FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[250]Song CCXII.[251]Song LII.

[250]Song CCXII.

[251]Song LII.

[Of the Hon. Andrew Erskine an account was communicated in a letter to Burns by Thomson, which the writer has withheld. He was a gentleman of talent, and joint projector of Thomson’s now celebrated work.]

October, 1793.

Your last letter, my dear Thomson, was indeed laden with heavy news. Alas, poor Erskine![252]The recollection that he was a co-adjutator in your publication, has till now scared me from writing to you, or turning my thoughts on composing for you.

I am pleased that you are reconciled to the air of the “Quaker’s wife;” though, by the bye, an old Highland gentleman, and a deep antiquarian, tells me it is a Gaelic air, and known by the name of “Leiger m’ choss.” The following verses, I hope, will please you, as an English song to the air.

Thine am I, my faithful fair:[253]

Your objection to the English song I proposed for “John Anderson my jo,” is certainly just. The following is by an old acquaintance of mine, and I think has merit. The song was never in print, which I think is so much in your favour. The more original good poetry your collection contains, it certainly has so much the more merit.

SONG.—BY GAVIN TURNBULL.[254]

Oh, condescend, dear charming maid,My wretched state to view;A tender swain, to love betray’d,And sad despair, by you.While here, all melancholy,My passion I deplore,Yet, urg’d by stern, resistless fate,I love thee more and more.I heard of love, and with disdainThe urchin’s power denied.I laugh’d at every lover’s pain,And mock’d them when they sigh’d.But how my state is alter’d!Those happy days are o’er;For all thy unrelenting hate,I love thee more and more.Oh, yield, illustrious beauty, yield!No longer let me mourn;And though victorious in the field,Thy captive do not scorn.Let generous pity warm thee,My wonted peace restore;And grateful I shall bless thee still,And love thee more and more.

Oh, condescend, dear charming maid,My wretched state to view;A tender swain, to love betray’d,And sad despair, by you.

While here, all melancholy,My passion I deplore,Yet, urg’d by stern, resistless fate,I love thee more and more.

I heard of love, and with disdainThe urchin’s power denied.I laugh’d at every lover’s pain,And mock’d them when they sigh’d.

But how my state is alter’d!Those happy days are o’er;For all thy unrelenting hate,I love thee more and more.

Oh, yield, illustrious beauty, yield!No longer let me mourn;And though victorious in the field,Thy captive do not scorn.

Let generous pity warm thee,My wonted peace restore;And grateful I shall bless thee still,And love thee more and more.

The following address of Turnbull’s to the Nightingale will suit as an English song to the air “There was a lass, and she was fair.” By the bye, Turnbull has a great many songs in MS., which I can command, if you like his manner. Possibly, as he is an old friend of mine, I may be prejudiced in his favour; but I like some of his pieces very much.

THE NIGHTINGALE.

Thou sweetest minstrel of the grove,That ever tried the plaintive strain,Awake thy tender tale of love,And soothe a poor forsaken swain.For though the muses deign to aidAnd teach him smoothly to complain,Yet Delia, charming, cruel maid,Is deaf to her forsaken swain.All day, with fashion’s gaudy sons,In sport she wanders o’er the plain:Their tales approves, and still she shunsThe notes of her forsaken swain.When evening shades obscure the sky,And bring the solemn hours again,Begin, sweet bird, thy melody,And soothe a poor forsaken swain.

Thou sweetest minstrel of the grove,That ever tried the plaintive strain,Awake thy tender tale of love,And soothe a poor forsaken swain.

For though the muses deign to aidAnd teach him smoothly to complain,Yet Delia, charming, cruel maid,Is deaf to her forsaken swain.

All day, with fashion’s gaudy sons,In sport she wanders o’er the plain:Their tales approves, and still she shunsThe notes of her forsaken swain.

When evening shades obscure the sky,And bring the solemn hours again,Begin, sweet bird, thy melody,And soothe a poor forsaken swain.

I shall just transcribe another of Turnbull’s, which would go charmingly to “Lewie Gordon.”

LAURA.

