by Robert Burns
I urge this, my dear, both to confirm myself in the doctrine, which, I assure you, I sometimes need; and because I know that this causes you often much disquiet. To return to Miss Nimmo: she is most certainly a worthy soul, and equalled by very, very few, in goodness of heart. But can she boast more goodness of heart than Clarinda? Not even prejudice will dare to say so. For penetration and discernment, Clarinda sees far beyond her: to wit, Miss Nimmo dare make no pretence; to Clarinda’s wit, scarcely any of her sex dare make pretence. Personal charms, it would be ridiculous to run the parallel. And for conduct in life, Miss Nimmo was never called out, either much to do or to suffer; Clarinda has been both; and has performed her part, where Miss Nimmo would have sunk at the bare idea.
Away, then, with these disquietudes! Let us pray with the honest weaver of Kilbarchan— “Lord, send us a gude conceit o’ oursel!” Or, in the words of the auld sang,
Who does me disdain, I can scorn them again,
And I’ll never mind any such foes.
There is an error in the commerce of intimacy74 ...
way of exchange, have not an equivalent to give us; and, what is still worse, have no idea of the value of our goods. Happy is our lot indeed, when we meet with an honest merchant, who is qualified to deal with us on our own terms; but that is a rarity. With almost everybody we must pocket our pearls, less or more, and learn in the old Scotch phrase— “To gie sic like as we get.” For this reason one should try to erect a kind of bank or store-house in one’s own mind; or, as the Psalmist says, “We should commune with our own hearts, and be still.” This is exactly [MS. dilapidated.]
74 The MS. is so worn as to be indecipherable.
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XXXIII.
EDINBURGH, 18th March 1788.
I am just hurrying away to wait on the great man, Clarinda; but I have more respect on my own peace and happiness than to set out without waiting on you; for my imagination, like a child’s favourite bird, will fondly flutter along with this scrawl till it perch on your bosom I thank you for all the happiness of yesterday — the walk delightful, the evening rapture. Do not be uneasy today, Clarinda. I am in rather better spirits today, though I had but an indifferent night. Care, anxiety, sat on my spirits. All the cheerfulness of this morning is the fruit of some serious, important ideas that lie, in their realities, beyond the dark and narrow house. The Father of mercies be with you, Clarinda. Every good thing attend you!
SYLVANDER.
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XXXIV.
Friday 9 [p.m., 21st March 1788].
I am just now come in, and have read your letters. The first thing I did was to thank the Divine Disposer of events that he has had such happiness in store for me as the connexion I have with you. Life, my Clarinda, is a weary, barren path; and woe be to him or her that ventures on it alone! For me, I have my dearest partner of my soul. Clarinda and I will make out our pilgrimage together. Wherever I am, I shall constantly let her know how I go on, what I observe in the world around me, and what adventures I meet with. Would it please you, my love, to get every week, or every fortnight at least, a packet of two or three sheets of remarks, nonsense, news, rhymes and old songs? Will you open with satisfaction and delight a letter from a man who loves you, who has loved you, and who will love you to death, through death, and for ever? O Clarinda! what do I owe to heaven for blessing me with such a piece of exalted excellence as you! I call over your idea, as a miser counts over his treasure. Tell me, were you studious to please me last night? I am sure you did it to transport.
How rich am I who have such a treasure as you! You know me; you know how to make me happy, and you do it most effectually. God bless you with “long life, long youth, long pleasure, and a friend!” Tomorrow night, according to your own direction, I shall watch the window—’tis the star that guides me to Paradise. The great relish to all is that honour, that innocence, that Religion are the witnesses and guarantees of our affection, Adieu, Clarinda! I am going to remember you in my prayers.
SYLVANDER.
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GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE (continued).
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LXXXIV. — TO MR. GAVIN HAMILTON.
[April 1788] MOSSGIEL, Friday Morning.
