mour has got a warrant to throw me in jail till I find security for an enormous sum. This they keep an entire secret, but I got it by a channel they little dream of; and I am wandering from one friend's house to another, and, like a true son of the gospel, "have nowhere to lay my head." I know you will pour an execration on her head, but spare the poor, ill-advised girl, for my sake; though may all the furies that rend the injured, enraged lover's bosom, await her mother until her latest hour! I write in a moment of rage, reflecting on my miserable situation-exiled, abandoned, forlorn. I can write no more-let me hear from you by the return of coach. I will write you ere I go. I am dear Sir, Yours, here and hereafter, XXVI. TO MR. ROBERT MUIR, KILMARNOCK. R. B. [Burns never tried to conceal either his joys or his sorrows: he sent copies of his favourite pieces, and intimations of much that befel him to his chief friends and comrades--this brief note was made to carry double.] Mossgiel, Friday noon. MY FRIEND, MY BROTHER, WARM recollection of an absent friend presses so hard upon my heart, that I send him the prefixed bagatelle (the Calf), pleased with the thought that it will greet the man of my bosom, and be a kind of distant language of friendship. You will have heard that poor Armour has repaid me double. A very fine boy and a girl have awakened a thought and feelings that thrill, some with tender pressure and some with foreboding anguish, through my soul. The poem was nearly an extemporaneous production, on a wager with Mr. Hamilton, that I would not produce a poem on the subject in a given time. If you think it worth while, read it to Charles and Mr. W. Parker, and if they choose a copy of it, it is at their service, as they are men whose friendship I shall be proud to claim, both in this world and that which is to come. I believe all hopes of staying at home will be abortive. but more of this when, in the latter I AM truly sorry I was not at home yesterday, when I was so much honoured with your order for my copies, and incomparably more by the handsome compliments you are pleased to pay my poetic abilities. I am fully persuaded that there is not any class of mankind so feelingly alive to the titillations of applause as the sons of Parnassus: nor is it easy to conceive how the heart of the poor bard dances with rapture, when those, whose character in life gives them a right to be polite judges, honour him with their approbation. Had you been thoroughly acquainted with me, Madam, you could not have touched my darling heart-chord more sweetly than by noticing my attempts to celebrate your illustrious ancestor, the Saviour of his Country. "Great patriot hero! ill-requited chief!"'1 The first book I met with in my early years, which I perused with pleasure, was, "The Life of Hannibal;" the next was, "The History of Sir William Wallace:" for several of my earlier years I had few other authors;• and many a solitary hour have I stole out, after the laborious vocations of the day, to shed a tear over their glorious, but unfortunate stories. In those boyish days I remember, in particular, being struck with that part of Wallace's story where these lines occur "Syne to the Leglen wood, when it was late, I chose a fine summer Sunday, the only day my line of life allowed, and walked half a dozen 1 Thomson. Kilmarnock, August, 1786. MY DEAR SIR, YOUR truly facetious epistle of the 3d inst. gave me much entertainment. I was sorry I had not the pleasure of seeing you as I passed your way, but we shall bring up all our lee way on Wednesday, the 16th current, when I hope to have it in my power to call on you and take a kind, very probably a last adieu, before I go for Jamaica; and I expect orders to repair to Greenock every day.—I have at last made my public appearance, and am solemnly inaugurated into the numerous class.-Could I have got a carrier, you should have had a score of vouchers for my authorship; but now you have them, let them speak for themselves. Farewell, my dear friend! may guid luck hit you, And 'mang her favourites admit you! Good Lord deceive him. Burness, when the bard modified it into Burns: the name, now a rising one in India, is spelt Burnes.] Mossgiel, Tuesday noon, Sept. 26, 1786. I THIS moment receive yours-receive it with the honest hospitable warmth of a friend's welcome. Whatever comes from you wakens always up the better blood about my heart, which your kind little recollections of my parentai friends carries as far as it will go. 'Tis there that man is blest! 