No More Learning

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.

* * * * *




CCXCII.


TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.

[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 ease_ would 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; those _senses 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 undiscerning MANY; 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.