The language of refusal is to me the most difficult language on earth, and you are the man in the world, excepting one of Right Hon. designation, to whom it gives me the greatest pain to hold such language. My brother has already got money,75 and shall want nothing in my power to enable him to fulfil his engagement with you; but to be security on so large a scale, even for a brother, is what I dare not do, except I were in such circumstances of life as that the worst that might happen could not greatly injure me.
I never wrote a letter which gave me so much pain in my life, as I know the unhappy consequences: — I shall incur the displeasure of a gentleman for whom I have the highest respect and to whom I am deeply obliged. — I am etc.
ROBERT BURNS.
75 Altogether £180. Gilbert is meant, and the business referred to was renewal of lease of Mossgiel, the poet to be cautioner.
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LXXXV. — TO MR. WILLIAM DUNBAR, W.S., EDINBURGH.
MAUCHLINE, 7th April 1788.
I have not delayed so long to write you, my much respected friend, because I thought no further of my promise. I have long since given up that formal kind of correspondence where one sits down irksomely to write a letter, because he is in duty bound to do so.
I have been roving over the country, as the farm76 I have taken is forty miles from this place, hiring servants and preparing matters; but most of all, I am earnestly busy to bring about a revolution in my own mind. As, till within these eighteen months, I never was the wealthy master of ten guineas, my knowledge of business is to learn. Add to this, my late scenes of idleness and dissipation have enervated my mind to an alarming degree. Skill in the sober science of life is my most serious, and hourly study. I have dropped all conversation and all reading (prose reading) but what tends in some way or other to my serious aim. Except one worthy young fellow77 I have not a single correspondent in Edinburgh. You have indeed kindly made me an offer of that kind. The world of wits, the gens comme-il-faut, which I lately left, and in which I never again will intimately mix — from that port, Sir, I expect your gazette, what the beaux esprits are saying, what they are doing, and what they are singing. Any sober intelligence from my sequestered life is all you have to expect from me. I have scarcely made a single distich since I saw you. When I meet with an old Scots air that has any facetious idea in its name, I have a peculiar pleasure in following out that idea for a verse or two.
I trust this will find you in better health than I did the last time I called for you. A few lines from you, directed to me, at Mauchline, were it but to let me know how you are, will settle my mind a good deal. Now, never shun the idea of writing me because, perhaps, you may be out of humour or spirits. I could give you a hundred good consequences attending a dull letter; one, for example, and the remaining ninety-nine some other time — it will always serve to keep in countenance, my much respected Sir, your obliged friend and humble servant, R. B.
76 Ellisland, near Dumfries.
77 Robert Ainslie, W.S.
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LXXXVI. — TO MRS. DUNLOP.
MAUCHLINE, 28th April 1788.
MADAM, — Your powers of reprehension must be great indeed, as I assure you they make my heart ache with penitential pangs, even though I was really not guilty. As I commence farming at Whitsunday, you will easily guess I must be pretty busy; but that is not all. As I got the offer of the Excise business without solicitation, and as it costs me only six months’ attendance for instructions, to entitle me to a commission — which commission lies by me, and at any future period, on my simple petition, can be resum
ed — I thought five-and-thirty pounds a-year was no bad dernier ressort for a poor poet, if Fortune in her jade tricks should kick him down from the little eminence to which she has lately helped him up.
For this reason, I am at present attending these instructions, to have them completed before Whitsunday. Still, Madam, I prepared with the sincerest pleasure to meet you at the Mount, and came to my brother’s on Saturday night, to set out on Sunday; but for some nights preceding I had slept in an apartment, where the force of the winds and rains was only mitigated by being sifted through numberless apertures in the windows, walls, etc. In consequence I was on Sunday, Monday, and part of Tuesday, unable to stir out of bed, with all the miserable effects of a violent cold.
