by Robert Burns
To make some amends, mes chères Mesdames, for dragging you on to this second sheet; and to relieve a little the tiresomeness of my unstudied and uncorrectible prose, I shall transcribe you some of my late poetic bagatelles; though I have, these eight or ten months, done very little that way. One day, in a hermitage on the banks of Nith, belonging to a gentleman in my neighbourhood, who is so good as give me a key at pleasure, I wrote as follows; supposing myself the sequestered, venerable inhabitant of the lonely mansion.
LINES WRITTEN IN FRIARS-CARSE HERMITAGE.
Thou whom chance may hither lead,
Be thou clad in russet weed, etc.
R. B.
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CV. — TO MR. MORISON, WRIGHT, MAUCHLINE.
Ellisland, September 22nd 1788.
MY DEAR SIR, — Necessity obliges me to go into my new house, even before it be plastered. I will inhabit the one end until the other is finished. About three weeks more, I think, will at farthest be my time, beyond which I cannot stay in this present house. If ever you wish to deserve the blessing of him that was ready to perish; if ever you were in a situation that a little kindness would have rescued you from many evils; if ever you hope to find rest in future states of untried being-get these matters of mine ready.89 My servant will be out in the beginning of next week for the clock. My compliments to Mrs. Morison. — I am, after all my tribulation, Dear Sir, yours,
R. B.
89 The letter refers to chairs and other articles of furniture which the Poet had ordered.
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CVI. — TO MRS. DUNLOP, OF DUNLOP.
Mauchline, 27th Sept. 1788.
I have received twins, dear Madam, more than once; but scarcely ever with more pleasure than when I received yours of the 12th instant. To make myself understood; I had wrote to Mr. Graham, enclosing my poem addressed to him, and the same post which favoured me with yours brought me an answer from him. It was dated the very day he had received mine; and I am quite at a loss to say whether it was most polite or kind.
Your criticisms, my honoured benefactress, are truly the work of a friend. They are not the blasting depredations of a canker-toothed, caterpillar critic; nor are they the fair statement of cold impartiality, balancing with unfeeling exactitude the pro and con of an author’s merits; they are the judicious observations of animated friendship, selecting the beauties of the piece. I am just arrived from Nithsdale, and will be here a fortnight. I was on horseback this morning by three o’clock; for between my wife and my farm is just forty-six miles. As I jogged on in the dark, I was taken with a poetic fit, as follows:
“Mrs. Ferguson of Craigdarroch’s lamentation for the death of her son; an uncommonly promising youth of eighteen or nineteen years of age: —
Fate gave the word — the arrow sped,
And pierced my darling’s heart,”(i>etc.)
You will not send me your poetic rambles, but, you see, I am no niggard of mine. I am sure your impromptus give me double pleasure; what falls from your pen can neither be unentertaining in itself, nor indifferent to me.
The one fault you found is just: but I cannot please myself in an emendation.
What a life of solicitude is the life of a parent! You interested me much in your young couple.
I would not take my folio paper for this epistle, and now I repent it. I am so jaded with my dirty long journey, that I was afraid to drawl into the essence of dulness with anything larger than a quarto, and so I must leave out another rhyme of this morning’s manufacture.
I will pay the sapientipotent George most cheerfully, to hear from you ere I leave Ayrshire. R. B.
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CVII — TO MR. PETER HILL.
Mauchline, 1st October 1788.
I have been here in this country about three days, and all that time my chief reading has been the “Address to Lochlomond” you were so obliging as to send to me. Were I impanneled one of the author’s jury, to determine his criminality respecting the sin of poesy, my verdict should be “Guilty! A poet of nature’s making!” It is an excellent method for improvement, and what I believe every poet does, to place some favourite classic author in his walks of study and composition before him as a model. Though your author had not mentioned the name, I could have, at half a glance, guessed his model to be Thomson. Will my brother-poet forgive me if I venture to hint that his imitation of that immortal bard is, in two or three places, rather more servile than such a genius as his required: — e.g.
To soothe the maddening passions all to peace.
ADDRESS.
