by Robert Burns
R. B.
98 The piece beginning — There was a lass and she was fair.
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CXXVI. — TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.
ELL ISLAND, 4th May 1789.
My dear Sir, — Your duty-free favour of the 25th April I received two days ago; I will not say I perused it with pleasure; that is the cold compliment of ceremony; I perused it, Sir, with delicious satisfaction; — in short, it is such a letter, that not you, nor your friend, but the legislature, by express proviso in their postage laws, should frank. A letter informed with the soul of friendship is such an honour to human nature, that they should order it free ingress and egress to and from their bags and mails, as an encouragement and mark of distinction to supereminent virtue.
I have just put the last hand to a little poem, which I think will be something to your taste.99 One morning lately, as I was out pretty early in the fields, sowing some grass seeds, I heard the burst of a shot from a neighbouring plantation, and presently a poor little wounded hare came crippling by me. You will guess my indignation at the inhuman fellow who could shoot a hare at this season, when all of them have young ones. Indeed there is something in that business of destroying, for our sport, individuals in the animal creation that do not injure us materially, which I could never reconcile to my ideas of virtue.
Let me know how you like my poem. I am doubtful whether it would not be an improvement to keep out the last stanza but one altogether.
Cruikshank is a glorious production of the author of man. You, he, and the noble Colonel100 of the Crochallan Fencibles are to me
Dear as the ruddy drops which warm my heart.
I have got a good mind to make verses on you all, to the tune of “Three guid fellows ayont the glen”
R. B.
99 See the poem on the “Wounded Hare.”
100 That is, William Dunbar, W.S.
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CXXVIL — TO MR. RICHARD BROWN.
MAUCHLINE, 21st May 1789.
My Dear Friend, — I was in the country by accident, and hearing of your safe arrival, I could not resist the temptation of wishing you joy on your return — wishing you would write to me before you sail again — wishing that you would always set me down as your bosom friend — wishing you long life and prosperity, and that every good thing may attend you — wishing Mrs. Brown and your little ones as free of the evils of this world as is consistent with humanity — wishing you and she were to make two at the ensuing lying-in, with which Mrs. B. threatens very soon to favour me — wishing I had longer time to write to you at present; and, finally, wishing that if there is to be another state of existence, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Burns, our little ones of both families, and you and I, in some snug retreat, may make a jovial party to all eternity!
My direction is at Ellisland, near Dumfries. — Yours,
R. B.
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CXXVIIL — TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.
ELLISLAND, 8th June 1789.
MY DEAR FRIEND, — I am perfectly ashamed of myself when I look at the date of your last. It is not that I forget the friend of my heart and the companion of my peregrinations; but I have been condemned to drudgery beyond sufferance, though not, thank God, beyond redemption. I have had a collection of poems by a lady put into my hands to prepare them for the press; which horrid task, with sowing corn with my own hand, a parcel of masons, wrights, plasterers, etc., to attend to, roaming on business through Ayrshire — all this was against me, and the very first dreadful article was of itself too much for me.
13th. I have not had a moment to spare from incessant toil since the 8th. Life, my dear Sir, is a serious matter. You know by experience that a man’s individual self is a good deal, but believe me, a wife and family of children, whenever you have the honour to be a husband and a father, will show you that your present and most anxious hours of solitude are spent on trifles. The welfare of those who are very dear to us, whose only support, hope, and stay we are — this, to a generous mind, is another sort of more important object of care than any concerns whatever which centre merely in the individual. On the other hand, let no young, rakehelly dog among you, make a song of his pretended liberty and freedom from care. If the relations we stand in to king, country, kindred, and friends, be anything but the visionary fancies of dreaming metaphysicians; if religion, virtue, magnanimity, generosity, humanity and justice, be ought but empty sounds; then the man who may be said to live only for others, for the beloved, honourable female, whose tender faithful embrace endears life, and for the helpless little innocents who are to be the men and women, the worshippers of his God, the subjects of his king, and the support, nay the very vital existence of his COUNTRY, in the ensuing age; — compare such a man with any fellow whatever, who, whether he bustle and push in business among labourers, clerks, statesmen; or whether he roar and rant, and drink and sing in taverns — a fellow over whose grave no one will breathe a single heigh-ho, except from the cobweb-tie of what is called good fellowship — who has no view nor aim but what terminates in himself — if there be any grovelling earth-born wretch of our species, a renegade to common sense, who would fain believe that the noble creature, man, is no better than a sort of fungus, generated out of nothing, nobody knows how, and soon dissipating in nothing, nobody knows where; such a stupid beast, such a crawling reptile, might balance the foregoing unexaggerated comparison, but no one else would have the patience.
Forgive me, my dear Sir, for this long silence. To make you amends, I shall send you soon, and more encouraging still, without any postage, one or two rhymes of my later manufacture.
R. B.
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CXXIX. — TO MRS. DUNLOP.
