the present
canvass in our string of boroughs. I do not believe there will be such a
hard run match in the whole general election.
I am too little a man to have any political attachments; I am deeply
indebted to, and have the warmest veneration for, individuals of both
parties; but a man[108] who has it in his power to be the father of a
country, and who is only known to that country by the mischiefs he does
in it, is a character that one cannot speak of with patience.
Sir J. J. does "what man can do," but yet I doubt his fate.
R. B.
[Footnote 106: The Kirk's Alarm.]
[Footnote 107: _The Five Carlines._]
[Footnote 108: Duke of Queensbury.]
* * * * *
CXLL--To MRS. DUNLOP.
ELLISLAND, _13th December_ 1789.
Many thanks, dear Madam, for your sheetful of rhymes. Though at present
I am below the veriest prose, yet from you everything pleases. I am
groaning under the miseries of a diseased nervous system; a system, the
state of which is most conducive to our happiness--or the most
productive of our misery. For now near three weeks I have been so ill
with a nervous headache, that I have been obliged for a time to give up
my excise-books, being scare able to lift my head, much less to ride
once a week over ten muir parishes. What is man? To-day, in the
luxuriance of health, exulting in the enjoyment of existence; in a few
days, perhaps in a few hours, loaded with conscious painful being,
counting the tardy pace of the lingering moments by the repercussions of
anguish, and refusing or denied a comforter. Day follows night, and
night comes after day, only to curse him with life which gives him no
pleasure; and yet the awful, dark termination of that life, is something
at which he recoils.
Tell us, ye dead; will none of you in pity
Disclose the secret
_What'tis you are, and we must shortly be?_
'Tis no matter:
A little time will make us learn'd as you are.
Can it be possible, that when I resign this frail, feverish being, I
shall still find myself in conscious existence? When the last gasp of
agony has announced that I am no more to those that knew me, and the few
who loved me; when the cold, stiffened, unconscious, ghastly corse is
resigned into the earth, to be the prey of unsightly reptiles, and to
become in time a trodden clod, shall I be yet warm in life, seeing and
seen, enjoying and enjoyed? Ye venerable sages, and holy flamens, is
there probability in your conjectures, truth in your stories, of another
world beyond death; or are they all alike, baseless visions, and
fabricated fables? If there is another life, it must be only for the
just, the benevolent, the amiable, and the humane; what a flattering
idea, then, is a world to come! Would to God I as firmly believed it, as
I ardently wish it! There I should meet an aged parent, now at rest from
the many buffetings of an evil world, against which he so long and so
bravely struggled. There should I meet the friend, the disinterested
friend of my early life; the man who rejoiced to see me, because he
loved me and could serve me. Muir, thy weaknesses were the aberrations
of human nature, but thy heart glowed with everything generous, manly,
and noble; and if ever emanation from the All-good Being animated a
human form, it was thine! There should I, with speechless agony of
rapture, again recognise my lost, my ever dear Mary! whose bosom was
fraught with truth, honour, constancy, and love.
My Mary, dear departed shade!
Where is thy place of heavenly rest?
Seest thou thy lover lowly laid?
Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?
Jesus Christ, thou amiablest of characters! I trust thou art no
impostor, and that thy revelation of blissful scenes of existence beyond
death and the grave, is not one of the many impositions which time after
time have been palmed on credulous mankind. I trust that in thee "shall
all the families of the earth be blessed," by being yet connected
together in a better world, where every tie that bound heart to heart,
in this state of existence, shall be, far beyond our present
conceptions, more endearing.
I am a good deal inclined to think with those who maintain, that what
are called nervous affections are in fact diseases of the mind. I cannot
reason, I cannot think; and but to you I would not venture to write
anything above an order to a cobbler. You have felt too much of the ills
of life not to sympathise with a diseased wretch, who has impaired more
than half of any faculties he possessed. Your goodness will excuse this
distracted scrawl, which the writer dare scarcely read, and which he
would throw into the fire, were he able to write anything better, or
indeed anything at all.
Rumour told me something of a son of yours, who was returned from the
East or West Indies. If you have gotten news from James or Anthony, it
was cruel in you not to let me know; as I promise you, on the sincerity
of a man, who is weary of one world, and anxious about another, that
scarce anything could give me so much pleasure as to hear of any good
thing befalling my honoured friend.
If you have a minute's leisure, take up your pen in pity to LE PAUVRE
MISERABLE.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXLII.--To LADY WINIFRED M. CONSTABLE.
