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The Complete Works

IX. TO MR. JAMES BURNESS, MONTROSE.

[The elder Burns, whose death this letter intimates, lies buried in the kirk-yard of Alloway, with a tombstone recording his worth.]

Lochlea, 17th Feb. 1784.

Dear Cousin,

I would have returned you my thanks for your kind favour of the 13th of December sooner, had it not been that I waited to give you an account of that melancholy event, which, for some time past, we have from day to day expected.

On the 13th current I lost the best of fathers. Though, to be sure, we have had long warning of the impending stroke; still the feelings of nature claim their part, and I cannot recollect the tender endearments and parental lessons of the best of friends and ablest of instructors, without feeling what perhaps the calmer dictates of reason would partly condemn.

I hope my father’s friends in your country will not let their connexion in this place die with him. For my part I shall ever with pleasure—with pride, acknowledge my connexion with those who were allied by the ties of blood and friendship to a man whose memory I shall ever honour and revere.

I expect, therefore, my dear Sir, you will not neglect any opportunity of letting me hear from you, which will very much oblige,

My dear Cousin, yours sincerely,

R. B.

X. TO JAMES BURNESS, MONTROSE.

[Mrs. Buchan, the forerunner in extravagance and absurdity of Joanna Southcote, after attempting to fix her tent among the hills of the west and the vales of the Nith, finally set up her staff at Auchengibbert-Hill, in Galloway, where she lectured her followers, and held out hopes of their reaching the stars, even in this life. She died early: one or two of her people, as she called them, survived till within these half-dozen years.]

Mossgiel, August, 1784.

We have been surprised with one of the most extraordinary phenomena in the moral world which, I dare say, had happened in the course of this half century. We have had a party of Presbytery relief, as they call themselves, for some time in this country. A pretty thriving society of them has been in the burgh of Irvine for some years past, till about two years ago, a Mrs. Buchan from Glasgow came among them, and began to spread some fanatical notions of religion among them, and, in a short time, made many converts; and, among others, their preacher, Mr. Whyte, who, upon that account, has been suspended and formally deposed by his brethren. He continued, however, to preach in private to his party, and was supported, both he and their spiritual mother, as they affect to call old Buchan, by the contributions of the rest, several of whom were in good circumstances; till, in spring last, the populace rose and mobbed Mrs. Buchan, and put her out of the town; on which all her followers voluntarily quitted the place likewise, and with such precipitation, that many of them never shut their doors behind them; one left a washing on the green, another a cow bellowing at the crib without food, or anybody to mind her, and after several stages, they are fixed at present in the neighbourhood of Dumfries. Their tenets are a strange jumble of enthusiastic jargon; among others, she pretends to give them the Holy Ghost by breathing on them, which she does with postures and practices that are scandalously indecent; they have likewise disposed of all their effects, and hold a community of goods, and live nearly an idle life, carrying on a great farce of pretended devotion in barns and woods, where they lodge and lie all together, and hold likewise a community of women, as it is another of their tenets that they can commit no mortal sin. I am personally acquainted with most of them, and I can assure you the above mentioned are facts.

This, my dear Sir, is one of the many instances of the folly of leaving the guidance of sound reason and common sense in matters of religion.

Whenever we neglect or despise these sacred monitors, the whimsical notions of a perturbated brain are taken for the immediate influences of the Deity, and the wildest fanaticism, and the most inconstant absurdities, will meet with abettors and converts. Nay, I have often thought, that the more out-of-the-way and ridiculous the fancies are, if once they are sanctified under the sacred name of religion, the unhappy mistaken votaries are the more firmly glued to them.

R. B.

XI. TO MISS–

[This has generally been printed among the early letters of Burns. Cromek thinks that the person addressed was the “Peggy” of the Common-place Book. This is questioned by Robert Chambers, who, however, leaves both name and date unsettled.]

My dear Countrywoman,

I am so impatient to show you that I am once more at peace with you, that I send you the book I mentioned directly, rather than wait the uncertain time of my seeing you. I am afraid I have mislaid or lost Collins’ Poems, which I promised to Miss Irvin. If I can find them, I will forward them by you; if not, you must apologize for me.

I know you will laugh at it when I tell you that your piano and you together have played the deuce somehow about my heart. My breast has been widowed these many months, and I thought myself proof against the fascinating witchcraft; but I am afraid you will “feelingly convince me what I am.” I say, I am afraid, because I am not sure what is the matter with me. I have one miserable bad symptom; when you whisper, or look kindly to another, it gives me a draught of damnation. I have a kind of wayward wish to be with you ten minutes by yourself, though what I would say, Heaven above knows, for I am sure I know not. I have no formed design in all this; but just, in the nakedness of my heart, write you down a mere matter-of-fact story. You may perhaps give yourself airs of distance on this, and that will completely cure me; but I wish you would not: just let us meet, if you please, in the old beaten way of friendship.

