The Letters of Robert Burns
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Robert Burns >> The Letters of Robert Burns
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R. B.
* * * * *
CLXXXIII.--To Miss BENSON, YORK, AFTERWARDS MRS. BASIL MONTAGU.
DUMFRIES, _21st March 1793._
Madam,--Among many things for which I envy those hale, long-lived old
fellows before the flood, is this in particular, that when they met with
anybody after their own heart, they had a charming long prospect of
many, many happy meetings with them in after-life.
Now, in this short, stormy, winter day of our fleeting existence, when
you now and then, in the Chapter of Accidents, meet an individual whose
acquaintance is a real acquisition, there are all the probabilities
against you, that you shall never meet with that valued character more.
On the other hand, brief as this miserable being is, it is none of the
least of the miseries belonging to it, that if there is any miscreant
whom you hate, or creature whom you despise, the ill-run of the chances
shall be so against you, that in the over takings, turnings, and
jostlings of life, pop! at some unlucky corner, eternally comes the
wretch upon you, and will not allow your indignation or contempt a
moment's repose. As I am a sturdy believer in the powers of darkness, I
take these to be the doings of that old author of mischief, the devil.
It is well known that he has some kind of short-hand way of taking down
our thoughts, and I make no doubt that he is perfectly acquainted with
my sentiments respecting Miss Benson; how much I admired her abilities
and valued her worth, and how very fortunate I thought myself in her
acquaintance. For this last reason, my dear Madam, I must entertain no
hopes of the very great pleasure of meeting with you again.--I am, etc.
R. B.
* * * *
CLXXXIV.-To MR. JOHN FRANCIS ERSKINE, OF MAR.
DUMFRIES, 13th _April 1793.
Sir,--Degenerate as human nature is said to be--and in many instances
worthless and unprincipled it is--still there are bright examples to the
contrary: examples that, even in the eyes of superior beings, must shed
a lustre on the name of Man.
Such an example have I now before me, when you, Sir, came forward to
patronise and befriend a distant and obscure stranger, merely because
poverty had made him helpless, and his British hardihood of mind had
provoked the arbitrary of wantonness and power. My much esteemed friend,
Mr, Riddel of Glenriddel, has just read me a paragraph of a letter he
had from you. Accept, Sir, of the silent throb of gratitude, for words
would but mock the emotions of my soul.
You have been misinformed as to my final dismissal from the Excise; I am
still in the service. Indeed, but for the exertions of a gentleman who
must be known to you, Mr. Graham of Fintry, a gentleman who has ever
been my warm and generous friend, I had, without so much as a hearing,
or the slightest previous intimation, been turned adrift, with my
helpless family, to all the horrors of want. Had I had any other
resource, probably I might have saved them the trouble of a dismissal;
but the little money I gained by my publication is almost every guinea
embarked to save from ruin an only brother, who, though one of the
worthiest, is by no means one of the most fortunate of men.
In my defence to their accusations, I said, that whatever might be my
sentiments of republics, ancient or modern, as to Britain, I abjured the
idea: That a constitution, which, in its original principles, experience
had proved to be every way fitted for our happiness in society, it would
be insanity to sacrifice to an untried visionary theory: That, in
consideration of my being situated in a department, however humble,
immediately in the hands of people in power, I had forborne taking any
active part, either personally, or as an author, in the present business
of Reform: but that, where I must declare my sentiments, I would say
there existed a system of corruption between the executive power and the
representative part of the legislature, which boded no good to our
glorious constitution, and which every patriotic Briton must wish to see
amended. Some such sentiments as these I stated in a letter to my
generous patron, Mr. Graham, which he laid before the Board at large;
where, it seems, my last remark gave great offence: and one of our
supervisors-general, a Mr. Corbet, was instructed to inquire on the
spot, and to document me--"that my business was to act, _not to think_;
and that whatever might be men or measures, it was for me to be _silent_
and _obedient_".
Mr. Corbet was likewise my steady friend; so between Mr. Graham and him
I have been partly forgiven; only I understand that all hopes of my
getting officially forward are blasted.
