for a grand cure: the ship is on her way home that is to take me out to Jamaica; and then, farewell dear old Scotland! and farewell, dear ungrateful Jean, for never, never will I see you more. You will have heard that I am going to commence poet in print; and to-morrow my works go to the press. I expect it will be a volume of about 200 pages-it is just the last foolish action I intend to do; and then turn a wise man as fast as possible. Believe siasm as ever pilgrim did to Loretto; and as I explored every den and dell where I could suppose my heroic countryman to have lodged, I recollect (for even then I was a rhymer) that my heart glowed with a wish to be able to make a song on him in some measure equal to his merits. R. B. NO. XIX. me to be, dear Brice, your friend and well- TO JOHN RICHMOND, EDINBURGH, wisher, NO. XVIII. TO MRS. DUNLOP, OF DUNLOP. R. B. Ayrshire, July, 1786. MADAM.-I am truly sorry I was not at home yesterday, when I was so much honoured with your order for my copies, and incomparably more by the handsome compliments you are pleased to pay my poetic abilities. I am fully persuaded that there is not any class of mankind so feelingly alive to the titillations of applause as the sons of Parnassus: nor is it easy to conceive how the heart of the poor bard dances with rapture, when those whose character in life gives them a right to be polite judges, honour him with their approbation. Had you been thoroughly acquainted with me, Madam, you could not have touched my darling heart-chord more sweetly than by noticing my attempts to celebrate your illustrious ancestor, the saviour of his country. Great patriot hero! ill- requited chief! The first book I met with in my early years, which I perused with pleasure, was The Life of Hannibal;" the next was "The History of Sir William Wallace;" for several of my earlier years I had few other authors; and many a solitary hour have I stole out, after the laborious vocations of the day, to shed a tear over their glorious, but unfortunate stories. In those boyish days I remember, in particular, being struck with that part of Wallace's story where these lines occur : Syne to the Leglen wood, when it was late, To make a silent and a safe retreat. I chose a fine summer Sunday, the only day my line of life allowed, and walked half-adozen of miles to pay my respects to the Leglen wood, with as much devout enthu T Mossgiel, July 9th, 1786. WITH the sincerest grief I read your letter. You are truly a son of misfortune. I shall be extremely anxious to hear from you how your health goes on-if it is any way re-establishing, or if Leith promises well -in short, how you feel in the inner man. I have waited on Armour since her return home; not from the least view of reconciliation, but merely to ask for her health, and, to you I will confess it, from a foolish hankering fondness, very ill placed indeed. The mother forbade me the house, nor did Jean show that penitence that might have been expected. However, the priest, I am informed, will give me a certificate as a single man, if I comply with the rules of the church, which, for that very reason, I intend to do. I am going to put on sackcloth and ashes this day. I am indulged so far as to appear in my own seat. Peccavi, pater; miserere mei. My book will be ready in a fortnight. If you have any subscribers, return them by Connell. The Lord stand with the righte R. B. ous-amen, amen. NO. XX. TO MR. DAVID BRICE, Mossgiel, July 17th, 1786. I HAVE been so throng printing my Poems, that I could scarcely find as much time as to write to you. Poor Armour is come back again to Mauchline, and I went to call for her, and her mother forbade me the house, nor did she herself express much sorrow for what she has done. I have already appeared publicly in church, and was indulged in the liberty of standing in my own seat. I do this to get a certificate as a bachelor, which Mr. Auld has promised me. I am now fixed to go for the West Indies in October. Jean and her friends insisted much that she should stand along with me in the kirk, but the minister would not allow it, which bred a great trouble, I assure you, and I am blamed as the cause of it, though I am sure I am innocent; but I am very much pleased, for all that, not to have had her company. I have no news to tell you that I remember. I am really happy to hear of your welfare, and that you are so well in Glasgow. I must certainly see you before I leave the country. I shall expect to hear from you soon, and am, dear Brice, yours, R. B. NO. XXI. TO MR. JOHN RICHMOND. Old Rome Forest, July 30th, 1786. MY DEAR RICHMOND.