No More Learning

my dear Sir.

R. B.

* * * * *




CXXI.


TO MRS. DUNLOP.

[This letter, on the hiring season, is well worth the consideration of
all masters, and all servants. In England, servants are engaged by the
month; in Scotland by the half-year, and therefore less at the mercy
of the changeable and capricious. ]

27_th May, 1788. _

MADAM,

I have been torturing my philosophy to no purpose, to account for that
kind partiality of yours, which has followed me, in my return to the
shade of life, with assiduous benevolence. Often did I regret, in the
fleeting hours of my late will-o'-wisp appearance, that "here I had no
continuing city;" and but for the consolation of a few solid guineas,
could almost lament the time that a momentary acquaintance with wealth
and splendour put me so much out of conceit with the sworn companions
of my road through life--insignificance and poverty.

There are few circumstances relating to the unequal distribution of
the good things of this life that give me more vexation (I mean in
what I see around me) than the importance the opulent bestow on their
trifling family affairs, compared with the very same things on the
contracted scale of a cottage. Last afternoon I had the honour to
spend an hour or two at a good woman's fireside, where the planks that
composed the floor were decorated with a splendid carpet, and the gay
table sparkled with silver and china. 'Tis now about term-day, and
there has been a revolution among those creatures, who though in
appearance partakers, and equally noble partakers, of the same nature
with Madame, are from time to time--their nerves, their sinews, their
health, strength, wisdom, experience, genius, time, nay a good part of
their very thoughts--sold for months and years, not only to the
necessities, the conveniences, but, the caprices of the important few.
We talked of the insignificant creatures, nay notwithstanding their
general stupidity and rascality, did some of the poor devils the
honour to commend them.
But light be the turf upon his breast who
taught "Reverence thyself! " We looked down on the unpolished wretches,
their impertinent wives and clouterly brats, as the lordly bull does
on the little dirty ant-hill, whose puny inhabitants he crushes in the
carelessness of his ramble, or tosses in the air in the wantonness of
his pride.

R. B.

* * * * *




CXXII.


TO MRS. DUNLOP,

AT MR DUNLOP'S, HADDINGTON.

[In this, the poet's first letter from Ellisland, he lays down his
whole system of in-door and out-door economy: while his wife took care
of the household, he was to manage the farm, and "pen a stanza" during
his hours of leisure. ]

_Ellisland, 13th June, 1788. _

"Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see,
My heart, untravell'd, fondly turns to thee;
Still to my _friend_ it turns with ceaseless pain,
and drags at each remove a lengthening chain. "

GOLDSMITH.

This is the second day, my honoured friend, that I have been on my
farm. A solitary inmate of an old smoky spense; far from every object
I love, or by whom I am beloved; nor any acquaintance older than
yesterday, except Jenny Geddes, the old mare I ride on; while uncouth
cares and novel plans hourly insult my awkward ignorance and bashful
inexperience. There is a foggy atmosphere native to my soul in the
hour of care; consequently the dreary objects seem larger than life.
Extreme sensibility, irritated and prejudiced on the gloomy side by a
series of misfortunes and disappointments, at that period of my
existence when the soul is laying in her cargo of ideas for the voyage
of life, is, I believe, the principal cause of this unhappy frame of
mind.

"The valiant, in himself, what can he suffer?