Now, Sir, to the business in which I would more immediately interest
you. The partiality of my countrymen has brought me forward as a man of
genius, and has given me a character to support. In the Poet I have
avowed manly and independent sentiments, which I trust will be found in
the man. Reasons of no less weight than the support of a wife and
family, have pointed out as the eligible, and situated as I was, the
only eligible line of life for me, my present occupation. Still my
honest fame is my dearest concern; and a thousand times have I trembled
at the idea of those _degrading_ epithets that malice or
misrepresentation may affix to my name. I have often, in blasting
anticipation, listened to some future hackney scribbler, with the heavy
malice of savage stupidity, exulting in his hireling paragraphs--"Burns,
notwithstanding the _fanfaronade_ of independence to be found in his
works, and after having been held forth to public view and to public
estimation as a man of some genius, yet, quite destitute of resources
within himself to support his borrowed dignity, he dwindled into a
paltry exciseman, and slunk out the rest of his insignificant existence
in the meanest of pursuits, and among the vilest of mankind."
In your illustrious hands, Sir, permit me to lodge my disavowal and
defiance of these slanderous falsehoods. Burns was a poor man from
birth, and an exciseman by necessity; but--I will say it! the sterling
of his honest worth no poverty could debase, and his independent British
mind, oppression might bend, but could not subdue. Have not I, to me a
more precious stake in my country's welfare, than the richest dukedom in
it?--I have a large family of children, and the prospect of more. I have
three sons, who, I see already, have brought into the world souls ill
qualified to inhabit the bodies of slaves.--Can I look tamely on, and
see any machinations to wrest from them the birthright of my boys,--the
little independent Britons, in whose veins runs my own blood?--No! I
will not! should my heart's blood stream around my attempt to defend it!
Does any man tell me that my full efforts can be of no service; and that
it does not belong to my humble station to meddle with the concerns of
a nation?
I can tell him that it is on such individuals as I that a nation has to
rest, both for the hand of support and the eye of intelligence. The
uninformed mob may swell a nation's bulk; and the titled, tinsel,
courtly throng may be its feathered ornament; but the number of those
who are elevated enough in life to reason and to reflect, yet low enough
to keep clear of the venal contagion of a court!--these are a
nation's strength.
I know not how to apologise for the impertinent length of this epistle;
but one small request I must ask of you farther--When you have honoured
this letter with a perusal, please to commit it to the flames. Burns, in
whose behalf you have so generously interested yourself, I have here, in
his native colours, drawn as he is; but should any of the people in
whose hands is the very bread he eats, get the least knowledge of the
picture, it would ruin the poor bard for ever!
My poems having just come out in another edition, I beg leave to present
you with a copy as a small mark of that high esteem and ardent gratitude
with which I have the honour to be, Sir, your deeply indebted, and ever
devoted, humble servant,
R. B.[129]
[Footnote 129: This letter was penned in response to the sympathy
which Mr. Erskine had expressed for Burns in a letter to Captain
Riddell of Carse, when Burns was taken to task by the Board of Excise
for his political opinions.]
* * * * *
CLXXXV.--To MISS M'MORDO, DRUMLANRIG.
DUMFRIES, _Juy 1793._
... Now let me add a few wishes which every man, who has himself the
honour of being a father, must breathe when he sees female youth,
beauty, and innocence about to enter into this chequered and very
precarious world. May you, my young madam, escape that frivolity which
threatens universally to pervade the minds and manners of fashionable
life, The mob of fashionable female youth--what are they? Are they
anything? They prattle, laugh, sing, dance, finger a lesson, or perhaps
turn the pages of a fashionable novel; but are their minds stored with
any information worthy of the noble powers of reason and judgment? and
do their hearts glow with sentiment, ardent, generous, or humane? Were I
to poetize on the subject I would call them the butterflies of the human
kind, remarkable only for the idle variety of their ordinary glare,
sillily straying from one blossoming weed to another, without a meaning
or an aim, the idiot prey of every pirate of the skies who thinks them
worth his while as he wings his way by them, and speedily by wintry time
swept to that oblivion whence they might as well never have appeared.
Amid this crowd of nothings may you be something, etc.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXXXVI.--To JOHN M'MURDO, ESQ., DRUMLANRIG.
This is a painful, disagreeable letter, and the first of the kind I ever
wrote. I am truly in serious distress for three or four guineas: can
you, my dear sir, accommodate me? These accursed times by tripping up
importation have, for this year at least, lopped off a full third of my
income;[130] and with my large family this is to me a distressing matter.
R. B.
[Footnote 130: Never more than 70 UK pounds.]
* * * * *
CLXXXVII.--To MRS. RIDDEL.
