this life will renew their former intimacies, with this endearing addition, that "we meet to part no more!" . . . 66 A thousand times have I made this apostrophe to the departed sons of men, but not one of them has ever thought fit to answer the question. "O that some courteous ghost would blab it out!" but it cannot be; you and I, my friend, must make the experiment by ourselves, and for ourselves. However, I am so convinced that an unshaken faith in the doctrines of religion is not only necessary, by making us better men, but also by making us happier men, that I should take every care that your little godson, and every little creature that shall call me father, shall be taught them. So ends this heterogeneous letter, written at this wild place of the world, in the intervals of my labour of discharging a vessel of rum from Antigua.-R. B. No. CCXLVII. TO MR. CUNNINGHAM. DUMFRIES, 10th September, 1792. No! I will not attempt an apology. Amid all my hurry of business, grinding the faces of the publican and the sinner on the merciless wheels of the Excise; making ballads, and then drinking, and singing them; and, over and above all, the correcting the press-work of two different publications; still, still I might have stolen five minutes to dedicate to one of the first of my friends and fellow-creatures. I might have done, as I do at present, snatched an hour near "witching time of night," and scrawled a page or two. I might have congratulated my friend on his marriage; or I might have thanked the Caledonian archers for the honour they have done me (though, to do myself justice, I intended to have done both in rhyme; else I had done both long ere now). Well, then, here is to your good health! for you must know I have set a nipperkin of toddy by me, just by way of spell, to keep away the meikle-horned Deil, or any of his subaltern imps who may be on their nightly rounds. But what shall I write to you? "The voice said, Cry,” and I said, "What shall I cry?" O thou spirit! whatever thou art, or wherever thou makest thyself visible !—be thou a bogle by the eerie side of an auld thorn, in the dreary glen through which the herd-callan maun bicker in his gloamin route frae the faulde!-Be thou a brownie, set, at dead of night, to thy task by the blazing ingle, or in the solitary barn, where the repercussions of thy iron flail half affright thyself, as thou performest the work of twenty of the sons of men, ere the cock-crowing summon thee to thy ample cog of substantial brose !-Be thou a kelpie, haunting the ford or ferry, in the starless night, mixing thy laughing yell with the howling of the storm and the roaring of the flood, as thou viewest the perils and miseries of man on the foundering horse, or in the tumbling boat!-Or, lastly, be thou a ghost, paying thy nocturnal visits to the hoary ruins of decayed grandeur; or performing thy mystic rites in the shadow of the time-worn church, while the moon looks, without a cloud, on the silent, ghastly dwellings of the dead around thee; or, taking thy stand by the bedside of the villain or the murderer, portraying on his dreaming fancy pictures dreadful as the horrors of unveiled hell, and terrible as the wrath of incensed Deity!Come, thou spirit, but not in these horrid forms; come with the milder, gentle, easy inspirations which thou breathest round the wig of a prating advocate, or the téte of a tea-sipping gossip, while their tongues run at the light-horse gallop of clish-maclaver for ever and ever; come and assist a poor devil who is quite jaded in the attempt to share half an idea among half a hundred words, to fill up four quarto pages, while he has not got one single sentence of recollection, information, or remark worth putting pen to paper for. I feel, I feel the presence of supernatural assistance! Circled in the embrace of my elbow-chair, my breast labours, like the bloated Sybil on her three-footed stool, and, like her too, labours with Nonsense.