unprincipled it is still there are bright examples to the contrary; examples that, even in the eyes of superior beings, must shed a lustre on the name of man. to think; and that, whatever might be men or measures, it was for me to be silent and obedient." Mr. Corbet was likewise my steady friend; so between Mr. Graham and him, I have been partly forgiven: only I understand that all hopes of my getting officially forward Such an example have I now before me, when you, Sir, came forward to patronise and befriend a distant obscure stranger, merely because poverty had made him help-are blasted. less, and his British hardihood of mind had provoked the arbitrary wantonness of power. My much esteemed friend, Mr. Riddel of Glenriddel, has just read me a paragraph of a letter he had from you. Accept, Sir, of the silent throb of gratitude; for words would but mock the emotions of my soul. You have been misinformed as to my final dismission from the Excise; I am still in the service. Indeed, but for the exertions of a gentleman, who must be known to you, Mr. Graham of Fintry-a gentleman who has ever been my warm and generous friend-I had, without so much as a hearing, or the slightest previous intimation, been turned adrift, with my helpless family, to all the horrors of want. Had I had any other resource, probably I might have saved them the trouble of a dismission; but the little money I gained by publication, is my almost every guinea, embarked to save from ruin an only brother, who, though one of the worthiest, is by no means one of the most fortunate of men. | Now, Sir, to the business in which I would more immediately interest you. The partiality of my COUNTRYMEN has brought me forward as a man of genius, and has given me a character to support. In the POET I have avowed manly and independent sentiments, which I trust will be found in the MAN. Reasons of no less weight than the support of a wife and family, have pointed out as the eligible, and, situated as I was, the only eligible, line of life for me, my present occupation. Still, my honest fame is my dearest concern; and a thousand times. have I trembled at the idea of those degrading epithets that malice or misrepresentation may affix to my name. I have often, in blasting anticipation, listened to some future hackney scribbler, with the heavy malice of savage stupidity, exulting in his hireling paragraphs--“ BURNS, notwithstanding, the fanfaronade of independence to be found in his works, and after having been held forth to public view, and to public estimation, as a man of some genius, yet, quite destitute of resources within himself to support his borrowed dignity, he dwindled into a paltry exciseman, and slunk out the rest of his insignificant existence in the meanest of pursuits, and among the vilest of mankind." Have In my defence to their accusations, I said, that whatever might be my sentiments of republics, ancient or modern, as to Britain I abjured the idea, that a CONSTITUTION, which, in its original principles, experience had proved to be every way fitted for our happiness in society, it would be insanity to sacrifice to an untried visionary theorythat, in consideration of my being situated in a department, however humble, immediately in the hands of people in power, I had forborne taking any active part, either personally or as an author, in the present business of REFORM. But that, where I must declare my sentiments, I would say, there existed a system of corruption between the executive power and the representative part of the legislature, which boded no good to our glorious CONSTITUTION, and which every patriotic Briton must wish to see amended. Some such sentiments as these, I stated in a letter to my generous patron, Mr. Graham, which he laid before the Board at large, where, it seems, my last remark gave great offence; and one of our supervisors general, a Mr. Corbet, was instructed to inquire on the spot, and to docu- Does any man tell me, that my full efforts ment me, "that my business was to act, not | can be of no service, and that it does not In your illustrious hands, Sir, permit me to lodge my disavowal and defiance of these slanderous falsehoods. BURNS was a poor man from birth, and an exciseman by necessity; but---I will say it !