by Robert Burns
May cauld ne’er catch you, but a hap,
Nor hunger but in plenty’s lap!
Amen!
R. B.
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XXXV. — TO MR. JOHN BALLANTINE, BANKER, AT ONE TIME PROVOST OF AYR.
EDINBURGH, 13th December 1786.
MY HONOURED FRIEND, — I would not write you till I could have it in my power to give you some account of myself and my matters, which, by the by, is often no easy task. I arrived here on Tuesday was se’nnight26, and have suffered ever since I came to town with a miserable headache and stomach complaint, but am now a good deal better. I have found a worthy warm friend in Mr. Dalrymple, of Orangefield, who introduced me to Lord Glencairn, a man whose worth and brotherly kindness to me I shall remember when time shall be no more. By his interest it is passed in the “Caledonian Hunt,” and entered in their books, that they are to take each a copy of the second edition, for which they are to pay one guinea. I have been introduced to a good many of the noblesse, but my avowed patrons and patrones es are, the Duchess of Gordon — the Countess of Glencairn, with my Lord and Lady Betty27 — the Dean of Faculty — Sir John Whitefoord. I have likewise warm friends among the literati; Professors Stewart, Blair, and Mr. Mackenzie — the Man of Feeling. An unknown hand left ten guineas for the Ayrshire bard with Mr. Sibbald, which I got. I since have discovered my generous unknown friend to be Patrick Miller, Esq., brother to the Justice Clerk; and drank a glass of claret with him, by invitation, at his own house yesternight. I am nearly agreed with Creech to print my book, and I suppose I will begin on Monday. I will send a subscription bill or two, next post; when I intend writing my first kind patron, Mr. Aikin. I saw his son to-day, and he is very well.
Dugald Stewart, and some of my learned friends, put me in the periodical paper called the Lounger,28 a copy of which I here enclose you. I was, Sir, when I was first honoured with your notice, too obscure; now I tremble lest I should be ruined by being dragged too suddenly into the glare of polite and learned observation.
I shall certainly, my ever honoured patron, write you an account of my every step; and better health and more spirits may enable me to make it something better than this stupid matter-of-fact epistle. — I have the honour to be, good Sir, your ever grateful humble servant, R. B.
If any of my friends write me, my direction is care of Mr. Creech, Bookseller.
26 A mistake for “a fortnight.”
27 Cunningham
28 The paper here alluded to was written by Mackenzie, the celebrated author of The Man of Feeling.
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XXXVI. — TO MR. ROBERT MUIR.
EDINBURGH, Dec. 20th, 1786.
MY DEAR FRIEND, — I have just time for the carrier, to tell you that I received your letter, of which I shall say no more but what a lass of my acquaintance said of her bastard wean; she said she “didna ken wha was the father exactly, but she suspected it was some o’ thae bonny blackguard smugglers, for it was like them.” So I only say, your obliging epistle was like you. I enclose you a parcel of subscription bills. Your affair of sixty copies is also like you; but it would not be like me to comply.
Your friend’s notion of my life has put a crotchet in my head of sketching it in some future epistle to you. My compliments to Charles and Mr. Parker. R. B.
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XXXVII. — TO MR. WILLIAM CHALMERS, WRITER, AYR.
EDINBURGH, Dec. 27th, 1786.
MY DEAR FRIEND, — I confess I have sinned the sin for which there is hardly any forgiveness — ingratitude to friendship, in not writing you sooner; but of all men living, I had intended to have sent you an entertaining letter; and by all the plodding, stupid powers, that in nodding conceited majesty preside over the dull routine of business — a heavily-solemn oath this! — I am and have been, ever since I came to Edinburgh, as unfit to write a letter of humour, as to write a commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine, who was banished to the Isle of Patmos by the cruel and bloody Domitian, son to Vespasian and brother to Titus, both emperors of Rome, and who was himself an emperor, and raised the second or third persecution, I forget which, against the Christians, and after throwing the said apostle John, brother to the apostle James, commonly called James the Greater, to distinguish him from another James, who was on some account or other known by the name of James the Less — after throwing him into a cauldron of boiling oil from which he was miraculously preserved, he banished the poor son of Zebedee to a desert island in the Archipelago where he was gifted with the second sight, and saw as many wild beasts as I have seen since I came to Edinburgh; which, a circumstance not uncommon in story-telling, brings me back to where I set out.
