94 EPISTLE FROM ESOPUS TO MARIA. [1794.

EPISTLE FROM ESOPUS TO MARIA.

The dramatic company which occasionally had a season in the little theatre behind the George Inn in Dumfries, was headed by Mr. James Williamson; and this hero had, like Burns, been admitted into the jocund circle at Woodley Park, [Mr. Riddel's]. Our poet had happened at this time to hear of a most extraordinary adventure having befallen Williamson and his associates, while performing at Whitehaven. The "bad Earl of Lonsdale" had committed the whole company to prison there as vagrants!1 Here were two favorite aversions of Burns brought into excitement at once, for he hated the Cumbrian lord with a perfect hatred, a feeling in which he was not singular. Fructifying upon the offence of Maria and the despotism of Lonsdale together, he conceived the idea of the following epistle, as from Williamson in his Whitehaven prison to the lady whose society he had lately enjoyed.

FROM those drear solitudes and frowsy cells, Where infamy with sad repentance dwells;

2

your welfare, peace, and bliss-I have the honour to be, madam, your most devoted humble servant, R. B."

Letter to Mrs. Riddel.

1 See a communication in the Kendal Mercury, July 10, 1852.

2 In these dread solitudes and awful cells,

Where heavenly pensive contemplation dwells, etc.

Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard.

ET. 36.] EPISTLE FROM ESOPUS TO MARIA. 95

Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast,
And deal from iron hands the spare repast;
Where truant 'prentices, yet young in sin,
Blush at the curious stranger peeping in;
Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar,
Resolve to drink, nay, half to whore no more;
Where tiny thieves not destined yet to swing,
Beat hemp for others, riper for the string:
From these dire scenes my wretched lines I
date,

To tell Maria her Esopus' fate.

"Alas! I feel I am no actor here!"1
'Tis real hangmen, real scourges bear!
Prepare, Maria, for a horrid tale

Will turn thy very rouge to deadly pale;
Will make thy hair, though erst from gipsy

polled,

By barber woven, and by barber sold,

Though twisted smooth with Harry's nicest

care,

Like hoary bristles to erect and stare.
The hero of the mimic scene, no more
I start in Hamlet, in Othello roar;
Or haughty chieftain, 'mid the din of arms,
In Highland bonnet woo Malvina's charms;
While sans culottes stoop up the mountain
high,

1 Lyttelton's Prologue to Thomson's Coriolanus, spoken by Mr. Quin.

96

EPISTLE FROM ESOPUS TO MARIA. [1794.

And steal from me Maria's prying eye.
Blest Highland bonnet! once my proudest dress,
Now prouder still, Maria's temples press.
I see her wave thy towering plumes afar,
And call each coxcomb to the wordy war;
I see her face the first of Ireland's sons,1
And even out-Irish his Hibernian bronze;
The crafty colonel 2 leaves the tartaned lines
For other wars, where he a hero shines;
The hopeful youth, in Scottish senate bred,
Who owns a Bushby's heart without the head,
Comes 'mid a string of coxcombs to display,
That veni, vidi, vici, is his way;

The shrinking bard adown an alley skulks,
And dreads a meeting worse than Woolwich
hulks ;

(Though there, his heresies in church and state
Might well award him Muir and Palmer's fate :)
Still she undaunted reels and rattles on,
And dares the public like a noontide sun.

1 The poet here enumerates several of Mrs. Riddel's visiting-friends. "Gillespie " has been noted as the name of the Irish gentleman first alluded to.

2 Colonel M'Dowall, of Logan, noted as the Lothario of his county during many long years.

8 Burns alludes in this poem to a family which in his day occupied a conspicuous place in Dumfriesshire society. Mr. John Bushby had raised himself to wealth and importance, first as a solicitor, and afterwards as a banker. The person referred to in these lines was Mr. Bushby Maitland, son of John Bushby, then a young advocate, and supposed to be by no means the equal of his father in point of intellect.

ET. 36.] EPISTLE FROM ESOPUS TO MARIA. 97

(What scandal called Maria's jaunty stagger, The ricket reeling of a crooked swagger? Whose spleen e'en worse than Burns's venom when

He dips in gall unmixed his eager pen,
And pours his vengeance in the burning line,
Who christened thus Maria's lyre divine
The idiot strum of vanity bemused,

And even the abuse of poesy abused?

Who called her verse a parish workhouse, made For motley, foundling fancies, stolen or strayed?)

A workhouse! ah, that sound awakes my woes,
And pillows on the thorn my racked repose !
In durance vile here must I wake and weep,
And all my frowsy couch in sorrow steep-
That straw where many a rogue has lain of
yore,

And vermined gipsies littered heretofore !

Why Lonsdale thus, thy wrath on vagrants

pour?

Must earth no rascal save thyself endure?

Must thou alone in guilt immortal swell,

And make a vast monopoly of hell?

Thou know'st the virtues cannot hate thee

worse;

The vices also, must they club their curse?
Or must no tiny sin to others fall,

Because thy guilt's supreme enough for all?
Maria, send me, too, thy griefs and cares;

98

THE LOVELY LASS OF INVERNESS. [1794.

In all of thee sure thy Esopus shares.

As thou at all mankind the flag unfurls,
Who on my fair one Satire's vengeance hurls?
Who calls thee pert, affected, vain coquette,
A wit in folly, and a fool in wit?
Who says that fool alone is not thy due,
And quotes thy treacheries to prove it true?
Our force united on thy foes we'll turn,
And dare the war with all of woman born:
For who can write and speak as thou and I
My periods that deciphering defy,

And thy still matchless tongue that conquers all reply?

THE LOVELY LASS OF INVERNESS.1

TUNE- Lass of Inverness.

The first half-stanza of this song is from an older composition, which Burns here improved upon.

THE lovely lass o' Inverness,

Nae joy nor pleasure can she see;

1 The songs wholly, or almost wholly, by Burns, furnished for the fifth volume of Johnson's Museum, now follow, as far as p. 112.