opportunity. To court the notice or the tables of the great, except where I sometimes have had a little matter to ask of them, or more often the pleasanter task of witnessing my gratitude to them, is what I never have done, and I trust never shall do. But with your ladyship I have the honour to be connected by one of the strongest and most endearing ties in the whole moral world. Common sufferers in a cause where even to be unfortunate is glorious-the cause of heroic loyalty! Though my fathers had not illustrious honours and vast properties to hazard in the contest, though they left their humble cottages only to add so many units more to the unnoted crowd that followed their leaders, yet what they could, they did, and what they had, they lost: with unshaken firmness and unconcealed political attachments, they shook hands with ruin for what they esteemed the cause of their king and their country. This language, and the enclosed verses, are for your ladyship's eye alone. Poets are not very famous for their prudence; but as I can do nothing for a cause which is now nearly no more, I do not wish to hurt myself. I have the honour to be, my lady, your ladyship's obliged and obedient humble servant, 1 R. B. TO PROVOST MAXWELL, OF LOCHMABEN. ELLISLAND, 20th December 1789. DEAR PROVOST-As my friend, Mr Graham, goes for your good town to-morrow, I cannot resist the temptation to send you a few lines; and as I have nothing to say, I have chosen this sheet of foolscap, and begun, as you see, at the top of the first page, because I have ever observed that when once people have fairly set out, they know not where to stop. Now, that my first sentence is concluded, I have nothing to do but to pray Heaven to help me on to another. Shall I write you on politics, or religion, two master-subjects for your sayers of nothing? Of the first, I daresay by this time you are nearly surfeited; and for the last, whatever they may talk of it who make it a kind of companyconcern, I never could endure it beyond a soliloquy. I might write you on farming, on building, on marketing; but my poor distracted mind is so torn, so jaded, so racked and bedeviled with the task of the superlatively damned to make one guinea do the business of three, that I detest, abhor, and swoon at the very word business, though no less than four letters of my very short surname are in it. 2 Well, to make the matter short, I shall betake myself to a subject ever fruitful of themes-a subject the turtle-feast of the 1 Those addressed to Mr William Tytler. * The provost, as the leading voter in Marjory of the Monie Lochs, must have recently had a sufficiency of politics. sons of Satan, and the delicious secret sugar-plum of the babes of grace-a subject sparkling with all the jewels that wit can find in the mines of genius, and pregnant with all the stores of learning from Moses and Confucius to Franklin and Priestleyin short, may it please your lordship, I intend to write * * * ['Here,' says Allan Cunningham, 'the poet inserted a song, the specification of which could be of no benefit to his fame."] If at any time you expect a field-day in your town—a day when dukes, earls, and knights pay their court to weavers, tailors, and cobblers-I should like to know of it two or three days beforehand. It is not that I care three skips of a cur-dog for the politics, but I should like to see such an exhibition of human nature. If you meet with that worthy old veteran in religion and good-fellowship, Mr Jeffrey, or any of his amiable family, I beg you will give them my best compliments. R. B. In the conclusion of this letter, Burns alludes to the minister of Lochmaben. In the course of his perambulations, he was occasionally in the house of this worthy man. Mr Jeffrey had a daughter, a sweet blue-eyed young creature, who at one of Burns's visits, probably the first, did the honours of the table. Next morning, our poet presented at breakfast a song which has given the young lady immortality : THE BLUE-EYED LASSIE1 I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen, She talked, she smiled, my heart she wiled; But, spare to speak, and spare to speed; 2 To her twa een sae bonny bluc. road pang perhaps death This song was printed in Johnson's Museum, with an air composed by Mr Riddel of Glenriddel. It has been set by George Thomson to the tune of The Blathrie o 't,' but, in the opinion of the present editor, it flows much more sweetly to 'My only joe and dearie O.' 2 A proverbial expression. Miss Jeffrey married a gentleman named Renwick, of New York, and was living there about 1822, when a son of Mr George Thomson was introduced to her by her son, the professor of chemistry in Columbia College. Mr Thomson gave the following account of her to his father:-She is a widow-has still the remains of Burns's delightful portrait of her: her twa sweet een, that gave him his death, are yet clear and full of expression. She has great suavity of manners and much good sense.' He then adds from her recollection a charming picture of the manners of Burns in refined and agreeable society. She told me that she often looks back with a melancholy satisfaction on the many