'Tis there, my friend, man feels a consciousness of something within him above the trodden clod! The grateful reverence to the hoary (earthly) author of his being -the burning glow when he clasps the woman of his soul to his bosom-the tender yearnings of heart for the little angels to whom he has given existence-these nature has poured in milky streams about the human heart; and the man who never rouses them to action, by the inspiring influences of their proper objects, loses by far the most pleasurable part of his existence. My departure is uncertain, but I do not think it will be till after harvest. I will be on very short allowance of time indeed, if I do not com ply with your friendly invitation. When it will be I don't know, but if I can make my wish good, I will endeavour to drop you a line some My best compliments to Mrs. time before. Mossgiel, 18th Nov. 1786. MADAM, POETS are such outré beings, so much the children of wayward fancy and capricious whim, that I believe the world generally allows them a larger latitude in the laws of propriety, than the sober sons of judgment and prudence. I mention this as an apology for the liberties that a nameless stranger has taken with you in the enclosed poem, which he begs leave to present you with. Whether it has poetical merit any way worthy of the theme, I am not the proper judge; but it is the best my abilities can produce; and what to a good heart will, perhaps, be a superior grace, it is equally sincere as fervent. The scenery was nearly taken from real life, though I dare say, Madam, you do not recollect tered when he first walked into the parlour of the towers of Stair, to hear that lady's opinion of some of his songs.] [1786.] MADAM, it, as I believe you scarcely noticed the poetic genius of Burns. He used to relate how his heart flutreveur as he wandered by you. I had roved out as chance directed, in the favourite haunts of my muse on the banks of the Ayr, to view nature in all the gayety of the vernal year. The evening sun was flaming over the distant western hills; not a breath stirred the crimson opening blossom, or the verdant spreading leaf. It was a golden moment for a poetic heart. I listened to the feathered warblers, pouring their harmony on every hand, with a congenial kindred regard, and frequently turned out of my path, lest I should disturb their little songs, or frighten them to another station. Surely, said THE hurry of my preparations for going abroad has hindered me from performing my promise so soon as I intended. I have here sent you a parcel of songs, &c., which never made their appearance, except to a friend or two at most. Perhaps some of them may be no great entertainment to you, but of that I am far from being an adequate judge. The song to the tune of "Ettrick Banks" [The bonnie lass of Ballochmyle] you will easily see the impropriety of exposing much, even in manuscript. I think, description of one of nature's sweetest scenes, a July evening, and one of the finest pieces of nature's workmanship, the finest indeed we know anything of, an amiable, beautiful young woman;1 but I have no common friend to procure me that permission, without which I would not dare to spread the copy. I to myself, he must be a wretch indeed, who, regardless of your harmonious endeavour to please him, can eye your elusive flights to dis-myself, it has some merit: both as a tolerable cover your secret recesses, and to rob you of all the property nature gives you--your dearest comforts, your helpless nestlings. Even the hoary hawthorn twig that shot across the way, what heart at such a time but must have been interested in its welfare, and wished it preserved from the rudely-browsing cattle, or the withering eastern blast? Such was the scene,-and such the hour, when, in a corner of my prospect, I spied one of the fairest pieces of nature's workmanship that ever crowned a poetic landscape or met a poet's eye, those visionary bards excepted, who hold commerce with aërial beings! Had Calumny and Villany taken my walk, they had at that moment sworn eternal peace with such an object. What an hour of inspiration for a poet! It would have raised plain dull historic prose into metaphor measure. I am quite aware, Madam, what task the world would assign me in this letter. The obscure bard, when any of the great condescend to take notice of him, should heap the altar with the incense of flattery. Their high ancestry, their own great and god-like qualities and actions, should be recounted with the most exaggerated description. This, Madam, is a task for which I am altogether unfit. Besides a certain disqualifying pride of heart, I know nothing of your connexions in life, and have no access to where 1 Miss Alexander your real character is to be found-the company of your compeers: and more, I am afraid that even the most refined adulation is by no means the road to your good opinion. One feature of your character I shall ever with grateful pleasure remember;-the reception I got when I had the honour of waiting on you at Stair. I am little acquainted with politeness, but I know a good deal of benevolence of temfer and goodness of heart. Surely did those in exalted stations know how happy they could make some classes of their inferiors by condescension and affability, they would never stand so high, measuring out with every look the height of their elevation, but condescend as sweetly as did Mrs. Stewart of Stair. R. B. after having caused him to kindle a fire at the Cross of Ayr, ye shall, at noontide of the day, put into the said wretch's merciless hands the said copy of the said nefarious and wicked song, to be consumed by fire in