Part 63
[Alexander Geddes was a controversialist and poet, and a bishop of the broken remnant of the Catholic Church of Scotland: he is known as the author of a very humorous ballad called "The Wee bit Wifickie," and as the translator of one of the books of the Iliad, in opposition to Cowper.]
_Ellisland, 3d Feb. 1789._
VENERABLE FATHER,
As I am conscious that wherever I am, you do me the honour to interest yourself in my welfare, it gives me pleasure to inform you that I am here at last, stationary in the serious business of life, and have now not only the retired leisure, but the hearty inclination, to attend to those great and important questions--what I am? where I am? and for what I am destined?
In that first concern, the conduct of the man, there was ever but one side on which I was habitually blameable, and there I have secured myself in the way pointed out by Nature and Nature's God. I was sensible that to so helpless a creature as a poor poet, a wife and family were encumbrances, which a species of prudence would bid him shun; but when the alternative was, being at eternal warfare with myself, on account of habitual follies, to give them no worse name, which no general example, no licentious wit, no sophistical infidelity, would, to me, ever justify, I must have been a fool to have hesitated, and a madman to have made another choice. Besides, I had in "my Jean" a long and much-loved fellow-creature's happiness or misery among my hands, and who could trifle with such a deposit?
In the affair of a livelihood, I think myself tolerably secure: I have good hopes of my farm, but should they fail, I have an excise commission, which on my simple petition, will, at any time, procure me bread. There is a certain stigma affixed to the character of an Excise officer, but I do not pretend to borrow honour from my profession; and though the salary be comparatively small, it is luxury to anything that the first twenty-five years of my life taught me to expect.
Thus, with a rational aim and method in life, you may easily guess, my reverend and much-honoured friend, that my characteristical trade is not forgotten. I am, if possible, more than over an enthusiast to the muses. I am determined to study man and nature, and in that view incessantly; and to try if the ripening and corrections of years can enable me to produce something worth preserving.
You will see in your book, which I beg your pardon for detaining so long, that I have been tuning my lyre on the banks of Nith. Some large poetic plans that are floating in my imagination, or partly put in execution, I shall impart to you when I have the pleasure of meeting with you; which, if you are then in Edinburgh, I shall have about the beginning of March.
That acquaintance, worthy Sir, with which you were pleased to honour me, you must still allow me to challenge; for with whatever unconcern I give up my transient connexion with the merely great, those self-important beings whose intrinsic * * * * [con]cealed under the accidental advantages of their * * * * I cannot lose the patronizing notice of the learned and good, without the bitterest regret.
R. B.
* * * * *
CL.
TO MR. JAMES BURNESS.
[Fanny Burns married Adam Armour, brother to bonnie Jean, went with him to Mauchline, and bore him sons and daughters.]
_Ellisland, 9th Feb. 1789._
MY DEAR SIR,
Why I did not write to you long ago, is what, even on the rack, I could not answer. If you can in your mind form an idea of indolence, dissipation, hurry, cares, change of country, entering on untried scenes of life, all combined, you will save me the trouble of a blushing apology. It could not be want of regard for a man for whom I had a high esteem before I knew him--an esteem which has much increased since I did know him; and this caveat entered, I shall plead guilty to any other indictment with which you shall please to charge me.
After I had parted from you for many months my life was one continued scene of dissipation. Here at last I am become stationary, and have taken a farm and--a wife.
The farm is beautifully situated on the Nith, a large river that runs by Dumfries, and falls into the Solway frith. I have gotten a lease of my farm as long as I pleased: but how it may turn out is just a guess, it is yet to improve and enclose, &c.; however, I have good hopes of my bargain on the whole.
My wife is my Jean, with whose story you are partly acquainted. I found I had a much-loved fellow creature's happiness or misery among my hands, and I durst not trifle with so sacred a deposit. Indeed I have not any reason to repent the step I have taken, as I have attached myself to a very good wife, and have shaken myself loose of every bad failing.