ELLISLAND, 16th DECEMBER 1789.
My Lady,--In vain have I from day to day expected to hear from Mis.
Young, as she promised me at Dalswinton that she would do me the honour
to introduce me at Tinwald; and it was impossible, not from your
Ladyship's accessibility, but from my own feelings, that I could go
alone. Lately, indeed, Mr. Maxwell, of Currachan, in his usual goodness,
offered to accompany me, when an unlucky indisposition on my part
hindered my embracing the opportunity. To court the notice or the tables
of the great, except where I sometimes have had a little matter to ask
of them, or more often the pleasanter task of witnessing my gratitude to
them, is what I never have done, and I trust never shall do. But with
your Ladyship I have the honour to be connected by one of the strongest
and most endearing ties in the whole moral world. Common sufferings, in
a cause where even to be unfortunate is glorious--the cause of heroic
loyalty! Though my fathers had not illustrious honours and vast
properties to hazard in the contest, though they left their humble
cottages only to add so many units more to the unnoted crowd that
followed their leaders, yet what they could they did, and what they had
they lost; with unshaken firmness and unconcealed political attachments,
they shook hands with Ruin for what they esteemed the cause of their
king and their country. This language and the inclosed verses are for
your Ladyship's eye alone. Poets are not very famous for their prudence;
but as I can do nothing for a cause which is now nearly no more, I do
not wish to hurt myself.--I have the honour to be, my lady, your
Ladyship's obliged and obedient humble servant.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXLIII.--To MR. CHARLES K. SHARPE, OF HODDAM.
_Under a fictitious Signature, inclosing a Ballad, 1790 or 1791._[109]
It is true, Sir, you are a gentleman of rank and fortune, and I am a
poor devil; you are a feather in the cap of society, and I am a very
hobnail in his shoes; yet I have the honour to belong to the same family
with you, and on that score I now address you. You will perhaps suspect
that I am going to claim affinity with the ancient and honourable house
of Kirkpatrick. No, no, Sir. I cannot indeed be properly said to belong
to any house, or even any province or kingdom; as my mother, who for
many years was spouse to a marching regiment, gave me into this bad
world, aboard the packet-boat, somewhere between Donaghadee and
Portpatrick. By our common family, I mean, Sir, the family of the Muses.
I am a fiddler and a poet; and you, I am told, play an exquisite violin,
and have a standard taste in the belles lettres. The other day, a
brother catgut gave me a charming Scots air of your composition. If I
was pleased with the tune, I was in raptures with the title you have
given it, and, taking up the idea, I have spun it into the three stanzas
inclosed. Will you allow me, Sir, to present you them, as the dearest
offering that a misbegotten son of poverty and rhyme has to give? I have
a longing to take you by the hand and unburden my heart by saying, "Sir,
I honour you as a man who supports the dignity of human nature, amid an
age when frivolity and avarice have, between them, debased us below the
brutes that perish!" But, alas, Sir! to me you are unapproachable. It is
true, the Muses baptised me in Castalian streams; but the thoughtless
gipsies forgot to give me a name. As the sex have served many a good
fellow, the Nine have given me a great deal of pleasure; but, bewitching
jades! they have beggared me. Would they but spare me a little of their
cast-linen! Were it only to put it in my power to say, that I have a
shirt on my back! But the idle wenches, like Solomon's lilies, "they
toil not, neither do they spin;" so I must e'en continue to tie my
remnant of a cravat, like the hangman's rope, round my naked throat, and
coax my galligaskins to keep together their many-coloured fragments. As
to the affair of shoes, I have given that up. My pilgrimages in my
ballad-trade, from town to town, and on your stony-hearted turnpikes
too, are not what even the hide of Job's behemoth could bear. The coat
on my back is no more: I shall not speak evil of the dead. It would be
equally unhandsome and ungrateful to find fault with my old surtout,
which so kindly supplies and conceals the want of that coat. My hat,
indeed, is a great favourite; and though I got it literally for an old
song, I would not exchange it for the best beaver in Britain. I was,
during several years, a kind of fac-totum servant to a country
clergyman, where I picked up a good many scraps of learning,
particularly--in some branches of the mathematics. Whenever I feel
inclined to rest myself on my way, I take my seat under a hedge, laying
my poetic wallet on the one side, and my fiddle-case on the other, and
placing my hat between my legs, I can by means of its brim, or rather
brims, go through the whole doctrine of the Conic Sections. However,
Sir, don't let me mislead you, as if I would interest your pity. Fortune
has so much forsaken me, that she has taught me to live without her;
and, amid all my rags and poverty, I am as independent, and much more
happy than a monarch of the world. According to the hackneyed metaphor,
I value the several actors in the great drama of life, simply as they
act their parts. I can look on a worthless fellow of a duke with
unqualified contempt, and can regard an honest scavenger with sincere
respect. As you, Sir, go through your role with such distinguished
merit, permit me to make one in the chorus of universal applause, and
assure you that with the highest respect, I have the honour to be, etc.