To make you some amends for what, before you reach this paragraph, you will have suffered, I enclose you two poems I have carded and spun since I passed Glenbuck.
One blank in the address to Edinburgh— “Fair B —— ,” is heavenly Miss Burnet, daughter to Lord Monboddo, at whose house I have had the honour to be more than once. There has not been anything nearly like her in all the combinations of beauty, grace, and goodness the great Creator has formed, since Milton’s Eve on the first day of her existence.
My direction is — care of Andrew Bruce, merchant, Bridge Street. R. B.
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XXXVIII. — TO THE EARL OF EGLINGTON.
EDINBURGH, January 1787.
MY LORD, — As I have but slender pretensions to philosophy, I cannot rise to the exalted ideas of a citizen of the world, but have all those national prejudices, which I believe glow peculiarly strong in the breast of a Scotchman. There is scarcely anything to which I am so fully alive as the honour and welfare of my country; and as a poet, I have no higher enjoyment than singing her sons and daughters. Fate had cast my station in the veriest shades of life; but never did a heart pant more ardently than mine to be distinguished; though till very lately I looked in vain on every side for a ray of light. It is easy then to guess how much I was gratified with the countenance and approbation of one of my country’s most illustrious sons, when Mr. Wauchope called on me yesterday on the part of your lordship. Your munificence, my lord, certainly deserves my very grateful acknowledgments; but your patronage is a bounty peculiarly suited to my feelings. I am not master enough of the etiquette of life to know, whether there be not some impropriety in troubling your lordship with my thanks, but my heart whispered me to do it. From the emotions of my inmost soul I do it. Selfish ingratitude I hope I am incapable of; and mercenary servility, I trust, I shall ever have so much honest pride as to detest. R. B.
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XXXIX. — TO MR. JOHN BALLANTINE.
EDINBURGH, Jan. 14th 1787.
MY HONOURED FRIEND, — It gives me a secret comfort to observe in myself that I am not yet so far gone as Willie Gaw’s Skate, “past redemption;” for I have still this favourable symptom of grace, that when my conscience, as in the case of this letter, tells me I am leaving something undone that I ought to do, it teases me eternally till I do it.
I am still “dark as was Chaos” in respect to futurity. My generous friend, Mr. Patrick Miller, has been talking with me about a lease of some farm or other in an estate called Dalswinton, which he has lately bought near Dumfries. Some life-rented embittering recollections whisper me that I will be happier anywhere than in my old neighbourhood, but Mr. Miller is no judge of land; and though I daresay he means to favour me, yet he may give me, in his opinion, an advantageous bargain that may ruin me. I am to take a tour by Dumfries as I return, and have promised to meet Mr. Miller on his lands some time in May.
I went to a mason-lodge yesternight, where the Most Worshipful Grand Master Chartres, and all the Grand Lodge of Scotland visited. The meeting was numerous and elegant; all the different lodges about town were present, in all their pomp. The Grand Master, who presided with great solemnity and
honour to himself as a gentleman and mason, among other general toasts gave “Caledonia, and Caledonia’s Bard, Brother Burns,” which rung through the whole assembly with multiplied honours and repeated acclamations. As I had no idea such a thing would happen, I was downright thunderstruck, and, trembling in every nerve, made the best return in my power. Just as I had finished, some of the grand officers said so loud that I could hear with a most comforting accent, “Very well, indeed!” which set me something to rights again.