I have found my book a very profitable business, and with the profits of it I have begun life pretty decently. Should fortune not favour me in farming, as I have no great faith in her fickle ladyship, I have provided myself in another resource, which however some folks may affect to despise it, is still a comfortable shift in the day of misfortune. In the heyday of my fame, a gentleman whose name at least I dare say you know, as his estate lies somewhere near Dundee, Mr. Graham, of Fintray, one of the commissioners of Excise, offered me the commission of an Excise officer. I thought it prudent to accept the offer; and accordingly I took my instructions, and have my commission by me. Whether I may ever do duty, or be a penny the better for it, is what I do not know; but I have the comfortable assurance, that come whatever ill fate will, I can, on my simple petition to the Excise-board, get into employ.
We have lost poor uncle Robert this winter. He has long been very weak, and with very little alteration on him, he expired 3d Jan.
His son William has been with me this winter, and goes in May to be an apprentice to a mason. His other son, the eldest, John, comes to me I expect in summer. They are both remarkably stout young fellows, and promise to do well. His only daughter, Fanny, has been with me ever since her father's death, and I purpose keeping her in my family till she be quite woman grown, and fit for service. She is one of the cleverest girls, and has one of the most amiable dispositions I have ever seen.
All friends in this country and Ayrshire are well. Remember me to all friends in the north. My wife joins me in compliments to Mrs. B. and family.
I am ever, my dear Cousin,
Yours, sincerely,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The beautiful lines with which this letter concludes, I have reason to believe were the production of the lady to whom the epistle is addressed.]
_Ellisland, 4th March, 1789._
Here am I, my honoured friend, returned safe from the capital. To a man, who has a home, however humble or remote--if that home is like mine, the scene of domestic comfort--the bustle of Edinburgh will soon be a business of sickening disgust.
"Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate you!"
When I must skulk into a corner, lest the rattling equipage of some gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to exclaim--"What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some state of pre-existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the sceptre of rule, and the key of riches in his puny fist, and I am kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?" I have read somewhere of a monarch (in Spain I think it was), who was so out of humour with the Ptolemean system of astronomy, that he said had he been of the CREATOR'S council, he could have saved him a great deal of labour and absurdity. I will not defend this blasphemous speech; but often, as I have glided with humble stealth through the pomp of Princes' street, it has suggested itself to me, as an improvement on the present human figure, that a man in proportion to his own conceit of his consequence in the world, could have pushed out the longitude of his common size, as a snail pushes out his horns, or, as we draw out a perspective. This trifling alteration, not to mention the prodigious saving it would be in the tear and wear of the neck and limb-sinews of many of his majesty's liege subjects, in the way of tossing the head and tiptoe strutting, would evidently turn out a vast advantage, in enabling us at once to adjust the ceremonials in making a bow, or making way to a great man, and that too within a second of the precise spherical angle of reverence, or an inch of the particular point of respectful distance, which the important creature itself requires; as a measuring-glance at its towering altitude, would determine the affair like instinct.
You are right, Madam, in your idea of poor Mylne's poem, which he has addressed to me. The piece has a good deal of merit, but it has one great fault--it is, by far, too long. Besides, my success has encouraged such a shoal of ill-spawned monsters to crawl into public notice, under the title of Scottish Poets, that the very term Scottish Poetry borders on the burlesque. When I write to Mr. Carfrae, I shall advise him rather to try one of his deceased friend's English pieces. I am prodigiously hurried with my own matters, else I would have requested a perusal of all Mylne's poetic performances; and would have offered his friends my assistance in either selecting or correcting what would be proper for the press. What it is that occupies me so much, and perhaps a little oppresses my present spirits, shall fill up a paragraph in some future letter. In the mean time, allow me to close this epistle with a few lines done by a friend of mine * * * * *. I give you them, that as you have seen the original, you may guess whether one or two alterations I have ventured to make in them, be any real improvement.