Dear Madam,--I meant to have called on you yesternight, but as I edged
up to your box-door, the first object which greeted my view, was one of
those lobster-coated puppies[131] sitting like another dragon, guarding
the Hesperian fruit. On the conditions and capitulations you so
obligingly offer, I shall certainly make my weather-beaten rustic phiz a
part of your box-furniture on Tuesday; when we may arrange the business
of the visit.
Among the profusion of idle compliments, which insidious craft, or
unmeaning folly, incessantly offer at your shrine--a shrine, how far
exalted above such adoration--permit me, were it but for rarity's sake,
to pay you the honest tribute of a warm heart and an independent mind;
and to assure you that I am, thou most amiable, and most accomplished of
thy sex, with the most respectful esteem, and fervent regard,
thine, etc.
R. B.
[Footnote 131: Military officers.]
* * * * *
CLXXXVIII.--To MRS. RIDDEL.
I will wait on you, my ever valued friend, but whether in the morning I
am not sure. Sunday closes a period of our curst revenue business, and
may probably keep me employed with my pen until noon. Fine employment
for a poet's pen! There is a species of human genus that I call _the
gin-horse class_: what enviable dogs they are! Round, and round, and
round they go,--Mundell's ox, that drives his cotton mill, is their
exact prototype--without an idea or wish beyond their circle; fat,
sleek, stupid, patient, quiet, and contented; while here I sit,
altogether Novemberish, a damn'd melange of fretfulness and melancholy;
not enough of the one to rouse me to passion, nor of the other to repose
me in torpor; my soul flouncing and fluttering round her tenement, like
a wild finch, caught amid the horrors of winter, and newly thrust into a
cage. Well, I am persuaded that it was of me the Hebrew sage prophesied,
when he foretold-- "And behold, on whatsoever this man doth set his
heart, it shall not prosper!" If my resentment is awaked, it is sure to
be where it dare not squeak; and if--....
Pray that wisdom and bliss be more frequent visitors of
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXXXIX.--To MRS. RIDDEL.
I have often told you, my dear friend, that you had a spice of caprice
in your composition, and you have as often disavowed it; even perhaps
while your opinions were, at the moment, irrefragably proving it. Could
any thing estrange me from a friend such as you?--No! To-morrow I shall
have the honour of waiting on you.
Farewell, thou first of friends, and most accomplished of women I even
with all thy little caprices!
R B.
* * * * *
CXC.--To MRS. RIDDEL.
Madam,--I return your commonplace book. I have perused it with much
pleasure, and would have continued my criticisms, but as it seems the
critic has forfeited your esteem, his strictures must lose their value.
If it is true that "offences come only from the heart," before you I am
guiltless. To admire, esteem, and prize you as the most accomplished of
women, and the first of friends--if these are crimes, I am the most
offending thing alive.
In a face where I used to meet the kind complacency of friendly
confidence, _now_ to find cold neglect and contemptuous scorn--is a
wrench that my heart can ill bear. It is, however, some kind of
miserable good luck, that while _de-haut-en-bas_ rigour may depress an
unoffending wretch to the ground, it has a tendency to rouse a stubborn
something in his bosom, which, though it cannot heal the wounds of his
soul, is at least an opiate to blunt their poignancy.
With the profoundest respect for your abilities, the most sincere esteem
and ardent regard for your gentle heart and amiable manners, and the
most fervent wish and prayer for your welfare, peace, and bliss, I have
the honour to be, Madam, your most devoted humble servant.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXCI.--TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.
25_th February_ 1794.
Canst thou minister to a mind diseased? Canst thou speak peace and rest
to a soul tost on a sea of troubles, without one friendly star to guide
her course, and dreading that the next surge may overwhelm her? Canst
thou give to a frame, tremblingly alive to the tortures of suspense, the
stability and hardihood of the rock that braves the blast? If thou canst
not do the least of these, why wouldst thou disturb me in my miseries,
with thy inquiries after me?
For these two months I have not been able to lift a pen. My constitution
and frame were, _ab origine_, blasted with a deep incurable taint of
hypochondria, which poisons my existence. Of late a number of domestic
vexations, and some pecuniary share in the ruin of these cursed times;
losses which, though trifling, were yet what I could ill bear, have so
irritated me, that my feelings at times could only be envied by a
reprobate spirit listening to the sentence that dooms it to perdition.
Are you deep in the language of consolation? I have exhausted in
reflection every topic of comfort. _A heart at ease_ would have been
charmed with my sentiments and reasonings; but as to myself, I was like
Judas Iscariot preaching the gospel; he might melt and mould the hearts
of those around him, but his own kept its native incorrigibility.