I have just now had a visit from my landlady,29 who is a staid, sober, piously-disposed, vice-abhorring widow, coming on her climacteric; she is at present in great tribulation respecting some daughters of Belial who are on the floor immediately above. My landlady, who, as I have said, is a flesh-disciplining godly matron, firmly believes her husband is in heaven; and, having been very happy with him on earth, she vigorously and perseveringly practises such of the most distinguished Christian virtues as attending church, railing against vice, etc., that she may be qualified to meet him in that happy place where the ungodly shall never enter. This, no doubt, requires some strong exertions of self-denial in a hale, well-kept widow of forty-five; and as our floors are low and ill-plastered, we can easily distinguish our laughter-loving, night-rejoicing neighbours when they are eating, drinking, singing, etc. My worthy landlady tosses sleepless and unquiet, “looking for rest and finding none,” the whole night. Just now she told me — though by-the-by she is sometimes dubious that I am, in her own phrase, “but a rough an’ roun’ Christian,” — that “we should not be uneasy or envious because the wicked enjoy the good things of this life, for the jades would one day lie in hell,” etc., etc.
I have to-day corrected my 152nd page. My best good wishes to Mr. Aikin. — I am ever, dear Sir, your much indebted humble servant, R. B.
29 Mrs. Carfrae, Baxter’s Close, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh, according to John Richmond, law clerk.
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XL. — TO MRS. DUNLOP.
EDINBURGH, 15th January 1787.
MADAM, — Yours of the 9th current, which I am this moment honoured with, is a deep reproach to me for ungrateful neglect. I will tell you the real truth, for I am miserably awkward at a fib — I wished to have written to Dr. Moore before I wrote to you; but, though every day since I received yours of December 30th, the idea, the wish to write to him has constantly pressed on my thoughts, yet I could not for my soul set about it. I know his fame and character, and I am one of “the sons of little men.” To write him a mere matter-of-fact affair, like a merchant’s order, would be disgracing the little character I have; and to write the author of The View of Society and Manners a letter of sentiment — I declare every artery runs cold at the thought. I shall try, however, to write to him to-morrow or next day. His kind interposition on my behalf I have already experienced, as a gentleman waited on me the other day, on the part of Lord Eglinton, with ten guineas, by way of subscription, for two copies of my next edition.
The word you object to in the mention I have made of my glorious countryman and your immortal ancestor, is indeed borrowed from Thomson; but it does not strike me as an improper epithet. I distrusted my own judgment on your finding fault with it, and applied for the opinion of some of the literati here, who honour me with their critical strictures, and they all allowed it to be proper. The song you ask I cannot recollect, and I have not a copy of it. I have not composed anything on the great Wallace, except what you have seen in print; and the inclosed, which I will print in this edition.30 You will see I have mentioned some others of the name. When I composed my “Vision,” long ago, I had attempted a description of Kyle, of which the additional stanzas are a part as it originally stood. My heart glows with a wish to be able to do justice to the merits of the “saviour of his country,” which sooner or later I shall at least attempt.
You are afraid I shall grow intoxicated with my prosperity as a poet; alas! Madam, I know myself and the world too well. I do not mean any airs of affected modesty; I am willing to believe that my abilities deserve some notice; but in a most enlightened, informed age and nation, when poetry is and has been the study of men of the first natural genius, aided with all the powers of polite learning, polite books, and polite company — to be dragged forth to the full glare of learned and polite observation, with all my imperfections of awkward rusticity and crude unpolished ideas on my head — I assure you, Madam, I do not dissemble when I tell you I tremble for the consequences. The novelty of a poet in my obscure situation, without any of those advantages which are reckoned necessary for that character, at least at this time of day, has raised a partial tide of public notice which has borne me to a height, where I am absolutely, feelingly certain, my abilities are inadequate to support me; and too surely do I see that time when the same tide will leave me, and recede, perhaps, as far below the mark of truth. I do not say this in the ridiculous affectation of self-abasement and modesty. I have studied myself, and know what ground I occupy; and however a friend or the world may differ from me in that particular, I stand for my own opinion, in silent resolve, with all the tenaciousness of property. I mention this to you once for all to disburthen my mind, and I do not wish to hear or say more about it. But
When proud fortune’s ebbing tide recedes,
you will bear me witness, that when my bubble of fame was at the highest I stood unintoxicated, with the inebriating cup in my hand, looking forward with rueful resolve to the hastening time, when the blow of Calumny should dash it to the ground, with all the eagerness of vengeful triumph.
