this vain and insubstantial profession. Charles Edward was still alive, but lost in the sottishness which so sadly fell upon a mind once ardent and apparently capable of better things. A few generous souls, perhaps none of them of very high standing in society, kept his memory alive by an annual symposium on his birthday. On the present occasion, they were favoured with the attendance of Burns in the capacity of their poet-laureate; and he accordingly produced an ode, of which Dr Currie has preserved a few stanzas: False flatterer, Hope, away! Nor think to lure us as in days of yore; Ye honoured mighty dead! Who nobly perished in the glorious cause, From great Dundee who smiling victory led, And fell a martyr in her arms (What breast of northern ice but warms?) To bold Balmerino's undying name, Whose soul of fire, lighted at heaven's high flame, Deserves the proudest wreath departed heroes claim. Nor unavenged your fate shall be, With doubling speed and gathering force, Till deep it crashing whelms the cottage in the vale! So vengeance To go no further, the magnanimity of the Prince in 1745 towards all of his enemies who fell in his power, forms a bright point in his character, and one to which full justice has never yet been done in public opinion. In the first part of this ode there is some beautiful imagery, which the poet afterwards interwove in the Chevalier's Lament.'-CURRIE. TO MISS LOGAN, WITH BEATTIE'S POEMS: AS A NEW-YEAR'S GIFT, JANUARY 1, 1787.1 Again the silent wheels of time Their annual round have driven, And you, though scarce in maiden prime, No gifts have I from Indian coasts I send you more than India boasts Our sex with guile and faithless love Mrs Dunlop had written to Dr John Moore, author of Zeluco, regarding Burns and his verse, and this amiable man had taken an opportunity of pointing out to the Earl of Eglintoun what a miracle of genius had risen in his county, and was now claiming the friendly patronage of all good Scotsmen. The earl immediately sent a gentleman to Burns, to bespeak the new edition of his poems, and hand him a suitable gift of money. TO THE EARL OF EGLINTOUN. [EDINBURGH, January 11, 1787.] MY LORD-AS I have but slender pretensions to philosophy, I cannot rise to the exalted ideas of a citizen of the world, but have all those national prejudices which I believe glow peculiarly strong in the breast of a Scotchman. There is scarcely anything to which I am so feelingly alive as the honour and welfare of my country; and as a poet, I have no higher enjoyment than singing her sons and daughters. Fate had cast my station in the veriest shades of life; but never did a heart pant more ardently than mine to be distinguished, though, till very lately, I looked in vain on every side for a ray of light. It is casy, then, to guess how much I was gratified with the countenance and approbation of one of my country's most illustrious sons, when Mr Wauchope called on me yesterday on the part of your lordship. Your munificence, my lord, certainly deserves my very grateful acknowledgments; but 1 Sister of Major Logan, to whom the poet had addressed an epistle on the 30th October of the past year. your patronage is a bounty peculiarly suited to my feelings. I am not master enough of the etiquette of life to know whether there be not some impropriety in troubling your lordship with my thanks, but my heart whispered me to do it. From the emotions of my inmost soul I do it. Selfish ingratitude, I hope, I am incapable of; and mercenary servility, I trust, I shall ever have so much honest pride as to detest. R. B. TO MR MACKENZIE, SURGEON, MAUCHLINE. EDINBURGH, 11th January 1787. MY DEAR SIR-Yours gave me something like the pleasure of an old friend's face. I saw your friend and my honoured patron, Sir John Whitefoord, just after I received your letter, and gave him your respectful compliments. He was pleased to say many handsome things of you, which I heard with the more satisfaction, as I knew them to be just. His son John, who calls very frequently on me, is in a fuss to-day like a coronation. This is the great day-the assembly and ball of the Caledonian Hunt; and John has had the good-luck to pre-engage the hand of the beauty-famed and wealth-celebrated Miss M'Adam, our countrywoman. Between friends, John is desperately in for it there, and I am afraid will be desperate indeed. I am sorry to send you the last speech and dying words of The Lounger. A gentleman waited on me yesterday, and gave me, by Lord Eglintoun's order, ten guineas by way of subscription for a brace of copies of my second edition. I met with Lord Maitland' and a brother of his to-day at breakfast. They are exceedingly easy, accessible, agreeable fellows, and seemingly pretty clever. I am ever, my dear sir, yours, ROBERT BURNS. TO JOHN BALLANTYNE, ESQ. EDINBURGH, January 14, 1787. MY HONOURED FRIEND-It gives me a secret comfort to observe in myself that I am not yet so far gone as Willie Gaw's Skate'past redemption;" for I have still this favourable symptom of grace, that when my conscience, as in the case of this letter, tells me I am leaving something undone that I ought to do, it teases me eternally till I do it. 1 Afterwards eighth Earl of Lauderdale; at this time a conspicuous member of the House of Commons, on the side of Opposition. 2 This is one of a great number of old saws which Burns, when a lad, had picked up from his mother, who had a vast collection of such fragments of traditionary humour and wisdom.