To soothe the throbbing passions into peace.
THOMSON.
I think the “Address” is in simplicity, harmony, and elegance of versification, fully equal to the “Seasons.” Like Thomson, too, he has looked into nature for himself: you meet with no copied description. One particular criticism I made at first reading; in no one instance has he said too much. He never flags in his progress, but, like a true poet of nature’s making, kindles in his course. His beginning is simple and modest, as if distrustful of the strength of his passion; only, I do not altogether like —
Truth,
The soul of every song that’s nobly great.
Fiction is the soul of many a song that is nobly great. Perhaps I am wrong: this may be but a prose criticism. Is not the phrase, in line 7, page 6, “Great lake,” too much vulgarised by every-day language for so sublime a poem?
Great mass of waters, theme for nobler song,
is perhaps no emendation. His enumeration of a comparison with other lakes is at once harmonious and poetic. Every reader’s ideas must sweep the
Winding margin of a hundred miles.
The perspective that follows mountains blue — the imprisoned billows beating in vain — the wooded isles — the digression on the yew-tree— “Benlomond’s lofty, cloud-envelop’d head,” etc., are beautiful. A thunder-storm is a subject which has been often tried, yet our poet, in his grand picture, has interjected a circumstance, so far as I know, entirely original in
the gloom
Deep seam’d with frequent streaks of moving fire.
In his preface to the Storm, “the glens how dark between,” is noble highland landscape! The “rain ploughing the red mould,” too, is beautifully fancied. “Benlomond’s lofty, pathless top,” is a good expression; and the surrounding view from it is truly great: the
silver mist,
Beneath the beaming sun,
is well described; and here he has contrived to enliven his poem with a little of that passion which bids fair, I think, to usurp the modern muses altogether. I know not how far this episode is a beauty on the whole, but the swain’s wish to carry “some faint idea of the vision bright,” to entertain her “partial listening ear,” is a pretty thought. But, in my opinion, the most beautiful passages in the whole poem are the fowls crowding, in wintry frosts, to Lochlomond’s “hospitable flood;” their wheeling round; their lighting, mixing, diving, etc.; and the glorious description of the sportsman. This last is equal to anything in the “Seasons.” The idea of “the floating tribes distant seen, far glistering to the moon,” provoking his eye as he is obliged to leave them, is a noble ray of poetic genius.
The “howling winds,” the “hideous roar” of “the white cascades,” are all in the same style.
I forget that while I am thus holding forth, with the heedless warmth of an enthusiast, I am perhaps tiring you with nonsense. I must, however, mention that the last verse of the sixteenth page is one of the most elegant compliments I have ever seen. I must likewise notice that beautiful paragraph beginning “The gleaming lake,” etc. I dare not go into the particular beauties of the last two paragraphs, but they are admirably fine, and truly Ossianic. I must beg your pardon for this lengthened scrawl. I had no idea of it when I began — I should like to know who the author is; but, whoever he be, please present him with my grate
ful thanks for the entertainment he has afforded me.90
A friend of mine desired me to commission for him two books, Letters on the Religion essential to Man, a book you sent me before; and The World Unmasked, or the Philosopher the greatest Cheat. Send me them by the first opportunity. The Bible you sent me is truly elegant; I only wish it had been in two volumes. R. B.
90 The poem, entitled “An Address to Lochlomond,” is said to have been written by one of the masters of the High School of Edinburgh.
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CVIIL — TO THE EDITOR OF THE “STAR”.
November 8th, 1788.
Sir, — Notwithstanding the opprobrious epithets with which some of our philosophers and gloomy sectarians have branded our nature — the principle of universal selfishness, the proneness to all evil, they have given us — still, the detestation in which inhumanity to the distressed, or insolence to the fallen, are held by all mankind, shows that they are not natives of the human heart. Even the unhappy partner of our kind who is undone, the bitter consequence of his follies or his crimes — who but sympathises with the miseries of this ruined profligate brother? We forget the injuries, and feel for the man.