the presence of all beholders, in abhorrence of, and terrorem to, all such compositions and composers. And this in nowise leave ye undone, but have it executed in every point as this our mandate bears, before the twenty-fourth current, when in person We hope to applaud your faithfulness and zeal. Given at Mauchline this twentieth day of November, Anno Domini one thousand seven hundred and eighty-six. God save the Bard! XXXII. IN THE NAME OF THE NINE. AMEN. [The song or ballad which one of the "Deil's yeld Nowte" was commanded to burn, was "Holy Willie's Prayer," it is believed. Currie interprets the "Deil's yeld Nowte," to mean old bachelors, which, if right, points to some other of his compositions, for purgation by fire. Gilbert Burns says it is a scoffing appellation sometimes given to sheriffs' officers and other executors of the law.] WE, Robert Burns, by virtue of a warrant from Nature, bearing date the twenty-fifth day of January, Anno Domini one thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine,1 Poet Laureat, and Bard in Chief, in and over the districts and countries of Kyle, Cunningham, and Carrick, of old extent, To our trusty and well-beloved William Chalmers and John M'Adam, students and practitioners in the ancient and mysterious science of confounding right and wrong. RIGHT TRUSTY : Be it known unto you that whereas in the course of our care and watchings over the order and police of all and sundry the manufacturers, retainers, and venders of poesy; bards, poets, poetasters, rhymers, jinglers, songsters, balladsingers, &c. &c. &c. &c., male and female We have discovered a certain nefarious, abominable, and wicked song or ballad, a copy whereof We have here enclosed; Our Will therefore is, that Ye pitch upon and appoint the most execrable individual of that most execrable species, known by the appellation, phrase, and nick-name of The Deil's Yeld Nowte: and 1 His birth-day. professor. [Dugald Stewart.] I would be delighted to see him perform acts of kindness and friendship, though I were not the object; he does it with such a grace. I think his characI think his character, divided into ten parts, stands thus-four parts Socrates-four parts Nathaniel-and two parts Shakspeare's Brutus. The foregoing verses were really extempore, but a little corrected since. They may entertain you a little with the help of that partiality with which you are so good as to favour the performances of, Dear Sir, I HAVE paid every attention to your commands, but can only say what perhaps you will have heard before this reach you, that Muirkirklands were bought by a John Gordon, W. S., but for whom I know not; Mauchlands, Haugh, Miln, &c., by a Frederick Fotheringham, supposed to be for Ballochmyle Laird, and Adamhill and Shawood were bought for Oswald's folks.-This is so imperfect an account, and will be so late ere it reach you, that were it not to discharge my conscience I would not trouble you with it; but after all my diligence I could make it no sooner nor better. For my own affairs, I am in a fair way of becoming as eminent as Thomas à Kempis or John Bunyan; and you may expect henceforth to see my birth-day inserted among the wonderful events, in the Poor Robin's and Aberdeen Almanacks, along with the Black Monday, and the battle of Bothwell bridge.-My Lord Glencairn and the Dean of Faculty, Mr. H. Erskine, have taken me under their wing; and by all probability I shall soon be the tenth worthy, and the eighth wise man in the world. Through my lord's influence it is inserted in the records of the Caledonian Hunt, that they universally, one and all, subscribe for the second edition.My subscription bills come out to-morrow, and you shall have some of them next post. I have met, in Mr. Dalrymple, of Orangefield, what Solomon emphatically calls "a friend that sticketh closer than a brother."-The warmth with which he interests himself in my affairs is of the same enthusiastic kind which you, Mr Aiken, and the few patrons that took notice of my earlier poetic days, showed for the poor unlucky devil of a poet. I always remember Mrs. Hamilton and Miss Kennedy in my poetic prayers, but you both in prose and verse. I WOULD not write you till I could have it in my power to give you some account of myself and my matters, which, by the by, is often no easy task. —I arrived here on Tuesday was se'ennight, and have suffered ever since I came to town with a miserable headache and stomach complaint, but am now a good deal better.—I have found a worthy warm friend in Mr. Dalrymple, of Orangefield, who introduced me to Lord Glencairn, a man whose worth and brotherly kindness to me, I shall remember when time shall be no more. By his interest it is passed in the "Caledonian Hunt," and entered in their books, that they are to take each a copy of the second edition, for which they are to pay one guinea.— I have been introduced to a good many of the noblesse, but my avowed patrons and patronesses 1. are the Duchess of Gordon-the Countess of Glencairn, with my Lord, and Lady Betty the Dean of Faculty-Sir John Whitefoord—I 1 Lady Betty Cunningham. |