by Robert Burns
Our worthy common friend, in her usual pleasant way, rallied me a good deal on my new acquaintance, and in the humour of her ideas I wrote some lines, which I inclose you, as I think they have a good deal of poetic merit: and Miss Nimmo tells me you are not only a critic, but a poetess. Fiction, you know, is the native region of poetry; and I hope you will pardon my vanity in sending you the bagatelle as a tolerably off-hand jeu-d’esprit. I have several poetic trifles, which I shall gladly leave with Miss Nimmo, or you, if they were worth house room; as there are scarcely two people on earth by whom it would mortify me more to be forgotten, though at the distance of ninescore miles. — I am, Madam, with the highest respect, your very humble servant,
ROBERT BURNS.
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II.
Saturday Evening, Dec. 8th, 1787.
I can say with truth, Madam, that I never met with a person in my life whom I more anxiously wished to meet again than yourself. To-night I was to have had that very great pleasure; I was intoxicated with the idea, but an unlucky fall from a coach has so bruised one of my knees, that I can’t stir my leg; so if I don’t see you again, I shall not rest in my grave for chagrin. I was vexed to the soul I had not seen you sooner; I determined to cultivate your friendship with the enthusiasm of religion; but thus has Fortune ever served me. I cannot bear the idea of leaving Edinburgh without seeing you. I know not how to account for it — I am strangely taken with some people, nor am I often mistaken. You are a stranger to me; but I am an odd being: some yet unnamed feelings, things, not principles, but better than whims, carry me farther than boasted reason ever did a philosopher. Farewell! every happiness be yours! ROBERT BURNS.
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III.
Dec. 12, 1787.
I stretch a point indeed, my dearest Madam, when I answer your card on the rack of my present agony. Your friendship, Madam! By heavens, I was never proud before. Your lines, I maintain it, are poetry, and good poetry; mine were indeed partly fiction and partly a friendship, which, had I been so blest as to have met with you in time, might have led me — god of love only knows where. Time is too short for ceremonies. I swear solemnly, in all the tenor of my former oath, to remember you in all the pride and warmth of friendship until I cease to be! To-morrow, and every day till I see you, you shall hear from me. Farewell! May you enjoy a better night’s repose than I am likely to have. R. B.
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IV.
Thursday, Dec. 20, 1787.
Your last, my dear Madam, had the effect on me that Job’s situation had on his friends when they sat down seven days and seven nights astonished and spake not a word. “Pay my addresses to a married woman!” I started as if I had seen the ghost of him I had injured. I recollected my expressions; some of them were indeed in the law phrase “habit and repute,” which is being half guilty. I cannot possibly say, Madam, whether my heart might not have gone astray a little; but I can declare upon the honour of a poet that the vagrant has wandered unknown to me. I have a pretty handsome troop of follies of my own, and, like some other people’s, they are but undisciplined blackguards; but the luckless rascals have something like honour in them — they would not do a dishonest thing.
To meet with an unfortunate woman, amiable and young, deserted and widowed by those who were bound by every tie of duty, nature, and gratitude to protect, comfort and cherish her; add to all, when she is perhaps one of the first of lovely forms and noble minds — the mind, too, that hits one’s taste as the joys of Heaven do a saint — should a faint idea, the natural child of imagination, thoughtfully peep over the fence — were you, my friend, to sit in judgment, and the poor, airy straggler brought before you, trembling, self-condemned, with artless eyes, brimful of contrition, looking wistfully on its judge — you could not, my dear Madam, condemn the hapless wretch to death without benefit of clergy? I won’t tell you what reply my heart made to your raillery of seven years, but I will give you what a brother of my trade says on the same allusion: —
The patriarch to gain a wife,
Chaste, beautiful, and young,
Served fourteen years a painful life,
And never thought it long.
O were you to reward such cares,
And life so long would stay,
Not fourteen but four hundred years
Would seem but as a day.62
I have written you this scrawl because I have nothing else to do, and you may sit down and find fault with it, if you have no better way of consuming your time. But finding fault with the vagaries of a poet’s fancy is much such another business as Xerxes chastising the waves of Hellespont.