—the sterling of his honest worth no poverty could debase; aud his independent British mind, oppression might bend, but could not subdue. not I, to me, a more precious stake in my country's we fare, than the richest dukedom in it? I have a large family of children, and the prospect of many more. 1 have three sons, who, I see already, have brought into the world souls ill qualitied to inhabit the bodies of SLAVES. Can I look tamely on, and see any machination to wrest from them the birthright of my boys-the little independent BRITONS, in whose veins runs my own blood? No! I will not, should my heart's blood stream around my attempt to defend it! belong to my humble station to meddle | my desultory way, of saying whatever comes with the concern of a nation? I can tell him, that it is on such individuals as I that a nation has to rest, both for the hand of support and the eye of intelligence. The uninformed MOB may swell a nation's bulk; and the titled, tinsel, courtly throng may be its feathered ornament; but the number of those who are elevated enough in life to reason and to reflect, yet low enough to keep clear of the venal contagion of a court-these are a nation's strength! I know not how to apologise for the impertinent length of this epistle; but one small request I must ask of you farther :when you have honoured this letter with a perusal, please to commit it to the flames. BURNS, in whose behalf you have so generously interested yourself, I have here, in his native colours, drawn as he is; but should any of the people in whose hands is the very bread he eats, get the least knowledge of the picture, it would ruin the poor BARD for ever! My poems having just come out in another edition, I beg leave to present you with a copy, as a small mark of that high esteem and ardent gratitude with which I have the honour to be, Sir, your deeply indebted and ever devoted humble servant, NO. CCLXVI. R. B. uppermost. The business of many of our tunes wanting, at the beginning, what fiddlers call a starting-note, is often a rub to us poor rhymers. "There's braw, braw lads on Yarrow braes, That wander through the through the blooming heather," you may alter to "Braw, braw lads on Yarrow braes, My song, "Here awa, there awa," as amended by Mr. Erskine, I entirely approve of, and return you. (159) Give me leave to criticise your taste in the only thing in which it is, in my opinion, reprehensible. You know I ought to know something of my own trade. Of pathos, sentiment and point, you are a complete judge; but there is a quality more necessary than either in a song, and which is the very essence of a ballad-I mean simplicity: now, if I mistake not, this last feature you are a little apt to sacrifice to the foregoing. Ramsay, as every other poet, has not been always equally happy in his pieces; still, I cannot approve of taking such liberties with an author as Mr. W. proposes doing with "The last time I came o'er the moor.' Let a poet, if he chooses, take up the idea of another, and work it into a piece of his own; but to mangle the works of the poor bard, whose tuneful tongue is now mute for ever, in the dark and narrow house-by I grant that Heaven, 'twould be sacrilege! Mr. W.'s version is an improvement; but I know Mr. W. well, and esteem him much; let him mend the song, as the High ander mended his gun-he gave it a new stock, a new lock, and a new barrel. I do not, by this, object to leaving out improper stanzas, where that can be done without spoiling the whole. One stanza in "The lass o' Patie's mill" must be left out: the not sure if we can take the same liberty song will be nothing worse for it. I am might want the last stanza, and be the with "Corn rigs are bonnie." Perhaps it better for it. "Cauld kail in Aberdeen," you must leave with me yet a while. I have vowed to have a song to that air, on the lady whom I attempted to celebrate in the verses, "Puirtith cauld and restless love." At any rate, my other song, "Green grow the rashes," will never suit. That song is current in Scotland under the old title, and to the merry old tune of that name, which, of course, would mar the progress of your song to celebrity. Your book will be the standard of Scots songs for the future: let this idea ever keep your judgment on the alarm. I send a song on a celebrated toast in this country, to suit "Bonnie Dundee." I send you also a ballad to the Mill, Mill, O!" (160) "The last time I came o'er the moor," I would fain attempt to make a Scots song for, and let Ramsay's be the English set. You shall hear from me soon. When you go to London on this business, can you come by Dumfries? I have still several MS. Scots airs by me, which I have picked up, mostly from the singing of country lasses. They please me vastly; but your learned lugs (161) would perhaps be displeased with the very feature for which I like them. I call them simple; you would pronounce them silly. Do you know a fine air called "Jackie Hume's Lament ?" I have a song of considerable merit to that air. I'll enclose you both the song and tune, as I had them I had them ready to send to Johnson's Museum. (162) I send you likewise, to me, a beautiful little air, which I had taken down from viva voce. (163) Adieu. MY DEAR SIR-I had scarcely put my last letter into the post office, when I took up the subject of "The last time I came o'er the moor," and, ere I slept, drew the outlines of the foregoing. How far I have succeeded, I leave on this, as on every other occasion, to you to decide. I own my vanity is flattered, when you give my songs a place in your elegant and superb work; but to be of service to the work is my first wish. As I have often told you, I do not in a single instance wish you, out