"Like the fair plant that from our touch withdraws, Shrink, mildly fearful, even from applause, Be all a mother's fondest hope can dream, And all you are, my charming ..., seem. Straight as the fox-glove, ere her bells disclose, Mild as the maiden-blushing hawthorn blows, Fair as the fairest of each lovely kind, Your form shall be the image of your mind; Your manners shall so true your soul express, That all shall long to know the worth they guess: Congenial hearts shall greet with kindred love, And even sick'ning envy must approve."
R. B.
* * * * *
CLII.
TO THE REV. PETER CARFRAE.
[Mylne was a worthy and a modest man: he died of an inflammatory fever in the prime of life.]
1789.
REV. SIR,
I do not recollect that I have ever felt a severer pang of shame, than on looking at the date of your obliging letter which accompanied Mr. Mylne's poem.
I am much to blame: the honour Mr. Mylne has done me, greatly enhanced in its value by the endearing, though melancholy circumstance, of its being the last production of his muse, deserved a better return.
I have, as you hint, thought of sending a copy of the poem to some periodical publication; but, on second thoughts, I am afraid, that in the present case, it would be an improper step. My success, perhaps as much accidental as merited, has brought an inundation of nonsense under the name of Scottish poetry. Subscription-bills for Scottish poems have so dunned, and daily do dun the public, that the very name is in danger of contempt. For these reasons, if publishing any of Mr. Mylne's poems in a magazine, &c., be at all prudent, in my opinion it certainly should not be a Scottish poem. The profits of the labours of a man of genius are, I hope, as honourable as any profits whatever; and Mr. Mylne's relations are most justly entitled to that honest harvest, which fate has denied himself to reap. But let the friends of Mr. Mylne's fame (among whom I crave the honour of ranking myself) always keep in eye his respectability as a man and as a poet, and take no measure that, before the world knows anything about him, would risk his name and character being classed with the fools of the times.
I have, Sir, some experience of publishing; and the way in which I would proceed with Mr. Mylne's poem is this:--I would publish, in two or three English and Scottish public papers, any one of his English poems which should, by private judges, be thought the most excellent, and mention it, at the same time, as one of the productions of a Lothian farmer, of respectable character, lately deceased, whose poems his friends had it in idea to publish, soon, by subscription, for the sake of his numerous family:--not in pity to that family, but in justice to what his friends think the poetic merits of the deceased; and to secure, in the most effectual manner, to those tender connexions, whose right it is, the pecuniary reward of those merits.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLIII.
TO DR. MOORE.
[Edward Nielson, whom Burns here introduces to Dr. Moore, was minister of Kirkbean, on the Solway-side. He was a jovial man, and loved good cheer, and merry company.]
_Ellisland, 23d March, 1789._
SIR,
The gentleman who will deliver you this is a Mr. Nielson, a worthy clergyman in my neighbourhood, and a very particular acquaintance of mine. As I have troubled him with this packet, I must turn him over to your goodness, to recompense him for it in a way in which he much needs your assistance, and where you can effectually serve him:--Mr. Nielson is on his way for France, to wait on his Grace of Queensberry, on some little business of a good deal of importance to him, and he wishes for your instructions respecting the most eligible mode of travelling, &c., for him, when he has crossed the channel. I should not have dared to take this liberty with you, but that I am told, by those who have the honour of your personal acquaintance, that to be a poor honest Scotchman is a letter of recommendation to you, and that to have it in your power to serve such a character, gives you much pleasure.