I went, last Wednesday, to my parish church, most cordially to join in grateful acknowledgment to the AUTHOR OF ALL GOOD for the consequent blessings of the glorious Revolution. To that auspicious event we owe no less than our liberties, civil and religious; to it we are likewise indebted for the present Royal Family, the ruling features of whose administration have ever been mildness to the subject, and tenderness of his rights.
Bred and educated in revolution principles, the principles of reason and common sense, it could not be any silly political prejudice which made my heart revolt at the harsh, abusive manner in which the reverend gentleman mentioned the House of Stuart, and which, I am afraid, was too much the language of the day. We may rejoice sufficiently in our deliverance from past evils, without cruelly raking up the ashes of those whose misfortune it was, perhaps as much as their crime, to be the authors of those evils; and we may bless GOD for all His goodness to us as a nation, without, at the same time, cursing a few ruined, powerless exiles, who only harboured ideas, and made attempts, that most of us would have done, had we been in their situation.
“The bloody and tyrannical House of Stuart” may be said with propriety and justice, when compared with the present Royal Family, and the sentiments of our days; but is there no allowance to be made for the manners of the times? Were the royal contemporaries of the Stuarts more attentive to their subjects’ rights? Might not the epithets of “bloody and tyrannical” be, with at least equal justice, applied to the House of Tudor, of York, or any other of their predecessors?
The simple state of the case, Sir, seems to be this: — At that period, the science of government, the knowledge of the true relation between king and subject, was, like other sciences and other knowledge, just in its infancy, emerging from dark ages of ignorance and barbarity.
The Stuarts only contended for prerogatives which they knew their predecessors enjoyed, and which they saw their contemporaries enjoying; but these prerogatives were inimical to the happiness of a nation and the rights of subjects.
In this contest between prince and people, the consequence of that light of science which had lately dawned over Europe, the monarch of France, for example, was victorious over the struggling liberties of his people: with us, luckily, the monarch failed, and his unwarrantable pretensions fell a sacrifice to our rights and happiness. Whether it was owing to the wisdom of leading individuals, or to the justling of parties, I cannot pretend to determine; but, likewise, happily for us, the kingly power was shifted into another branch of the family, who, as they owed the throne solely to the call of a free people, could claim nothing inconsistent with the covenanted terms which placed them there.
The Stuarts have been condemned and laughed at, for the folly and impracticability of their attempts in 1715, and 1745. That they failed, I bless GOD; but cannot join in the ridicule against them. Who does not know that the abilities or defects of leaders and commanders are often hidden, until put to the touchstone of exigency; and that there is a caprice of fortune, an omnipotence in particular accidents and conjunctures of circumstances, which exalt us as heroes, or brand us as madmen, just as they are for or against us?
Man, Mr. Publisher, is a strange, weak, inconsistent being: who would believe, Sir, that in this our Augustan age of liberality and refinement, while we seem so justly sensible and jealous of our rights and liberties, and animated with such indignation against the very memory of those who would have subverted them — that a certain people under our national protection should complain, not against our monarch and a few favourite advisers, but against our WHOLE LEGISLATIVE BODY, for similar oppression, and almost in the very same terms, as our forefathers did of the House of Stuart! I will not, I cannot, enter into the merits of the cause; but I dare say the American Congress, in 1776, will be allowed to be as able and enlightened as the English Convention was in 1688; and that their posterity will celebrate the centenary of their deliverance from us, as duly and sincerely, as we do ours from the oppressive measures of the wrong-headed House of Stuart.
To conclude, Sir; let every man who has a tear for the many miseries incident to humanity, feel for a family illustrious as any in Europe, and unfortunate beyond historic precedent; and let every Briton (and particularly every Scotsman) who ever looked with reverential pity on the dotage of a parent, cast a veil over the fatal mistake of the Kings of his forefathers.
R. B.
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CIX. — TO MRS. DUNLOP, AT MOREHAM MAINS.
MAUCHLINE, 13th November 1788.
