by Robert Burns
R. B.
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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.
130 Never more than 70 UK pounds.
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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 puppies131 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.
131 Military officers.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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CXCI. — TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.
25th 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
131 He had offered Burns a post on the staff of The Morning Chronicle, of which newspaper Mr. Perry was proprietor.
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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 —
Regret! Remorse! Shame! ye three hell hounds that ever dog my steps and bay at my heels, spare me! spare me!
Forgive the offences, and pity the perdition of, Madam, your humble slave,
R. B.
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CXCVI. — TO MRS. DUNLOP.
15th December 1795.
My Dear Friend, — As I am in a complete Decemberish humour, gloomy, sullen, stupid, as even the Deity of Dulness herself could wish, I shall not drawl out a heavy letter with a number of heavier apologies for my late silence. Only one I shall mention, because I know you will sympat
hise with it: these four months, a sweet little girl, my youngest child, has been so ill, that every day a week or less threatened to terminate her existence. There had much need be many pleasures annexed to the states of husband and father, for, God knows, they have many peculiar cares. I cannot describe to you the anxious, sleepless hours these ties frequently give me. I see a train of helpless little folks; me and my exertions all their stay: and on what a brittle thread does the life of man hang! If I am nipt off at the command of fate! even in all the vigour of manhood as I am — such things happen every day — Gracious God! what would become of my little flock! ‘Tis here that I envy your people of fortune. A father on his deathbed, taking an everlasting leave of his children, has indeed woe enough; but the man of competent fortune leaves his sons and daughters independency and friends; while I — but I shall run distracted if I think any longer on the subject!