[Footnote 109: "Here Burns plays high Jacobite to that singular old
curmudgeon, Lady Constable. I imagine his Jacobitism, like my own,
belonged to the fancy rather than the reason."--Scott.]
* * * * *
CXLIV.--To HIS BROTHER, GILBERT BURNS, MOSSGIEL.
ELLISLAND, _11th January 1790_.
Dear Brother,--I mean to take advantage of the frank, though I have not
in my present frame of mind much appetite for exertion in writing. My
nerves are in a cursed state. I feel that horrid hypochondria pervading
every atom of both body and soul. This farm has undone my enjoyment of
myself. It is a ruinous affair on all hands. But let it go to hell! I'll
fight it out and be off with it.
We have gotten a set of very decent players here just now. I have seen
them an evening or two. David Campbell, in Ayr, wrote to me by the
manager of the company, a Mr. Sutherland, who is a man of apparent
worth. On New-year-day evening I gave him the following prologue, which
he spouted to his audience with applause:--
No song nor dance I bring from yon great city, etc.
I can no more. If once I was clear of this curst farm, I should respire
more at ease.
* * * * *
CXLV.--To MR. WILLIAM DUNBAR, W.S.
ELLISLAND, 14th Jan. 1790.
Since we are here creatures of a day, since "a few summer days, a few
winter nights, and the life of man is at an end," why, my dear much
esteemed Sir, should you and I let negligent indolence, for I know it is
nothing worse, step in between us and bar the enjoyment of a mutual
correspondence? We are not shapen out of the common, heavy, methodical
clod, the elemental stuff of the plodding selfish race, the sons of
Arithmetic and Prudence; our feelings and hearts are not benumbed and
poisoned by the cursed influence of riches, which, whatever blessing
they may be in other respects, are no friends to the nobler qualities of
the heart; in the name of random sensibility, then, let never the moon
change on our silence any more. I have had a tract of bad health the
most part of this winter, else you had heard from me long ere now. Thank
heaven, I am now got so much better as to be able to partake a little in
the enjoyments of life.
Our friend, Cunningham, will perhaps have told you of my going into the
Excise. The truth is, I found it a very convenient business to have L50
per annum, nor have I yet felt any of these mortifying circumstances in
it that I was led to fear.
_Feb. 2nd._--I have not for sheer hurry of business been able to spare
five minutes to finish my letter. Besides my farm business, I ride on my
Excise matters at least two hundred miles every week. I have not by any
means given up the Muses. You will see in the third volume of Johnson's
Scots songs that I have contributed my mite there.
But, my dear Sir, little ones that look up to you for paternal
protection are an important charge. I have already two fine healthy
stout little fellows, and I wish to throw some light upon them. I have a
thousand reveries and schemes about them, and their future destiny. Not
that I am an Utopian projector in these things. I am resolved never to
breed up a son of mine to any of the learned professions. I know the
value of independence; and since I cannot give my sons an independent
fortune, I shall give them an independent line of life. What a chaos of
hurry, chance, and changes is this world, when one sits soberly down to
reflect on it! To a father, who himself knows the world, the thought
that he shall have sons to usher into it, must fill him with dread; but
if he have daughters, the prospect in a thoughtful moment is apt to
shock him.
I hope Mrs. Fordyce and the two young ladies are well. Do let me forget
that they are nieces of yours, and let me say that I never saw a more
interesting, sweeter pair of sisters in my life. I am the fool of my
feelings and attachments. I often take up a volume of my Spenser to
realise you to my imagination, [109a] and think over the social scenes
we have had together. God grant that there may be another world more
congenial for honest fellows beyond this; a world where these rubs and
plagues of absence, distance, misfortunes, ill-health, etc., shall no
more damp hilarity and divide friendship. This I know is your throng
season, but half a page will much oblige, my dear Sir, yours sincerely,
R. B.
[Footnote 109a: Mr. Dunbar had made him a present of a Spenser's
Poems.]
