CCCXXVII. TO MR THOMSON. January 1795. I FEAR for my songs; however, a few may please, yet originality is a coy feature in composition, and in a multiplicity of efforts in the same style, disappears altogether. For these three thousand years, we poetic folks have been describing the spring, for instance; and as the spring continues the same, there must soon be a sameness in the imagery, &c., of these said rhyming folks. . . . . .... A great critic (Aikin) on songs says, that love and wine are the exclusive themes for song-writing. The following is on neither subject, and consequently is no song, but will be allowed, I think, to be two or three pretty good prose thoughts inverted into rhyme (p. 291). Jan. 15th. The foregoing has lain by me this fortnight, for want of a spare moment. The supervisor of excise here being ill, I have been acting for him, and I assure you I have hardly five minutes to myself to thank you for your elegant present of Pindar. The typography is admirable, and worthy of the truly original bard. I do not give you the foregoing song for your book, but merely by way of vive la bagatelle; for the piece is not really poetry. R. B. CCCXXVIII, TO MRS RIDDEL. MR BURNS's compliments to Mrs Riddel-is much obliged to her for her polite attention in sending him the book. Owing to Mr B. at present acting as supervisor of Excise, a department that occupies his every hour of the day, he has not that time to spare which is necessary for any belles-lettres pursuit; but as he will in a week or two again return to his wonted leisure, he will then pay that attention to Mrs R.'s beautiful song, To thee, loved Nith, which it so well deserves. When Anacharsis's Travels come to hand, which Mrs Riddel mentioned as her gift to the public library, Mr B. will feel honoured by the indulgence of a perusal of them before presentation. It is a book he has never yet seen, and the regulations of the library allow too little leisure for deliberate reading. Friday evening. P.S.-Mr Burns will be much obliged to Mrs Riddel, if she will favour him with a perusal of any of her poetical pieces which he may not have seen. CCCXXIX. TO MR THOMSON. ECCLEFECHAN, 7th February 1795. MY DEAR THOMSON,-You cannot have any idea of the predicament in which I write to you. In the course of my duty as supervisor-in which capacity I have acted of late-I came yesternight to this unfortunate, wicked little village. I have gone forward, but snows of ten feet deep have impeded my progress; I have tried to gae back the gait I cam again, but the same obstacle has shut me up within insuperable bars. To add to my misfortune, since dinner, a scraper has been torturing catgut, in sounds that would have insulted the dying agonies of a sow under the hands of a butcher, and thinks himself, on that very account, exceeding good company. In fact, I have been in a dilemma, either to get drunk, to forget these miseries; or to hang myself, to get rid of them. Like a prudent man-a character congenial to my every thought, word, and deed-I, of two evils, have chosen the least, and am very drunk, at your service! I wrote you yesterday from Dumfries. I had not time then to tell you all I wanted to say, and at present I have not capacity. Do you know an air-I am sure you must know it-We'll gang nae mair to yon Town? I think, in slowish time, it would make an excellent song. I am highly delighted with it; and if you should think it worthy of your attention, I have a fair dame in my eye, to whom I would consecrate it. Try it with this doggrel (p. 299)--until I give you a better. R. B. As I am just going to bed, I wish you a good-night. P.S.-As I am likely to be storm-staid here to-morrow, if I am in the humour, you shall have a long letter from me. CCCXXX. TO MR HERON OF HERON. SIR,-I enclose you some copies of a couple of political ballads, one of which, I believe, you have never seen. Would to Heaven I could make you master of as many votes in the Stewartry-butWho does the utmost that he can, Does well, acts nobly-angels could no more. In order to bring my humble efforts to bear with more effect on the foe, I have privately printed a good many copies of both ballads, and have sent them among friends all about the country. To pillory on Parnassus the rank reprobation of character, the utter dereliction of all principle, in a profligate junto, which has not only outraged virtue, but violated common decency, spurning even hypocrisy as paltry iniquity below their daring-to unmask their flagitiousness to the broadest day-to deliver such over to their merited fate-is surely not merely innocent, but laudable; is not only propriety, but virtue. You have already, as your auxiliary, the sober detestation of mankind on the heads of your opponents; and I swear by the lyre of Thalia, to muster on your side all the votaries of honest laughter, and fair, candid ridicule. I am extremely obliged to you for your kind mention of my interests in a letter which Mr Syme shewed me. At present, my situation in life must be in a great measure stationary, at least for two or three years. The statement is this-I am on the supervisors' list, and as we come on there by precedency, in two or three years I shall be at the head of that list, and be appointed of course. Then, a FRIEND might be of service to me in getting me into a place of the kingdom which I would like. A supervisor's income varies from about a hundred and twenty to two hundred a year; but the business is an incessant drudgery, and would be nearly a complete bar to every species of literary pursuit. The moment I am appointed