Let me wander where I will,By shady wood, or winding rill;Where the sweetest May-born flowersPaint the meadows, deck the bowers;Where the linnet’s early songEchoes sweet the woods among:Let me wander where I will,Laura haunts my fancy still.If at rosy dawn I chooseTo indulge the smiling muse;If I court some cool retreat,To avoid the noontide heat;If beneath the moon’s pale ray,Thro’ unfrequented wilds I stray;Let me wander where I will,Laura haunts my fancy still.When at night the drowsy godWaves his sleep-compelling rod,And to fancy’s wakeful eyesBids celestial visions rise,While with boundless joy I roveThro’ the fairy land of love;Let me wander where I will,Laura haunts my fancy still.

If at rosy dawn I chooseTo indulge the smiling muse;If I court some cool retreat,To avoid the noontide heat;If beneath the moon’s pale ray,Thro’ unfrequented wilds I stray;Let me wander where I will,Laura haunts my fancy still.

When at night the drowsy godWaves his sleep-compelling rod,And to fancy’s wakeful eyesBids celestial visions rise,While with boundless joy I roveThro’ the fairy land of love;Let me wander where I will,Laura haunts my fancy still.

The rest of your letter I shall answer at some other opportunity.

R. B.

FOOTNOTES:[252]“The honorable Andrew Erskine, whose melancholy death Mr. Thomson had communicated in an excellent letter, which he has suppressed.”—Currie.[253]Song CCXIII.[254]Gavin Turnbull was author of a now forgotten volume, published at Glasgow, in 1788, under the title of “Poetical Essays.”

[252]“The honorable Andrew Erskine, whose melancholy death Mr. Thomson had communicated in an excellent letter, which he has suppressed.”—Currie.

[253]Song CCXIII.

[254]Gavin Turnbull was author of a now forgotten volume, published at Glasgow, in 1788, under the title of “Poetical Essays.”

[The collection of songs alluded to in this letter, are only known to the curious in loose lore: they wereprinted by an obscure bookseller, but not before death had secured him from the indignation of Burns.]

Dumfries, [December, 1793.]

Sir,

’Tis said that we take the greatest liberties with our greatest friends, and I pay myself a very high compliment in the manner in which I am going to apply the remark. I have owed you money longer than ever I owed it to any man. Here is Kerr’s account, and here are the six guineas; and now I don’t owe a shilling to man—or woman either. But for these d——d dirty, dog’s-ear’d little pages,[255]I had done myself the honour to have waited on you long ago. Independent of the obligations your hospitality has laid me under, the consciousness of your superiority in the rank of man and gentleman, of itself was fully as much as I could ever make head against; but to owe you money too, was more than I could face.

I think I once mentioned something to you of a collection of Scots songs I have for some years been making: I send you a perusal of what I have got together. I could not conveniently spare them above five or six days, and five or six glances of them will probably more than suffice you. When you are tired of them, please leave them with Mr. Clint, of the King’s Arms. There is not another copy of the collection in the world; and I should be sorry that any unfortunate negligence should deprive me of what has cost me a good deal of pains.

I have the honour to be, &c.

R. B.

FOOTNOTES:[255]Scottish Bank notes.

[255]Scottish Bank notes.

[These words, thrown into the form of a note, are copied from a blank leaf of the poet’s works, published in two volumes, small octavo, in 1793.]

Dumfries, 1793.

Will Mr. M’Murdo do me the favour to accept of these volumes; a trifling but sincere mark of the very high respect I bear for his worth as a man, his manners as a gentleman, and his kindness as a friend. However inferior now, or afterwards, I may rank as a poet; one honest virtue to which few poets can pretend, I trust I shall ever claim as mine:—to no man, whatever his station in life, or his power to serve me, have I ever paid a compliment at the expense oftruth.

The Author.

[This excellent letter, obtained from Stewart of Dalguise, is copied from my kind friend Chambers’s collection of Scottish songs.]

Dumfries, 5th December, 1793.

Sir,

Heated as I was with wine yesternight, I was perhaps rather seemingly impertinent in my anxious wish to be honoured with your acquaintance. You will forgive it: it was the impulse of heart-felt respect. “He is the father of the Scottish county reform, and is a man who does honour to the business, at the same time that the business does honour to him,” said my worthy friend Glenriddel to somebody by me who was talking of your coming to this county with your corps. “Then,” I said, “I have a woman’s longing to take him by the hand, and say to him, ‘Sir, I honour you as a man to whom the interests of humanity are dear, and as a patriot to whom the rights of your country are sacred.’”