Madam, — I had the very great pleasure of dining at Dunlop yesterday. Men are said to flatter women because they are weak, if it is so, poets must be weaker still; for Misses R. and K. and Miss G. M’K., with their flattering attentions, and artful compliments, absolutely turned my head. I own they did not lard me over as many a poet does his patron, but they so intoxicated me with their sly insinuations and delicate innuendos of compliment, that if it had not been for a lucky recollection, how much additional weight and lustre your good opinion and friendship must give me in that circle, I had certainly looked upon myself as a person of no small consequence. I dare not say one word how much I was charmed with the Major’s friendly welcome, elegant manner, and acute remark, lest I should be thought to balance my orientalisms of applause over-against the finest heifer in Ayrshire, which he made me a present of to help and adorn my farm-stock. As it was on hallow-day, I am determined annually as that day returns, to decorate her horns with an ode of gratitude to the family of Dunlop.
So soon as I know of your arrival at Dunlop, I will take the first conveniency to dedicate a day, or perhaps two, to you and friendship, under the guarantee of the Major’s hospitality. There will soon be three score and ten miles of permanent distance between us; and now that your friendship and friendly correspondence is entwisted with the heart-strings of my enjoyment of life, I must indulge myself in a happy day of “the feast of reason and the flow of soul.”
R. B.
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CX. — TO DR. BLACKLOCK.
MAUCHLINE, November 15th, 1788.
Reverend and dear Sir, — As I hear nothing of your motions, but that you are, or were, out of town, I do not know where this may find you, or whether it will find you at all. I wrote you a long letter, dated from the land of matrimony, in June; but either it had not found you, or, what I dread more, it found you or Mrs. Blacklock in too precarious a state of health and spirits to take notice of an idle packet.
I have done many little things for Johnson since I had the pleasure of seeing you; and I have finished one piece, in the way of Pope’s “Moral Epistles;” but, from your silence, I have everything to fear, so I have only sent you two melancholy things, which I tremble to fear
may too well suit the tone of your present feelings.
In a fortnight I move, bag and baggage, to Nithsdale; till then, my direction is at this place; after that period, it will be at Ellisland, near Dumfries. It would extremely oblige me, were it but half a line, to let me know how you are, and where you are. Can I be indifferent to the fate of a man to whom I owe so much — a man whom I not only esteem, but venerate?
My warmest good wishes and most respectful compliments to Mrs. Blacklock, and Miss Johnson, if she is with you.
I cannot conclude without telling you that I am more and more pleased with the step I took respecting “my Jean.” Two things, from my happy experience, I set down as apophthegms in life, — a wife’s head is immaterial, compared with her heart; and “Virtue’s (for wisdom, what poet pretends to it?) ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” Adieu!
R. B.91
91 Here follow “The mother’s lament for the loss of her son,” and the song beginning “The lazy mist hangs from the brow of the hill.”
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CXI. — TO MRS. DUNLOP.
ELLISLAND, 17th December 1788.
My dear honoured friend, — Yours, dated Edinburgh, which I have just read, makes me very unhappy. “Almost blind and wholly deaf” are melancholy news of human nature; but when told of a much-loved and honoured friend, they carry misery in the sound. Goodness on your part, and gratitude on mine, began a tie which has gradually entwisted itself among the dearest chords of my bosom, and I tremble at the omens of your late and present ailing habit and shattered health. You miscalculate matters widely, when you forbid my waiting on you, lest it should hurt my worldly concerns. My small scale of farming is exceedingly more simple and easy than what you have lately seen at Moreham Mains. But, be that as it may, the heart of the man and the fancy of the poet are the two grand considerations for which I live: if miry ridges and dirty dunghills are to engross the best part of the functions of my soul immortal, I had better been a rook or a magpie at once, and then I should not have been plagued with any ideas superior to breaking of clods and picking up grubs; not to mention barn-door cocks of mallards, creatures with which I could almost exchange lives at any time. If you continue so deaf, I am afraid a visit will be no great pleasure to either of us; but if I hear you are got so well again as to be able to relish conversation, look you to it, Madam, for I will make my threatenings good. I am to be at the New-year-day fair of Ayr, and, by all that is sacred in the world, friend, I will come and see you.