Your patronising me and interesting yourself in my fame and character as a poet, I rejoice in; it exalts me in my own idea; and whether you can or cannot aid me in my subscription is a trifle. Has a paltry subscription-bill any charms to the heart of a bard, compared with the patronage of the descendant of the immortal Wallace? R. B.
30 Stanza in the “Vision,” beginning, “By stately tower or palace fair,” and ending with the first Duan.
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XLI — TO DR. MOORE.31
EDINBURGH, Jan. 1787.
SIR, — Mrs. Dunlop has been so kind as to send me extracts of letters she has had from you, where you do the rustic bard the honour of noticing him and his works. Those who have felt the anxieties and solicitudes of authorship, can only know what pleasure it gives to be noticed in such a manner, by judges of the first character. Your criticisms, Sir, I receive with reverence: only I am sorry they mostly came too late: a peccant passage or two that I would certainly have altered, were gone to the press.
The hope to be admired for ages is, in by far the greater part of those even who are authors of repute, an unsubstantial dream. For my part, my first ambition was, and still my strongest wish is, to please my compeers, the inmates of the hamlet, while ever-changing language and manners shall allow me to be relished and understood. I am very willing to admit that I have some poetical abilities; and as few, if any, writers, either moral or poetical, are intimately acquainted with the classes of mankind among whom I have chiefly mingled, I may have seen men and manners in a different phasis from what is common, which may assist originality of thought. Still I know very well the novelty of my character has by far the greatest share in the learned and polite notice I have lately had; and in a language where Pope and Churchill have raised the laugh, and Shenstone and Gray drawn the tear; where Thomson and Beattie have painted the landscape, and Lyttelton and Collins described the heart, I am not vain enough to hope for distinguished poetic fame. R. B.
31 Father of the hero of Coruña, and author of Zeluco, etc.
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XLII. — TO THE REV. G. LAWRIE, NEWMILNS, NEAR KILMARNOCK.
EDINBURGH, Feb. 5th, 1787.
REVEREND AND DEAR SIR, — When I look at the date of your kind letter, my heart reproaches me severely with ingratitude in neglecting so long to answer it. I will not trouble you with any account, by way of
apology, of my hurried life and distracted attention: do me the justice to believe that my delay by no means proceeded from want of respect. I feel, and ever shall feel for you, the mingled sentiments of esteem for a friend and reverence for a father.
I thank you, Sir, with all my soul, for your friendly hints, though I do not need them so much as my friends are apt to imagine. You are dazzled with newspaper accounts and distant reports; but, in reality, I have no great temptation to be intoxicated with the cup of prosperity. Novelty may attract the attention of mankind awhile; to it I owe my present eclat; but I see the time not far distant when the popular tide which has borne me to a height of which I am, perhaps, unworthy, shall recede with silent celerity, and leave me a barren waste of sand, to descend at my leisure to my former station. I do not say this in the affectation of modesty; I see the consequence is unavoidable, and am prepared for it. I had been at a good deal of pains to form a just, impartial estimate of my intellectual powers before I came here: I have not added, since I came to Edinburgh, anything to the account; and I trust I shall take every atom of it back to my shades, the coverts of my unnoticed early years.
In Dr. Blacklock, whom I see very often, I have found what I would have expected in our friend, a clear head and an excellent heart.
By far the most agreeable hours I spend in Edinburgh must be placed to the account of Miss Lawrie and her pianoforte. I cannot help repeating to you and Mrs. Lawrie a compliment that Mr. Mackenzie, the celebrated “Man of Feeling,” paid to Miss Lawrie, the other night, at the concert. I had come in at the interlude, and sat down by him till I saw Miss Lawrie in a seat not very far distant, and went up to pay my respects to her. On my return to Mr. Mackenzie he asked me who she was; I told him ‘twas the daughter of a reverend friend of mine in the west country. He returned, there were something very striking, to his idea, in her appearance. On my desiring to know what it was, he was pleased to say, “She has a great deal of the elegance of a well-bred lady about her, with all the sweet simplicity of a country girl.”
