Wouldst thou be cured, thou silly, moping elf! And as we're merry, may we still be wise. 25th, Christmas morning. This, my much-loved friend, is a morning of wishes; accept mine -so Heaven hear me as they are sincere!- that blessings may attend your steps, and affliction know you not! In the charming words of my favourite author, The Man of Feeling: 'May the Great Spirit bear up the weight of thy gray hairs, and blunt the arrow that brings them rest!' Now that I talk of authors, how do you like Cowper? Is not the Task a glorious poem! The religion of the Task, bating a few scraps of Calvinistic divinity, is the religion of God and Nature-the religion that exalts, that ennobles man. Were not you to send me your Zeluco, in return for mine! Tell me how you like my marks and notes through the book. I would not give a farthing for a book unless I were at liberty to blot it with my criticisms. I have lately collected, for a friend's perusal, all my letters; I mean those which I first sketched, in a rough draught, and afterwards wrote out fair. On looking over some old musty papers, which from time to time I had parcelled by, as trash that were scarce worth preserving, and which yet, at the same time, I did not care to destroy, I discovered many of these rude sketches, and have written, and am writing them out, in a bound MS. for my friend's library. As I wrote always to you the rhapsody of the moment, I cannot find a single scroll to you, except one, about the commencement of our acquaintance. If there were any possible conveyance, I would send you a perusal of my book. R. B. It was probably at the end of the year that the poet addressed a short unceremonious rhymed epistle to worthy Collector Mitchell, alluding to a want of ready money, which he desired his friend to remedy by the temporary advance of a guinea, and also speaking of his illness as leaving him with resolutions of more careful conduct in future. THE SEDITION-BILL, 1795. I modestly fu' fain wad hint it, If wi' the hizzie down ye sent it, It would be kind; And while my heart wi' life-blood dunted, So may the auld year gang out moaning Domestic peace and comforts crowning POSTSCRIPT. Ye've heard this while how I've been licket, Grim loon! he got me by the fecket, But by guid luck I lap a wicket, But by that health, I've got a share o't, Then farewell folly, hide and hair o't, 181 servant-girl throbbed waistcoat The present was a season of national distress, in consequence of a failure of the late harvest. Discontents, meetings, and mobbings alarmed the ministry, and towards the close of the year, it was conceived that some additional restrictions upon the expression of public sentiment were necessary; hence the celebrated sedition-bill of that period. The broken remains of the Whig party were greatly exasperated by the measure, and amongst the various expressions of adverse sentiment in Scotland, none attracted more attention than a public meeting which took place at the Circus-now Adelphi Theatre-in Edinburgh, where the Honourable Henry Erskine, Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, presided. The Tory majority of the Scottish bar, seeing their chief thus engaged, as they said, in 'agitating the giddy and ignorant multitude, and cherishing such humours and dispositions as directly tend to overturn the laws,' resolved, at the approaching annual election to the deanship, to oppose Mr Erskine's reappointment. It was a most painful step for them to take, Erskine being a favourite with all parties and classes of men; but they felt that private feelings must yield to the sense of public duty. Throughout the whole of December, a war raged upon the subject in the 1 newspapers, and the 'Parliament House' had never known a more agitating crisis. At length, on the 12th of January 1796, the election took place, when Mr Dundas, the Lord Advocate, was preferred to honest Harry by a majority of 123 against 38 votes. The degraded dean was himself deeply mortified by the event. In the vexation of the moment, he went that night to his door, and hewed off from it with a coal-axe the brass-plate which expressed his forfeited dignity. The liberals throughout the country read the news with a bitterness beyond all common measure. It seemed to them as if every virtue under heaven was now to be as nothing, wanting the accompaniment of what they called subservient political professions. It was not likely that Burns would hear of the degradation of his friend and ancient patron with tranquil feelings, or remain quite silent on the occasion. He privately circulated the following effusion referring to the contest: THE DEAN OF FACULTY, A BALLAD. Dire was the hate at old