cisms of approbation or disapprobation as I peruse along. I will make no apology for presenting you with a few unconnected thoughts that occurred to me in my repeated perusals of your poem. I want to shew you that I have honesty enough to tell you what I take to be truths, even when they are not quite on the side of approbation; and I do it in the firm faith that you have equal greatness of mind to hear them with pleasure. I had lately the honour of a letter from Dr. Moore, where he tells me that he has sent me some books: they are not yet come to hand, but I hear they are on the way. Wishing you all success in your progress in the path of fame; and that you may equally escape the danger of stumbling through incautious speed, or losing ground through loitering neglect, I am, &c, R. B. ing to intrude on your time with a long ballad. I have, as you will shortly see, finished "The Kirk's Alarm;" but now that is done, and that I have laughed once or twice at the conceits in some of the stanzas, I am determined not to let it get into the public; so I send you this copy, the first that I have sent to Ayr-shire, except some few of the stanzas, which I wrote off in embryo for Gavin Hamilton, under the express provision and request that you will only read it to a few of us, and do not on any account give, or permit to be taken, any copy of the ballad. If I could be of any service, to Dr. M'Gill, I would do it, though it should be at a much greater expense than irritating a few bigoted priests, but I am afraid serving him in his present embarras is a task too hard for me. I have enemies enow, God knows, though I do not wantonly add to the number. Still, as I think there is some merit in two or three of the thoughts, I send it to you as a small but sincere testimony how much, and with what respectful esteem, I am, dear, Sir, Your obliged humble servant, "I Do not lose a moment in returning you my sincere acknowledgments for your letter, and your criticism on my poem, which is a very flattering proof that you have read it with attention. I think your objections are perfectly just, except in one instance. "You have indeed been very profuse of panegyric on my little performance. A much less portion of applause from you would have been gratifying to me; since I think its value depends entirely upon the source whence it proceedsthe incense of praise, like other incense, is more grateful from the quality, than the quantity, of the odour. "I hope you still cultivate the pleasures of poetry, which are precious even independent of the rewards of fame. Perhaps the most valuable property of poetry is its power of disengaging the mind from worldly cares, and leading the imagination to the richest springs of intellectual enjoyment; since, however frequently life may be chequered with gloomy scenes, those who truly love the Muse can always find one little path adorned with flowers and cheered by sunshine."] + [Of Knockshinnock, in Glen Afton, Ayr-shire.] [An error into which the previous biographers of Burns have fallen is corrected by this letter. The" Kirk's Alarm” is neither an early production nor of western descent; it was composed at Ellisland with the hope of rendering some service to the Reverend Dr. M'Gill, against whom a cry of heresy had been raised-and not without reason. There are extant two copies of this satire in the poet's hand-writing; one is contained in the Afton MSS. and the other is in the collection of the daughter of the gentleman to whom this letter is addressed.-CUNNINGHAM,] "When you can spare a few moments, I should be proud of a letter from you, directed for me, Gerrard-street, Soho. "I cannot express my happiness sufficiently at the instance of your attachment to my late inestimable friend, Bob Fergusson [in the erection of a monument to him], who was particularly intimate with myself and relations. While I recollect with pleasure his extraordinary talents, and many amiable qualities, it affords me the greatest consolation that I am honoured with the correspondence of his successor in national simplicity and genius. That Mr. Burns has refined in the art of poetry must readily be admitted; but, notwithstanding many favourable representations, I am yet to learn that he inherits his convivial powers. "There was such a richness of conversation, such a plenitude of fancy and attraction in him, that when I call the happy period of our intercourse to my memory, I feel my. self in a state of delirium. I was then younger than him by eight or ten years; but his manner was so felicitous that he enraptured every person around him, and infused into the hearts of young and old the spirit which operated on his own mind."] and seasons, will, I hope, plead my excuse for neglecting so long to answer your obliging letter of the 5th of August. That you have done well in quitting your laborious concern in * * * I do not doubt; the weighty reasons you mention were, I hope, very, and deservedly indeed, weighty ones, and your health is a matter of the last importance; but whether the remaining proprietors of the paper have also done well is what I much doubt. The***. so far as I was a reader, exhibited such a brilliancy of point, such an elegance of paragraph, and such a variety of intelligence, that I can hardly conceive it possible to continue a daily paper in the same degree of excellence: but if there was a man who had abilities equal to the task, that man's assistance the proprietors have lost. When I received your letter I was transcribing for * * * my letter to the magistrates of the Canongate, Edinburgh, begging their permission to place a tomb-stone over poor Fergusson, and their edict in consequence of my petition, but now I shall send them to Poor Fergusson! If there be a life beyond the grave, which I trust there is; and if there be a good God presiding over all nature, which I am sure there is; thou art now enjoying existence in a glorious world, where worth of the heart alone is distinction in the man; where riches, deprived of all their pleasure-purchasing powers, return to their native sordid matter; where titles and honours are the disregarded reveries of an idle dream: and where that heavy virtue, which is the negative conse [This child, named Francis Wallace, after Mrs. Dunlop, died at the early age of fourteen. He is described as having been, to all appearance, the most promising of all Burns's children.] [The poetic Epistle from Miss Janet Little was ushered in by the following account of herself: "Loudon House, 12th July, 1789. "SIR, "THOUGH I have not the happiness of being personally acquainted with you, yet amongst the number of those who have read and admired your publications, may I be permitted to trouble you with this? You must know, Sir, I am somewhat in love with the Muses, though I cannot boast of any favours they have deigned to confer upon me as yet; my situation in life has been very much against me as to that. I have spent some years in and about Ecclefechan (where my parents reside), in the station of a servant, and am now come to Loudon House, at present possessed by Mrs. H-; she is daughter to Mrs. Dunlop, of Dunlop, whom I understand you are particularly acquainted with. As I had the pleasure of perusing your poems, I felt a partiality for the author, which I should not have experienced had you been in a more dignified station. I wrote a few verses of address to you, which I did not then think of ever presenting; but as fortune seems to have favoured me in this, by bringing me into a family by whom you are well known, and much esteemed, and where, perhaps, I may have an opportunity of seeing you; I shall in hopes of your future friendship, take the liberty to transcribe them. 1. Fair fa' the honest rustic swain. Old Ramsay's shade reviv'd again I HAVE mentioned in my last my appointment to the Excise, and the birth of little Frank; who, by the bye, I trust will be no discredit to the honourable name of Wallace,* as he has a fine manly countenance, and a figure that might do credit to a little fellow two months older; and likewise an excellent good temper, though when he pleases he has a pipe only not quite so loud as the horn that his immortal name-sake blew as a signal to take out the pin of Stirling bridge. I had some time ago an epistle, part poetic, and part prosaic, from your poetess, Mrs. J. Little, a very ingenious, but modest composi tion. I should have written her as she re quested, but for the hurry of this new business. I have heard of her and her compositions in this country; and I am happy to add, always to the honour of her character. The fact is, I know not well how to write to her: I should sit down to a sheet of paper that I knew not how to stain. I am no dab at fine-drawn letter-writing; and, except when prompted by friendship or gratitude, or, which happens extremely rarely, inspired by the Muse (I know not her name) that presides over epistolary writing, I sit down, when necessitated to write, as I would sit down to beat hemp. Some parts of your letter of the 20th August struck me with the most melancholy concern for the state of your mind at present. Would I could write you a letter of comfort; I would sit down to it with as much pleasure as I would to write an epic poem, of my own composition, that should equal the Iliad. Religion, my dear friend, is the true comfort! A strong persuasion in a future state of existence; a proposition so obviously probable that, setting revelation aside, every nation and people, so far as investigation has reached, for at least near four thousand years, have, in some mode or other, firmly believed it. In vain would we reason and pretend to doubt. I have myself done so to a very daring pitch; but when I