-Nonsense, auspicious name! Tutor, friend, and finger-post in the mystic mazes of law, the cadaverous paths of physic, and particularly in the sightless soarings of school divinity; who-leaving Common Sense confounded at his strength of pinion, Reason delirious with eyeing his giddy flight, and Truth creeping back into the bottom of her well, cursing the hour that ever she offered her scorned alliance to the wizard power of Theologic Vision-raves abroad on all the winds: "On earth Discord! a gloomy heaven above, opening her jealous gates to the nineteen-thousandth part of the tithe of mankind! and below, an inescapable and inexorable hell, expanding its leviathan jaws for the vast residue of mortals!!!" O doctrine comfortable and healing to the weary, wounded soul of man! Ye sons and daughters of affliction, ye pauvres misérables, to whom day brings no pleasure, and night yields no rest, be comforted! "'Tis but one to nineteen hundred thousand that your situation will mend in this world." So, alas! the experience of the poor and needy too often affirms; and 'tis nineteen hundred thousand to one, by the dogmas of ****, that you will be damned eternally in the world to come! But, of all Nonsense, Religious Nonsense is the most nonsensical; so enough, and more than enough of it. Only, by the by, will you, or can you, tell me, my dear Cunningham, why a sectarian turn of mind has always a tendency to narrow and illiberalize the heart? They are orderly; they may be just; nay, I have known them merciful; but still your children of sanctity move among their fellow-creatures with a nostril snuffing putrescence and a foot spurning filth,-in short, with a conceited dignity that your titled **** or any other of your Scottish lordlings of seven centuries' standing display, when they accidentally mix among the many-aproned sons of mechanical life. I remember, in my ploughboy days, I could not conceive it possible that a noble lord could be a fool, or a godly man could be a knave. How ignorant are plough boys! Nay, I have since discovered that a godly woman may be a ***** !—But hold-Here's t'ye again-this rum is generous Antigua; so a very unfit menstruum for scandal. Apropos, how do you like-I mean really like-the married life? Ah, my friend, matrimony is quite a different thing from what your love-sick youths and sighing girls take it to be! But marriage, we are told, is appointed by God, and I shall never quarrel with any of His institutions. I am a husband of older standing than you, and shall give you my ideas of the conjugal state (en passant—you know I am no Latinist-is not conjugal derived from jugum, a yoke?). Well, then, the scale of good wifeship I divide into ten parts :-Goodnature, four; Good Sense, two; Wit, one; Personal Charms, viz. a sweet face, eloquent eyes, fine limbs, graceful carriage (I would add a fine waist too, but that is so soon spoilt, you know), all these, one; as for the other qualities belonging to, or attending on, a wife, such as Fortune, Connexions, Education (I mean education extraordinary), Family Blood, &c., divide the two remaining degrees among them as you please; only remember that all these minor properties must be expressed by fractions, for there is not any one of them, in the aforesaid scale, entitled to the dignity of an integer. As for the rest of my fancies and reveries—how I lately met with Miss Lesley Baillie, the most beautiful, elegant woman in the world-how I accompanied her and her father's family fifteen miles on their journey, out of pure devotion, to admire the loveliness of the works of God in such an unequalled display of them-how, in galloping home at night, I made a ballad on her, of which these two stanzas make a part Thou, bonie Lesley, art a queen, The very Deil he could na scathe And say, "I canna wrang thee." -behold all these things are written in the chronicles of my imaginations, and shall be read by thee, my dear friend, and by thy beloved spouse, my other dear friend, at a more convenient season. Now, to thee, and to thy before-designed bosom-companion, be given the precious things brought forth by the sun, and the precious things brought forth by the moon, and the benignest influences of the stars, and the living streams which flow from the fountains of life, and by the tree of life, for ever and ever! Amen.-R. B. No. CCXLVIII. TO MR. G. THOMSON. [In the autumn of 1792 Mr. G. Thomson of Edinburgh planned "A select Collection of original Scottish Airs; to which are added Symphonies and Accompaniments by Pleyel and Kozeluck, with characteristic Verses by the most esteemed Scottish Poets;" and as Burns was the only poet of that period worthy of the name, he was instantly applied to, to furnish verses to some airs which were not already supplied with any, or at least with satisfactory, words. ] DUMFRIES, 16th Sept. 1792. SIR, I have just this moment got your letter. As the request you make to me will positively add to my enjoyments in complying with it, I shall enter into your undertaking with all the small portion of abilities I have, strained to their utmost exertion by the impulse of enthusiasm. Only don't hurry me: "Deil tak' the hindmost" is by no means the