My limb now allows me to sit in some peace: to walk I have yet no prospect of, as I can’t mark it to the ground.
I have just now looked over what I have written, and it is such a chaos of nonsense that I daresay you will throw it into the fire and call me an idle, stupid fellow; but, whatever you may think of my brains, believe me to be, with the most sacred respect and heart-felt esteem, my dear Madam, your humble Servant, ROBT. BURNS.
62 Tom D’Urfey’s Songs.
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V.
Friday Evening, 28th December 1787.
I beg your pardon, my dear “Clarinda,” for the fragment scrawl I sent you yesterday. I really do not know what I wrote. A gentleman, for whose character, abilities, and critical knowledge I have the highest veneration, called in just as I had begun the second sentence, and I would not make the porter wait. I read to my much-respected friend several of my own bagatelles, and, among others, your lines, which I had copied out. He began some criticisms on them as on the other pieces, when I informed him they were the work of a young lady in this town, which, I assure you, made him stare. My learned friend seriously protested that he did not believe any young woman in Edinburgh was capable of such lines; and if you know anything of Professor Gregory, you will neither doubt of his abilities nor his sincerity. I do love you, if possible, still better for having so fine a taste and turn for poesy. I have again gone wrong in my usual unguarded way, but you may erase the word, and put esteem, respect, or any other tame Dutch expression you please in its place. I believe there is no holding converse, or carrying on correspondence, with an amiable woman, much less a gloriously amiable fine woman, without some mixture of that delicious passion, whose most devoted slave I have more than once had the honour of being. But why be hurt or offended on that account? Can no honest man have a prepossession for a fine woman, but he must run his head against an intrigue? Take a little of the tender witchcraft of love, and add to it the generous, the honourable sentiments of manly friendship, and I know but one more delightful morsel, which few, few in any rank ever taste. Such a composition is like adding cream to strawberries; it not only gives the fruit a more elegant richness, but has a deliciousness of its own.
I inclose you a few lines I composed on a late melancholy occasion. I will not give above five or six copies of it in all, and I should be hurt if any friend should give any copies without my consent.
You cannot imagine, Clarinda (I like the idea of Arcadian names in a commerce of this kind), how much store I have set by the hopes of your future friendship. I do not know if you have a just idea of my character, but I wish you to see me as I am. I am, as most people of my trade are, a strange Will-o’-Wisp being: the victim, too frequently, of much imprudence and many follies. My great constituent elements are pride and passion. The first I have endeavoured to humanise into integrity and honour; the last makes me a devotee to the warmest degree of enthusiasm, in love, religion, or friendship — either of them, or all together, as I happen to be inspired. ‘Tis true, I never saw you but once; but how much acquaintance did I form with you in that once? Do not think I flatter you, or have a design upon you, Clarinda; I have too much pride for the one, and too little cold contrivance for the other; but of all God’s creatur
es I ever could approach in the beaten way of my acquaintance, you struck me with the deepest, the strongest, the most permanent impression. I say the most permanent, because I know myself well, and how far I can promise either on my prepossessions or powers. Why are you unhappy? And why are so many of our fellow-creatures, unworthy to belong to the same species with you, blest with all they can wish? You have a hand all benevolent to give-why were you denied the pleasure? You have a heart formed — gloriously formed — for all the most refined luxuries of love:-why was that heart ever wrung? O Clarinda! shall we not meet in a state, some yet unknown state of being, where the lavish hand of plenty shall minister to the highest wish of benevolence; and where the chill north-wind of prudence shall never blow over the flowery fields of enjoyment? If we do not, man was made in vain! I deserved most of the unhappy hours that have lingered over my head; they were the wages of my labour: but what unprovoked demon, malignant as hell, stole upon the confidence of unmistrusting busy Fate, and dashed your cup of life with undeserved sorrow?