Still there are two great pillars that bear us up, amid the wreck of
misfortune and misery. The ONE is composed of the different
modifications of a certain noble, stubborn something in a man, known by
the names of courage, fortitude, magnanimity. The OTHER is made up of
those feelings and sentiments, which, however the sceptic may deny them,
or the enthusiast disfigure them, are yet, I am convinced, original and
component parts of the human soul; those _senses of the mind_ if I may
be allowed the expression, which connect us with, and link us to, those
awful obscure realities--an all-powerful, and equally beneficent God;
and a world to come, beyond death and the grave. The first gives the
nerve of combat, while a ray of hope beams on the field: the last pours
the balm of comfort into the wounds which time can never cure.
I do not remember, my dear Cunningham, that you and I ever talked on the
subject of religion at all. I know some who laugh at it, as the trick of
the crafty FEW, to lead the undiscerning MANY; or at most, as an
uncertain obscurity which mankind can never know anything of, and with
which they are fools if they give themselves much to do. Nor would I
quarrel with a man for his irreligion, any more than I would for his
want of a musical ear, I would regret that he was shut out from what, to
me and to others, were such superlative sources of enjoyment. It is in
this point of a view, and for this reason, that I will deeply imbue the
mind of every child of mine with religion. If my son should happen to be
a man of feeling, sentiment, and taste, I shall thus add largely to his
enjoyments. Let me flatter myself that this sweet little fellow, who is
just now running about my desk, will be a man of a melting, ardent,
glowing heart; and an imagination, delighted with the painter, and rapt
with the poet. Let me figure him wandering out in a sweet evening, to
inhale the balmy gales, and enjoy the glowing luxuriance of the spring;
himself the while in the blooming youth of life. He looks abroad on all
nature, and through nature up to nature's God. His soul, by swift
delighting degrees, is rapt above this sublunary sphere until he can be
silent no longer, and bursts out into the glorious enthusiasm
of Thomson,
These, as they change, Almighty Father, these
Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Is full of thee.
And so on, in all the spirit and ardour of that charming hymn. These are
no ideal pleasures, they are real delights; and I ask, what of the
delights among the sons of men are superior, not to say equal to them?
And they have this precious, vast addition, that conscious virtue stamps
them for her own; and lays hold on them to bring herself into the
presence of a witnessing, judging, and approving God.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXCII.--To MRS. DUNLOP.
CASTLE DOUGLAS, _25th June 1794._
Here in a solitary inn, in a solitary village, am I set by myself, to
amuse my brooding fancy as I may. Solitary confinement, you know, is
Howard's favourite idea of reclaiming sinners; so let me consider by
what fatality it happens, that I have so long been exceeding sinful as
to neglect the correspondence of the most valued friend I have on earth.
To tell you that I have been in poor health will not be excuse enough,
though it is true. I am afraid that I am about to suffer for the follies
of my youth. My medical friends threaten me with a flying gout; but I
trust they are mistaken.
I am just going to trouble your critical patience with the first sketch
of a stanza I have been framing, as I passed along the road. The subject
is Liberty: you know, my honoured friend, how dear the theme is to me. I
design it an irregular ode for General Washington's birth-day. After
having mentioned the degeneracy of other kingdoms I come to
Scotland thus:
Thee, Caledonia, thy wild heaths among,
Thee, famed for martial deed and sacred song,
To thee I turn with swimming eyes;
Where is that soul of freedom fled?
Immingled with the mighty dead!
Beneath the hallowed turf where Wallace lies!
Hear it not, Wallace, in thy bed of death;
Ye babbling winds, in silence sweep,
Disturb ye not the hero's sleep.
You will probably have another scrawl from me in a stage or two.
R. B.
* * * * *
CXCIII.--To MR. JAMES JOHNSON.
DUMFRIES, 1794.
My Dear Friend,--You should have heard from me long ago; but over and
above some vexatious share in the pecuniary losses of these accursed
times, I have all this winter been plagued with low spirits and blue
devils, so that _I have almost hung my harp on the willow trees_.
I am just now busy correcting a new edition of my poems, and this, with
my ordinary business, finds me in full employment.