You see, Madam, the truth of the French maxim, le vrai n’est pas toujours le vrai-semblable; your last was so full of expostulation, and was something so like the language of an offended friend, that I began to tremble for a correspondence, which I had with grateful pleasure set down as one of the greatest enjoyments of my future life.
Your books have delighted me; Virgil, Dryden, and Tasso were all equally strangers to me; but of this more at large in my next. R. B.
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LXXXVII. — TO MR. JAMES SMITH, AVON PRINTFIELD, LINLITHGOW.
MAUCHLINE, April 28th, 1788.
Beware of your Strasburgh, my good Sir! Look on this as the opening of a correspondence, like the opening of a twenty-four gun battery!
There is no understanding a man properly, without knowing something of his previous ideas; that is to say, if the man has any ideas; for I know many who, in the animal-muster, pass for men, that are the scanty masters of only one idea on any given subject, and by far the greatest part of your acquaintances and mine can barely boast of ideas, 1.25 — 1.5 — 1.75 (or some such fractional matter); so to let you a little into the secrets of my pericranium, there is, you must know, a certain clean-limbed, handsome, bewitching young hussy of your acquaintance, to whom I have lately and privately given a matrimonial title to my corpus.
Bode a robe and wear it,
Bode a pock and bear it,
says the wise old Scots adage! I hate to presage ill-luck; and as my girl has been doubly kinder to me than even the best of women usually are to their partners of our sex, in similar circumstances, I reckon on twelve times a brace of children against I celebrate my twelfth wedding-day: these twenty-four will give me twenty-four gossipings, twenty-four christenings (I mean one equal to two), and I hope, by the blessing of the God of my fathers, to make them twenty-four dutiful children to their parents, twenty-four useful members of society, and twenty-four approved servants of their God....
“Light’s heartsome,” quo’ the wife when she was stealing sheep. You see what a lamp I have hung up to lighten your paths, when you are idle enough to explore the combinations and relations of my ideas. ‘Tis now as plain as a pike-staff, why a twenty-four gun battery was a metaphor I could readily employ.
Now for business. I intend to present Mrs. Burns with a printed shawl, an article of which I dare say you have variety: ‘tis my first present to her since I have irrevocably called her mine, and I have a kind of whimsical wish to get her the first said present from an old and much-valued friend of hers and mine, a trusty Trojan, on whose friendship I count myself possessed of as a life-rent lease.
Look on this letter as a “beginning of sorrows;” I will write you till your eyes ache reading nonsense.
Mrs. Burns (‘tis only her private designation) begs her best compliments to you. R. B.
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LXXXVIII — TO PROFESSOR DUGALD STEWART.
MAUCHLINE, 3rd May 1788.
SIR, — I enclose you one or two more of my bagatelles. If the fervent wishes of honest gratitude have any influence with that great unknown Being who frames the chain of causes and events, prosperity and happiness will attend your visit to the Continent, and return you safe to your native shore.
Wherever I am, allow me, Sir, to claim it as my privilege to acquaint you with my progress in my trade of rhymes; as I am sure I could say it with truth, that, next to my little fame, and the having it in my power to make life more comfortable to those whom nature has made dear to me, I shall ever regard your countenance, your patronage, your friendly good offices, as the most valued consequence of my late success in life. R. B.
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LXXXIX. — TO MRS. DUNLOP.
MAUCHLINE, 4th May 1788.
MADAM, — Dryden’s Virgil has delighted me. I do not know whether the critics will agree with me, but the Georgics are to me by far the best of Virgil. It is indeed a species of writing entirely new to me, and has filled my head with a thousand fancies of emulation; but, alas! when I read the Georgics, and then survey my own powers, ‘tis like the idea of a Shetland pony, drawn up by the side of a thorough-bred hunter, to start for the plate. I own I am disappointed in the AEneid. Faultless correctness may please, and does highly please, the lettered critic; but to that awful character T have not the most distant pretensions. I do not know whether I do not hazard my pretensions to be a critic of any kind, when I say that I think Virgil, in many instances, a servile copier of Homer. If I had the Odyssey by me, I could parallel many passages where Virgil has evidently copied, but by no means improved, Homer. Nor can I think there is anything of this owing to the translators; for, from everything I have seen of Dryden, I think him, in genius and fluency of language, Pope’s master. I have not perused Tasso enough to form an opinion: in some future letter you shall have my ideas of him; though I am conscious my criticisms must be very inaccurate and imperfect, as there I have ever felt and lamented my want of learning most. R. B.