I will not subscribe myself your humble servant, for that is a phrase, I think at least fifty miles off from the heart; but I will conclude with sincerely wishing that the Great Protector of innocence may shield you from the barbed dart of calumny, and hand you by the covert snare of deceit.

R. B.

XII. TO MR. JOHN RICHMOND, OF EDINBURGH

[John Richmond, writer, one of the poet’s Mauchline friends, to whom we are indebted for much valuable information concerning Burns and his productions—Connel was the Mauchline carrier.]

Mossgiel, Feb. 17, 1786.

My dear Sir,

I have not time at present to upbraid you for your silence and neglect; I shall only say I received yours with great pleasure. I have enclosed you a piece of rhyming ware for your perusal. I have been very busy with the muses since I saw you, and have composed, among several others, “The Ordination,” a poem on Mr. M’Kinlay’s being called to Kilmarnock; “Scotch Drink,” a poem; “The Cotter’s Saturday Night;” “An Address to the Devil,” &c. I have likewise completed my poem on the “Dogs,” but have not shown it to the world. My chief patron now is Mr. Aiken, in Ayr, who is pleased to express great approbation of my works. Be so good as send me Fergusson, by Connel, and I will remit you the money. I have no news to acquaint you with about Mauchline, they are just going on in the old way. I have some very important news with respect to myself, not the most agreeable—news that I am sure you cannot guess, but I shall give you the particulars another time. I am extremely happy with Smith; he is the only friend I have now in Mauchline. I can scarcely forgive your long neglect of me, and I beg you will let me hear from you regularly by Connel. If you would act your part as a friend, I am sure neither good nor bad fortune should strange of alter me. Excuse haste, as I got yours but yesterday.

I am, my dear Sir,

Yours,

R. B.

XIII. TO MR. JOHN KENNEDY, DUMFRIES HOUSE

[Who the John Kennedy was to whom Burns addressed this note, enclosing “The Cotter’s Saturday night,” it is now, perhaps, vain to inquire: the Kennedy to whom Mr. Cobbett introduces us was a Thomas—perhaps a relation.]

Mossgiel, 3d March, 1786.

Sir,

I have done myself the pleasure of complying with your request in sending you my Cottager.—If you have a leisure minute, I should be glad you would copy it, and return me either the original or the transcript, as I have not a copy of it by me, and I have a friend who wishes to see it.

“Now, Kennedy, if foot or horse.”^[159]

Robt. Burness.

XIV. TO MR. ROBERT MUIR, KILMARNOCK

[The Muirs—there were two brothers—were kind and generous patrons of the poet. They subscribed for half-a-hundred copies of the Kilmarnock edition of his works, and befriended him when friends were few.]

Mossgiel, 20th March, 1786.

Dear Sir,

I am heartily sorry I had not the pleasure of seeing you as you returned through Mauchline; but as I was engaged, I could not be in town before the evening.

I here enclose you my “Scotch Drink,” and “may the – follow with a blessing for your edification.” I hope, some time before we hear the gowk, to have the pleasure of seeing you at Kilmarnock, when I intend we shall have a gill between us, in a mutchkin-stoup; which will be a great comfort and consolation to,

Dear Sir,

Your humble servant,

Robt. Burness.

XV. TO MR. AIKEN

[Robert Aiken, the gentleman to whom the “Cotter’s Saturday Night” is inscribed, is also introduced in the “Brigs of Ayr.” This is the last letter to which Burns seems to have subscribed his name in the spelling of his ancestors.]

Mossgiel, 3d April, 1786.

Dear Sir,

I received your kind letter with double pleasure, on account of the second flattering instance of Mrs. C.’s notice and approbation, I assure you I

“Turn out the burnt o’ my shin,”

as the famous Ramsay, of jingling memory, says, at such a patroness. Present her my most grateful acknowledgment in your very best manner of telling truth. I have inscribed the following stanza on the blank leaf of Miss More’s Work:—^[160]

My proposals for publishing I am just going to send to press. I expect to hear from you by the first opportunity.

I am ever, dear Sir,

Yours,

Robt. Burness.

XVI. TO MR. M’WHINNIE, WRITER, AYR

[Mr. M’Whinnie obtained for Burns several subscriptions for the first edition of his Poems, of which this note enclosed the proposals.]

Mossgiel, 17th April, 1786.

It is injuring some hearts, those hearts that elegantly bear the impression of the good Creator, to say to them you give them the trouble of obliging a friend; for this reason, I only tell you that I gratify my own feelings in requesting your friendly offices with respect to the enclosed, because I know it will gratify yours to assist me in it to the utmost of your power.

I have sent you four copies, as I have no less than eight dozen, which is a great deal more than I shall ever need.