In times like these, Sir, when our commoners are barely able by the glimmer of their own twilight understandings to scrawl a frank, and when lords are what gentlemen would be ashamed to be, to whom shall a sinking country call for help? To the independent country gentleman. To him who has too deep a stake in his country not to be in earnest for her welfare; and who in the honest pride of a man can view with equal contempt the insolence of office and the allurements of corruption.

I mentioned to you a Scots ode or song I had lately composed, and which I think has some merit. Allow me to enclose it. When I fall in with you at the theatre, I shall be glad to have your opinion of it. Accept it, Sir, as a very humble but most sincere tribute of respect from a man, who, dear as he prizes poetic fame, yet holds dearer an independent mind.

I have the honour to be,

R. B.

Who was about to bespeak a Play one evening at the Dumfries Theatre.

[This clever lady, whom Burns so happily applies the words of Thomson, died in the year 1820, at Hampton Court.]

I am thinking to send my “Address” to some periodical publication, but it has not yet got your sanction, so pray look at it.

As to the Tuesday’s play, let me beg of you, my dear madam, to give us, “The Wonder, a Woman keeps a Secret!” to which please add, “The Spoilt Child”—you will highly oblige me by so doing.

Ah, what an enviable creature you are! There now, this cursed, gloomy, blue-devil day, you are going to a party of choice spirits—

“To play the shapesOf frolic fancy, and incessant formThose rapid pictures, assembled trainOf fleet ideas, never join’d before,Where livelywitexcites to gay surprise;Or folly-paintinghumour, grave himself,Calls laughter forth, deep-shaking every nerve.”

Thomson.

But as you rejoice with them that do rejoice, do also remember to weep with them that weep, and pity your melancholy friend.

R. B.

[The name of the lady to whom this letter is addressed, has not transpired.]

Dumfries, 1794.

Madam,

You were so very good as to promise me to honour my friend with your presence on his benefit night. That night is fixed for Friday first: the play a most interesting one! “The Way to Keep Him.” I have the pleasure to know Mr. G. well. His merit as an actor is generally acknowledged. He has genius and worth which would do honour to patronage: he is a poor and modest man; claims which from their verysilencehave the more forcible power on the generous heart. Alas, for pity! that from the indolence of those who have the good things of this life in their gift, too often does brazen-fronted importunity snatch that boon, the rightful due of retiring, humble want! Of all the qualities we assign to the author and director of nature, by far the most enviable is—to be able “to wipe away all tears from all eyes.” O what insignificant, sordid wretches are they, however chance may have loaded them with wealth, who go to their graves, to their magnificentmausoleums, with hardly the consciousness of having made one poor honest heart happy!

But I crave your pardon, Madam; I came to beg, not to preach.

R. B.

[This fantastic Earl of Buchan died a few years ago: when he was put into the family burial-ground, at Dryburgh, his head was laid the wrong way, which Sir Walter Scott said was little matter, as it had never been quite right in his lifetime.]

Dumfries, 12th January, 1794.

My Lord,

Will your lordship allow me to present you with the enclosed little composition of mine, as a small tribute of gratitude for the acquaintance with which you have been pleased to honour me? Independent of my enthusiasm as a Scotsman, I have rarely met with anything in history which interests my feelings as a man, equal with the story of Bannockburn. On the one hand, a cruel, but able usurper, leading on the finest army in Europe to extinguish the last spark of freedom among a greatly-daring and greatly-injured people; on the other hand, the desperate relics of a gallant nation, devoting themselves to rescue their bleeding country, or perish with her.

Liberty! thou art a prize truly and indeed invaluable! for never canst thou be too dearly bought!

If my little ode has the honour of your lordship’s approbation, it will gratify my highest ambition.

I have the honour to be, &c.

R. B.

[Captain Miller, of Dalswinton, sat in the House of Commons for the Dumfries district of boroughs. Dalswinton has passed from the family to my friend James M’Alpine Leny, Esq.]

