and recount the circumstances, you would be resumed-I thought five-and-thirty pounds applaud me.* No. CVII. * TO THE SAME. R. B. [No date.] Now for that wayward, unfortunate thing, myself. I have broke measures with Creech, and last week I wrote him a frosty, keen letter. He replied in terms of chastisement, and promised me upon his honour that I should have the account on Monday; but this is Tuesday, and yet I have not heard a word from him. God have mercy on me! a poor damned, incautious, duped, unfortunate fool! The sport, the miserable victim of rebellious pride, hypochondriac imagination, agonizing sensibility, and bedlam passions! "I wish that I were dead, but I'm no like to die!" I had lately "a hair-breadth 'scape in th' imminent deadly breach" of love too. Thank my stars I got off heart-whole, "waur fleyed than hurt." - Interruption. I have this moment got a hint: I fear I am a year was no bad dernier ressort for a poor poet, if fortune in her jade tricks should kick him down from the little eminence to which she has lately helped him up. For this reason, I am at present attending these instructions to have them completed before Whit-Sunday. Still, Madam, I prepared with the sincerest pleasure to meet you at the Mount, and came to my brother's on Saturday night, to set out on Sunday; but for some nights preceding I had slept in an apartment, where the force of the winds and rains was only mitigated by being sifted through numberless apertures in the windows, walls, &c. In consequence I was on Sunday, Monday, and part of Tuesday, unable to stir out of bed, with all the miserable effects of a violent cold. You see, Madam, the truth of the French maxim, le vrai n'est pas toujours le vrai-semblable; your last was so full of expostulation, and was something so like the language of an offended friend, that I began to tremble for a correspondence, which I had with grateful pleasure set down as one of the greatest enjoyments of my future life. Your books have delighted me: Virgil, something like undone but I hope for the Dryden, and Tasso, were all equally strangers best. Come, stubborn pride and unshrinking resolution; accompany me through this, to me, miserable world! You must not desert me! Your friendship I think I can count on, though I should date my letters from a marching regiment. Early in life, and all my life, I reckoned on a recruiting drum as my forlorn hope. Seriously, though, life at present presents me with but a melancholy path: but-my limb will soon be sound, and I shall struggle on. No. CVIII. TO MRS. DUNLOP. MADAM: R. B. Mauchline, 28th April, 1788. YOUR powers of reprehension must be great indeed, as I assure you they made my heart ache with penitential pangs, even though I was really not guilty. As I commence farmer at Whit-Sunday, you will easily guess I must be pretty busy; but that is not all. As I got the offer of the Excise business without solicitation, and as it costs me only six months' attendance for instructions, to entitle me to a commission-which commission lies by me, and at any future period, on my simple petition, can to me; but of this more at large in my next. R. B. No. CIX. TO MR. JAMES SMITH, AVON PRINTFIELD, LINLITHGOW. Mauchline, April 28th, 1788. BEWARE of your Strasburgh, my good Sir! Look on this as the opening of a correspondence, like the opening of a twenty-four gun battery! There is no understanding a man properly without knowing something of his previous ideas (that is to say, if the man has any ideas ; for I know many who, in the animal-muster, pass for men, that are the scanty masters of only one idea on any given subject, and by far the greatest part of your acquaintances and mine can barely boast of ideas, 1.25-1.5-1.75 (or some such fractional matter); so to let you a little into the secrets of my pericranium, there is, you must know, a certain clean-limbed, handsome, bewitching young hussy ussy of your acquaintance, to whom I have lately and privately given a matrimonial title to my * [The sacrifices to which the Poet alludes were honourable to his heart; he determined-in spite of the frowns of some, and the smiles of others to unite his fortunes with those of Jean Armour.) corpus. † [The Tasso with which Mrs. Dunlop indulged the Poet was the translation of Hoole: a work, in spite of the commendation of Johnson, as inferior in beauty to the version of Fairfax, as a beggar's pike-staff is to a pear-tree in full blossom. CUNNINGHAM.] "Bode a robe and wear it, says the wise old Scots adage! I hate to presage ill-luck; and as my girl has been doubly kinder to me than even the best of women usually are to their partners of our sex, in similar circumstances, I reckon on twelve times a brace of children against I celebrate my twelfth wedding-day: these twenty-four will give me twenty-four gossipings, twentyfour christenings (I mean one equal to two), and I hope, by the blessing of the God of my fathers, to make them twenty - four dutiful children to their parents, twenty-four useful members of society, and twenty-four approven servants of their God! *** "Light's heartsome," quo' the wife when she was stealing sheep. You see what a lamp I have hung up to lighten your paths, when you are idle enough to explore the combinations and relations of my ideas. 