The Complete Works of Robert Burns Part 199

--Up and to your looms, lads."

R. B.

XCI.

TO MISS CHALMERS.

[The "Ochel-Hills," which the poet promises in this letter, is a song, beginning,

"Where braving angry winter's storms The lofty Ochels rise,"

written in honour of Margaret Chalmers, and published along with the "Banks of the Devon," in Johnson's Musical Museum.]

_Edinburgh, Dec._ 12, 1787.

I am here under the care of a surgeon, with a bruised limb extended on a cushion; and the tints of my mind vying with the livid horror preceding a midnight thunder-storm. A drunken coachman was the cause of the first, and incomparably the lightest evil; misfortune, bodily const.i.tution, h.e.l.l, and myself have formed a "quadruple alliance" to guaranty the other. I got my fall on Sat.u.r.day, and am getting slowly better.

I have taken tooth and nail to the Bible, and am got through the five books of Moses, and half way in Joshua. It is really a glorious book.

I sent for my bookbinder to-day, and ordered him to get me an octavo Bible in sheets, the best paper and print in town; and bind it with all the elegance of his craft.

I would give my best song to my worst enemy, I mean the merit of making it, to have you and Charlotte by me. You are angelic creatures, and would pour oil and wine into my wounded spirit.

I enclose you a proof copy of the "Banks of the Devon," which present with my best wishes to Charlotte. The "Ochel-hills" you shall probably have next week for yourself. None of your fine speeches!

R. B.

XCII.

TO MISS CHALMERS.

[The eloquent hypochondriasm of the concluding paragraph of this letter, called forth the commendation of Lord Jeffrey, when he criticised Cromek's Reliques of Burns, in the Edinburgh Review.]

_Edinburgh, Dec._ 19, 1787.

I begin this letter in answer to yours of the 17th current, which is not yet cold since I read it. The atmosphere of my soul is vastly clearer than when I wrote you last. For the first time, yesterday I crossed the room on crutches. It would do your heart good to see my hardship, not on my poetic, but on my oaken stilts; throwing my best leg with an air! and with as much hilarity in my gait and countenance, as a May frog leaping across the newly harrowed ridge, enjoying the fragrance of the refreshed earth, after the long-expected shower!

I can't say I am altogether at my ease when I see anywhere in my path that meagre, squalid, famine-faced spectre, Poverty; attended as he always is, by iron-fisted oppression, and leering contempt; but I have st.u.r.dily withstood his buffetings many a hard-laboured day already, and still my motto is--I DARE! My worst enemy is _moi-meme._ I lie so miserably open to the inroads and incursions of a mischievous, light-armed, well-mounted banditti, under the banners of imagination, whim, caprice, and pa.s.sion: and the heavy-armed veteran regulars of wisdom, prudence, and forethought move so very, very slow, that I am almost in a state of perpetual warfare, and, alas! frequent defeat. There are just two creatures I would envy, a horse in his wild state traversing the forests of Asia, or an oyster on some of the desert sh.o.r.es of Europe. The one has not a wish without enjoyment, the other has neither wish nor fear.

R. B.

XCIII.

TO SIR JOHN WHITEFOORD.

[The Whitefoords of Whitefoord, interested themselves in all matters connected with literature: the power of the family, unluckily for Burns, was not equal to their taste.]

_Edinburgh, December_, 1787.

SIR,

Mr. Mackenzie, in Mauchline, my very warm and worthy friend, has informed me how much you are pleased to interest yourself in my fate as a man, and (what to me is incomparably dearer) my fame as a poet.

I have, Sir, in one or two instances, been patronized by those of your character in life, when I was introduced to their notice by * * * * *

friends to them and honoured acquaintances to me! but you are the first gentleman in the country whose benevolence and goodness of heart has interested himself for me, unsolicited and unknown. I am not master enough of the etiquette of these matters to know, nor did I stay to inquire, whether formal duty bade, or cold propriety disallowed, my thanking you in this manner, as I am convinced, from the light in which you kindly view me, that you will do me the justice to believe this letter is not the manoeuvre of the needy, sharping author, fastening on those in upper life, who honour him with a little notice of him or his works. Indeed, the situation of poets is generally such, to a proverb, as may, in some measure, palliate that prost.i.tution of heart and talents, they have at times been guilty of.

I do not think prodigality is, by any means, a necessary concomitant of a poetic turn, but I believe a careless indolent attention to economy, is almost inseparable from it; then there must be in the heart of every bard of Nature's making, a certain modest sensibility, mixed with a kind of pride, that will ever keep him out of the way of those windfalls of fortune which frequently light on hardy impudence and foot-licking servility. It is not easy to imagine a more helpless state than his whose poetic fancy unfits him for the world, and whose character as a scholar gives him some pretensions to the _politesse_ of life--yet is as poor as I am.

For my part, I thank Heaven my star has been kinder; learning never elevated my ideas above the peasant's shed, and I have an independent fortune at the plough-tail.

I was surprised to hear that any one who pretended in the least to the manners of the gentleman, should be so foolish, or worse, as to stoop to traduce the morals of such a one as I am, and so inhumanly cruel, too, as to meddle with that late most unfortunate, unhappy part of my story. With a tear of grat.i.tude, I thank you, Sir, for the warmth with which you interposed in behalf of my conduct. I am, I acknowledge, too frequently the sport of whim, caprice, and pa.s.sion, but reverence to G.o.d, and integrity to my fellow-creatures, I hope I shall ever preserve. I have no return, Sir, to make you for your goodness but one--a return which, I am persuaded, will not be unacceptable--the honest, warm wishes of a grateful heart for your happiness, and every one of that lovely flock, who stand to you in a filial relation. If ever calumny aim the poisoned shaft at them, may friendship be by to ward the blow!

R. B.

XCIV.

TO MISS WILLIAMS,

ON READING HER POEM OF THE SLAVE-TRADE.

[The name and merits of Miss Williams are widely known; nor is it a small honour to her muse that her tender song of "Evan Banks" was imputed to Burns by Cromek: other editors since have continued to include it in his works, though Sir Walter Scott named the true author.]

_Edinburgh, Dec._ 1787.

I know very little of scientific criticism, so all I can pretend to in that intricate art is merely to note, as I read along, what pa.s.sages strike me as being uncommonly beautiful, and where the expression seems to be perplexed or faulty.

The poem opens finely. There are none of these idle prefatory lines which one may skip over before one comes to the subject. Verses 9th and 10th in particular,