Dear Sir,

The following ode is on a subject which I know you by no means regard with indifference. Oh, Liberty,

“Thou mak’st the gloomy face of nature gay,Giv’st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day.”

Addison.

It does me so much good to meet with a man whose honest bosom glows with the generous enthusiasm, the heroic daring of liberty, that I could not forbear sending you a composition of my own on the subject, which I really think is in my best manner.

I have the honour to be,

Dear Sir, &c.

R. B.

[The dragon guarding the Hesperian fruit, was simply a military officer, who, with the courtesy of those whose trade is arms, paid attention to the lady.]

Dear Madam,

I meant to have called on you yesternight, but as I edged up to your box-door, the first object which greeted my view, was one of those lobster-coated puppies, sitting like another dragon, guarding the Hesperian fruit. On the conditions and capitulations you so obligingly offer, I shall certainly make my weather-beaten rustic phiz a part of your box-furniture on Tuesday; when we may arrange the business of the visit.

Among the profusion of idle compliments, which insidious craft, or unmeaning folly, incessantly offer at your shrine—a shrine, how far exalted above such adoration—permit me, were it but for rarity’s sake, to pay you the honest tribute of a warm heart and an independent mind; and to assure you, that I am, thou most amiable and most accomplished of thy sex, with the most respectful esteem, and fervent regard, thine, &c.

R. B.

[The patient sons of order and prudence seem often to have stirred the poet to such invectives as this letter exhibits.]

I will wait on you, my ever-valued friend, but whether in the morning I am not sure. Sunday closes a period of our curst revenue business, and may probably keep me employed with my pen until noon. Fine employment for a poet’s pen! There is a species of the human genus that I callthe gin-horse class:what enviable dogs they are! Round, and round, and round they go,—Mundell’s ox that drives his cotton-mill is their exact prototype—without an idea or wish beyond their circle; fat, sleek, stupid, patient, quiet, and contented; while here I sit, altogether Novemberish, a d—mn’d melange of fretfulness and melancholy; not enough of the one to rouse me to passion, nor of the other to repose me in torpor, my soul flouncing and fluttering round her tenement, like a wild finch, caught amid the horrors of winter, and newly thrust into a cage. Well, I am persuaded that it was of me the Hebrew sage prophesied, when he foretold—“And behold, on whatsoever this man doth set his heart, it shall not prosper!” If my resentment is awaked, it is sure to be where it dare not squeak: and if— * * * * *

Pray that wisdom and bliss be more frequent visiters of

R. B.

[The bard often offended and often appeased this whimsical but very clever lady.]

I have this moment got the song from Syme, and I am sorry to see that he has spoilt it a good deal. It shall be a lesson to me how I lend him anything again.

I have sent you “Werter,” truly happy to have any the smallest opportunity of obliging you.

’Tis true, Madam, I saw you once since I was at Woodlea; and that once froze the very life-blood of my heart. Your reception of me was such, that a wretch meeting the eye of his judge, about to pronounce sentence of death on himcould only have envied my feelings and situation. But I hate the theme, and never more shall write or speak on it.

One thing I shall proudly say, that I can pay Mrs. R. a higher tribute of esteem, and appreciate her amiable worth more truly, than any man whom I have seen approach her.

R. B.

[Burns often complained in company, and sometimes in his letters, of the caprice of Mrs. Riddel.]

I have often told you, my dear friend, that you had a spice of caprice in your composition, and you have as often disavowed it; even perhaps while your opinions were, at the moment, irrefragably proving it. Couldanythingestrange me from a friend such as you?—No! To-morrow I shall have the honour of waiting on you.

Farewell, thou first of friends, and most accomplished of women; even with all thy little caprices!

R. B.

[The offended lady was soothed by this submissive letter, and the bard was re-established in her good graces.]

Madam,

I return your common-place book. I have perused it with much pleasure, and would have continued my criticisms, but as it seems the critic has forfeited your esteem, his strictures must lose their value.

If it is true that “offences come only from the heart,” before you I am guiltless. To admire, esteem, and prize you as the most accomplished of women, and the first of friends—if these are crimes, I am the most offending thing alive.