'Tis now as plain as a pike-staff why a twenty-four gun battery was a metaphor I could readily employ. Now for business-I intend to present Mrs. Burns with a printed shawl, an article of which I dare say you have a variety: 'tis my first present to her since I have irrevocably called her mine, and I have a kind of whimsical wish to get her the first said present from an old and much valued friend of hers and mine, a trusty Trojan, on whose friendship I count myself possessed of as a life-rent lease. DRYDEN's Virgil has delighted me. I do not know whether the critics will agree with me, but the Georgics are to me by far the best part of Virgil. It is indeed a species of writing entirely new to me; and has filled my head with a thousand fancies of emulation: but, alas! when I read the Georgics, and then survey my own powers, 'tis like the idea of a Shetland pony, drawn up by the side of a thorough-bred hunter, to start for the plate. I own I am disappointed in the Æneid. Faultless correctness may please, and does highly please, the lettered critic: but to that awful character I have not the most distant pretensions. I do not know whether I do not hazard my pretensions to be a critic of any kind when I say that I think Virgil, in many instances, a servile copier of Homer. If I had the Odyssey by me, I could parallel many passages where Virgil has evidently copied, but by no means improved, Homer. Nor can I think there is any thing of this owing to the trans TO PROFESSOR DUGALD STEWART.* lators; for, from every thing I have seen of Look on this letter as a "beginning of sorrows;" I will write you till your eyes ache reading nonsense. Mrs. Burns ('tis only her private designation) begs her best compliments to you. SIR: No. CX. R. B. Mauchline, 3d May, 1788. I ENCLOSE you one or two more of my bagatelles. If the fervent wishes of honest gratitude have any influence with that great, unknown Being, who frames the chain of causes and events, prosperity and happiness will attend your visit to the Continent, and return you safe to your native shore. * [Of the accomplished Dugald Stewart, the kindness of his heart and the amenity of his manners were as conspicuous as his talents. The account of Burns, which he rendered to Currie, will always be read with interest.-vide Memoir, p. 41. The Poet in his memoranda, thus alludes to his respected patron:-"I never spent an afternoon among great folks with half that pleasure as when I had the honour of paying my devoirs to that plain, honest, worthy man, Professor Stewart. I would be delighted to see him perform acts of kindness and friendship, though I were not the object,-he does it with such a grace. I think his character divided into Dryden, I think him, in genius and fluency of R. B. ten parts, stands thus:-four parts Socrates-four parts Nathaniel-and two parts Shakspeare's Brutus."] † [A national poem was long present to the fancy of Burns: but he seems to have hesitated between the stately versification of the English muse and the homely strains of Coila-death prevented him from deciding. It would not appear that Burns, though he loved "The Task" so much that he carried it in his pocket, had extended his reading to Cowper's Translation of Homer. The graphic beauty and natural force of that fine version would not have been lost on a lover of clear images and nervous manly language.CUNNINGHAM.] 11 I AM two kind letters in your debt, but I have been from home, and horridly busy, buying and preparing for my farming business, over and above the plague of my Excise instructions, which this week will finish. As I flatter my wishes that I foresee many future years' correspondence between us, 'tis foolish to talk of excusing dull epistles; a dull letter may be a very kind one. - I have the pleasure to tell you that I have been extremely fortunate in all my buyings and bargainings hitherto; Mrs. Burns not excepted; which title I now avow to the world. I am truly pleased with this last affair: it has indeed added to anxieties for futurity, but it has given a stability to my mind and resolutions unknown before; and the poor girl has the most sacred enthusiasm of attachment to me, and has not a wish but to gratify my every idea of her deportment. I am interrupted.-Farewell ! my dear Sir. No. CXIII. TO MRS. DUNLOP. MADAM: R. B. 27th May, 1788. I HAVE been torturing my philosophy to no purpose, to account for that kind partiality of yours which has followed me, in my return to the shade of life, with assiduous benevolence. Often did I regret, in the fleeting hours of my late will-o'-wisp appearance, that "here I had no continuing city;" and, but for the consolation of a few solid guineas, could almost lament the time that a momentary acquaintance with wealth and splendour put me so much out of conceit with the sworn companions of my road through life-insignificance and poverty. There are few circumstances relating to the unequal distribution of the good things of this life that give me more vexation (I mean in what I see around me) than the importance the opulent bestow on their trifling family affairs, compared with the very same things on the contracted scale of a cottage. Last afternoon I had the honour to spend an hour or two at a good woman's fire-side, where the planks that composed the floor were decorated with a splendid carpet, and the gay table sparkled with silver and china. "Tis about term-day, and there has been a revolu now • [The hiring-season naturally introduced the conversation to which the Poet indignantly alludes. In Scotland, servants are hired half-yearly from term to term, or, in other words, from Whit-Sunday to Martinmas, and from Martinmas to tion among those creatures, who though in appearance partakers, and equally noble partakers, of the same nature with Madame, are from time to time their nerves, their