Let me know how long your stay will be out of town; I shall count the hours till you inform me of your return. Cursed etiquette forbids your seeing me just now; and so soon as I can walk I must bid Edinburgh adieu. Lord! why was I born to see misery which I cannot relieve, and to meet with friends whom I cannot enjoy? I look back with the pang of unavailing avarice on my loss in not knowing you sooner: all last winter, these three months past, what luxury of intercourse have I not lost! Perhaps, though,’twas better for my peace. You see I am either above, or incapable of dissimulation. I believe it is want of that particular genius. I despise design, because I want either coolness or wisdom to be capable of it. I am interrupted. Adieu! my dear Clarinda!
SYLVANDER.
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VI.
Thursday, Jan. 3, 1788.
You are right, my dear Clarinda: a friendly correspondence goes for nothing, except one writes his or her undisguised sentiments. Yours please me for their instrinsic merit, as well as because they are yours, which I assure you, is to me a high recommendation. Your religious sentiments, Madam, I revere. If you have, on some suspicious evidence, from some lying oracle, learned that I despise or ridicule so sacredly important a matter as real religion, you have, my Clarinda, much misconstrued your friend. “I am not mad, most noble Festus!” Have you ever met a perfect character? Do we not sometimes rather exchange faults, than get rid of them? For instance, I am perhaps tired with, and shocked at a life too much the prey of giddy inconsistencies and thoughtless follies; by degrees I grow sober, prudent, and statedly pious — I say statedly, because the most unaffected devotion is not at all inconsistent with my first character — I join the world in congratulating myself on the happy change. But let me pry more narrowly into this affair. Have I, at bottom, any thing of a sacred pride in these endowments and emendations? Have I nothing of a presbyterian sourness, an hypocritical severity, when I survey my less regular neighbours? In a word, have I missed all those nameless and numberless modifications of indistinct selfishness, which are so near our own eyes, that we can scarcely bring them within the sphere of our vision, and which the known spotless cambric of our character hides from the ordinary observer?
My definition of worth is short; truth and humanity respecting our fellow-creatures; reverence and humility in the presence of that Being, my Creator and Preserver, and who, I have every reason to believe, will one day be my Judge. The first part of my definition is the creature of unbiassed instinct; the last is the child of after reflection. Where I found these two essentials I would gently note and slightly mention any attendant flaws — flaws, the marks, the consequences of human nature.
I can easily enter into the sublime pleasures that your strong imagination and keen sensibility must derive from religion, particularly if a little in the shade of misfortune; but I own I cannot, without a marked grudge, see Heaven totally engross so amiable, so charming a woman, as my friend Clarinda; and should be very well pleased at a circumstance that would put it in the power of somebody (happy somebody!) to divide her attention, with all the delicacy and tenderness of an earthly attachment.
You will not easily persuade me that you have not a grammatical knowledge of the English language. So far from being inaccurate, you are elegant beyond any woman of my acquaintance, except one, — whom I wish you knew.
Your last verses to me have so delighted me, that I have got an excellent old Scots air that suits the measure, and you shall see them in print in the Scots Musical Museum, a work publishing by a friend of mine in this town. I want four stanzas, you gave me but three, and one of them alluded to an expression in my former letter; so I have taken your two first verses, with a slight alteration in the second, and have added a third, but you must help me to a fourth. Here they are; the latter half of the first stanza would have been worthy of Sappho; I am in raptures with it.
Talk not of Love, it gives me pain,
For Love has been my foe:
He bound me with an iron chain,
And sunk me deep in woe.
But Friendship’s pure and lasting joys
My heart was formed to prove:
There welcome, win and wear the prize,
But never talk of Love.
Your friendship much can make me blest,
O why that bliss destroy!
[only]
Why urge the odious one request,
[will]
You know I must deny.
The alteration in the second stanza is no improvement, but there was a slight inaccuracy in your rhyme. The third I only offer to your choice, and have left two words for your determination. The air is “The banks of Spey,” and is most beautiful.
To-morrow evening I intend taking a chair, and paying a visit at Park Place to a much-valued old friend.63 If I could be sure of finding you at home (and I will send one of the chairmen to call), I would spend from five to six o’clock with you, as I go past. I cannot do more at this time, as I have something on my hand that hurries me much. I propose giving you the first call, my old friend the second, and Miss Nimmo as I return home. Do not break any engagement for me, as I will spend another evening with you at any rate before I leave town.