In a face where I used to meet the kind complacency of friendly confidence,nowto find cold neglect, and contemptuous scorn—is a wrench that my heart can ill bear. It is, however, some kind of miserable good luck, and whilede haut-en-basrigour may depress an unoffending wretch to the ground, it has a tendency to rouse a stubborn something in his bosom, which, though it cannot heal the wounds of his soul, is at least an opiate to blunt their poignancy.

With the profoundest respect for your abilities; the most sincere esteem and ardent regard for your gentle heart and amiable manners; and the most fervent wish and prayer for your welfare, peace, and bliss, I have the honour to be,

Madam,

Your most devoted humble servant,

R. B.

[John Syme, of the stamp-office, was the companion as well as comrade in arms, of Burns: he was a well-informed gentleman, loved witty company, and sinned in rhyme now and then: his epigrams were often happy.]

You know that among other high dignities, you have the honour to be my supreme court of critical judicature, from which there is no appeal. I enclose you a song which I composed since I saw you, and I am going to give you the history of it. Do you know that among much that I admire in the characters and manners of those great folks whom I have now the honour to call my acquaintances, the Oswald family, there is nothing charms me more than Mr. Oswald’s unconcealable attachment to that incomparable woman. Did you ever, my dear Syme, meet with a man who owed more to the Divine Giver of all good things than Mr. O.? A fine fortune; a pleasing exterior; self-evident amiable dispositions, and an ingenuous upright mind, and that informed, too, much beyond the usual run of young fellows of his rank and fortune: and to all this, such a woman!—but of her I shall say nothing at all, in despair of saying anything adequate: in my song I have endeavoured to do justice to what would be his feelings, on seeing, in the scene I have drawn, the habitation of his Lucy. As I am a good deal pleased with my performance, I, in my first fervour, thought of sending it to Mrs. Oswald, but on second thoughts, perhaps what I offer as the honest incense of genuine respect, might, from the well-known character of poverty and poetry, be construed into some modification or other of that servility which my soul abhors.

R. B.

[Burns, on other occasions than this, recalled both his letters and verses: it is to be regretted that he did not recall more of both.]

Dumfries, 1794.

Madam,

Nothing short of a kind of absolute necessity could have made me trouble you with this letter. Except my ardent and just esteem for your sense, taste, and worth, every sentiment arising in my breast, as I put pen to paper to you, is painful. The scenes I have passed with the friend of my soul and his amiable connexions! the wrench at my heart to think that he is gone, for ever gone from me, never more to meet in the wanderings of a weary world! and the cutting reflection of all, that I had most unfortunately, though most undeservedly, lost the confidence of that soul of worth, ere it took its flight!

These, Madam, are sensations of no ordinary anguish.—However, you also may be offended with someimputedimproprieties of mine; sensibility you know I possess, and sincerity none will deny me.

To oppose those prejudices which have been raised against me, is not the business of this letter. Indeed it is a warfare I know not how to wage. The powers of positive vice I can in some degree calculate, and against direct malevolence I can be on my guard; but who can estimate the fatuity of giddy caprice, or ward off the unthinking mischief of precipitate folly?

I have a favour to request of you, Madam, and of your sister Mrs. ——, through your means. You know that, at the wish of my late friend, I made a collection of all my trifles in verse which I had ever written. They are many of them local, some of them puerile and silly, and all of them unfit for the public eye. As I have some little fame at stake, a fame that I trust may live when the hate of those who “watch for my halting,” and the contumelious sneer of those whom accident has made my superiors, will, with themselves, be gone to the regions of oblivion; I am uneasy now for the fate of those manuscripts—Will Mrs. —— have the goodness to destroy them, or return them to me? As a pledge of friendship they were bestowed; and that circumstance indeed was all their merit. Most unhappily for me, that merit they no longer possess; and I hope that Mrs. —— ‘s goodness, which I well know, and ever will revere, will not refuse this favour to a man whom she once held in some degree of estimation.

With the sincerest esteem,

I have the honour to be,

Madam, &c.

R. B.

[The religious feeling of Burns was sometimes blunted, but at times it burst out, as in this letter, with eloquence and fervour, mingled with fear.]

25th February, 1794.

