TO MR. PETER HILL,
BOOKSELLER, EDINBURGH.
[The Mademoiselle Burns whom the poet inquires about, was one of the "ladies of the Canongate," who desired to introduce free trade in her profession into a close borough: this was refused by the magistrates of Edinburgh, though advocated with much eloquence and humour in a letter by her namesake--it is coloured too strongly with her calling to be published.]
_Ellisland, 2d Feb., 1790._
No! I will not say one word about apologies or excuses for not writing.--I am a poor, rascally gauger, condemned to gallop at least 200 miles every week to inspect dirty ponds and yeasty barrels, and where can I find time to write to, or importance to interest anybody?
The upbraidings of my conscience, nay the upbraidings of my wife, have persecuted me on your account these two or three months past.--I wish to G.o.d I was a great man, that my correspondence might throw light upon you, to let the world see what you really are: and then I would make your fortune without putting my hand in my pocket for you, which, like all other great men, I suppose I would avoid as much as possible.
What are you doing, and how are you doing? Have you lately seen any of my few friends? What is become of the BOROUGH REFORM, or how is the fate of my poor namesake, Mademoiselle Burns, decided? O man!
but for thee and thy selfish appet.i.tes, and dishonest artifices, that beauteous form, and that once innocent and still ingenuous mind, might have shone conspicuous and lovely in the faithful wife, and the affectionate mother; and shall the unfortunate sacrifice to thy pleasures have no claim on thy humanity!
I saw lately in a Review, some extracts from a new poem, called the Village Curate; send it me. I want likewise a cheap copy of The World.
Mr. Armstrong, the young poet, who does me the honour to mention me so kindly in his works, please give him my best thanks for the copy of his book--I shall write him, my first leisure hour. I like his poetry much, but I think his style in prose quite astonishing.
Your book came safe, and I am going to trouble you with further commissions. I call it troubling you,--because I want only, BOOKS; the cheapest way, the best; so you may have to hunt for them in the evening auctions. I want Smollette"s works, for the sake of his incomparable humour. I have already Roderick Random, and Humphrey Clinker.--Peregrine Pickle, Launcelot Greaves, and Ferdinand Count Fathom, I still want; but as I said, the veriest ordinary copies will serve me. I am nice only in the appearance of my poets. I forget the price of Cowper"s Poems, but, I believe, I must have them. I saw the other day, proposals for a publication, ent.i.tled "Banks"s new and complete Christian"s Family Bible," printed for C. Cooke, Paternoster-row, London.--He promises at least, to give in the work, I think it is three hundred and odd engravings, to which he has put the names of the first artists in London.--You will know the character of the performance, as some numbers of it are published; and if it is really what it pretends to be, set me down as a subscriber, and send me the published numbers.
Let me hear from you, your first leisure minute, and trust me you shall in future have no reason to complain of my silence. The dazzling perplexity of novelty will dissipate and leave me to pursue my course in the quiet path of methodical routine.
R. B.
CLx.x.xVII.
TO MR. W. NICOL.
[The poet has recorded this unlooked-for death of the Dominie"s mare in some hasty verses, which are not much superior to the subject.]
_Ellisland, Feb. 9th, 1790._
MY DEAR SIR,
That d--mned mare of yours is dead. I would freely have given her price to have saved her; she has vexed me beyond description. Indebted as I was to your goodness beyond what I can ever repay, I eagerly grasped at your offer to have the mare with me. That I might at least show my readiness in wishing to be grateful, I took every care of her in my power. She was never crossed for riding above half a score of times by me or in my keeping. I drew her in the plough, one of three, for one poor week. I refused fifty-five shillings for her, which was the highest bode I could squeeze for her. I fed her up and had her in fine order for Dumfries fair; when four or five days before the fair, she was seized with an unaccountable disorder in the sinews, or somewhere in the bones of the neck; with a weakness or total want of power in her fillets, and in short the whole vertebrae of her spine seemed to be diseased and unhinged, and in eight-and-forty hours, in spite of the two best farriers in the country, she died and be d--mned to her! The farriers said that she had been quite strained in the fillets beyond cure before you had bought her; and that the poor devil, though she might keep a little flesh, had been jaded and quite worn out with fatigue and oppression. While she was with me, she was under my own eye, and I a.s.sure you, my much valued friend, everything was done for her that could be done; and the accident has vexed me to the heart. In fact I could not pluck up spirits to write to you, on account of the unfortunate business.
There is little new in this country. Our theatrical company, of which you must have heard, leave us this week.--Their merit and character are indeed very great, both on the stage and in private life; not a worthless creature among them; and their encouragement has been accordingly. Their usual run is from eighteen to twenty-five pounds a night: seldom less than the one, and the house will hold no more than the other. There have been repeated instances of sending away six, and eight, and ten pounds a night for want of room. A new theatre is to be built by subscription; the first stone is to be laid on Friday first to come. Three hundred guineas have been raised by thirty subscribers, and thirty more might have been got if wanted. The manager, Mr.
Sutherland, was introduced to me by a friend from Ayr; and a worthier or cleverer fellow I have rarely met with. Some of our clergy have slipt in by stealth now and then; but they have got up a farce of their own. You must have heard how the Rev. Mr. Lawson of Kirkmahoe, seconded by the Rev. Mr. Kirkpatrick of Dunscore, and the rest of that faction, have accused in formal process, the unfortunate and Rev. Mr.