Do not tell me that you are pleased, when your friends inform you of your faults. I am ignorant what they are; but I am sure they must be such evanescent trifles, compared with your personal and mental accomplishments, that I would despise the ungenerous narrow soul, who would notice any shadow of imperfections you may seem to have, any other way than in the most delicate agreeable raillery. Coarse minds are not aware how much they injure the keenly feeling tie of bosom friendship, when, in their foolish officiousness, they mention what nobody cares for recollecting. People of nice sensibility, and generous minds, have a certain intrinsic dignity, that fires at being trifled with, or lowered, or even too nearly approached.
You need make no apology for long letters; I am even with you. Many happy new years to you, charming Clarinda! I can’t dissemble, were it to shun perdition. He who sees you as I have done, and does not love you, deserves to be damn’d for his stupidity! He who loves you, and would injure you, deserves to be doubly damn’d for his villany! Adieu.
SYLVANDER.
P.S. What would you think of this for a fourth stanza?
Your thought, if love must harbour there,
Conceal it in that thought,
Nor cause me from my bosom tear
The very friend I sought.
63 Probably Mr. Nicol, who lived in Buccleuch Pend, a short distance from Clarinda’s residence.
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VII.
Saturday Noon [5th January].
Some days, some nights, nay, some hours, like the “ten righteous persons in Sodom,” save the rest of the vapid, tiresome, miserable months and years of life. One of these hours my dear Clarinda blest me with yesternight.
One well-spent hour,
&nbs
p; In such a tender circumstance for friends,
Is better than an age of common time!
THOMSON.
My favourite feature in Milton’s Satan is his manly fortitude in supporting what cannot be remedied — in short, the wild broken fragments of a noble exalted mind in ruins. I meant no more by saying he was a favourite hero of mine.
I mentioned to you my letter to Dr. Moore, giving an account of my life: it is truth, every word of it; and will give you a just idea of the man whom you have honoured with your friendship. I am afraid you will hardly be able to make sense of so torn a piece. Your verses I shall muse on, deliciously, as I gaze on your image in my mind’s eye, in my heart’s core: they will be in time enough for a week to come. I am truly happy your headache is better. O, how can pain or evil be so daringly unfeeling, cruelly savage, as to wound so noble a mind, so lovely a form!
My little fellow is all my namesake. Write me soon. My every, strongest good wishes attend you, Clarinda!
SYLVANDER.
I know not what I have written — I am pestered with people around me.
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VIII.
Jan. 8, 1788, Tuesday Night.
I am delighted, charming Clarinda, with your honest enthusiasm for religion. Those of either sex, but particularly the female, who are lukewarm in that most important of all things, “O my soul, come not thou into their secrets!” I feel myself deeply interested in your good opinion, and will lay before you the outlines of my belief. He who is our Author and Preserver, and will one day be our Judge, must be (not for his sake in the way of duty, but from the native impulse of our hearts), the object of our reverential awe and grateful adoration: He is Almighty and all-bounteous, we are weak and dependent; hence prayer and every other sort of devotion. “He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to everlasting life;” consequently it must be in every one’s power to embrace his offer of “everlasting life;” otherwise he could not, in justice, condemn those who did not. A mind pervaded, actuated, and governed by purity, truth, and charity, though it does not merit heaven, yet is an absolute necessary prerequisite, without which heaven can neither be obtained nor enjoyed; and, by divine promise, such a mind shall never fail of attaining “everlasting life;” hence the impure, the deceiving, and the uncharitable extrude themselves from eternal bliss, by their unfitness for enjoying it. The Supreme Being has put the immediate administration of all this, for wise and good ends known to himself, into the hands of Jesus Christ, a great personage, whose relation to him we cannot comprehend, but whose relation to us is a guide and Saviour; and who, except for our own obstinacy and misconduct, will bring us all, through various ways, and by various means, to bliss at last.