ELLISLAND, 21st June 1789.
Dear Madam, — Will you take the effusions, the miserable effusions of low spirits, just as they flow from their bitter spring? I know not of any particular cause for this worst of all my foes besetting me; but for some time my soul has been beclouded with a thickening atmosphere of evil imaginations and gloomy presages.
Monday Evening.
I have just heard Mr. Kilpatrick preach a sermon. He is a man famous for his benevolence, and I revere him; but from such ideas of my Creator, good Lord, deliver me! Religion, my honoured friend, is surely a simple business, as it equally concerns the ignorant and the learned, the poor and the rich. That there is an incomprehensible Great Being, to whom I owe my existence, and that He must be intimately acquainted with the operations and progress of the internal machinery, and consequent outward deportment of this creature which He has made; these are, I think, self-evident propositions. That there is a real and eternal distinction between virtue and vice, and consequently, that I am an accountable creature; that from the seeming nature of the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfection, nay, positive injustice, in the administration of affairs, both in the natural and moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene of existence beyond the grave; must, I think, be allowed by every one who will give himself a moment’s reflection. I will go farther, and affirm, that from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of his doctrine and precepts, unparalleled by all the aggregated wisdom and learning of many preceding ages, though, to appearance he, himself, was the obscurest and most illiterate of our species; therefore Jesus Christ was from God.
Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others, this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, this is my measure of iniquity.
What think you, Madam, of my creed? I trust that I have said nothing that will lessen me in the eye of one, whose good opinion I value almost next to the approbation of my own mind.
R. B.
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CXXX. — TO MISS HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS.
ELLISLAND, 1789.
Madam, — Of the many problems in th
e nature of that wonderful creature, man, this is one of the most extraordinary — that he shall go on from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, or perhaps from year to year, suffering a hundred times more in an hour from the impotent consciousness of neglecting what he ought to do, than the very doing of it would cost him. I am deeply indebted to you, first, for a most elegant poetic compliment; then for a polite, obliging letter; and, lastly, for your excellent poem on the Slave Trade; and yet, wretch that I am! though the debts were debts of honour, and the creditor a lady, I have put off and put off even the very acknowledgment of the obligation, until you must indeed be the very angel I take you for, if you can forgive me.
Your poem I have read with the highest pleasure. I have a way whenever I read a book — I mean a book in our own trade, Madam, a poetic one, and when it is my own property — that I take a pencil and mark at the ends of verses, or note on margins and odd paper, little criticisms of approbation or disapprobation as I peruse along. I will make no apology for presenting you with a few unconnected thoughts that occurred to me in my repeated perusals of your poem. I want to show you that I have honesty enough to tell you what I take to be truths, even when they are not quite on the side of approbation; and I do it in the firm faith that you have equal greatness of mind to hear them with pleasure. [Here follows a list of strictures.]
I had lately the honour of a letter from Dr. Moore, where he tells me that he has sent me some books; they are not yet come to hand, but I hear they are on the way.
Wishing you all success in your progress in the path of fame, and that you may equally escape the danger of stumbling through incautious speed, or losing ground through loitering neglect, I am, etc.
R. B.
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CXXXI. — TO MR. ROBERT GRAHAM, OF FINTRY.
ELLISLAND, 31st july 1789.
Sir, — The language of gratitude has been so prostituted by servile adulation and designing flattery that I know not how to express myself when I would acknowledge receipt of your last letter. I beg and hope, ever-honoured “Friend of my life and patron of my rhymes,” that you will always give me credit for the sincerest, chastest gratitude. I dare call the Searcher of hearts and Author of all Goodness to witness how truly grateful I am.
Mr. Mitchell101 did not wait my calling on him, but sent me a kind letter, giving me a hint of the business; and yesterday he entered with the most friendly ardour into my views and interests. He seems to think, and from my private knowledge I am certain he is right, that removing the officer who now does, and for these many years has done, duty in the Division in the middle of which I live, will be productive of at least no disadvantage to the revenue, and may likewise be done without any detriment to him. Should the Honourable Board [of Excise] think so, and should they deem it eligible to appoint me to officiate in his present place, I am then at the top of my wishes. The emoluments in my office will enable me to carry on, and enjoy those improvements on my farm, which but for this additional assistance, I might in a year or two have abandoned. Should it be judged improper to place me in this Division, I am deliberating whether I had not better give up my farming altogether, and go into the Excise whenever I can find employment. Now that the salary is £50 per annum, the Excise is surely a much superior object to a farm, which, without some foreign assistance, must for half a lease be a losing bargain. The worst of it is — I know there are some respectable characters who do me the honour to interest themselves in my welfare and behaviour, and, as leaving the farm so soon may have an unsteady, giddy-headed appearance, I had better perhaps lose a little money than hazard their esteem.