of compliment to me, to insert any thing of mine. One hint let me give you-whatever Mr. Pleyel does, let him not alter one iota of the original Scottish airs, I mean in the song department, but let our national music preserve its native features. They are, I own, frequently wild and irreducible to the more modern rules; but on that very eccentricity, perhaps, depends a great part of their effect. NO. CCLXIX. MR. THOMSON TO BURNS. Edinburgh, April 26th, 1793. I I HEARTILY thank you, my dear Sir, for your last two letters, and the songs which accompanied them. I am always both instructed and entertained by your observations; and the frankness with which you speak out your mind, is to me highly agreeable. It is very possible I may not have the true idea of simplicity in composition. confess there are several songs, of Allan Ramsay's for example, that I think silly enough, which another person, more conversant than I have been with country people, would perhaps call simple and natural. But the lowest scenes of simple nature will not please generally, if copied precisely as they are. The poet, like the painter, must select what will form an agreeable, as well as a natural picture. On this subject it were easy to enlarge; but, at present, suffice it to say, that I consider simplicity, rightly understood, as a most essential quality in composition, and the groundwork of beauty in all the arts. I will gladly appropriate your most interesting new ballad, "When wild war's deadly blast,” &c., to the "Mill, Mill, O!" as well as the two other songs to their respective airs; but the third and fourth lines of the first verse must undergo some little alteration in order to suit the music. Pleyel does not alter a single note of the songs. That would be absurd indeed! With the airs which he introduces into the sonatas, I allow him to take such liberties as he pleases; but that has nothing to do with the songs. P.S. I wish you would do as you proposed with your "Rigs of Barley." If the loose sentiments are thrashed out of it, I will find an air for it; but as to this there is no hurry. NO. CCLXX. TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE. April 26th, 1793. I AM out of humour, my dear Ainslie, and that is the reason why I take up the pen to you: 'tis the nearest way (probatum | est) to recover my spirits again. I received your last, and was much entertained with it; but I will not at this time, nor at any other time, answer it. Answer a letter !-I never could answer a letter in my life. I have written many a letter in return for letters I have received, but then-they were original matter spurt-away-zig, here, zag, there as if the devil, that my grannie (an old woman, indeed) often told me, rode on will-o'-wisp, or, in her more classic phrase, SPUNKIE, were looking over my elbow. Happy thought that idea has engendered in my head! SPUNKIE, thou shalt henceforth be my symbol, signature, and tutelary genius! Like thee, hop-stepand-loup, here-awa-there-awa, higgledy-piggledy, pell-mell, hither-and-yout, ram-stam, happy-go-lucky, up tails-a'-by-the-light-o'the-moon-has been, is, and shall be, my progress through the mosses and moors of this vile, bleak, barren wilderness of a life of ours. Come, then, my guardian spirit! like thee, may I skip away, amusing myself by and at my own light; and if any opaquesouled lubber of mankind complain that my elfin, lambent, glimmerous wanderings have misled his stupid steps over precipices or into bogs, let the thick-headed Blunderbuss recollect that he is not SPUNKIE : that SPUNKIE's wanderings could not copied be: Amid these perils none durst walk but he. which, wrapt in his grey plaid, he grew wise, as he grew weary, all the way home. He carried this so far, that an old musty Hebrew concordance, which we had in a present from a neighbouring priest, by mere dint of applying it, as doctors do a blistering plaster, between his shoulders, Stitch, in a dozen pilgrimages, acquired as much rational theology as the said priest had done by forty years' perusal of the pages. Tell me, and tell me truly, what you think of this theory. Yours, SPUNKIE. NO. CCLXXI. TO MISS KENNEDY. MADAM-Permit me to present you with the enclosed song, as a small though grateful tribute for the honour of your acquaintance. I have, in these verses, attempted some faint sketches of your portrait in the unembellished, simple manner of descriptive TRUTH. Flattery I leave to your LOVERS, whose exaggerating fancies may make them imagine you still nearer perfection than you really are. Poets, Madam, of all mankind, feel most forcibly the powers of BEAUTY; as, if they are really POETS of nature's making, their delicate, than most of the world. In the feelings must be finer, and their taste more cheerful bloom of SPRING, or the pensive mildness of AUTUMN, the grandeur of SUMMER, or the hoary majesty of WINTER, the poet feels a charm unknown to the rest of I have no doubt but Scholarcraft may be his species. Even the sight of