The enclosed ode is a compliment to the memory of the late Mrs. Oswald, of Auchencruive. You, probably, knew her personally, an honour of which I cannot boast; but I spent my early years in her neighbourhood, and among her servants and tenants. I know that she was detested with the most heart-felt cordiality. However, in the particular part of her conduct which roused my poetic wrath, she was much less blameable. In January last, on my road to Ayrshire, I had put up at Bailie Wigham's in Sanquhar, the only tolerable inn in the place. The frost was keen, and the grim evening and howling wind were ushering in a night of snow and drift. My horse and I were both much fatigued with the labours of the day, and just as my friend the Bailie and I were bidding defiance to the storm, over a smoking bowl, in wheels the funeral pageantry of the late great Mrs. Oswald, and poor I am forced to brave all the horrors of the tempestuous night, and jade my horse, my young favourite horse, whom I had just christened Pegasus, twelve miles farther on, through the wildest moors and hills of Ayrshire, to New Cumnock, the next inn. The powers of poesy and prose sink under me, when I would describe what I felt. Suffice it to say, that when a good fire at New Cumnock had so far recovered my frozen sinews, I sat down and wrote the enclosed ode.
I was at Edinburgh lately, and settled finally with Mr. Creech; and I must own, that, at last, he has been amicable and fair with me.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLIV.
TO MR. WILLIAM BURNS.
[William Burns was the youngest brother of the poet: he was bred a sadler; went to Longtown, and finally to London, where he died early.]
_Isle, March 25th, 1789._
I have stolen from my corn-sowing this minute to write a line to accompany your shirt and hat, for I can no more. Your sister Maria arrived yesternight, and begs to be remembered to you. Write me every opportunity, never mind postage. My head, too, is as addle as an egg, this morning, with dining abroad yesterday. I received yours by the mason. Forgive me this foolish-looking scrawl of an epistle.
I am ever,
My dear William,
Yours,
R. B.
P.S. If you are not then gone from Longtown, I'll write you a long letter, by this day se'ennight. If you should not succeed in your tramps, don't be dejected, or take any rash step--return to us in that case, and we will court fortune's better humour. Remember this, I charge you.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLV.
TO MR. HILL.
[The Monkland Book Club existed only while Robert Riddel, of the Friars-Carse, lived, or Burns had leisure to attend: such institutions, when well conducted, are very beneficial, when not oppressed by divinity and verse, as they sometimes are.]
_Ellisland, 2d April, 1789._
I will make no excuse, my dear Bibliopolus (God forgive me for murdering language!) that I have sat down to write you on this vile paper.
It is economy, Sir; it is that cardinal virtue, prudence: so I beg you will sit down, and either compose or borrow a panegyric. If you are going to borrow, apply to * * * * to compose, or rather to compound, something very clever on my remarkable frugality; that I write to one of my most esteemed friends on this wretched paper, which was originally intended for the venal fist of some drunken exciseman, to take dirty notes in a miserable vault of an ale-cellar.
O Frugality! thou mother of ten thousand blessings--thou cook of fat beef and dainty greens!--thou manufacturer of warm Shetland hose, and comfortable surtouts!--thou old housewife darning thy decayed stockings with thy ancient spectacles on thy aged nose!--lead me, hand me in thy clutching palsied fist, up those heights, and through those thickets, hitherto inaccessible, and impervious to my anxious, weary feet:--not those Parnassian crags, bleak and barren, where the hungry worshippers of fame are breathless, clambering, hanging between heaven and hell; but those glittering cliffs of Potosi, where the all-sufficient, all powerful deity, Wealth, holds his immediate court of joys and pleasures; where the sunny exposure of plenty, and the hot walls of profusion, produce those blissful fruits of luxury, exotics in this world, and natives of paradise!--Thou withered sibyl, my sage conductress, usher me into thy refulgent, adored presence!--The power, splendid and potent as he now is, was once the puling nursling of thy faithful care, and tender arms! Call me thy son, thy cousin, thy kinsman, or favourite, and adjure the god by the scenes of his infant years, no longer to repulse me as a stranger, or an alien, but to favour me with his peculiar countenance and protection?--He daily bestows his greatest kindness on the undeserving and the worthless--assure him, that I bring ample documents of meritorious demerits! Pledge yourself for me, that, for the glorious cause of Lucre, I will do anything, be anything--but the horse-leech of private oppression, or the vulture of public robbery!