Canst thou minister to a mind diseased? Canst thou speak peace and rest to a soul tost on a sea of troubles, without one friendly star to guide her course, and dreading that the next surge may overwhelm her? Canst thou give to a frame tremblingly alive as the tortures of suspense, the stability and hardihood of the rock that braves the blast? If thou canst not do the least of these, why wouldst thou disturb me in my miseries, with thy inquiries after me?

For these two months I have not been able to lift a pen. My constitution and frame were,ab origine, blasted with a deep incurable taint of hypochondria, which poisons my existence. Of late a number of domestic vexations, and some pecuniary share in the ruin of these cursed times; losses which, though trifling, were yet what I could ill bear, have so irritated me, that my feelings at times could only be envied by a reprobate spirit listening to the sentence that dooms it to perdition.

Are you deep in the language of consolation? I have exhausted in reflection every topic of comfort.A heart at easewould have been charmed with my sentiments and reasonings; but as to myself I was like Judas Iscariot preaching the gospel; he might melt and mould the hearts of those around him, but his own kept its native incorrigibility.

Still there are two great pillars that bear us up, amid the wreck of misfortune and misery. The one is composed of the different modifications of a certain noble stubborn something in man, known by the names of courage, fortitude,magnanimity. The other is made up of those feelings and sentiments, which, however the sceptic may deny them, or the enthusiast disfigure them, are yet, I am convinced, original and component parts of the human soul; thosesenses of the mind, if I may be allowed the expression, which connect us with, and link us to, those awful, obscure realities—an all-powerful, and equally beneficent God; and a world to come, beyond death and the grave. The first gives the nerve of combat, while a ray of hope beams on the field: the last pours the balm of comfort into the wounds which time can never cure.

I do not remember, my dear Cunningham, that you and I ever talked on the subject of religion at all. I know some who laugh at it, as the trick of the crafty few, to lead the undiscerningmany; or at most as an uncertain obscurity, which mankind can never know anything of, and with which they are fools if they give themselves much to do. Nor would I quarrel with a man for his irreligion, any more than I would for his want of a musical ear. I would regret that he was shut out from what, to me and to others, were such superlative sources of enjoyment. It is in this point of view, and for this reason, that I will deeply imbue the mind of every child of mine with religion. If my son should happen to be a man of feeling, sentiment, and taste, I shall thus add largely to his enjoyments. Let me flatter myself that this sweet little fellow, who is just now running about my desk, will be a man of a melting, ardent, glowing heart; and an imagination, delighted with the painter, and rapt with the poet. Let me figure him wandering out in a sweet evening, to inhale the balmy gales, and enjoy the growing luxuriance of spring; himself the while in the blooming youth of life. He looks abroad on all nature, and through nature up to nature’s God. His soul, by swift delighting degrees, is rapt above this sublunary sphere, until he can be silent no longer, and bursts out into the glorious enthusiasm of Thomson,

“These, as they change, Almighty Father, theseAre but the varied God.—The rolling yearIs full of thee.”

And so on, in all the spirit and ardour of that charming hymn. These are no ideal pleasures, they are real delights; and I ask what of the delights among the sons of men are superior, not to say equal to them? And they have this precious, vast addition, that conscious virtue stamps them for her own; and lays hold on them to bring herself into the presence of a witnessing, judging, and approving God.

R. B.

[The original letter is in the possession of the Hon. Mrs. Halland, of Poynings: it is undated, but from a memorandum on the back it appears to have been written in May, 1794.]

May, 1794.

My Lord,

When you cast your eye on the name at the bottom of this letter, and on the title-page of the book I do myself the honour to send your lordship, a more pleasurable feeling than my vanity tells me that it must be a name not entirely unknown to you. The generous patronage of your late illustrious brother found me in the lowest obscurity: he introduced my rustic muse to the partiality of my country; and to him I owe all. My sense of his goodness, and the anguish of my soul at losing my truly noble protector and friend, I have endeavoured to express in a poem to his memory, which I have now published. This edition is just from the press; and in my gratitude to the dead, and my respect for the living (fame belies you, my lord, if you possess not the same dignity of man, which was your noble brother’s characteristic feature), I had destined a copy for the Earl of Glencairn. I learnt just now that you are in town:—allow me to present it you.