-My hour is now come-you and I will never meet in Britain more. I have orders within three weeks at farthest, to repair aboard the Nancy, Captain Smith, from Clyde to Jamaica, and to call at Antigua. This, except to our friend Smith, whom God long preserve, is a secret about Mauchline. Would you believe it? Armour has got a warrant to throw me in jail till I find security for an enormous sum. This they keep an entire secret, but I got it by a channel they little dream of; and I am wandering from one friend's house to another, and, like a true son of the gospel, "have nowhere to lay my head." I know you will I know you will pour an execration on her head, but spare the poor, ill-advised girl, for my sake; though may all the furies that rend the injured, euraged mother's bosom, await her mother until her latest hour! I write in a moment of rage, reflecting on my miserable situation—exiled, abandoned, forlorn. I can write no more-let me hear from you by the return of coach. I will write you ere I go. I am, dear Sir, yours, here and hereafter, NO. XXII. R. B. TO MR. ROBERT MUIR, KILMAR NOCK. Mossgiel, Friday Morning, [Aug. 1786.] MY FRIEND, MY BROTHER-Warm recollection of an absent friend presses so hard upon my heart, that I send him the prefixed bagatelle (The Calf), pleased with the thought that it will greet the man of my bosom, and be a kind of distant language of friendship. You will have heard that poor Armour has repaid me double. A very fine boy and a girl have awakened a thought and feelings that thrill, some with tender pressure, and some with foreboding anguish, through my soul. The poem was nearly an extemporaneous production, on a wager with Mr. Hamilton, that I would not produce a poem on the subject in a given time. If you think it worth while, read it to Charles and Mr W. Parker, and if they choose a copy of it, it is at their service, as they are men whose friendship I shall be proud to claim, both in this world and that which is to come. I believe all hopes of staying at home, will be abortive; but more of this when, in the latter part of next week, you shall be troubled with a visit from, my dear Sir, your most devoted, R. B. NO. XXIII. TO MR. JOHN KENNEDY. Kilmarnock, August, 1786. MY DEAR SIR.-Your truly facetious epistle of the 3rd instant gave me much entertainment. I was only sorry I had not the pleasure of seeing you as I passed your way, but we shall bring up all our lee-way on Wednesday, the 16th current, when I hope to have it in my power to call on you, and take a kind, very probably, a last adieu, before I go to Jamaica; and I expect orders to repair to Greenock every day. I have at last made my public appearance, and am solemnly inaugurated into the numerous class. Could I have got a carrier, you should have had a score of vouchers for my authorship; but, now you have them, let them speak for themselves. Farewell, dear friend! may guid luck hit you, NO. XXIV. R. B. TO MR BURNESS, MONTROSE. Mossgiel, Tuesday noon, Sept. 26, 1786. MY DEAR SIR.-I this moment receive yours--receive it with the honest hospitable warmth of a friend's welcome. Whatever comes from you wakens always up the better blood about my heart, which your kind little recollections of my parental friends carries as far as it will go. "Tis there that man is blest!-'Tis there, my friend, man feels a consciousness of something within him above the trodden clod! The grateful reverence to the hoary (earthly) author of his being-the burning glow when he clasps the woman of his soul to his bosom-the tender yearnings of heart for the little angels to whom he has given existence-these nature has poured in milky streams about the human heart; and the man who never rouses them to action, by the inspiring influences of their proper objects, loses by far the most pleasurable part of his existence. My departure is uncertain, but I do not think it will be till after harvest. I will be on very short allowance of time indeed, if I do not comply with your friendly invitation. When it will be, I don't know, but if I can make my wish good, I will endeavour to drop you a line some time before. My best compliments to Mrs. B.; I should be equally mortifed should I drop in when she is abroad; but of that I suppose there is little chance. What I have wrote Heaven knows; I have not time to review it; so accept of it in the beaten way of friendship. With the ordinary phrase perhaps rather more than the ordinary sincerity-I am, dear Sir, ever yours, R. B. NO. XXV. TO MR ROBERT AIKEN. (7) Ayrshire, 1786. SIR.-I was with Wilson my printer t'other day, and settled all our bygone matters between us. After I had paid him all demands, I made him the offer of the second edition, on the hazard of being paid out of the first and readiest, which he declines. By his account, the paper of 1000 copies would cost about twenty-seven pounds, and the printing about fifteen or sixteen; he offers to agree to this for the printing, if I will advance for the paper, but this you know, is out of my power; so farewell hopes of a second edition till I grow richer! an epoch which I think will arrive at the payment of the British national debt. There is scarcely any thing hurts me so much in being disappointed of my second edition, as not having it in my power to show my gratitude to Mr. Ballantine, by publishing my poem of the Brigs of Ayr. I