Be sure to remember a poor poet militant in your prayers. He looks forward with fear and trembling to that, to him, important moment which stamps the die with—with—with, perhaps, the eternal disgrace of,

My dear Sir,

Your humble,

afflicted, tormented,

Robert Burns.

XVII. TO MR. JOHN KENNEDY

[“The small piece,” the very last of his productions, which the poet enclosed in this letter, was “The Mountain Daisy,” called in the manuscript more properly “The Gowan.”]

Mossgiel, 20th April, 1786.

Sir,

By some neglect in Mr. Hamilton, I did not hear of your kind request for a subscription paper ’till this day. I will not attempt any acknowledgment for this, nor the manner in which I see your name in Mr. Hamilton’s subscription list. Allow me only to say, Sir, I feel the weight of the debt.

I have here likewise enclosed a small piece, the very latest of my productions. I am a good deal pleased with some sentiments myself, as they are just the native querulous feelings of a heart, which, as the elegantly melting Gray says, “melancholy has marked for her own.”

Our race comes on a-pace; that much-expected scene of revelry and mirth; but to me it brings no joy equal to that meeting with which your last flattered the expectation of,

Sir,

Your indebted humble servant,

R. B.

XVIII. TO MON. JAMES SMITH, MAUCHLINE

[James Smith, of whom Burns said he was small of stature, but large of soul, kept at that time a draper’s shop in Mauchline, and was comrade to the poet in many a wild adventure.]

Monday Morning, Mossgiel, 1786.

My Dear Sir,

I went to Dr. Douglas yesterday, fully resolved to take the opportunity of Captain Smith: but I found the Doctor with a Mr. and Mrs. White, both Jamaicans, and they have deranged my plans altogether. They assure him that to send me from Savannah la Mar to Port Antonio will cost my master, Charles Douglas, upwards of fifty pounds; besides running the risk of throwing myself into a pleuritic fever, in consequence of hard travelling in the sun. On these accounts, he refuses sending me with Smith, but a vessel sails from Greenock the first of September, right for the place of my destination. The Captain of her is an intimate friend of Mr. Gavin Hamilton’s, and as good a fellow as heart could wish: with him I am destined to go. Where I shall shelter, I know not, but I hope to weather the storm. Perish the drop of blood of mine that fears them! I know their worst, and am prepared to meet it;—

“I’ll laugh an’ sing, an’ shake my leg,

As lang’s I dow.”

On Thursday morning, if you can muster as much self-denial as to be out of bed about seven o’clock, I shall see you, as I ride through to Cumnock. After all, Heaven bless the sex! I feel there is still happiness for me among them:

“O woman, lovely woman! Heaven design’d you

To temper man!—we had been brutes without you.”^[161]

R. B.

XIX. TO MR. JOHN KENNEDY

[Burns was busy in a two-fold sense at present: he was seeking patrons in every quarter for his contemplated volume, and was composing for it some of his most exquisite poetry.]

Mossgiel, 16 May, 1796.

Dear Sir,

I have sent you the above hasty copy as I promised. In about three or four weeks I shall probably set the press a-going. I am much hurried at present, otherwise your diligence, so very friendly in my subscription, should have a more lengthened acknowledgment from,

Dear Sir,

Your obliged servant,

R. B.

XX. TO MR. DAVID BRICE

[David Brice was a shoemaker, and shared with Smith the confidence of the poet in his love affairs. He was working in Glasgow when this letter was written.]

Mossgiel, June 12, 1786.

Dear Brice,

I received your message by G. Patterson, and as I am not very throng at present, I just write to let you know that there is such a worthless, rhyming reprobate, as your humble servant, still in the land of the living, though I can scarcely say, in the place of hope. I have no news to tell you that will give me any pleasure to mention, or you to hear.

Poor ill-advised ungrateful Armour came home on Friday last. You have heard all the particulars of that affair, and a black affair it is. What she thinks of her conduct now, I don’t know; one thing I do know—she has made me completely miserable. Never man loved, or rather adored a woman more than I did her; and, to confess a truth between you and me, I do still love her to distraction after all, though I won’t tell her so if I were to see her, which I don’t want to do. My poor dear unfortunate Jean! how happy have I been in thy arms! It is not the losing her that makes me so unhappy, but for her sake I feel most severely: I foresee she is in the road to, I am afraid, eternal ruin. *

* * *

May Almighty God forgive her ingratitude and perjury to me, as I from my very soul forgive her: and may his grace be with her and bless her in all her future life! I can have no nearer idea of the place of eternal punishment than what I have felt in my own breast on her account. I have tried often to forget her; I have run into all kinds of dissipation and riots, mason-meetings, drinking matches, and other mischief, to drive her out of my head, but all in vain. And now for a grand cure; the ship is on her way home that is to take me out to Jamaica; and then, farewell dear old Scotland! and farewell dear ungrateful Jean! for never never will I see you more.