I know, my lord, such is the vile, venal contagion which pervades the world of letters, that professions of respect from an author, particularly from a poet, to a lord, are more than suspicious. I claim my by-past conduct, and my feelings at this moment, as exceptions to the too just conclusion. Exalted as are the honours of your lordship’s name, and unnoted as is the obscurity of mine; with the uprightness of an honest man, I come before your lordship with an offering, however humble, ’tis all I have to give, of my grateful respect; and to beg of you, my lord,—’tis all I have to ask of you,—that you will do me the honour to accept of it.

I have the honour to be,

R. B.

[The correspondence between the poet and the musician was interrupted in spring, but in summer and autumn the song-strains were renewed.]

May, 1794.

My dear Sir,

I return you the plates, with which I am highly pleased; I would humbly propose, instead of the younker knitting stockings, to put a stock and horn into his hands. A friend of mine, who is positively the ablest judge on the subject I have ever met with, and, though an unknown, is yet a superior artist with the burin, is quite charmed with Allan’s manner. I got him a peep of the “Gentle Shepherd;” and he pronounces Allan a most original artist of great excellence.

For my part, I look on Mr. Allan’s choosing my favourite poem for his subject, to be one of the highest compliments I have ever received.

I am quite vexed at Pleyel’s being cooped up in France, as it will put an entire stop to our work. Now, and for six or seven months, I shall be quite in song, as you shall see by and bye. I got an air, pretty enough, composed by Lady Elizabeth Heron, of Heron, which she calls “The Banks of Cree.” Cree is a beautiful romantic stream; and, as her ladyship is a particular friend of mine, I have written the following song to it.

Here is the glen and here the bower.[256]

R. B.

FOOTNOTES:[256]Song CCXXIII.

[256]Song CCXXIII.

[The endorsement on the back of the original letter shows in what far lands it has travelled:—“Given by David M’Culloch, Penang, 1810. A. Fraser.” “Received 15th December, 1823, in Calcutta, from Captain Frazer’s widow, by me, Thomas Rankine.” “Transmitted to Archibald Hastie, Esq., London, March 27th, 1824, from Bombay.”]

Dumfries, 21st June, 1794.

My dear Sir,

My long-projected journey through your country is at last fixed: and on Wednesday next, if you have nothing of more importance to do, take a saunter down to Gatehouse about two or three o’clock, I shall be happy to take a draught of M’Kune’s best with you. Collector Syme will be at Glens about that time, and will meet us about dish-of-tea hour. Syme goes also to Kerroughtree, and let me remind you of your kind promise to accompany me there; I will need all the friends I can muster, for I am indeed ill at ease whenever I approach your honourables and right honourables.

Yours sincerely,

R. B.

[Castle Douglas is a thriving Galloway village: it was in other days called “The Carlinwark,” but accepted its present proud name from an opulent family of mercantile Douglasses, well known in Scotland, England, and America.]

Castle Douglas, 25th June, 1794.

Here, in a solitary inn, in a solitary village, am I set by myself, to amuse my brooding fancy as I may.—Solitary confinement, you know, is Howard’s favourite idea of reclaiming sinners; so let me consider by what fatality it happens that I have so long been so exceeding sinful as to neglect the correspondence of the most valued friend I have on earth. To tell you that I have been in poor health will not be excuse enough, though it is true. I am afraid that I am about to suffer for the follies of my youth. My medical friends threaten me with a flying gout; but I trust they are mistaken.

I am just going to trouble your critical patience with the first sketch of a stanza I have been framing as I passed along the road. The subject is Liberty: you know, my honoured friend, how dear the theme is to me. I design it as an irregular ode for General Washington’s birth-day. After having mentioned the degeneracy of other kingdoms, I come to Scotland thus:—

Thee, Caledonia, thy wild heaths among,Thee, famed for martial deed, and sacred song,To thee I turn with swimming eyes;Where is that soul of freedom fled?Immingled with the mighty dead!Beneath the hallowed turf where Wallace lies!Hear it not, Wallace, in thy bed of death!Ye babbling winds in silence sweep,Disturb not ye the hero’s sleep.

with additions of

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