cri de guerre of my muse. Will you, as I am inferior to none of you in enthusiastic attachment to the poetry and music of old Caledonia, and, since you request it, have cheerfully promised my mite of assistance-will you let me have a list of your airs, with the first line of the printed verses you intend for them, that I may have an opportunity of suggesting any alteration that may occur to me? You know 'tis in the way of my trade; still leaving you, gentlemen, the undoubted right of publishers to approve or reject, at your pleasure, for your own publication. Apropos, if you are for English verses, there is, on my part, an end of the matter. Whether in the simplicity of the ballad, or the pathos of the song, I can only hope to please myself in being allowed at least a sprinkling of our native tongue. English verses, particularly the works of Scotsmen, that have merit, are certainly very eligible. "Tweedside"-"Ah, the poor shepherd's mournful fate!" "Ah, Chloris! could I now but sit," &c., you cannot mend; but such insipid stuff as "To Fanny fair could I impart," &c., usually set to "The Mill, Mill, O!" is a disgrace to the collections in which it has already appeared, and would doubly disgrace a collection that will have the very superior merit of yours. But more of this in the farther prosecution of the business, if I am called on for my strictures and amendments;—I say amendments; for I will not alter except where I myself, at least, think that I amend. As to any remuneration, you may think my songs either above or below price; for they shall absolutely be the one or the other. In the honest enthusiasm with which I embark in your undertaking, to talk of money, wages, fee, hire, &c. would be downright prostitution of soul! A proof of each of the songs that I compose or amend I shall receive as a favour. In the rustic phrase of the season," Gude speed the wark!" I am, Sir, Your very humble Servant, No. CCXLIX. TO MRS. DUNLOP. [Mrs. Henri, Mrs. Dunlop's widowed daughter, had gone to France to introduce her boy to his father's family, and found herself in the midst of the terrible convulsion of the great Revolution.] DUMFRIES, 24th September, 1792. I HAVE this moment, my dear Madam, yours of the 23d. All your other kind reproaches, your news, &c., are out of my head when I read and think on Mrs. Henri's situation. Good God! a heart-wounded, helpless young woman in a strange, foreign land, and that land convulsed with every horror that can harrow the human feelings-sick-looking, longing for a comforter, but finding none-a mother's feelings, too;--but it is too much: He who wounded (He only can), may He heal! I wish the farmer great joy of his new acquisition to his family. I cannot say that I give him joy of his life as a farmer. 'Tis, as a farmer paying a dear, unconscionable rent, a cursed life! As to a laird farming his own property; sowing his own corn in hope, and reaping it, in spite of brittle weather, in gladness; knowing that none can say unto him, 'What dost thou?' fattening his herds; shearing his flocks; rejoicing at Christmas; and begetting sons and daughters, until he be the venerated, grey-haired leader of a little tribe-'tis a heavenly life! but devil take the life of reaping the fruits that another must eat. Well, your kind wishes will be gratified, as to seeing me when I make my Ayrshire visit. I cannot leave Mrs. B. until her nine months' race is run, which may perhaps be in three or four weeks. She, too, seems determined to make me the patriarchal leader of a band. However, if Heaven will be so obliging as to let me have them in the proportion of three boys to one girl, I shall be so much the more pleased. hope, if I am spared with them, to show a set of boys that will do honour to my cares and name; but I am not equal to the task of rearing girls.* Besides, I am too poor; a girl should always have a fortune. Apropos, your little godson is thriving charmingly, but is a very devil. He, though two years younger, has completely mastered his brother. Robert is indeed the mildest, gentlest creature I ever saw. He has a most surprising memory, and is quite the pride of his schoolmaster. You know how readily we get into prattle upon a subject dear to our heart you can excuse it. God bless you and yours!-R. B. YOUR observation as to the aptitude of Dr. Percy's ballad, "O, Nancy, wilt thou go with me?" to the air, “Nannie, O !" is just. It is, besides, perhaps the most beautiful ballad in the English language. But *The child proved to be a girl, born 21st November: she was named Elizabeth Riddel. |