would detest myself as a wretch, if I thought I were capable, in a very long life of forgetting the honest, warm, and tender delicacy with which he enters into my interests. I am sometimes pleased with myself in my grateful sensations; but I believe, on the whole, I have very little merit in it, as my gratitude is not a virtue, the consequence of reflection, but sheerly the instinctive emotion of my heart, too inattentive to allow worldly maxims and views to settle into selfish habits. I have heen feeling all the various rotations and movements within, respecting the excise. There are many things plead strongly against it; the uncertainty of getting soon into business; the consequences of my follies, which may perhaps make it impracticable for me to stay at home, and besides, I have for some time been pining under secret wretchedness, from causes which you pretty well know:-the pang of disappointment, the sting of pride, with some wandering stabs of remorse, which never fail to settle on my vitals like vultures, when attention is not called away by the calls of society, or the vagaries of the muse. Even in the hour of social mirth, my gaiety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of the executioner. All these reasons urge me to go abroad, and to all these reasons I have only one answer-the feelings of a father. This, in the present mood I am in, overbalances every thing that can be laid in the scale against it. You may perhaps think it an extravagant fancy, but it is a sentiment which strikes home to my very soul; though sceptical in some points of our current belief, yet I think I have every evidence for the reality of a life beyond the stinted bourne of our present existence: if so, then, how should I in the presence of that tremendous Being, the Author of existence, how should I meet the reproaches of those who stand to me in the dear relation of children, whom I deserted in the smiling innocency of helpless infancy? Oh thou great unknown Power!-thou Almighty God! who hast lighted up reason in my breast, and blessed me with immortality! I have frequently wandered from that order and regularity necessary for the perfection of thy works, yet thou hast never left me nor forsaken me! Since I wrote the foregoing sheet, I have seen something of the storm of mischief thickening over my folly-devoted head. Should you, my friends, my benefactors, be successful in your applications for me (8), perhaps it may not be in my power in that way, to reap the fruit of your friendly efforts. What I have written in the preceding pages | nature's workmanship, the finest indeed we know anything of, an amiable, beautiful young woman (9); but I have no common friend to procure me that permission, without which I would not dare to spread the copy. is the settled tenor of my present resolution; You see, Sir, that if to know one's errors NO. XXVI. TO MRS. STEWART, OF STAIR. 1786. MADAM.-The hurry of my preparations for going abroad has hindered me from performing my promise so soon as I intended. I have here sent you a parcel of songs, &c., which never made their appearance, except to a friend or two at most. Perhaps some of them may be no great entertainment to you, but of that I am far from being an adequate judge. The song to the tune of Ettrick Banks (The Bonnie Lass of Ballochmyle), you will easily see the impropriety of exposing much, even in manuscript. I think, myself, it has some merit, both as a tolerable description of one of nature's sweetest scenes, a July evening, and one of the finest pieces of I am quite aware, Madam, what task the world would assign me in this letter. The obscure bard, when any of the great condescend to take notice of him should heap the altar with the incense of flattery. Their high ancestry, their own great and god-like qualities and actions, should be recounted with the most exaggerated description. This, Madam, is a task for which I am altogether unfit. Besides a certain disqualifying pride of heart, I know nothing of your connexions in life, and have no access to where your real character is to be found-the company of your compeers; and more, I am afraid that even the most refined adulation is by no means the road to your good opinion. One feature of your character I shall ever with grateful pleasure remember-the reception I got when I had the honour of waiting on you at Stair. on you at Stair. I am little acquainted with politeness, but I know a good deal of benevolence of temper and goodness of heart. Surely did those in exalted stations know how happy they could make some classes of their inferiors by condescension and affability, they would never stand so high, measuring out with every look the height of their ele vation, but condescend as sweetly as did Mrs. Stewart of Stair. R. B. NO. XXVII. IN THE NAME OF THE NINE. Amen. WE, Robert Burns, by virtue of a warrant from Nature, bearing date the twenty-fifth day of January, anno domini one thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine (10), Poet Laureat, and Bard-in-Chief, in and over the districts and countries of Kyle, Cunningham, and Carrick, of old extent, To our trusty and well-beloved William Chalmers and John M'Adam, students and practitioners in the ancient and mysterious science of confounding wright and wrong. RIGHT TRUSTY-Be it known unto you, That whereas in the course of our care and watchings over the order and police of all and sundry the manufacturers, retainers, and venders of poesy; bards, poets, poetasters, rhymers, jinglers, songsters, ballad-singers, &c. &c. &c. &c., male and female-We have discovered a certain nefarious, abominable, and wicked song or ballad, a copy whereof We have here enclosed; Our Will therefore is that ye pitch upon and appoint the most execrable individual of that most execrable species, known by the appellation, phrase, and nickname of The Deil's Yell Nowte (11): and after having caused him to kindle a fire at the Cross of Ayr, ye shall, at noon-tide of the day, put into the said wretch's merciless hands the said copy of the said nefarious and wicked song, to be consumed by fire in presence of all beholders, in abhorrence of, and terror to, all such compositions and composers. And this in nowise leave ye undone, but have it executed in every point as this our mandate bears, before the twentyfourth current, when in person We hope to applaud your faithfulness and zeal. Given at Mauchline this twentieth day of November, anno domini one thousand seven hundred and eighty-six. God save the Bard! NO. XXVIII. TO GAVIN HAMILTON, Esq., Edinburgh, Dec. 7th, 1786. HONOURED SIR.-I have paid every attention to your commands, but can only say, what perhaps you will have heard before this reach you, that Muirkirklands were bought by a John Gordon, W. S., but for whom I know not; Mauchlands, Haugh Miln, &c., by a Frederick Fotheringham, supposed to be for Ballochmyle Laird; And Adam-hill and Shawood were bought for Oswald's folks. This is so imperfect an account, and will be so late ere it reach you, that were it not to discharge my conscience I would not trouble you with it; but after all my diligence I could make it no sooner nor better. For my own affairs, I am in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas à Kempis or John Bunyan; and you may expect henceforth to see my birth-day inserted among the wonderful events, in the Poor Robin's and Aberdeen Almanacks, along with the black Monday, and the battle of Bothwell-bridge. My Lord Glencairn and the Dean of Faculty, Mr. H. Erskine, have taken me under their wing; and by all probability I shall soon be the tenth worthy, and the eighth wise man of the world. Through my lord's influence, it is inserted in the records of the Caledonian Hunt, that they universally, one and all, subscribe for the second edition. My subscription bills come out to-morrow. and you shall have some of them next post. I have met in Mr. Dalrymyle of Orangefield, what Solomon emphatically calls "a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." The warmth with which he interests himself in my affairs is of the same enthusiastic kind which you, Mr. Aiken, and the few patrons that took notice of my earlier poetic days, showed for the poor unlucky devil of a poet. I always remember Mrs. Hamilton and Miss Kennedy in my poetic prayers, but you both in prose and verse. | May cauld ne'er catch you but a hap (12), NO. XXIX. R. B. TO JOHN BALLANTINE, Esq., Edinburgh, Dec. 13th, 1786. MY HONOURED FRIEND.I would not write you till I could have it in my power to give you some account of myself and my matters, which, by the bye, is often no easy task. I arrived here on Tuesday was se'nnight, and have suffered ever since I came to town with a miserable head-ache and stomach complaint, but am now a good deal better. I have found a worthy warm friend in Mr. Dalrymple of Orangefield, who introduced me to Lord Glencairn, a man whose worth and brotherly kindness to me I shall remember when time shall be no more. By his interest it is passed in the "Caledonian Hunt," and entered in their books, that they are to take each a copy of the second edition, for which they are to pay one guinea. I have been introduced to a good many of the noblesse, but my avowed patrons and patronesses are, the Duchess of Gordon-the Countess of Glencairn, with my Lord, and Lady Betty (13)-the Dean of FacultySir John Whitefoord. I have likewise warm friends among the literati; Professors Stewart, Blair, and Mr. Mackenzie-the “Man of Feeling." An unknown hand left ten guineas for the Ayrshire bard with Mr. Sibbald, which I got. I since have discovered my generous unknown friend to be Patrick Miller, Esq., brother to the Justice Clerk,-and drank a glass of claret with him by invitation at his own house yesternight. I am nearly agreed with Creech to print my book, and I suppose I will begin on Monday. I will send a subscription bill or two, next post; when I intend writing to my first kind patron, |