But to descend from heroics.
I want a Shakspeare; I want likewise an English dictionary--Johnson's, I suppose, is best. In these and all my prose commissions, the cheapest is always best for me. There is a small debt of honour that I owe Mr. Robert Cleghorn, in Saughton Mills, my worthy friend, and your well-wisher. Please give him, and urge him to take it, the first time you see him, ten shillings worth of anything you have to sell, and place it to my account.
The library scheme that I mentioned to you, is already begun, under the direction of Captain Riddel. There is another in emulation of it going on at Closeburn, under the auspices of Mr. Monteith, of Closeburn, which will be on a greater scale than ours. Capt. Riddel gave his infant society a great many of his old books, else I had written you on that subject; but one of these days, I shall trouble you with a commission for "The Monkland Friendly Society"--a copy of _The Spectator_, _Mirror_, and _Lounger_, _Man of Feeling, Man of the World_, _Guthrie's Geographical Grammar_, with some religious pieces, will likely be our first order.
When I grow richer, I will write to you on gilt post, to make amends for this sheet. At present, every guinea has a five guinea errand with,
My dear Sir,
Your faithful, poor, but honest, friend,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLVI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP
[Some lines which extend, but fail to finish the sketch contained in this letter, will be found elsewhere in this publication.]
_Ellisland, 4th April, 1789._
I no sooner hit on any poetic plan or fancy, but I wish to send it to you: and if knowing and reading these give half the pleasure to you, that communicating them to you gives to me, I am satisfied.
I have a poetic whim in my head, which I at present dedicate, or rather inscribe to the Right Hon. Charles James Fox; but how long that fancy may hold, I cannot say. A few of the first lines, I have just rough-sketched as follows:
SKETCH.
How wisdom and folly meet, mix, and unite; How virtue and vice blend their black and their white; How genius, the illustrious father of fiction, Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction-- I sing: If these mortals, the critics, should bustle, I care not, not I, let the critics go whistle.
But now for a patron, whose name and whose glory, At once may illustrate and honour my story.
Thou first of our orators, first of our wits; Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits; With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so strong, No man with the half of 'em e'er went far wrong; With passion so potent, and fancies so bright, No man with the half of 'em ere went quite right; A sorry, poor misbegot son of the muses, For using thy name offers many excuses.
On the 20th current I hope to have the honour of assuring you in person, how sincerely I am--
R. B.
* * * * *
CLVII.
TO MR. WILLIAM BURNS,
SADLER,
CARE OF MR. WRIGHT, CARRIER, LONGTOWN.
["Never to despair" was a favourite saying with Burns: and "firm resolve," he held, with Young, to be "the column of true majesty in man."]
_Isle, 15th April, 1789._
MY DEAR WILLIAM,
I am extremely sorry at the misfortune of your legs; I beg you will never let any worldly concern interfere with the more serious matter, the safety of your life and limbs. I have not time in these hurried days to write you anything other than a mere how d'ye letter. I will only repeat my favourite quotation:--
"What proves the hero truly great Is never, never to despair."
My house shall be your welcome home; and as I know your prudence (would to God you had _resolution_ equal to your _prudence_!) if anywhere at a distance from friends, you should need money, you know my direction by post.
The enclosed is from Gilbert, brought by your sister Nanny. It was unluckily forgot. Yours to Gilbert goes by post.--I heard from them yesterday, they are all well.
Adieu.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLVIII.
TO MRS. M'MURDO,
DRUMLANRIG.
[Of this accomplished lady, Mrs. M'Murdo, of Drumlanrig, and her daughters, something has been said in the notes on the songs: the poem alluded to was the song of "Bonnie Jean."]
_Ellisland, 2d May, 1789._
MADAM,