The Complete Works of Robert Burns Part 238

I have one or two good fellows here whom you would be glad to know.

R. B.

CCXXIII.

TO COL. FULLARTON.

OF FULLARTON.

[This letter was first published in the Edinburgh Chronicle.]

_Ellisland, 1791._

SIR,

I have just this minute got the frank, and next minute must send it to post, else I purposed to have sent you two or three other bagatelles, that might have amused a vacant hour about as well as "Six excellent new songs," or, the Aberdeen 'Prognostication for the year to come.' I shall probably trouble you soon with another packet. About the gloomy month of November, when 'the people of England hang and drown themselves,' anything generally is better than one's own thought.

Fond as I may be of my own productions, it is not for their sake that I am so anxious to send you them. I am ambitious, covetously ambitious of being known to a gentleman whom I am proud to call my countryman; a gentleman who was a foreign amba.s.sador as soon as he was a man, and a leader of armies as soon as he was a soldier, and that with an eclat unknown to the usual minions of a court, men who, with all the advent.i.tious advantages of princely connexions and princely fortune, must yet, like the caterpillar, labour a whole lifetime before they reach the wished height, there to roost a stupid chrysalis, and doze out the remaining glimmering existence of old age.

If the gentleman who accompanied you when you did me the honour of calling on me, is with you, I beg to be respectfully remembered to him.

I have the honour to be,

Sir,

Your highly obliged, and most devoted

Humble servant,

R. B.

CCXXIV.

TO MISS DAVIES.

[This accomplished lady was the youngest daughter of Dr. Davies, of Tenby, in Pembrokeshire: she was related to the Riddels of Friar's Ca.r.s.e, and one of her sisters married Captain Adam Gordon, of the n.o.ble family of Kenmure. She had both taste and skill in verse.]

It is impossible, Madam, that the generous warmth and angelic purity of your youthful mind, can have any idea of that moral disease under which I unhappily must rank us the chief of sinners; I mean a torpitude of the moral powers, that may be called, a lethargy of conscience. In vain Remorse rears her horrent crest, and rouses all her snakes; beneath the deadly fixed eye and leaden hand of Indolence, their wildest ire is charmed into the torpor of the bat, slumbering out the rigours of winter, in the c.h.i.n.k of a ruined wall. Nothing less, Madam, could have made me so long neglect your obliging commands. Indeed I had one apology--the bagatelle was not worth presenting. Besides, so strongly am I interested in Miss Davies's fate and welfare in the serious business of life, amid its chances and changes, that to make her the subject of a silly ballad is downright mockery of these ardent feelings; 'tis like an impertinent jest to a dying friend.

Gracious Heaven! why this disparity between our wishes and our powers?

Why is the most generous wish to make others blest, impotent and ineffectual--as the idle breeze that crosses the pathless desert! In my walks of life I have met with a few people to whom how gladly would I have said--"Go, be happy! I know that your hearts have been wounded by the scorn of the proud, whom accident has placed above you--or worse still, in whose hands are, perhaps, placed many of the comforts of your life. But there! ascend that rock, Independence, and look justly down on their littleness of soul. Make the worthless tremble under your indignation, and the foolish sink before your contempt; and largely impart that happiness to others, which, I am certain, will give yourselves so much pleasure to bestow."

Why, dear Madam, must I wake from this delightful revery, and find it all a dream? Why, amid my generous enthusiasm, must I, find myself poor and powerless, incapable of wiping one tear from the eye of pity, or of adding one comfort to the friend I love!--Out upon the world, say I, that its affairs are administered so ill! They talk of reform;--good Heaven! what a reform would I make among the sons and even the daughters of men!--Down, immediately, should go fools from the high places, where misbegotten chance has perked them up, and through life should they skulk, ever haunted by their native insignificance, as the body marches accompanied by its shadow.--As for a much more formidable cla.s.s, the knaves, I am at a loss what to do with them: had I a world, there should not be a knave in it.

But the hand that could give, I would liberally fill: and I would pour delight on the heart that could kindly forgive, and generously love.

Still the inequalities of life are, among men, comparatively tolerable--but there is a delicacy, a tenderness, accompanying every view in which we can place lovely Woman, that are grated and shocked at the rude, capricious distinctions of fortune. Woman is the blood-royal of life: let there be slight degrees of precedency among them--but let them be ALL sacred.--Whether this last sentiment be right or wrong, I am not accountable; it is an original component feature of my mind.

R. B.

CCXXV.

TO MRS. DUNLOP.

[Burns, says Cromek, acknowledged that a refined and accomplished woman was a being all but new to him till he went to Edinburgh, and received letters from Mrs. Dunlop.]

_Ellisland, 17th December, 1791._

Many thanks to you, Madam, for your good news respecting the little floweret and the mother-plant. I hope my poetic prayers have been heard, and will be answered up to the warmest sincerity of their fullest extent; and then Mrs. Henri will find her little darling the representative of his late parent, in everything but his abridged existence.

I have just finished the following song, which to a lady the descendant of Wallace--and many heroes of his true ill.u.s.trious line--and herself the mother of several soldiers, needs neither preface nor apology.

_Scene_--_a field of battle_--_time of the day, evening; the wounded and dying of the victorious army are supposed to join in the following_

SONG OF DEATH.

Farewell, thou fair day, thou green earth, and ye skies Now gay with the bright setting sun; Farewell, loves and friendships, ye dear tender ties-- Our race of existence is run!

The circ.u.mstance that gave rise to the foregoing verses was, looking over with a musical friend M'Donald's collection of Highland airs, I was struck with one, an Isle of Skye tune, ent.i.tled "Oran and Aoig, or, The Song of Death," to the measure of which I have adapted my stanzas. I have of late composed two or three other little pieces, which, ere yon full-orbed moon, whose broad impudent face now stares at old mother earth all night, shall have shrunk into a modest crescent, just peeping forth at dewy dawn, I shall find an hour to transcribe for you. _A Dieu je vous commende._

R. B.

CCXXVI.