supervisor, in the common routine, I may be nominated on the collector's list; and this is always a business purely of political patronage. A collectorship varies much, from better than two hundred a year to near a thousand. They also come forward by precedency on the list; and have, besides a handsome income, a life of complete leisure. A life of literary leisure, with a decent competency, is the summit of my wishes. It would be the prudish affectation of silly pride in me to say that I do not need, or would not be indebted to, a political friend; at the same time, sir, I by no means lay my affairs before you thus, to hook my dependent situation on your benevolence. If, in my progress of life, an opening should occur where the good offices of a gentleman of your public character and political consequence might bring me forward, I shall petition your goodness with the same frankness as I now do myself the honour to subscribe myself, R. B. CCCXXXI. TO JOHN SYME, ESQ. You know that, among other high dignities, you have the honour to be my supreme court of critical judicature, from which there is no appeal. I enclose you a song (0 wat ye, p. 299) which I composed since I saw you, and I am going to give you the history of it. Do you know that among much that I admire in the characters and manners of those great folks whom I have now the honour to call my acquaintances, the Oswald family,—there is nothing charms me more than Mr Oswald's unconcealable attachment to that incomparable woman? Did you ever, my dear Syme, meet with a man who owed more to the Divine Giver of all good things than Mr O.? A fine fortune, a pleasing exterior, selfevident amiable dispositions, and an ingenuous, upright mind, and that informed, too, much beyond the usual run of young fellows of his rank and fortune and to all this, such a woman!— but of her I must say nothing at all, in despair of saying anything adequate. In my song, I have endeavoured to do justice to what would be his feelings, on seeing, in the scene I have drawn, the habitation of his Lucy. As I am a good deal pleased with my performance, I, in my first fervour, thought of sending it to Mrs Oswald, but, on second thoughts, perhaps what I offer as the honest incense of genuine respect, might, from the well-known character of poverty and poetry, be construed into some modification or other of that servility which my soul abhors. Do let me know some convenient moment, ere the worthy family leave the town, that I, with propriety, may wait on them. In the circle of the fashionable herd, those who come either to show their own consequence, or to borrow consequence from the visit-in such a mob I will not appear; mine is a different errand. Yours, ROBT. BURNS. CCCXXXII. TO MR THOMSON. May 1795. WELL! this is not amiss (p. 302). You see how I answer your orders your tailor could not be more punctual. I am just now in a high fit for poetising, provided that the strait-jacket of criticism don't cure me. If you can, in a post or two, administer a little of the intoxicating potion of your applause, it will raise your humble servant's frenzy to any height you want. I am at this moment "holding high converse" with the Muses, and have not a word to throw away on such a prosaic dog as you are. R. B. CCCXXXIII. TO MR THOMSON. May 1795. TEN thousand thanks for your elegant present-though I am ashamed of the value of it being bestowed on a man who has not, by any means, merited such an instance of kindness. I have shown it to two or three judges of the first abilities here, and they all agree with me in classing it as a first-rate production. My phiz is sae kenspeckle, that the very joiner's apprentice, whom Mrs Burns employed to break up the parcel (I was out of town that day), knew it at once. My most grateful compliments to Allan, who has honoured my rustic Muse so much with his masterly pencil. One strange coincidence is, that the little one who is making the felonious attempt on the cat's tail, is the most striking likeness of an ill-deedie, wee, rumble-gairie urchin of mine, whom, from that propensity to witty wickedness, and manfu' mischief, which, even at twa days auld, I foresaw would form the striking features of his disposition, I named Willie Nicol, after a certain friend of mine, who is one of the masters of a grammar-school in a city which shall be nameless. Several people think that Allan's likeness of me is more striking than Nasmyth's, for which I sat to him half-a-dozen times. However, there is an artist of considerable merit just now in this town, who has hit the most remarkable likeness of what I am at this moment, that I think ever was taken of anybody. It is a small miniature, and as it will be in your town getting itself be-crystallized, &c., I have some thoughts of suggesting to you to prefix a vignette taken from it to my song, Contented ur Little and Canty wi' Mair, in order that the portrait of my face and the picture of my mind may go down the stream of time together. Give the enclosed epigram to my much-valued friend Cunningham, and tell him, that on Wednesday I go to visit a friend of his, to whom his friendly partiality in speaking of me in a manner introduced me-I mean a well-known military and literary character, Colonel Dirom. You do not tell me how you liked my two last songs. Are they condemned? R. B. CCCXXXIV. 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 Dullness 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 sympathize in 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 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 |