Harlaw, But Scot with Scot ne'er met so hot, Than 'twixt Hal and Bob for the famous job- Squire Hal besides had in this case Pretensions rather brassy, For talents to deserve a place Are qualifications saucy; So their worships of the Faculty, Quite sick of merit's rudeness, Chose one who should owe it all, d'ye see, To their gratis grace and goodness. This fact is stated on the authority of the late Mr James Bertram, brewer Edinburgh, who was Mr Erskine's clerk at the time. FATAL ILLNESS OF THE POET. As once on Pisgah purged was the sight So may be, on this Pisgah height, Bob's purblind, mental vision: Nay, Bobby's mouth may be opened yet, In your heretic sins may you live and die, But accept, ye sublime majority, With your Honours and a certain King The more they're to your liking. 183 It is not impossible—our bard being not quite an angel-that he might recall to mind on this occasion that 'Bob' had taken no sort of notice of a certain elegy which had been written in 1787 on the death of his father the Lord President. It is perhaps just worthy of being remarked in addition, that this was one occasion when the two greatest of Scotland's modern great men might be said to meet in the struggle of public life— for, while Burns stood thus by Harry Erskine, the name of Walter Scott is found in the ranks of those who opposed and voted against him. It would have been pleasant to add, that young Francis Jeffrey had made an appearance on the occasion; but it appears that, while strongly inclined to vote with the minority, he was induced by a regard for the wishes of his father to remain neutral.1 Early in the month of January, when his health was in the course of improvement, Burns tarried to a late hour at a jovial party in the Globe Tavern. Before returning home, he unluckily remained for some time in the open air, and, overpowered by the effects of the liquor he had drunk, fell asleep. In these circumstances, and in the peculiar condition to which a severe medicine had reduced his constitution, a fatal chill penetrated to his bones; he reached home with the seeds of a rheumatic fever already in possession of his weakened frame. In this little accident, and not in the pressure of poverty or disrepute, or wounded feelings or a broken heart, truly lay the determining cause of the sadly shortened days of our great national poet. Dr Currie states, that 1 Cockburn's Life of Lord Jeffrey. the new illness confined him for about a week; and this was probably true, although some expressions of the bard himself would indicate a longer period of extreme illness. TO MRS RIDDEL. DUMFRIES, 20th January 1796. I CANNOT express my gratitude to you for allowing me a longer perusal of Anacharsis. In fact, I never met with a book that bewitched me so much; and I, as a member of the library, must warmly feel the obligation you have laid us under. Indeed, to me the obligation is stronger than to any other individual of our society; as Anacharsis is an indispensable desideratum to a son of the Muses. The health you wished me in your morning's card is, I think, flown from me for ever. I have not been able to leave my bed today till about an hour ago. These wickedly unlucky advertisements I lent (I did wrong) to a friend, and I am ill able to go in quest of him. The Muses have not quite forsaken me. The following detached stanzas I intend to interweave in some disastrous tale of a shepherd. R. B. On the 28th, Burns was sufficiently well to attend the Mason Lodge, and recommend for entry as an apprentice Mr James Georgeson, a Liverpool merchant. Next day, he sent Mr Peter Hill his annual kipper, or dried salmon, with a brief but apparently cheerful letter, imposing on his friend the condition, ' that you do not, like a fool, as you were last year, put yourself to five times the value in expense of a return;' sending, moreover, compliments to various friends, and promising a longer letter in ten days, but in the meantime saying not a word of illness. It would have been puzzling to find him, two days later, writing in the following doleful terms to Mrs Dunlop, if we had not already had ample opportunities of knowing how light and transient were all the feelings of Burns, three days of suffering being as liable to appear to him as a long season of wo, as a few hours of merriment were to make him forget that any misfortune lay at his door : TO MRS DUNLOP. DUMFRIES, 31st January 1796. THESE many months you have been two packets in my debtwhat sin of ignorance I have committed against so highly valued a friend, I am utterly at a loss to guess. Alas! madam, ill can I 1 Volume of Burns's letters to Mr Peter Hill, in possession of Dalmarnock. Wilson, Esq., |