reflected that I was opposing the most ardent wishes and the most darling hopes of good men, and flying in the face of all human belief in all ages, I was shocked at my own conduct. I know not whether I have ever sent you the following lines, or if you have ever seen them; but it is one of my favourite quotations, which I keep constantly by me in my progress through life, in the language of the book of Job, BIG with the idea of this important day at Friar's Carse, I have watched the elements and skies, in the full persuasion that they would phenomena of terrific portent. announce it to the astonished world by some Yesternight until a very late hour did I wait with anxious horror, for the appearance of some Comet firing half the sky; or aerial armies of sanguinary Scandinavians, darting athwart the startled heavens, rapid as the ragged lightning, and horrid as those convulsions of nature that bury nations. The elements, however, seem to take the matter very quietly: they did not even usher in this morning with triple suns and a shower of blood, symbolical of the three potent heroes, and the mighty claret-shed of the day. For me, as Thomson in his Winter says of the storm-I shall "Hear astonished, and astonished sing" The whistle and the man; I sing The man that won the whistle, &c. A cuckold coward loun is he; To leave the heights of Parnassus and come to the humble vale of prose-I have some misgivings that I take too much upon me, when I request you to get your guest, Sir Robert Lawrie, to frank the two enclosed covers for me, the one of them, to Sir William Cunningham, of Robertland, Bart., at Kilmarnock, the other, to Mr. Allan Masterton, Writing-Master, Edinburgh. The first has a kindred claim on Sir Robert, as being a brother Baronet, and likewise a keen Foxite; the other is one of the worthiest men in the world, and a man of real genius; so, allow me to say he has a fraternal claim on you. I want them franked for to-morrow, as I cannot get them to the post to-night.-I shall send a servant again for them in the evening. Wishing that your head may be crowned with laurels to-night, and free from aches to-morrow, I have the honour to be, Sir. No. CLXVI. TO CAPTAIN RIDDEL. R. B.* Ellisland, 1789. SIR, I WISH from my inmost soul it were in my power to give you a more substantial gratification and return for all the goodness to the poet, than transcribing a few of his idle rhymes.— However, "an old song," though to a proverb an instance of insignificance, is generally the only coin a poet has to pay with. If my poems which I have transcribed, and mean still to transcribe into your book, were equal to the grateful respect and high esteem I bear for the gentleman to whom I present them, they would be the finest poems in the language. -As they are, they will at least be a testimony with what sincerity I have the honour to be, you have more good sense than to waste the precious days of vacation time in the dirt of business and Edinburgh.-Wherever you are, God bless you, and lead you not into temptation, but deliver you from evil! I do not know if I have informed you that I am now appointed to an Excise division, in the middle of which my house and farm lie. In this I was extremely lucky. Without ever having been an expectant, as they call their journeymen excisemen, I was directly planted down to all intents and purposes an officer of excise; there to flourish and bring forth fruits worthy of repentance. I know not how the word exciseman, or still more opprobrious, gauger, will sound in your ears. I too have seen the day when my auditory nerves would have felt very delicately on this subject; but a wife and children are things which have a wonderful power in blunting these kind of sensations. Fifty pounds a year for life, and a provision for widows and orphans, you will allow is no bad settlement for a poet. For the ignominy of the profession, I have the encouragement which I once heard a recruiting sergeant give to a numerous, if not a respectable, audience, in the streets of Kilmarnock." Gentlemen, for your further and better encouragement, I can assure you that our regiment is the most blackguard corps honest fellow has the surest chance of preferunder the Crown, and consequently with us an ment." You need not doubt that I find several very unpleasant and disagreeable circumstances in my business; but I am tired with and disgusted at the language of complaint against the evils of life. Human existence in the most favour able situations does not abound with pleasures, and has its inconveniences and ills; capricious ills as if they were the peculiar property of his foolish man mistakes these inconveniences and particular situation; and hence that eternal fickleness, that love of change, which has ruined, and daily does ruin many a fine fellow. as well as many a blockhead, and is almost, without