You see, Sir, with what freedom I lay before you all my little matters — little indeed to the world, but of the most important magnitude to me.... Were it not for a very few of our kind, the very existence of magnanimity, generosity, and all their kindred virtues, would be as much a question with metaphysicians as the existence of witchcraft. Perhaps the nature of man is not so much to blame for this, as the situation in which by some miscarriage or other he is placed in this world. The poor, naked, helpless wretch, with such voracious appetites and such a famine of provision for them, is under a cursed necessity of turning selfish in his own defence. Except a few instances of original scoundrelism, thorough-paced selfishness is always the work of time. Indeed, in a little time, we generally grow so attentive to ourselves and so regardless of others that I have often in poetic frenzy looked on this world as one vast ocean, occupied and commoved by innumerable vortices, each whirling round its centre. These vortices are the children of men. The great design and, if I may say so, merit of each particular vortex consists in how widely it can extend the influence of its circle, and how much floating trash it can suck in and absorb.
I know not why I have got into this preaching vein, except it be to show you that it is not my ignorance but my knowledge of mankind which makes me so much admire your goodness to me.
I shall return your books very soon. I only wish to give Dr. Adam Smith one other perusal, which I will do in one or two days.
R. B.
101 A collector in the Excise.
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CXXXIL — TO DAVID SILLAR, MERCHANT, IRVINE.102
ELLISLAND, 5 Aug. 1789.
My Dear Sir, — I was half in thoughts not to have written to you at all, by way of revenge for the two damn’d business letters you sent me. I wanted to know all about your publications — your news, your hopes, fears, etc., in commencing poet in print. In short, I wanted you to write to Robin like his old acquaintance Davie, and not in the style of Mr. Tare to Mr. Tret, as thus: —
“Mr. Tret. — Sir, — This comes to advise you that fifteen barrels of herrings were, by the blessing of God, shipped safe on board the Lovely Janet, Q.D.C., Duncan Mac-Leerie, master, etc.”
I hear you have commenced married man — so much the better. I know not whether the nine gipsies are jealous of my lucky, but they are a good deal shyer since I could boast the important relation of husband.
I have got about eleven subscribers for your book.... My best compliments to Mrs. Sillar, and believe me to be, dear Davie, ever yours,
ROBT. BURNS.
102 This letter was first published in 1879. The original is probably lost, but a copy is to be found in the minute-book of the Irvine Burns Club. Sillar was “Davie, a brother poet.”
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CXXXIII. — TO MR. JOHN LOGAN, OF KNOCK SHINNOCK.
ELLISLAND, NEAR DUMFRIES, 7th Aug. 1789.
Dear Sir, — I intended to have written you long ere now, and, as I told you, I had gotten three stanzas on my way in a poetic epistle to you; but that old enemy of all good works, the Devil, threw me into a prosaic mire, and for the soul of me I cannot get out of it. I dare not write you a long letter, as I am going to intrude on your time with a long ballad. I have, as you will shortly see, finished “The Kirk’s Alarm;” but now that it is done, and that I have laughed once or twice at the conceits in some of the stanzas, I am determined not to let it get into the public; so I send you this copy, the first that I have sent to Ayrshire, except some few of the stanzas, which I wrote off in embryo for Gavin Hamilton, under the express provision and request that you will only read it to a few of us, and do not on any account give, or permit to be taken, any copy of the ballad. If I could be of any service to Dr. M’Gill, I would do it, though it should be at a much greater expense than irritating a few bigoted priests, but I am afraid serving him in his present embarras is a task too hard for me. I have enemies enow, God knows, though I do not wantonly add to the number. Still, as I think there is some merit in two or three of the thoughts, I send it to you as a small, but sincere testimony how much, and with what respectful esteem, I am, dear Sir, your obliged humble servant
R. B.
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CXXXIV. — TO MR. PETER STUART, EDITOR, LONDON.
/> End of Aug. 1789.
My dear Sir, — The hurry of a farmer in this particular season, and the indolence of a poet at all seasons, will, I hope, plead my excuse for neglecting so long to answer your obliging letter of the 5th August.
... When I received your letter I was transcribing for The Star my letter to the magistrates of the Canongate of Edinburgh, begging their permission to place a tombstone over poor Fergusson. 112a. Poor Fergusson! if there be a life beyond the grave, which I trust there is; and if there be a good God presiding over all nature, which I am sure there is, thou art now enjoying existence in a glorious world where worth of heart alone is distinction in the man; where riches, deprived of their pleasure-purchasing powers, return to their native sordid matter; where titles and honours are the disregarded reveries of an idle dream; and where that heavy virtue, which is the negative consequence of steady dulness, and those thoughtless though often destructive follies, which are the unavoidable aberrations of frail human nature, will be thrown into equal oblivion as if they had never been!
R. B.
112a: A young Scottish poet of undoubted ability who perished miserably in Edinburgh at the age of twenty-four. He was the senior of Burns, who greatly admired and mourned him, by about eight year
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