You will have heard that I am going to commence poet in print; and to morrow my works go to the press. I expect it will be a volume of about two hundred pages—it is just the last foolish action I intend to do; and then turn a wise man as fast as possible.

Believe me to be, dear Brice,

Your friend and well-wisher,

R. B.

XXI. TO MR. ROBERT AIKEN

[This letter was written under great distress of mind. That separation which Burns records in “The Lament,” had, unhappily, taken place between him and Jean Armour, and it would appear, that for a time at least a coldness ensued between the poet and the patron, occasioned, it is conjectured, by that fruitful subject of sorrow and disquiet. The letter, I regret to say, is not wholly here.]

[Ayrshire, 1786.]

Sir,

I was with Wilson, my printer, t’other day, and settled all our by-gone matters between us. After I had paid him all demands, I made him the offer of the second edition, on the hazard of being paid out of the first and readiest, which he declines. By his account, the paper of a thousand copies would cost me about twenty-seven pounds, and the printing about fifteen or sixteen: he offers to agree to this for the printing, if I will advance for the paper, but this, you know, is out of my power; so farewell hopes of a second edition till I grow rich! an epoch which I think will arrive at the payment of the British national debt.

There is scarcely anything hurts me so much in being disappointed of my second edition, as not having it in my power to show my gratitude to Mr. Ballantyne, by publishing my poem of “The Brigs of Ayr.” I would detest myself as a wretch, if I thought I were capable in a very long life of forgetting the honest, warm, and tender delicacy with which he enters into my interests. I am sometimes pleased with myself in my greateful sensations; but I believe, on the whole, I have very little merit in it, as my gratitude is not a virtue, the consequence of reflection; but sheerly the instinctive emotion of my heart, too inattentive to allow worldly maxims and views to settle into selfish habits. I have been feeling all the various rotations and movements within, respecting the excise. There are many things plead strongly against it; the uncertainty of getting soon into business; the consequences of my follies, which may perhaps make it impracticable for me to stay at home; and besides I have for some time been pining under secret wretchedness, from causes which you pretty well know—the pang of disappointment, the sting of pride, with some wandering stabs of remorse, which never fail to settle on my vitals like vultures, when attention is not called away by the calls of society, or the vagaries of the muse. Even in the hour of social mirth, my gayety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of the executioner. All these reasons urge me to go abroad, and to all these reasons I have only one answer—the feelings of a father. This, in the present mood I am in, overbalances everything that can be laid in the scale against it. * * * *

You may perhaps think it an extravagant fancy, but it is a sentiment which strikes home to my very soul: though sceptical in some points of our current belief, yet, I think, I have every evidence for the reality of a life beyond the stinted bourne of our present existence; if so, then, how should I, in the presence of that tremendous Being, the Author of existence, how should I meet the reproaches of those who stand to me in the dear relation of children, whom I deserted in the smiling innocency of helpless infancy? O, thou great unknown Power!—thou almighty God! who has lighted up reason in my breast, and blessed me with immortality!—I have frequently wandered from that order and regularity necessary for the perfection of thy works, yet thou hast never left me nor forsaken me! * * * *

Since I wrote the foregoing sheet, I have seen something of the storm of mischief thickening over my folly-devoted head. Should you, my friends, my benefactors, be successful in your applications for me, perhaps it may not be in my power, in that way, to reap the fruit of your friendly efforts. What I have written in the preceding pages, is the settled tenor of my present resolution; but should inimical circumstances forbid me closing with your kind offer, or enjoying it only threaten to entail farther misery— * * * *

To tell the truth, I have little reason for complaint; as the world, in general, has been kind to me fully up to my deserts. I was, for some time past, fast getting into the pining, distrustful snarl of the misanthrope. I saw myself alone, unlit for the struggle of life, shrinking at every rising cloud in the chance-directed atmosphere of fortune, while all defenceless I looked about in vain for a cover. It never occurred to me, at least never with the force it deserved, that this world is a busy scene, and man, a creature destined for a progressive struggle; and that, however I might possess a warm heart and inoffensive manners (which last, by the by, was rather more than I could well boast); still, more than these passive qualities, there was something to be done. When all my school-fellows and youthful compeers (those misguided few excepted who joined, to use a Gentoo phrase, the “hallachores” of the human race) were striking off with eager hope and earnest intent, in some one or other of the many paths of busy life, I was “standing idle in the market-place,” or only left the chase of the butterfly from flower to flower, to hunt fancy from whim to whim. * * * *

You see, Sir, that if to know one’s errors were a probability of mending them, I stand a fair chance; but according to the reverend Westminster divines, though conviction must precede conversion, it is very far from always implying it. * * * *

R. B.