* * * * *
CXLVL.--To MRS. DUNLOP.
ELLISLAND, _25th January 1790._
It has been owing to unremitting hurry of business that I have not
written to you, Madam, long ere now. My health is greatly better, and I
now begin once more to share in satisfaction and enjoyment with the rest
of my fellow-creatures.
Many thanks, my much esteemed friend, for your kind letters; but why
will you make me run the risk of being contemptible and mercenary in my
own eyes? When I pique myself on my independent spirit, I hope it is
neither poetic licence, nor poetic rant; and I am so flattered with the
honour you have done me in making me your compeer in friendship and
friendly correspondence, that I cannot without pain, and a degree of
mortification, be reminded of the real inequality between our
situations.
Most sincerely do I rejoice with you, dear Madam, in the good news of
Anthony. Not only your anxiety about his fate, but my own esteem for
such a noble, warm-hearted, manly young fellow, in the little I had of
his acquaintance, has interested me deeply in his fortunes.
Falconer, the unfortunate author of the "Shipwreck," which you so much
admire, is no more. After witnessing the dreadful catastrophe he so
feelingly describes in his poem, and after weathering many hard gales of
fortune, he went to the bottom with the _Aurora_ frigate!
I forget what part of Scotland had the honour of giving him birth; but
he was the son of obscurity and mis'ortune.[110] He was one of those
daring, adventurous spirits, which Scotland, beyond any other country,
is remarkable for producing. Little does the fond mother think, as she
hangs delighted over the sweet little leech at her bosom, where the poor
fellow may hereafter wander, or what may be his fate. I remember a
stanza in an old Scottish ballad, which, notwithstanding its rude
simplicity, speaks feelingly to the heart:--
Little did my mother think,
That day she cradled me,
What land I was to travel in,
Or what death I should dee!
Old Scottish songs are, you know, a favourite study and pursuit of mine,
and now I am on that subject, allow me to give you two stanzas of
another old simple ballad, which I am sure will please you. The
catastrophe of the piece is a poor ruined female, lamenting her fate,
She concludes with this pathetic wish:--
O that my father had ne'er on me smil'd;
O that my mother had ne'er to me sung!
O that my cradle had never been rock'd;
But that I had died when I was young!
O that the grave it were my bed;
My blankets were my winding sheet;
The clocks and the worms my bedfellows a';
And O sad sound as I should sleep!
I do not remember in all my reading to have met with anything more truly
the language of misery than the exclamation in the last line. Misery is
like love; to speak its language truly, the author must have felt it.
I am every day expecting the doctor to give your little godson the
small-pox. They are _rife_ in the country, and I tremble for his fate.
By the way, I cannot help congratulating you on his looks and spirit.
Every person who sees him, acknowledges him to be the finest, handsomest
child he has ever seen. I am myself delighted with the manly swell of
his little chest, and a certain miniature dignity in the carriage of his
head, and the glance of his fine black eye, which promise the undaunted
gallantry of an independent mind.
I thought to have sent you some rhymes, but time forbids. I promise you
poetry until you are tired of it, next time I have the honour of
assuring you how truly I am, etc.
R. B.
[Footnote 110: He was of poor parentage, and a native of Edinburgh.]
* * * * *
CXLVII.--To MR. PETER HILL, BOOKSELLER, EDINBURGH.
ELLISLAND, _2nd Feb. 1790._
No! I will not say one word about apologies or excuses for not
writing--I am a poor, rascally gauger, condemned to gallop at least 200
miles every week to inspect dirty ponds and yeasty barrels, and where
can I find time to write to, or importance to interest anybody? The
upbraidings of my conscience, nay, the upbraidings of my wife, have
persecuted me on your account these two or three months past. I wish to
God I was a great man, that my correspondence might throw light upon
you, to let the world see what you really are: and then I would make
your fortune, without putting my hand in my pocket for you, which, like
all other great men, I suppose I would avoid as much as possible. What
are you doing, and how are you doing? Have you lately seen any of my few
friends? What has become of the borough reform, or how is the fate of my
poor namesake Mademoiselle Burns decided? O man! but for thee and thy
selfish appetites, and dishonest artifices, that beauteous form, and
that once innocent and still ingenuous mind, might have shone
conspicuous and lovely in the faithful wife, and the affectionate
mother; and shall the unfortunate sacrifice to thy pleasures have no
claim on thy humanity!