exception, a constant source of disappointment and misery. I long to hear from you how you go on—not so much in business as in life. Are you pretty well satisfied with your own exertions, and tolerably at ease in your internal reflections! "Tis much to be a great character as a lawyer, but beyond comparison more to be a great character as a man. That you may be both the one and the other is the earnest wish, and that you will be both is the firm persuasion of, My dear Sir, &c. R. B. from his horse, many years after this jovial contest; be excelled in ready eloquence, and loved witty company. CUNNINGHAM. See the Poem of "The Whistle" page 307.] No. CLXVIII. TO MR. RICHARD BROWN. Ellisland, 4th November, 1789. I HAVE a good while had a wish to trouble you with a letter, and had certainly done it long ere now--but for a humiliating something that throws cold water on the resolution, as if one should say, "You have found Mr. Graham a very powerful and kind friend indeed, and that interest he is so kindly taking in your concerns you ought, by every thing in your power to keep alive and cherish." Now, though since God has thought proper to make one powerful and another helpless, the connection of obliger and obliged is all fair: and though my being under your patronage is to me highly honourable, yet, Sir, allow me to flatter myself that, as a poet and an honest man, you first interested yourself in my welfare, and principally as such still you permit me to approach you. I have found the excise business go on a great deal smoother with me than I expected; owing a good deal to the generous friendship of Mr. Mitchell, my collector, and the kind assistance of Mr. Findlater, my supervisor. I dare to be honest, and I fear no labour. Nor do I find my hurried life greatly inimical to my correspondence with the Muses. Their visits to me, indeed, and I believe to most of their acquaintance, like the visits of good angels, are short and far between: but I meet them now and then, as I jog through the hills of Nithsdale, just as I used to do on the banks of Ayr. Í take the liberty to inclose you a few bagatelles, all of them the productions of my leisure thoughts in my excise rides. I HAVE been so hurried, my ever dear friend, that though I got both your letters, I have not been able to command an hour to answer them as I wished; and even now you are to look on this as merely confessing debt, and craving days. Few things could have given me so much pleasure as the news that you were once more safe and sound on terra firma, and happy in that place where happiness is alone to be found, in the fire-side circle. May the benevolent Director of all things peculiarly bless you in all those endearing connections consequent on the tender and venerable names of husband and father! I have indeed been extremely lucky in getting an additional income of £50 a year, while, at the same time, the appointment will not cost me above £10 or £12 per annum of expenses more than I must have inevitably incurred. The worst circumstance is that the Excise division which I have got is so extensive, no less than ten parishes to ride over; and it abounds besides with so much business that I can scarcely steal a spare moment. However, labour endears rest, and both together are absolutely necessary for the proper enjoyment of human existence. I cannot meet you any where. No less than an order from the Board of Excise, at Edinburgh, is necessary before I can have so much time as to meet you in Ayr-shire. But do you come, and see me. We must have a social day, and perhaps lengthen it out with half the night, before you go again to sea. You are If you know, or have ever seen, Captain the earliest friend I now have on earth, my Grose, the antiquarian, you will enter into any brothers excepted and is not that an endear-humour that is in the verses on him. Perhaps ing circumstance? When you and I first met, we were at the green period of human life. The twig would easily take a bent, but would as easily return to its former state. You and I not only took a mutual bent, but, by the melancholy, though strong influence of being both of the family of the unfortunate, we were entwined with one another in our growth towards advanced age; and blasted be the sacrilegious hand that shall attempt to undo the union! You and I must have one bumper to my favourite toast, "May the companions of our youth be the friends of our old age!" Come and see me one year; I shall see you at Port Glasgow the next, and if we can contrive to have a gossiping between our two bedfellows, it will be so much additional pleasure. Mrs. Burns joins me in kind compliments to you and Mrs. Brown. Adieu! I am ever, my dear Sir, yours, R. B. you have seen them before, as I sent them to a The election ballad, as you will see, alludes to the present canvass in our string of boroughs. |