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 me. My book will be ready in a fortnight. If you have any subscribers, return them by Connel. The Lord stand with the righteous-Amen, amen! R. B. XVI. TO MR DAVID BRICE, SHOEMAKER, GLASGOW. MOSSGIEL, 17th July 1786. I HAVE been so throng [busy] printing my Poems, that I could scarcely find as much time as to write to you. Poor foolish 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. XVII. TO MR JOHN RICHMOND. OLD ROME FOREST, 30th July 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 no where to lay my head." I know you will pour an execration on her head, but spare the poor, ill-advised girl, for my sake. * ** 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, R. B. XVIII. TO MONS. JAMES SMITH, MAUCHLINE. Monday Morning, MossGIEL. MY DEAR SIR,-I went to Dr Douglas yesterday, fully resolved to take the opportunity of Captain Smith; but I found the Doctor with a Mr and Mrs White, both Jamaicans, and they have deranged my plans altogether. They assure him that to send me from Savannah la Mar to Port Antonio will cost my master, Charles Douglas, upwards of fifty pounds, besides running the risk of throwing myself into a pleuritic fever, in consequence of hard travelling in the sun. On these accounts he refuses sending me with Smith; but a vessel sails from Greenock the 1st of September, right for the place of my destination. The captain of her is an intimate friend of Mr Gavin Hamilton's, and as good a fellow as heart could wish: with him I am destined to go. Where I shall shelter I know not, but I hope to weather the storm. *** On Thursday morning, if you can muster as much self-denial as to be out of bed about seven o'clock, I shall see you as I ride through to Cumnock. After all, Heaven bless the sex! I feel there is still happiness for me among them : Oh, woman, lovely woman! Heaven designed you R. B. XIX. TO MR JOHN KENNEDY. KILMARNOCK, August 1786. MY DEAR SIR,-Your truly facetious epistle of the 3d 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 leeway 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 for 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, And 'mang her favourites admit you, If e'er Detraction shore to smit you, threaten May nane believe him. R. B. XX. TO MR BURNES, MONTROSE. MOSSGIEL, September 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 -; I should [be] equally mortified 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. XXI. TO MRS STEWART OF STAIR. [August?] 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, p. 223] 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 Nature's workmanship, the finest, indeed, we know anything of an amiable, beautiful young woman (Miss Alexander); but I have no common friend to procure me that permission, without which I would not dare to spread the copy. 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 connections 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. 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 elevation, but condescend as sweetly as did Mrs Stewart of Stair. R. B. XXII. TO MR ROBERT AIKEN. SIR, I was with Wilson my printer t'other day, and settled all our bygone matters between us. After I had paid 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 twentyseven 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 epocha which I think will arrive at the payment of the British national debt. There is scarcely anything 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 been 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 everything 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 has 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, 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 is the settled tenor of iny present resolution; but should inimical circumstances forbid me closing with your kind offer, or enjoying it only threaten to entail further misery |