evenings she spent in the company of the great bard, in the social circle of her father's fireside, listening to the brilliant sallies of his imagination and to his delightful conversation. "Many times," said she, "have I seen Burns enter my father's dwelling in a cold rainy night, after a long ride over the dreary moors. On such occasions one of the family would help to disencumber him of his dreadnought and boots, while others brought him a pair of slippers and made him a warm dish of tea. It was during these visits that he felt himself perfectly happy, and opened his whole soul to us, repeated and even sang many of his admirable songs, and enchanted all who had the good-fortune to be present with his manly, luminous observations and artless manners. I never," she added, "could fancy that Burns had ever followed the rustic occupation of the plough, because everything he said or did had a gracefulness and charm that was in an extraordinary degree engaging.' It may be pleasant to many to know, that Captain Wilks, of the United States navy, and superior of the Exploratory Expedition whose publication has been received in this country as a valuable contribution to science, is a son-in-law of the Blue-eyed Lassie of Burns. Mrs Renwick, however, had the fate to see Mrs Wilks and others of her children go to the grave before her. In the New York Mirror (1846) appeared the following notice regarding Mrs Renwick:-'The lady to whom the following verses -never before published-were addressed, known to the readers of Burns as the "Blue-eyed Lassie," is one of a race whose beauties and virtues formed for several generations the inspiration of the master of the Scottish song. Her mother was Agnes Armstrong, in whose honour the touching words and beautiful air of "Roslin 1 New edition of Mr Thomson's Melodies, 1830. Castle were composed, and "Fairie fair" was her more remote progenitrix.' The editor then adds the following song as a composition of Burns: SONG. AIR-Maggy Lauder. When first I saw fair Jeanie's face, She's aye, aye sae blithe, sae gay, Had I Dundas's whole estate, Or Hopetoun's wealth to shine in; She's aye, aye sae blithe, sae gay, &c. But sair I fear some happier swain Has gained sweet Jeanie's favour: If so, may every bliss be hers, Though I maun never have her, While men have eyes, or ears, or taste, She's aye, aye sae blithe, sae gay, &c. Mrs Renwick has been for some years dead. The Countess of Glencairn, mother of his beloved patron, had from the first shewn Burns much kindness. By her origin, as we 'This allusion is not readily intelligible. The person meant seems to be ‘Fairlie Fair,' a fictitious character in the ballad of Hardyknute, written at the beginning of the last century by Lady Wardlaw. have seen, she was a somewhat remarkable person among the Scottish nobility, being the daughter of a village musician, who was raised to unexpected wealth by the bequest of a fortunate relative. Her ladyship had lately written a kind letter to Burns. TO THE COUNTESS OF GLENCAIRN. [ELLISLAND, December 1789.] MY LADY-The honour you have done your poor poet in writing him so very obliging a letter, and the pleasure the enclosed beautiful verses have given him, came very seasonably to his aid amid the cheerless gloom and sinking despondency of diseased nerves and December weather. As to forgetting the family of Glencairn, Heaven is my witness with what sincerity I could use those old verses, which please me more in their rude simplicity than the most elegant lines I ever saw : If thee, Jerusalem, I forget, Skill part from my right hand. My tongue to my mouth's roof let cleave, If I do thee forget, Jerusalem, and thee above My chief joy do not set.' When I am tempted to do anything improper, I dare not, because I look on myself as accountable to your ladyship and family. Now and then, when I have the honour to be called to the tables of the great, if I happen to meet with any mortification from the stately stupidity of self-sufficient squires, or the luxurious insolence of upstart nabobs, I get above the creatures by calling to remembrance that I am patronised by the noble House of Glencairn; and at gala-times-such as New-year's Day, a christening, or the kirnnight, when my punch-bowl is brought from its dusty corner, and filled up in honour of the occasion, I begin with-The Countess of Glencairn! My good woman, with the enthusiasm of a grateful heart, next cries: My Lord! and so the toast goes on until I end with Lady Harriet's little angel!' whose epithalamium I have pledged myself to write. When I received your ladyship's letter, I was just in the act of transcribing for you some verses I have lately composed, and meant to have sent them my first leisure hour, and acquainted you with my late change of life. I mentioned to my lord my fears concerning my farm. Those fears were, indeed, too true; it is a bargain would have ruined me, but for the lucky circumstance of my having an Excise commission. People may talk as they please of the ignominy of the Excise; Lady Harriet Don was the daughter of Lady Glencairn. Her child was the late accomplished Sir Alexander Don, of Newton-Don, Bart. |