Sir J. J. does "what man can do," but yet I doubt his fate.
CLXXVII.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[Burns was often a prey to lowness of spirits: at this some dull men have marvelled; but the dull have no misgivings: they go blindly and stupidly on, like a horse in a mill, and have none of the sorrows or joys which genius is heir to.]
_Ellisland, 13th December, 1789._
Many thanks, dear Madam, for your sheet-full of rhymes. Though at present I am below the veriest prose, yet from you everything pleases.
I am groaning under the miseries of a diseased nervous system; a system, the state of which is most conducive to our happiness--or the most productive of our misery. For now near three weeks I have been so ill with a nervous head-ache, that I have been obliged for a time to give up my excise-books, being scarce able to lift my head, much less to ride once a week over ten muir parishes. What is man?--To-day in the luxuriance of health, exulting in the enjoyment of existence; in a few days, perhaps in a few hours, loaded with conscious painful being, counting the tardy pace of the lingering moments by the repercussions of anguish, and refusing or denied a comforter. Day follows night, and night comes after day, only to curse him with life which gives him no pleasure; and yet the awful, dark termination of that life is something at which he recoils.
"Tell us, ye dead; will none of you in pity Disclose the secret ------------------- _What "tis you are, and we must shortly be?_ ------------------------ "tis no matter: A little time will make us learn"d as you are."[194]
Can it be possible, that when I resign this frail, feverish being, I shall still find myself in conscious existence? When the last gasp of agony has announced that I am no more to those that knew me, and the few who loved me; when the cold, stiffened, unconscious, ghastly corse is resigned into the earth, to be the prey of unsightly reptiles, and to become in time a trodden clod, shall I be yet warm in life, seeing and seen, enjoying and enjoyed? Ye venerable sages and holy flamens, is there probability in your conjectures, truth in your stories, of another world beyond death; or are they all alike, baseless visions, and fabricated fables? If there is another life, it must be only for the just, the benevolent, the amiable, and the humane; what a flattering idea, then, is a world to come! Would to G.o.d I as firmly believed it, as I ardently wish it! There I should meet an aged parent, now at rest from the many buffetings of an evil world, against which he so long and so bravely struggled. There should I meet the friend, the disinterested friend of my early life; the man who rejoiced to see me, because he loved me and could serve me.--Muir, thy weaknesses were the aberrations of human nature, but thy heart glowed with everything generous, manly and n.o.ble; and if ever emanation from the All-good Being animated a human form, it was thine! There should I, with speechless agony of rapture, again recognise my lost, my ever dear Mary! whose bosom was fraught with truth, honour, constancy, and love.
"My Mary, dear departed shade!
Where is thy place of heavenly rest?
Seest thou thy lover lowly laid?
Hear"st thou the groans that rend his breast?"
Jesus Christ, thou amiablest of characters! I trust thou art no impostor, and that thy revelation of blissful scenes of existence beyond death and the grave, is not one of the many impositions which time after time have been palmed on credulous mankind. I trust that in thee "shall all the families of the earth be blessed," by being yet connected together in a better world, where every tie that bound heart to heart, in this state of existence, shall be, far beyond our present conceptions, more endearing.
I am a good deal inclined to think with those who maintain, that what are called nervous affections are in fact diseases of the mind. I cannot reason, I cannot think; and but to you I would not venture to write anything above an order to a cobbler. You have felt too much of the ills of life not to sympathise with a diseased wretch, who has impaired more than half of any faculties he possessed. Your goodness will excuse this distracted scrawl, which the writer dare scarcely read, and which he would throw into the fire, were he able to write anything better, or indeed anything at all.
Rumour told me something of a son of yours, who was returned from the East or West Indies. If you have gotten news from James or Anthony, it was cruel in you not to let me know; as I promise you on the sincerity of a man, who is weary of one world, and anxious about another, that scarce anything could give me so much pleasure as to hear of any good thing befalling my honoured friend.
If you have a minute"s leisure, take up your pen in pity to _le pauvre miserable._
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 194: Blair"s Grave.]
CLXXVIII.
TO LADY W[INIFRED] M[AXWELL] CONSTABLE.
[The Lady Winifred Maxwell, the last of the old line of Nithsdale, was granddaughter of that Earl who, in 1715, made an almost miraculous escape from death, through the spirit and fort.i.tude of his countess, a lady of the n.o.ble family of Powis.]
_Ellisland, 16th December, 1789._
MY LADY,
In vain have I from day to day expected to hear from Mrs. Young, as she promised me at Dalswinton that she would do me the honour to introduce me at Tinwald; and it was impossible, not from your ladyship"s accessibility, but from my own feelings, that I could go alone. Lately indeed, Mr. Maxwell of Carruchen, in his usual goodness, offered to accompany me, when an unlucky indisposition on my part hindered my embracing the 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 grat.i.tude 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 ill.u.s.trious 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. The 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,
R. B.
CLXXIX.
TO PROVOST MAXWELL,
OF LOCHMABEN.
[Of Lochmaben, the "Marjory of the mony Lochs" of the election ballads, Maxwell was at this time provost, a post more of honour than of labour.]
_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 dare say by this time you are nearly surfeited: and for the last, whatever they may talk of it, who make it a kind of company concern, I never could endure it beyond a soliloquy. I might write you on farming, on building, or marketing, but my poor distracted mind is so torn, so jaded, so racked and bediveled with the task of the superlative d.a.m.ned 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 sirname are in it.
Well, to make the matter short, I shall betake myself to a subject ever fruitful of themes; a subject the turtle-feast of the 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 Priestley--in short, may it please your Lordship, I intend to write * * *
[_Here the Poet inserted a song which can only be sung at times when the punch-bowl has done its duty and wild wit is set free._]
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.