Heron, of Kirkgunzeon, that in ordaining Mr. Nielson to the cure of souls in Kirkbean, he, the said Heron, feloniously and treasonably bound the said Nielson to the confession of faith, _so far as it was agreeable to reason and the word of G.o.d_!
Mrs. B. begs to be remembered most gratefully to you. Little Bobby and Frank are charmingly well and healthy. I am jaded to death with fatigue. For these two or three months, on an average, I have not ridden less than two hundred miles per week. I have done little in the poetic way. I have given Mr. Sutherland two Prologues; one of which was delivered last week. I have likewise strung four or five barbarous stanzas, to the tune of Chevy Chase, by way of Elegy on your poor unfortunate mare, beginning (the name she got here was Peg Nicholson)
"Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare, As ever trod on airn; But now she"s floating down the Nith, And past the mouth o" Cairn."
My best compliments to Mrs. Nicol, and little Neddy, and all the family; I hope Ned is a good scholar, and will come out to gather nuts and apples with me next harvest.
R. B.
CLx.x.xVIII.
TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.
[Burns looks back with something of regret to the days of rich dinners and flowing wine-cups which he experienced in Edinburgh. Alexander Cunningham and his unhappy loves are recorded in that fine song, "Had I a cave on some wild distant sh.o.r.e."]
_Ellisland, 13th February, 1790._
I beg your pardon, my dear and much valued friend, for writing to you on this very unfashionable, unsightly sheet--
"My poverty but not my will consents."
But to make amends, since of modish post I have none, except one poor widowed half-sheet of gilt, which lies in my drawer among my plebeian fool"s-cap pages, like the widow of a man of fashion, whom that unpolite scoundrel, Necessity, has driven from Burgundy and Pineapple, to a dish of Bohea, with the scandal-bearing help-mate of a village-priest; or a gla.s.s of whisky-toddy, with a ruby-nosed yoke-fellow of a foot-padding exciseman--I make a vow to enclose this sheet-full of epistolary fragments in that my only sc.r.a.p of gilt paper.
I am indeed your unworthy debtor for three friendly letters. I ought to have written to you long ere now, but it is a literal fact, I have scarcely a spare moment. It is not that I _will not_ write to you; Miss Burnet is not more dear to her guardian angel, nor his grace the Duke of Queensbury to the powers of darkness, than my friend Cunningham to me. It is not that I _cannot_ write to you; should you doubt it, take the following fragment, which was intended for you some time ago, and be convinced that I can _ant.i.thesize_ sentiment, and _circ.u.mvolute_ periods, as well as any coiner of phrase in the regions of philology.
_December, 1789._
MY DEAR CUNNINGHAM,
Where are you? And what are you doing? Can you be that son of levity, who takes up a friendship as he takes up a fashion; or are you, like some other of the worthiest fellows in the world, the victim of indolence, laden with fetters of ever-increasing weight?
What strange beings we are! Since we have a portion of conscious existence, equally capable of enjoying pleasure, happiness, and rapture, or of suffering pain, wretchedness, and misery, it is surely worthy of an inquiry, whether there be not such a thing as a science of life; whether method, economy, and fertility of expedients be not applicable to enjoyment, and whether there be not a want of dexterity in pleasure, which renders our little scantling of happiness still less; and a profuseness, an intoxication in bliss, which leads to satiety, disgust, and self-abhorrence. There is not a doubt but that health, talents, character, decent competency, respectable friends, are real substantial blessings; and yet do we not daily see those who enjoy many or all of these good things contrive notwithstanding to be as unhappy as others to whose lot few of them have fallen? I believe one great source of this mistake or misconduct is owing to a certain stimulus, with us called ambition, which goads us up the hill of life, not as we ascend other eminences, for the laudable curiosity of viewing an extended landscape, but rather for the dishonest pride of looking down on others of our fellow-creatures, seemingly diminutive in humbler stations, &c &c.
_Sunday, 14th February, 1790._
G.o.d help me! I am now obliged to
"Join night to day, and Sunday to the week."[197]
If there be any truth in the orthodox faith of these churches, I am d--mned past redemption, and what is worse, d--mned to all eternity. I am deeply read in Boston"s Four-fold State, Marshal on Sanctification, Guthrie"s Trial of a Saving Interest, &c.; but "there is no balm in Gilead, there is no physician there," for me; so I shall e"en turn Arminian, and trust to "sincere though imperfect obedience."
_Tuesday, 16th._
Luckily for me, I was prevented from the discussion of the knotty point at which I had just made a full stop. All my fears and care are of this world: if there is another, an honest man has nothing to fear from it. I hate a man that wishes to be a Deist: but I fear, every fair, unprejudiced inquirer must in some degree be a sceptic. It is not that there are any very staggering arguments against the immortality of man; but like electricity, phlogiston, &c., the subject is so involved in darkness, that we want data to go upon. One thing frightens me much: that we are to live for ever, seems _too good news to be true._ That we are to enter into a new scene of existence, where, exempt from want and pain, we shall enjoy ourselves and our friends without satiety or separation--how much should I be indebted to any one who could fully a.s.sure me that this was certain!
My time is once more expired. I will write to Mr. Cleghorn soon. G.o.d bless him and all his concerns! And may all the powers that preside over conviviality and friendship, be present with all their kindest influence, when the bearer of this, Mr. Syme, and you meet! I wish I could also make one.
Finally, brethren, farewell! Whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are gentle, whatsoever things are charitable, whatsoever things are kind, think on these things, and think on