The Complete Works of Robert Burns Part 207

CXIX.

TO MRS. DUNLOP.

[A poem, something after the fashion of the Georgics, was long present to the mind of Burns: had fortune been more friendly he might have, in due time, produced it.]

_Mauchline, 4th May, 1788._

MADAM,

Dryden's Virgil has delighted me. I do not know whether the critics will agree with me, but the Georgics are to me by far the best of Virgil. It is indeed a species of writing entirely new to me; and has filled my head with a thousand fancies of emulation: but, alas! when I read the Georgics, and then survey my own powers, 'tis like the idea of a Shetland pony, drawn up by the side of a thorough-bred hunter to start for the plate. I own I am disappointed in the aeneid. Faultless correctness may please, and does highly please, the lettered critic: but to that awful character I have not the most distant pretensions. I do not know whether I do not hazard my pretensions to be a critic of any kind, when I say that I think Virgil, in many instances, a servile copier of Homer. If I had the Odyssey by me, I could parallel many pa.s.sages where Virgil has evidently copied, but by no means improved, Homer. Nor can I think there is anything of this owing to the translators; for, from everything I have seen of Dryden, I think him in genius and fluency of language, Pope's master. I have not perused Ta.s.so enough to form an opinion: in some future letter, you shall have my ideas of him; though I am conscious my criticisms must be very inaccurate and imperfect, as there I have ever felt and lamented my want of learning most.

R. B.

CXX.

TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.

[I have heard the gentleman say, to whom this brief letter is addressed, how much he was pleased with the intimation, that the poet had reunited himself with Jean Armour, for he know his heart was with her.]

_Mauchline, May 26, 1788._

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I am two kind letters in your debt, but I have been from home, and horribly busy, buying and preparing for my farming business, over and above the plague of my Excise instructions, which this week will finish.

As I flatter my wishes that I foresee many future years'

correspondence between us, 'tis foolish to talk of excusing dull epistles; a dull letter may be a very kind one. I have the pleasure to tell you that I have been extremely fortunate in all my buyings, and bargainings. .h.i.therto; Mrs. Burns not excepted; which t.i.tle I now avow to the world. I am truly pleased with this last affair: it has indeed added to my anxieties for futurity, but it has given a stability to my mind, and resolutions unknown before; and the poor girl has the most sacred enthusiasm of attachment to me, and has not a wish but to gratify my every idea of her deportment. I am interrupted.--Farewell!

my dear Sir.

R. B.

CXXI.

TO MRS. DUNLOP.

[This letter, on the hiring season, is well worth the consideration of all masters, and all servants. In England, servants are engaged by the month; in Scotland by the half-year, and therefore less at the mercy of the changeable and capricious.]

27_th May, 1788._

MADAM,

I have been torturing my philosophy to no purpose, to account for that kind partiality of yours, which has followed me, in my return to the shade of life, with a.s.siduous benevolence. Often did I regret, in the fleeting hours of my late will-o'-wisp appearance, that "here I had no continuing city;" and but for the consolation of a few solid guineas, could almost lament the time that a momentary acquaintance with wealth and splendour put me so much out of conceit with the sworn companions of my road through life--insignificance and poverty.

There are few circ.u.mstances relating to the unequal distribution of the good things of this life that give me more vexation (I mean in what I see around me) than the importance the opulent bestow on their trifling family affairs, compared with the very same things on the contracted scale of a cottage. Last afternoon I had the honour to spend an hour or two at a good woman's fireside, where the planks that composed the floor were decorated with a splendid carpet, and the gay table sparkled with silver and china. 'Tis now about term-day, and there has been a revolution among those creatures, who though in appearance partakers, and equally n.o.ble partakers, of the same nature with Madame, are from time to time--their nerves, their sinews, their health, strength, wisdom, experience, genius, time, nay a good part of their very thoughts--sold for months and years, not only to the necessities, the conveniences, but, the caprices of the important few.

We talked of the insignificant creatures, nay notwithstanding their general stupidity and rascality, did some of the poor devils the honour to commend them. But light be the turf upon his breast who taught "Reverence thyself!" We looked down on the unpolished wretches, their impertinent wives and clouterly brats, as the lordly bull does on the little dirty ant-hill, whose puny inhabitants he crushes in the carelessness of his ramble, or tosses in the air in the wantonness of his pride.

R. B.

CXXII.

TO MRS. DUNLOP,

AT MR DUNLOP'S, HADDINGTON.

[In this, the poet's first letter from Ellisland, he lays down his whole system of in-door and out-door economy: while his wife took care of the household, he was to manage the farm, and "pen a stanza" during his hours of leisure.]

_Ellisland, 13th June, 1788._

"Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see, My heart, untravell'd, fondly turns to thee; Still to my _friend_ it turns with ceaseless pain, and drags at each remove a lengthening chain."

GOLDSMITH.

This is the second day, my honoured friend, that I have been on my farm. A solitary inmate of an old smoky spense; far from every object I love, or by whom I am beloved; nor any acquaintance older than yesterday, except Jenny Geddes, the old mare I ride on; while uncouth cares and novel plans hourly insult my awkward ignorance and bashful inexperience. There is a foggy atmosphere native to my soul in the hour of care; consequently the dreary objects seem larger than life.

Extreme sensibility, irritated and prejudiced on the gloomy side by a series of misfortunes and disappointments, at that period of my existence when the soul is laying in her cargo of ideas for the voyage of life, is, I believe, the princ.i.p.al cause of this unhappy frame of mind.

"The valiant, in himself, what can he suffer?

Or what need he regard his _single_ woes?" &c.

Your surmise, Madam, is just; I am indeed a husband.

To jealousy or infidelity I am an equal stranger. My preservative from the first is the most thorough consciousness of her sentiments of honour, and her attachment to me: my antidote against the last is my long and deep-rooted affection for her.

In housewife matters, of aptness to learn and activity to execute, she is eminently mistress; and during my absence in Nithsdale, she is regularly and constantly apprentice to my mother and sisters in their dairy and other rural business.

The muses must not be offended when I tell them, the concerns of my wife and family will, in my mind, always take the _pas_; but I a.s.sure them their ladyships will ever come next in place.

You are right that a bachelor state would have insured me more friends; but from a cause you will easily guess, conscious peace in the enjoyment of my own mind, and unmistrusting confidence in approaching my G.o.d, would seldom have been of the number.