a fine flower, caught, as a Scotsman catches the itch, by or the company of a fine woman (by far the friction. How else can you account for it, finest part of God's works below), have senthat born blockheads, by mere dint of hand-sations for the poetic heart that the HERD ling books, grow so wise that even they themselves are equally convinced of, and surprised at their own parts? I once carried this philosophy to that degree, that in a knot of country folks who had a library amongst them, and who, to the honour of their good sense, made me factotum in the business, one of our members, a little, wiselooking, squat, upright, jabbering body of a tailor, I advised him, instead of turning over the leaves, to bind the book on his back. Johnnie took the hint, and as our meetings were every fourth Saturday, and Pricklouse having a good Scots mile to walk in coming, and, of course, another in returning, Bodkin was sure to lay his hand on some heavy quarto or ponderous folio, with, and under D D of men are strangers to. On this last account, Madam, I am, as in many other things, indebted to Mr. Hamilton's kindness in introducing me to you. Your lovers may view you with a wish, I look on you with pleasure; their hearts, in your presence may glow with desire, mine rises with admiration. That the arrows of misfortune, however they should, as incident to humanity, glance a slight wound, may never reach your heart that the snares of villany may never beset you in the road of life-that INNOCENCE may hand you by the path of HONOUR to the dwelling of PEACE is the sincere wish of him who has the honour to be, &c. R. B. NO. CCLXXII. BURNS TO MR. THOMSON. June, 1793. querulous melody probably had its origin from the plaintive indignation of some swelling, suffering heart, fired at the tyrannic strides of some public destroyer, and overwhelmed with private distress, the conse WHEN I tell you, my dear Sir, that a friend of mine, in whom I am much in-quence of a country's ruin. If I have done any thing at all like justice to my feelings, terested, has fallen a sacrifice to these the following song, composed in three-quaraccursed times, you will easily allow that it ters of an hour's meditation in my elbowmight unhinge me for doing any good chair, ought to have some merit :among ballads. My own loss, as to pecuniary matters, is trifling; but the total ruin of a much-loved friend is a loss indeed. Pardon my seeming inattention to your last commands. I cannot alter the disputed lines in the "Mill, Mill, O!" (165) What you think a defect, I esteem as a positive beauty; so you see how doctors differ. I shall now, with as much alacrity as I can muster, go on with your commands. [Here is inserted the song, "Logan Braes.”] Do you know the following beautiful little fragment, in Witherspoon's collection of Scots songs ? AIR-"Hughie Graham." "Oh gin my love were yon red rose, Into her bonnie breast to fa'! Oh there, beyond expression blest, 'Till fley'd awa by Phoebus' light!' You know Frazer, the hautboy-player in Edinburgh-he is here, instructing a band of music for a feucible corps quartered in this county. Among many of his airs that please me, there is one, well known as a reel, by the name of "The Quaker's Wife;" and which, I remember, a grand-aunt of mine This thought is inexpressibly beautiful; used to sing, by the name of "Liggeram and quite, so far as I know, original. It is Cosh, my bonnie wee lass." Mr. Frazer too short for a song, else I would forswear plays it slow, and with an expression that you altogether, unless you gave it a place. quite charms me. I became such an enthu-I have often tried to eke a stanza to it, but siast about it, that I made a song for it, in vain. After balancing myself for a musing which I here subjoin, and enclose Frazer's five minutes, on the hind-legs of my set of the tune. If they hit your fancy, chair, I produced the following. they are at your service; if not, return me the tune, and I will put it in Johnson's Museum. I think the song is not in my worst manner. elbow The verses are far inferior to the fore going, I frankly confess; but if worthy of insertion at all, they might be first in place; as every poet who knows any thing of his trade, will husband his best thoughts for a Blythe hae I concluding stroke. I should wish to hear how this pleases you. NO. CCLXXIII. BURNS TO MR. THOMSON. June 25th, 1793. HAVE you ever, my dear Sir, felt your bosom ready to burst with indignation, on reading of those mighty villains who divide kingdom against kingdom, desolate provinces, and lay nations waste, out of the wantonness of ambition, or often from still more ignoble passions? In a mood of this kind to-day I recollected the air of “Logan Water," and it occurred to me that its Oh were my love yon lilac fair, Wi' purple blossoms to the spring; When wearied on my little wing! NO. CCLXXIV. MR. THOMSON TO BURNS. Monday, July 1st, 1793. I AM extremely sorry, my good Sir, that any thing should happen to unhinge you. |