The Complete Works of Robert Burns Part 221

I am, my dear Sir,

Sincerely yours,

R. B.

CLXIII.

TO WILLIAM CREECH, ESQ.

[The poetic address to the "venomed stang" of the toothache seems to have come into existence about this time.]

_Ellisland, 30th May, 1789._

SIR,

I had intended to have troubled you with a long letter, but at present the delightful sensations of an omnipotent toothache so engross all my inner man, as to put it out of my power even to write nonsense.

However, as in duty bound, I approach my bookseller with an offering in my hand--a few poetic clinches, and a song:--To expect any other kind of offering from the Rhyming Tribe would be to know them much less than you do. I do not pretend that there is much merit in these _morceaux_, but I have two reasons for sending them; _primo_, they are mostly ill-natured, so are in unison with my present feelings, while fifty troops of infernal spirits are driving post from ear to ear along my jaw-bones; and _secondly_, they are so short, that you cannot leave off in the middle, and so hurt my pride in the idea that you found any work of mine too heavy to get through.

I have a request to beg of you, and I not only beg of you, but conjure you, by all your wishes and by all your hopes, that the muse will spare the satiric wink in the moment of your foibles; that she will warble the song of rapture round your hymeneal couch; and that she will shed on your turf the honest tear of elegiac grat.i.tude! Grant my request as speedily as possible--send me by the very first fly or coach for this place three copies of the last edition of my poems, which place to my account.

Now may the good things of prose, and the good things of verse, come among thy hands, until they be filled with the _good things of this life_, prayeth

R. B.

CLXIV.

TO MR. M'AULEY.

[The poet made the acquaintance of Mr. M'Auley, of Dumbarton, in one of his northern tours,--he was introduced by his friend Kennedy.]

_Ellisland, 4th June, 1789._

DEAR SIR,

Though I am not without my fears respecting my fate, at that grand, universal inquest of right and wrong, commonly called _The Last Day_, yet I trust there is one sin, which that arch-vagabond, Satan, who I understand is to be king's evidence, cannot throw in my teeth, I mean ingrat.i.tude. There is a certain pretty large quantum of kindness for which I remain, and from inability, I fear, must still remain, your debtor; but though unable to repay the debt, I a.s.sure you, Sir, I shall ever warmly remember the obligation. It gives me the sincerest pleasure to hear by my old acquaintance, Mr. Kennedy, that you are, in immortal Allan's language, "Hale, and weel, and living;" and that your charming family are well, and promising to be an amiable and respectable addition to the company of performers, whom the Great Manager of the Drama of Man is bringing into action for the succeeding age.

With respect to my welfare, a subject in which you once warmly and effectively interested yourself, I am here in my old way, holding my plough, marking the growth of my corn, or the health of my dairy; and at times sauntering by the delightful windings of the Nith, on the margin of which I have built my humble domicile, praying for seasonable weather, or holding an intrigue with the muses; the only gipsies with whom I have now any intercourse. As I am entered into the holy state of matrimony, I trust my face is turned completely Zion-ward; and as it is a rule with all honest fellows to repeat no grievances, I hope that the little poetic licenses of former days will of course fall under the oblivious influence of some good-natured statute of celestial prescription. In my family devotion, which, like a good Presbyterian, I occasionally give to my household folks, I am extremely fond of that psalm, "Let not the errors of my youth," &c., and that other, "Lo, children are G.o.d's heritage," &c., in which last Mrs. Burns, who by the bye has a glorious "wood-note wild" at either old song or psalmody, joins me with the pathos of Handel's Messiah.

R. B.

CLXV.

TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.

[The following high-minded letter may be regarded as a sermon on domestic morality preached by one of the experienced.]

_Ellisland, 8th June, 1789._

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I am perfectly ashamed of myself when I look at the date of your last.

It is not that I forget the friend of my heart and the companion of my peregrinations; but I have been condemned to drudgery beyond sufferance, though not, thank G.o.d, beyond redemption. I have had a collection of poems by a lady, put into my hands to prepare them for the press; which horrid task, with sowing corn with my own hand, a parcel of masons, wrights, plasterers, &c., to attend to, roaming on business through Ayrs.h.i.+re--all this was against me, and the very first dreadful article was of itself too much for me.

13th. I have not had a moment to spare from incessant toil since the 8th.

Life, my dear Sir, is a serious matter. You know by experience that a man's individual self is a good deal, but believe me, a wife and family of children, whenever you have the honour to be a husband and a father, will show you that your present and most anxious hours of solitude are spent on trifles. The welfare of those who are very dear to us, whose only support, hope and stay we are--this, to a generous mind, is another sort of more important object of care than any concerns whatever which centre merely in the individual. On the other hand, let no young, unmarried, rakeh.e.l.ly dog among you, make a song of his pretended liberty and freedom from care. If the relations we stand in to king, country, kindred, and friends, be anything but the visionary fancies of dreaming metaphysicians; if religion, virtue, magnanimity, generosity, humanity and justice, be aught but empty sounds; then the man who may be said to live only for others, for the beloved, honourable female, whose tender faithful embrace endears life, and for the helpless little innocents who are to be the men and women, the wors.h.i.+ppers of his G.o.d, the subjects of his king, and the support, nay the vital existence of his COUNTRY in the ensuing age;--compare such a man with any fellow whatever, who, whether he bustle and push in business among labourers, clerks, statesmen; or whether he roar and rant, and drink and sing in taverns--a fellow over whose grave no one will breathe a single heigh-ho, except from the cobweb-tie of what is called good-fellows.h.i.+p--who has no view nor aim but what terminates in himself--if there be any grovelling earth-born wretch of our species, a renegado to common sense, who would fain believe that the n.o.ble creature man, is no better than a sort of fungus, generated out of nothing, n.o.body knows how, and soon dissipated in nothing, n.o.body knows where; such a stupid beast, such a crawling reptile, might balance the foregoing unexaggerated comparison, but no one else would have the patience.

Forgive me, my dear Sir, for this long silence. _To make you amends_, I shall send you soon, and more encouraging still, without any postage, one or two rhymes of my later manufacture.

R. B.

CLXVI.

TO MR. M'MURDO.

[John M'Murdo has been already mentioned as one of Burns's firmest friends: his table at Drumlanrig was always spread at the poet's coming: nor was it uncheered by the presence of the lady of the house and her daughters.]

_Ellisland, 19th June, 1789._

SIR,

A poet and a beggar are, in so many points of view, alike, that one might take them for the same individual character under different designations; were it not that though, with a trifling poetic license, most poets may be styled beggars, yet the converse of the proposition does not hold, that every beggar is a poet. In one particular, however, they remarkably agree; if you help either the one or the other to a mug of ale, or the picking of a bone, they will very willingly repay you with a song. This occurs to me at present, as I have just despatched a well-lined rib of John Kirkpatrick's Highlander; a bargain for which I am indebted to you, in the style of our ballad printers, "Five excellent new songs." The enclosed is nearly my newest song, and one that has cost me some pains, though that is but an equivocal mark of its excellence. Two or three others, which I have by me, shall do themselves the honour to wait on your after leisure: pet.i.tioners for admittance into favour must not hara.s.s the condescension of their benefactor.

You see, Sir, what it is to patronize a poet. 'Tis like being a magistrate in a petty borough; you do them the favour to preside in their council for one year, and your name bears the prefatory stigma of Bailie for life.