I saw lately, in a review, some extracts from a new poem, called the
"Village Curate;" send it me. I want likewise a cheap copy of _The
World_. Mr. Armstrong, the young poet, who does me the honour to mention
me so kindly in his works, please give him my best thanks for the copy
of his book.[111]--I shall write him, my first leisure hour. I like his
poetry much, but I think his style in prose quite astonishing.
Your book came safe, and I am going to trouble you with farther
commissions. I call it troubling you, because I want only books; the
cheapest way, the best; so you may have to hunt for them in the evening
auctions. I want Smollett's Works, for the sake of his incomparable
humour. I have already _Roderick Random_ and _Humphrey Clinker_;
--_Peregrine Pickle_, _Launcelot Greaves_, and _Ferdinand_, _Count
Fathom_, I still want; but, as I said, the veriest ordinary copies will
serve me. I am nice only in the appearance of my poets. I forget the
price of Cowper's _Poems_, but, I believe, I must have them. I saw the
other day, proposals for a publication, entitled _Banks's New and
Complete Christian Family Bible_, printed for C. Cooke, Paternoster Row,
London. He promises at least to give in the work, I think it is three
hundred and odd engravings, to which he has put the names of the first
artists in London. You will know the character of the performance, as
some numbers of it are published, and if it is really what it pretends
to be, set me down as a subscriber, and send me the published numbers.
Let me hear from you, your first leisure minute, and trust me, you shall
in future have no reason to complain of my silence. The dazzling
perplexity of novelty will dissipate, and leave me to pursue my course
in the quiet path of methodical routine.
R. B.
[Footnote 111: John Armstrong, student in the University of
Edinburgh, who had recently published a volume of Juvenile Poems.]
* * * * *
CXLVIIL.--To MR. W. NICOL.
ELLISLAND, _Feb. 9th, 1790._
My Dear Sir,--That damn'd mare of yours is dead. I would freely have
given her price to have saved her; she has vexed me beyond description.
Indebted as I was to your goodness beyond what I can ever repay, I
eagerly grasped at your offer to have the mare with me. That I might at
least show my readiness in wishing to be grateful, I took every care of
her in my power. She was never crossed for riding above half a score of
times by me or in my keeping. I drew her in the plough, one of three,
for one poor week. I refused fifty-five shillings for her, which was the
highest bode I could squeeze for her. I fed her up and had her in fine
order for Dumfries fair, when, four or five days before the fair, she
was seized with an unaccountable disorder in the sinews, or somewhere in
the bones of the neck--with a weakness or total want of power in her
fillets; and, in short, the whole vertebrae of her spine seemed to be
diseased and unhinged, and in eight and forty hours, in spite of the two
best farriers in the country, she died and be damn'd to her! The
farriers said that she had been quite strained in the fillets beyond
cure before you had bought her; and that the poor devil, though she
might keep a little flesh, had been jaded and quite worn out with
fatigue and oppression. While she was with me she was under my own eye,
and I assure you, my much valued friend, everything was done for her
that could be done; and the accident has vexed me to the heart. In fact,
I could not pluck up spirits to write to you, on account of the
unfortunate business.
There is little new in this country. Our theatrical company, of which
you must have heard, leave us this week. Their merit and character are
indeed very great, both on the stage and in private life; not a
worthless creature among them; and their encouragement has been
accordingly. Their usual run is from eighteen to twenty-five pounds a
night; seldom less than the one, and the house will hold no more than
the other. There have been repeated instances of sending away six, and
eight, and ten pounds a night for want of room. A new theatre is to be
built by subscription; the first stone is to be laid on Friday first to
come. Three hundred guineas have been raised by thirty subscribers, and
thirty more might have been got if wanted. The manager, Mr. Sutherland,
was introduced to me by a friend from Ayr; and a worthier or cleverer
fellow I have rarely met with. Some of our clergy have slipt in by
stealth now and then; but they have got up a farce of their own. You
must have heard how the Rev. Mr. Lawson of Kirkmahoe, seconded by the
Rev. Mr. Kirkpatrick of Dunscore, and the rest of that faction, have
accused, in formal process, the unfortunate and Rev. Mr. Heron of
Kirkgunzeon, that in ordaining Mr. Nielson to the cure of souls in
Kirkbean, he, the said Heron, feloniously and treasonably bound the said
Nielson to the confession of faith, _so far as it was agreeable to
reason and the word of God!_
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