I send you by my friend, Mr. Wallace, forty-one songs for your fifth
volume; if we cannot finish it any other way, what would you think of
Scotch words to some beautiful Irish airs? In the meantime, at your
leisure, give a copy of the _Museum_ to my worthy friend, Mr. Peter
Hill, bookseller, to bind for me, interleaved with blank leaves, exactly
as he did the Laird of Glenriddel's, that I may insert every anecdote I
can learn, together with my own criticisms and remarks on the songs. A
copy of this kind I shall leave with you, the editor, to publish at some
after period, by way of making the _Museum_ a book famous to the end of
time, and you renowned for ever.
I have got a highland dirk, for which I have great veneration, as it
once was the dirk of _Lord Balmerino_. It fell into bad hands, who
stripped it of the silver mounting, as well as the knife and fork. I
have some thoughts of sending it to your care, to get it mounted
anew.--Yours, etc.,
R. B.
* * * * *
CXCIV.--To MR. PETER MILLER, JUN., OF DALSWINION.[131]
DUMFRIES, _Nov. 1794._
Dear Sir,--Your offer is indeed truly generous, and sincerely do I thank
you for it; but in my present situation, I find that I dare not accept
it. You well know my political sentiments; and were I an insular
individual, unconnected with a wife and a family of children, with the
most fervid enthusiasm I would have volunteered my services; I then
could and would have despised all consequences that might have ensued.
My prospect in the Excise is something; at least, it is--encumbered as
I am with the welfare, the very existence, of near half-a-score of
helpless individuals--what I dare not sport with.
In the meantime, they are most welcome to my Ode; only, let them insert
it as a thing they have met with by accident and unknown to me. Nay, if
Mr. Perry, whose honour, after your character of him, I cannot doubt, if
he will give me an address and channel by which anything will come safe
from those spies with which he may be certain that his correspondence is
beset, I will now and then send him any bagatelle that I may write. In
the present hurry of Europe, nothing but news and politics will be
regarded; but against the days of peace, which Heaven send soon, my
little assistance may perhaps fill up an idle column of a newspaper. I
have long had it in my head to try my hand in the way of little prose
essays, which I propose sending into the world through the medium of
some newspaper; and should these be worth his while, to these Mr. Perry
shall be welcome; and all my reward shall be, his treating me with his
paper, which, by-the-by, to anybody who has the least relish for wit, is
a high treat indeed.
With the most grateful esteem, I am ever, Dear Sir,
R. B.
[Footnote 131: He had offered Burns a post on the staff of _The
Morning Chronicle_, of which newspaper Mr. Perry was proprietor.]
* * * * *
CXCV.--To MRS, RIDDEL,
Madam,--I dare say that this is the first epistle you ever received from
this nether world. I write you from the regions of hell, amid the
horrors of the damn'd. The time and manner of my leaving your earth I do
not exactly know, as I took my departure in the heat of a fever of
intoxication, contracted at your too hospitable mansion; but, on my
arrival here, I was fairly tried, and sentenced to endure the
purgatorial tortures of this infernal confine for the space of
ninety-nine years, eleven months, and twenty-nine days, and all on
account of the impropriety of my conduct yesternight under your roof.
Here am I, laid on a bed of pitiless furze, with my aching head reclined
on a pillow of ever-piercing thorn, while an infernal tormentor,
wrinkled, and old, and cruel--his name I think is _Recollection_--with
a whip of scorpions, forbids peace or rest to approach me, and keeps
anguish eternally awake. Still, Madam, if I could in any measure be
reinstated in the good opinion of the fair circle whom my conduct last
night so much injured, I think it would be an alleviation to my
torments. For this reason I trouble you with this letter. To the men of
the company I will make no apology.--Your husband, who insisted on my
drinking more than I chose, has no right to blame me, and the other
gentlemen were partakers of my guilt. But to you, Madam, I have much to
apologise. Your good opinion I valued as one of the greatest
acquisitions I had made on earth, and I was truly a beast to forfeit it.
There was a Miss I---too, a woman of fine sense, gentle and unassuming
manners--do make, on my part, a miserable damn'd wretch's best apology
to her. A Mrs. G--, a charming woman, did me the honour to be prejudiced
in my favour; this makes me hope that I have not outraged her beyond all
forgiveness.--To all the other ladies please present my humblest
contrition for my conduct, and my petition for their gracious pardon. O
all ye powers of decency and decorum! whisper to them that my errors,
though great, were involuntary--that an intoxicated man is the vilest of
beasts--that it was not in my nature to be brutal to any one--that to be
rude to a woman, when in my senses, was impossible with me--but--
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