-CROMEK. I am still dark as was chaos' in respect to futurity. My generous friend, Mr Patrick Miller, has been talking with me about a lease of some farm or other in an estate called Dalswinton, which he has lately bought near Dumfries. Some life-rented imbittering recollections whisper me that I will be happier anywhere than in my old neighbourhood, but Mr Miller is no judge of land; and though I daresay he means to favour me, yet he may give me, in his opinion, an advantageous bargain that may ruin me. I am to take a tour by Dumfries as I return, and have promised to meet Mr Miller on his lands some time in May. I went to a mason-lodge yesternight, where the most Worshipful Grand-Master Charteris, and all the Grand Lodge of Scotland, visited. The meeting was numerous and elegant; all the different lodges about town were present in all their pomp. The Grand Master, who presided with great solemnity and honour to himself as a gentleman and mason, among other general toasts, gave 'Caledonia, and Caledonia's Bard, Brother Burns,' which rang through the whole assembly with multiplied honours and repeated acclamations. As I had no idea such a thing would happen, I was downright thunderstruck, and, trembling in every nerve, made the best return in my power. Just as I had finished, some of the grand officers said so loud that I could hear, with a most comforting accent: Very well indeed!' which set me something to rights again. I have to-day corrected my 152d page. My best good-wishes to Mr Aiken. I am ever, dear sir, your much indebted humble servant, R. B. In reference to Mrs Dunlop's late intercession with Dr John Moore, Burns now addressed her as follows: TO MRS DUNLOP. EDINBURGH, 15th January 1787. MADAM-Yours of the 9th current, which I am this moment honoured with, is a deep reproach to me for ungrateful neglect. I will tell you the real truth, for I am miserably awkward at a fib. I wished to have written to Dr Moore before I wrote to you; but though, every day since I received yours of December 30th, the idea, the wish to write to him has constantly pressed on my thoughts, yet I could not for my soul set about it. I know his fame and character, and I am one of the sons of little men.' To write him a mere matter-of-fact affair, like a merchant's order, would be disgracing the little character I have; and to write the author of The View of Society and Manners a letter of sentiment-I declare every artery runs cold at the thought. I shall try, however, to write to him to-morrow or next day. His kind interposition in my behalf I have already experienced, as a gentleman waited on me the other day, on the part of Lord Eglintoun, with ten guineas, by way of subscription for two copies of my next edition. The word you object to in the mention I have made of my glorious countryman and your immortal ancestor, is indeed borrowed from Thomson; but it does not strike me as an improper epithet. I distrusted my own judgment on your finding fault with it, and applied for the opinion of some of the literati here, who honour me with their critical strictures, and they all allow it to be proper. The song you ask I cannot recollect, and I have not a copy of it. I have not composed anything on the great Wallace, except what you have seen in print, and the enclosed, which I will print in this edition.' You will see I have mentioned some others of the name. When I composed my Vision long ago, I had attempted a description of Kyle, of which the additional stanzas are a part as it originally stood. My heart glows with a wish to be able to do justice to the merits of the 'saviour of his country,' which, sooner or later, I shall at least attempt. You are afraid I shall grow intoxicated with my prosperity as a poet. Alas! madam, I know myself and the world too well. I do not mean any airs of affected modesty; I am willing to believe that my abilities deserve some notice; but in a most enlightened, informed age and nation, when poetry is, and has been, the study of men of the first natural genius, aided with all the powers of polite learning, polite books, and polite company-to be dragged forth to the full glare of learned and polite observation, with all my imperfections of awkward rusticity and crude unpolished ideas on my head-I assure you, madam, I do not dissemble when I tell you I tremble for the consequences. The novelty of a poet in my obscure situation, without any of those advantages which are reckoned necessary for that character, at least at this time of day, has raised a partial tide of public notice which has borne me to a height where I am absolutely, feelingly certain, my abilities are inadequate to support me; and too surely do I see that time when the same tide will leave me, and recede perhaps as far below the mark of truth. I do not say this in the ridiculous affectation of self-abasement and modesty. I have studied myself, and know what ground I occupy; and however a friend or the world may differ from me in that particular, I stand for my own opinion, in silent resolve, with all the tenaciousness of property. I mention this to you once for all, to disburden my mind, and I do not wish to hear or say more about it. But, When proud Fortune's ebbing tide recedes, you will bear me witness, that when my bubble of fame was at the highest, I stood unintoxicated, with the inebriating cup in my hand, looking forward with rueful resolve to the hastening time when 1 Stanzas in The Vision, beginning, 'By stately tower or palace fair,' and ending with the first Duan. |