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XC. — TO MR. SAMUEL BROWN, KIRKOSWALD.
MOSSGIEL, 4th May 1788.
DEAR UNCLE, — This, I hope, will find you and your conjugal yoke-fellow in your good old way. I am impatient to know if the Ailsa78 fowling be commenced for this season yet, as I want three or four stones of feathers, and I hope you will bespeak them for me. It would be a vain attempt for me to enumerate the various transactions I have been engaged in since I saw you last; but this know — I engaged in a smuggling trade, and no poor man ever experienced better returns, two for one: but as freight and delivery have turned out so dear, I am thinking of taking out a license and beginning in fair trade. I have taken a farm, on the borders of the Nith, and in imitation of the old patriarchs, get men-servants and maid-servants, and flocks and herds, and beget sons and daughters. — Your obedient nephew,
ROBERT BURNS.
78 A well-known rock in the Firth of Clyde, frequented by innumerable sea-fowl.
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XCI. — TO MR. JAMES JOHNSON, ENGRAVER, EDINBURGH.
MAUCHLINE, 25th May 1788.
MY DEAR SIR, — I am really uneasy about that money which Mr. Creech owes me per note in your hand, and I want it much at present, as I am engaging in business pretty deeply both for myself and my brother. A hundred guineas can be but a trifling affair to him, and’tis a matter of most serious importance to me.79 To-morrow I begin my operations as a farmer, and so God speed the plough!
I am so enamoured of a certain girl.... To be serious, I found I had a long and much-loved fellow-creature’s happiness or misery in my hands; and though pride and seeming justice were murderous king’s advocates on the one side, yet humanity, generosity, and forgiveness were such powerful, such irresistible counsel on the other, that a jury of all endearments and new attachments brought in a unanimous verdict of not guilty. And the panel, be it known unto all whom it concerns, is installed and instated into all the rights, privileges, etc., that belong to the name, title, and designation of wife.
79 Creech paid the amount five days after the date of this letter.
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XCII. —
TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.
MAUCHLINE, May 26th, 1788.
MY DEAR FRIEND, — I am two kind letters in your debt; but I have been from home, and horridly busy, buying and preparing for my farming business, over and above the plague of my Excise instructions, which this week will finish.
As I flatter my wishes that I foresee many future years’ correspondence between us, ‘tis foolish to talk of excusing dull epistles! a dull letter may be a very kind one. I have the pleasure to tell you that I have been extremely fortunate in all my buyings and bargainings hitherto, Mrs. Burns not excepted; which title I now avow to the world. I am truly pleased with this last affair. It has indeed added to my anxieties for futurity, but it has given a stability to my mind and resolutions unknown before; and the poor girl has the most sacred enthusiasm of attachment to me, and has not a wish but to gratify my every idea of her deportment. I am interrupted. Farewell! my dear Sir. R. B.
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XCIII. — TO MRS. DUNLOP.
27th May 1788.
MADAM, — I have been torturing my philosophy to no purpose to account for that kind partiality of yours, which has followed me, in my return to the shade of life, with assiduous benevolence. Often did I regret, in the fleeting hours of my late will-o’-wisp appearance, that “here I had no continuing city;” and, but for the consolation of a few solid guineas, could almost lament the time that a momentary acquaintance with wealth and splendour put me so much out of conceit with the sworn companions of my road through life — insignificance and poverty.