With, not the compliments, but the best wishes, the sincerest prayers of the season for you, that you may see many and happy years with Mrs.
M"Murdo, and your family; two blessings by the bye, to which your rank does not, by any means, ent.i.tle you; a loving wife and fine family being almost the only good things of this life to which the farm-house and cottage have an exclusive right,
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your much indebted and very humble servant,
R. B.
CLXVII.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The devil, the pope, and the Pretender darkened the sermons, for more than a century, of many sound divines in the north. As a Jacobite, Burns disliked to hear Prince Charles called the Pretender, and as a man of a tolerant nature, he disliked to hear the Pope treated unlike a gentleman: his notions regarding Satan are recorded in his inimitable address.]
_Ellisland, 21st June, 1789._
DEAR MADAM,
Will you take the effusions, the miserable effusions of low spirits, just as they flow from their bitter spring? I know not of any particular cause for this worst of all my foes besetting me; but for some time my soul has been beclouded with a thickening atmosphere of evil imaginations and gloomy presages.
_Monday Evening._
I have just heard Mr. Kirkpatrick preach a sermon. He is a man famous for his benevolence, and I revere him; but from such ideas of my Creator, good Lord deliver me! Religion, my honoured friend, is surely a simple business, as it equally concerns the ignorant and the learned, the poor and the rich. That there is an incomprehensible Great Being, to whom I owe my existence, and that he must be intimately acquainted with the operations and progress of the internal machinery, and consequent outward deportment of this creature which he has made; these are, I think, self-evident propositions. That there is a real and eternal distinction between virtue and vice, and consequently, that I am an accountable creature; that from the seeming nature of the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfection, nay, positive injustice, in the administration of affairs, both in the natural and moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene of existence beyond the grave; must, I think, be allowed by every one who will give himself a moment"s reflection. I will go farther, and affirm that from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of his doctrine and precepts, unparalleled by all the aggregated wisdom and learning of many preceding ages, though, _to appearance_, he himself was the obscurest and most illiterate of our species; therefore Jesus Christ was from G.o.d.
Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others, this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, this is my measure of iniquity.
What think you, madam, of my creed? I trust that I have said nothing that will lessen me in the eye of one, whose good opinion I value almost next to the approbation of my own mind.
R. B.
CLXVIII.
TO MR. ----.
[The name of the person to whom the following letter is addressed is unknown: he seems, from his letter to Burns to have been intimate with the unfortunate poet, Robert Fergusson, who, in richness of conversation and plenitude of fancy, reminded him, he said, of Robert Burns.]
1789.
MY DEAR SIR,
The hurry of a farmer in this particular season, and the indolence of a poet at all times 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 a.s.sistance 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 tombstone over poor Fergusson, and their edict in consequence of my pet.i.tion, 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 G.o.d 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 t.i.tles and honours are the disregarded reveries of an idle dream; and where that heavy virtue, which is the negative consequence of steady dulness, and those thoughtless, though often destructive follies which are unavoidable aberrations of frail human nature, will be thrown into equal oblivion as if they had never been!
Adieu my dear sir! So soon as your present views and schemes are concentered in an aim, I shall be glad to hear from you; as your welfare and happiness is by no means a subject indifferent to
Yours,
R. B.
CLXIX.
TO MISS WILLIAMS.
[Helen Maria Williams acknowledged this letter, with the critical pencilling, on her poem on the Slave Trade, which it enclosed: she agreed, she said, with all his objections, save one, but considered his praise too high.]
_Ellisland, 1789._
MADAM,
Of the many problems in the nature of that wonderful creature, man, this is one of the most extraordinary, that he shall go on from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, or perhaps from year to year, suffering a hundred times more in an hour from the impotent consciousness of neglecting what he ought to do, than the very doing of it would cost him. I am deeply indebted to you, first for a most elegant poetic compliment; then for a polite, obliging letter; and, lastly, for your excellent poem on the Slave Trade; and yet, wretch that I am! though the debts were debts of honour, and the creditor a lady, I have put off and put off even the very acknowledgment of the obligation, until you must indeed be the very angel I take you for, if you can forgive me.
Your poem I have read with the highest pleasure. I have a way whenever I read a book, I mean a book in our own trade, Madam, a poetic one, and when it is my own property, that I take a pencil and mark at the ends of verses, or note on margins and odd paper, little criticisms 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 show 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.
R. B.
CLXX.