sinews, their health, strength, wisdom, experience, genius, time, nay a good part of their very thoughts-sold for months and years, not only to the necessities, the conveniences, but the caprices of the important few. We talked of the insignificant creatures; nay, notwithstanding their general stupidity and rascality, did some of the poor devils the honour to commend them. But light be the turf upon his breast who taught, "Reverence thyself!" We looked down on the unpolished wretches, their impertinent wives and clouterly brats, as the lordly bull does on the little dirty ant-hill, whose puny inhabitants he crushes in the carelessness of his ramble, or tosses in the air in the wantonness of his pride. No. CXIV. TO THE SAME. AT MR. DUNLOP'S, HADDINGTON. R. B. Ellisland, 13th June, 1788. "Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see, GOLDSMITH. THIS is the second day, my honoured friend, that I have been on my farm. A solitary inmate of an old, smoky spence; far from every object I love, or by whom I am beloved; nor any acquaintance older than yesterday, except Jenny Geddes, the old mare I ride on; while uncouth cares and novel plans hourly insult my awkward ignorance and bashful inexperience. There is a foggy atmosphere native to my soul in the hour of care; consequently the dreary objects seem larger than the life. Extreme sensibility, irritated and prejudiced on the gloomy side by a series of misfortunes and disappointments, at that period of my existence when the soul is laying in her cargo of ideas for the voyage of life, is, I believe, the principal cause of this unhappy frame of mind. "The valiant, in himself, what can he suffer? Your surmise, Madam, is just; I am indeed a husband. * To jealousy or infidelity I am an equal stranger. My preservative from the first is the Whit-Sunday. In England, servants are engaged by the month, and are more at the mercy of the changeable and the capricious.] most thorough consciousness of her sentiments of honour, and her attachment to me: my antidote against the last is my long and deep-rooted affection for her. In housewife matters, of aptness to learn and activity to execute, she is eminently mistress: and during my absence in Nithsdale, she is regularly and constantly apprentice to my mother and sisters in their dairy and other rural business. The muses must not be offended when I tell them the concerns of my wife and family will, in my mind, always take the pas; but I assure them their ladyships will ever come next in place. You are right that a bachelor state would have ensured me more friends; but, from a cause you will easily guess, conscious peace in the enjoyment of my own mind, and unmistrusting confidence in approaching my God, would seldom have been of the number. I found a once much-loved and still muchloved female, literally and truly cast out to the mercy of the naked elements; but I enabled her to purchase a shelter;-there is no sporting with a fellow-creature's happiness or misery. The most placid good-nature and sweetness of disposition; a warm heart, gratefully devoted with all its powers to love me; vigorous health and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to the best advantage by a more than commonly handsome figure; these, I think, in a woman, may make a good wife, though she should never have read a page but the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, nor have danced in a brighter assembly than a penny pay-wedding. No. CXV, R. B. TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE. Ellisland, June 14th, 1788. THIS is now the third day, my dearest Sir, that I have sojourned in these regions; and during these three days you have occupied more of my thoughts than in three weeks preceding: in Ayr-shire I have several variations of friendship's compass-here it points invariably to the pole. My farm gives me a good many uncouth cares and anxieties, but I hate the language of complaint. Job, or some one of his friends, says well-"Why should a living man complain?" I have lately been much mortified with contemplating an unlucky imperfection in the very * [It was one of the pleasing theories of the Poet, in the pursuit of independence, that while he watched the public revenue as a gauger, his wife would superintend the whole system of in-door and out-door economy of a farmer's establishment, and that between them money would come pouring in. To insure this, he began a war against the nature framing and construction of my soul; namely, a blundering inaccuracy of her olfactory organs in hitting the scent of craft or design in my fellow-creatures. I do not mean any compliment to my ingenuousness, or to hint that the defect is in consequence of the unsuspicious simplicity of conscious truth and honour: I take it to be, in some way or other, an imperfection in the mental sight; or, metaphor apart, some modification of dullness. In two or three small instances lately, I have been most shamefully out. I have all along, hitherto, in the warfare of life, been bred to arms among the light-horsethe piquet-guards of fancy; a kind of hussars and Highlanders of the brain; but I am firmly resolved to sell out of these giddy battalions, who have no ideas of a battle but fighting the foe, or of a siege but storming the town. Cost what it will, I am determined to buy in among the grave squadrons of heavy-armed thought, or the artillery corps of plodding contrivance. What books are you reading, or what is the subject of your thoughts, besides the great studies of your profession? You said something about religion in your last. I don't exactly remember what it was, as the letter is in Ayr-shire; but I thought it not only prettily said, but nobly thought. You will make a noble fellow if once you were married. I make no reservation of your being well-married: you have so much sense, and knowledge of human nature, that, though you may not realize perhaps the ideas of romance, yet you will never be ill-married. Were it not for the terrors of my ticklish situation respecting provision for a family of children, I am decidedly of opinion that the step I have taken is vastly for my happiness. As it is, I look to the Excise scheme as a certainty of maintenance; a maintenance!