No. CCLXXXIII. TO G. THOMSON. September, 1793. "WHO shall decide when doctors disagree?" My ode "Bannockburn" pleases me so much that I cannot alter it. I have finished my song to "Saw ye my Father?" and in English, as you will see. That there is a syllable too much for the expression of the air, it is true; but allow me to say, that the mere dividing of a dotted crotchet into a crotchet and a quaver is not a great matter however, in that I have no pretensions to cope in judgment with you. Of the poetry I speak with confidence; but the music is a business where I hint my ideas with the utmost diffidence. No. CCLXXXIV. TO G. THOMSON. YOUR Irish airs are pretty, but they are downright Irish. If they were like the "Banks of Banna," for instance, though really Irish, yet in the Scottish taste, you might adopt them. Since you are so fond of Irish music, what say you to twenty-five of them in an additional number? We could easily find this quantity of charming airs; I will take care that you shall not want songs; and I assure you that you would find it the most saleable of the whole. If you do not approve of "Roy's Wife," for the music's sake, we shall not insert it. "Deil tak the Wars" is a charming song; so is "Saw ye my Peggy?" "There's nae Luck about the House" well deserves a place. I cannot say that "O'er the hills and far awa strikes me as equal to your selection. "This is no my ain House" is a great favourite air of mine; and if you will send me your set of it, I will task my muse to her highest effort. What is your opinion of "I hae laid a Herrin' in Sawt?" I like it much. Your Jacobite airs are pretty: and there are many others of the same kind, pretty; but you have not room for them. You cannot, I think, insert "Fye, let's a' to the Bridal,” to any other words than its own. 66 What pleases me as simple and naïve, disgusts you as ludicrous and low. For this reason "Fye, gie me my coggie, Sirs," Fye, let's a' to the Bridal," with several others of that cast, are, to me, highly pleasing; while "Saw thee my Father, or saw ye my Mother?" delights me with its descriptive simple pathos. Thus my song, "Ken ye what Mcg o' the Mill has gotten?" pleases myself so much, that I cannot try my hand at another song to the air; so I shall not attempt it. I know you will laugh at all this; but "Ilka man wears his belt his ain gait." No. CCLXXXV. TO JOHN MCMURDO, ESQ. DUMFRIES, December, 1793. SIR, It is said that we take the greatest liberties with our greatest friends, and I pay myself a very high compliment in the manner in which But I am going to apply the remark. I have owed you money longer than ever I owed it to any man. Here is Ker's account, and here are six guineas; and now I don't owe a shilling to man--or woman either. for these damned dirty, dog's-ear'd little pages [Scottish banknotes]. I had done myself the honour to have waited on you long ago. Independent of the obligations your hospitality has laid me under, the consciousness of your superiority in the rank of man and gentleman of itself was fully as much as I could ever make head against; but to owe you money too was more than I could face. I think I once mentioned something of a collection of Scots songs I have for some years been making: I send you a perusal of what I have got together. I could not conveniently spare them above five or six days, and five or six glances of them will probably more than suffice you. A very few of them are my own. When you are tired of them, please leave them with Mr. Clint, of the King's Arms. There is not another copy of the collection in the world; and I should be sorry that any unfortunate negligence should deprive me of what has cost me a good deal of pains. R. B. ance. No. CCLXXXVI. TO CAPTAIN [ROBERTSON OF LUDE?]. SIR, DUMFRIES, 5th December, 1793Heated as I was with wine yesternight, I was perhaps rather seemingly impertinent in my anxious wish to be honoured with your acquaintYou will forgive it : it was the impulse of heart-felt respect. "He is the father of the Scottish country reform, and is a man who does honour to the business at the same time that the business does honour to him," said my worthy friend Glenriddel to somebody by me who was talking of your coming to this country with your corps. "Then," I said, "I have a woman's longing to take him by the hand, and say to him, 'Sir, I honour you as a man to whom the interests of humanity are dear, and as a patriot to whom the rights of your country are sacred.'" In times like these, Sir, when our commoners are barely able by the glimmer of their own twilight understandings to scrawl a frank, and when lords are what gentlemen would be ashamed to be, to whom shall a sinking country call for help? To the independent country gentleman! To him who has too deep a stake in his country not to be in earnest for her welfare, and who in the honest pride of man can view with equal contempt the insolence of office and the allurements of corruption. I mentioned to you a Scots ode or song I had lately composed, and which I think has some merit. Allow me to enclose it. When I fall in with you at the theatre, I shall be glad to have your opinion of it. Accept of it, Sir, as a very humble but most sincere tribute of respect from a man who, dear as he prizes poetic fame, yet holds dearer an independent mind. I have the honour to be, R. B. No. CCLXXXVII. TO THE EARL OF BUCHAN, WITH A COPY OF BRUCE'S ADDRESS TO HIS TROOPS AT BANNOCKBURN. MY LORD, DUMFRIES, 12th January, 1794. Will your lordship allow me to present you with the enclosed little composition of mine, as a small tribute of gratitude for the acquaintance with which you have been pleased to honour me. Independent of my enthusiasm as a Scotsman, I have rarely met with anything in history which interests my feelings as a man equal with the story of Bannockburn. On the one hand, a cruel but able usurper, leading on the finest army in Europe to extinguish the last spark of freedom among a greatly daring and greatly injured people; on the other hand, the desperate relics of a gallant nation devoting themselves to rescue their bleeding country, or perish with her. Liberty! thou art a prize truly and indeed invaluable; for never canst thou be too dearly bought !—R. B. No. CCLXXXVIII. ΤΟ MRS. RIDDEL. [Burns's repugnance to officers of the army was probably due in some measure to his hostility to the political cause with which he identified them.] DEAR MADAM, I meant to have called on you yesternight, but as I edged up to your box-door, the first object which greeted my view was one of those lobster-coated puppies, sitting like another dragon, guarding the Hesperian fruit. On the conditions and capitulations you so obligingly offer, I shall certainly make my weather-beaten rustic phiz a part of your box-furniture on Tuesday; when we may arrange the business of the visit. Among the profusion of idle compliments which insidious craft, or unmeaning folly, incessantly offer at your shrine-a shrine, how far exalted above such adoration!--permit me, were it but for rarity's sake, to pay you the honest tribute of a warm heart and an independent mind; and to assure you that I am, thou most amiable and most accomplished of thy sex, with the most respectful esteem and fervent regard, thine, &c. R. B. No. CCLXXXIX. TO MR. SAMUEL CLARKE, JUN. DUMFRIES. [At a supper-table Burns proposed the toast, "May our success in the present war be equal to the justice of our cause," which was resented by an officer present as a reflection on the Government and the army. Next morning Burns wrote this note.] DEAR SIR, Sunday Morning. I was, I know, drunk last night, but I am sober this morning. From the expressions Capt. made use of to me, had I had nobody's welfare to care for but my own, we should certainly have come, according to the manners of the world, to the necessity of murdering one another about the business. The words were such as generally, I believe, end in a brace of pistols; but I am still pleased to think that I did not ruin the peace and welfare of a wife and a family of children in a drunken squabble. Farther, you know that the report of certain political opinions being mine has already once before brought me to the brink of destruction. I dread lest last night's business may be misrepresented in the same way. You, I beg, will take care to prevent it. I tax your wish for Mr. Burns's welfare with the task of waiting as soon as possible on every gentleman who was present, and state this to him, and, as you please, show him this letter. What, after all, was the obnoxious toast?" May our success in the present war be equal to the justice of our cause"-a toast that the most outrageous frenzy of loyalty cannot object to. request and beg that this morning you will wait on the parties present at the foolish dispute. I shall only add, that I am truly sorry that a man who stood so high in my estimation as Mr. should use me in the manner in which I conceive he has done.-R. B. I No. CCXC. TO MRS. RIDDEL [Burns's intimacy with the Riddels was interrupted about this time in consequence of the Poet's rough behaviour to the lady after a bout of hard drinking at the dinnertable. The following letter of apology is supposed to be written from the Dead to the Living.] MADAM, I daresay that this is the first epistle you ever received from this nether world. I write you from the regions of hell, amid the horrors of the damned. The time and manner of my leaving your earth I do not exactly know, as I took my departure in the heat of a fever of intoxication, contracted at your too hospitable mansion; but, on my arrival here, I was fairly tried, and sentenced to endure the purgatorial tortures of this infernal confine for the space of ninety-nine years, eleven months, and twenty-nine days, and all on account of the impropriety of my conduct yesternight under your roof. Here am I, laid on a bed of pitiless furze, with my aching head reclined on a pillow of ever-piercing thorn, while an infernal tormentor, wrinkled, and old, and cruel-his name I think is Recollection-with a whip of scorpions, forbids peace or rest to approach me, and keeps anguish eternally awake. Still, Madam, if I could in any measure be reinstated in the good opinion of the fair circle whom my conduct last night so much injured, I think it would be an alleviation to my torments. For this reason I trouble you with this letter. To the men of the company I will make no apology. Your husband, who insisted on my drinking more than I chose, has no right to blame me; and the other gentlemen were partakers of my guilt. But to you, Madam, I have much to apologize. Your good opinion I valued as one of the greatest acquisitions I had made on earth, and I was truly a beast to forfeit it. There was a Miss I- too, a woman of fine sense, gentle and unassuming manners-do make, on my part, a miserable d-mned wretch's best apology to her. A Mrs. G-, a charming woman, did me the honour to be prejudiced in my favour; this makes me hope that I have not outraged her beyond all forgiveness. To all the other ladies please present my humblest contrition for my conduct, and my petition for their gracious pardon. O all ye powers of decency and decorum! whisper to them that my errors, though great, were involuntary-that an intoxicated man is the vilest of beasts-that it was not in my nature to be brutal to any one-that to be rude to a woman, when in my senses, was impossible with me-but Regret! Remorse! Shame! ye three hellhounds that ever dog my steps and bay at my heels, spare me ! spare me ! Forgive the offences, and pity the perdition of, Madam, Your humble Slave, R. B. MADAM, No. CCXCI. TO MRS. RIDDEL. I return your common-place book. I have perused it with much pleasure, and would have continued my criticisms; but as it seems the critic has forfeited your esteem, his strictures must lose their value. If it is true that "offences come only from the heart," before you I am guiltless. To admire, esteem, and prize you as the most accomplished of women and the first of friends-if these are crimes, I am the most offending thing alive. In a face where I used to meet the kind complacency of friendly confidence, now to find cold neglect and contemptuous scorn, is a wrench that my heart can ill bear. It is, however, some kind of miserable good luck, that while de-haut-en-bas rigour may depress an unoffending wretch to the ground, it has a tendency to rouse a stubborn something in his |