-luxury to what either Mrs. Burns or I were born to. Adieu!-R. B. No. CXVI. TO THE SAME. Mauchline, 23rd June, 1788. THIS letter, my dear Sir, is only a business scrap. Mr. Miers, profile painter in your town, has executed a profile of Dr. Blacklock for me: do me the favour to call for it, and sit to him yourself for me, which put in the same size as the doctor's. The account of both profiles will of the soil of Ellisland, by trying to turn it into pasturare. and he caused his wife to be instructed in the business of the dairy, with the hope of making cheese rivalling the farfamed Dunlop; but "The best laid schemes of mice and men I JUST now received your brief epistle; and, to take vengeance on your laziness, I have, you see, taken a long sheet of writing-paper, and have begun at the top of the page, intending to scribble on to the very last corner. I am vexed at that affair of the ***, but dare not enlarge on the subject until you send me your direction, as I suppose that will be altered on your late master and friend's death. I am concerned for the old fellow's exit, only as I fear it may be to your disadvantage in any respect for an old man's dying, except he have been a very benevolent character, or in some particular situation of life that the welfare of the poor or the helpless depended on him, I think it an event of the most trifling moment to the world. Man is naturally a kind, benevolent animal, but he is dropped into such a needy situation here in this vexatious world, and has such a whore-son, hungry, growling, multiplying pack of necessities, appetites, passions, and desires about him, ready to devour him for want of other food; that in fact he must lay aside his cares for others that he may look properly to himself. You have been imposed upon in paying Mr. Miers for the profile of a Mr. H. I did not mention it in my letter to you, nor did I ever give Mr. Miers any such order. I have no objection to lose the money, but I will not have any such profile in my possession. I desired the carrier to pay you, but as I mentioned only 15s. to him, I will rather enclose you a guinea note. I have it not, indeed, to spare here, as I am only sojourner in a strange land in this place; but in a day or two I return to Mauchline, and there I have the bank-notes through the house like salt per mits. a There is a great degree of folly in talking unnecessarily of one's private affairs. I have [The kindness of Mr. Field, profilist, Strand, has not only indulged me with a look at the original outline of the Poet's face, but has put me in possession of a capital copy. It is the size of life: the contour is fine-nay, noble: the nose is a little blunt at the point: the mouth is full and well just now been interrupted by one of my new neighbours, who has made himself absolutely contemptible in my eyes, by his silly, garrulous pruriency. I know it has been a fault of my own, too; but from this moment I abjure it as I would the service of hell! Your poets, spendthrifts, and other fools of that kidney, pretend, forsooth, to crack their jokes on prudence; but 'tis a squalid vagabond, glorying in his rags. Still, imprudence respecting money matters is much more pardonable than imprudence respecting character. I have no objection to prefer prodigality to avarice, in some few instances; but I appeal to your observation, if you have not met, and often met, with the same disingenuousness, the same hollow-hearted insincerity, and disintegritive depravity of principle, in the hackneyed victims of profusion, as in the unfeeling children of parsimony. I have every possible reverence for the much talked-of world beyond the grave, and I wish that which piety believes, and virtue deserves, may be all matter of fact. But in things belonging to, and terminating in this present scene of existence, man has serious and interesting business on hand. Whether a man shall shake hands with welcome in the distinguished elevation of respect, or shrink from contempt in the abject corner of insignificance; whether he shall wanton under the tropic of plenty, at least enjoy himself in the comfortable latitudes of easy convenience, or starve in the arctic circle of dreary poverty; whether he shall rise in the manly consciousness of a self-approving mind, or sink beneath a galling load of regret and remorse-these are alternatives of the last moment. You see how I preach. You used occasionally to sermonize too; I wish you would, in charity, favour me with a sheet full in your own way. I admire the close of a letter Lord Bolingbroke wrote to Dean Swift: -" Adieu, dear Swift! with all thy faults I love thee entirely: make an effort to love me with all mine!" Humble servant, and all that trumpery, is now such a prostituted business that honest friendship, in her sincere way, must have recourse to her primitive, simple, - farewell! No. CXVIII. R. B. |