No More Learning

TO THE REV. ARCH. ALISON.

[Alison was much gratified it is said, with this recognition of the
principles laid down in his ingenious and popular work. ]

_Ellisland, near Dumfries, 14th Feb. 1791. _

SIR,

You must by this time have set me down as one of the most ungrateful
of men. You did me the honour to present me with a book, which does
honour to science and the intellectual powers of man, and I have not
even so much as acknowledged the receipt of it. The fact is, you
yourself are to blame for it. Flattered as I was by your telling me
that you wished to have my opinion of the work, the old spiritual
enemy of mankind, who knows well that vanity is one of the sins that
most easily beset me, put it into my head to ponder over the
performance with the look-out of a critic, and to draw up forsooth a
deep learned digest of strictures on a composition, of which, in fact,
until I read the book, I did not even know the first principles. I
own, Sir, that at first glance, several of your propositions startled
me as paradoxical. That the martial clangour of a trumpet had
something in it vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime, than the
twingle twangle of a jew's-harp: that the delicate flexure of a
rose-twig, when the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of the
dawn, was infinitely more beautiful and elegant than the upright stub
of a burdock; and that from something innate and independent of all
associations of ideas;--these I had set down as irrefragable, orthodox
truths, until perusing your book shook my faith. --In short, Sir,
except Euclid's Elements of Geometry, which I made a shift to unravel
by my father's fire-side, in the winter evening of the first season I
held the plough, I never read a book which gave me such a quantum of
information, and added so much to my stock of ideas, as your "Essays
on the Principles of Taste. " One thing, Sir, you must forgive my
mentioning as an uncommon merit in the work, I mean the language. To
clothe abstract philosophy in elegance of style, sounds something like
a contradiction in terms; but you have convinced me that they are
quite compatible.
I enclose you some poetic bagatelles of my late composition. The one
in print[198] is my first essay in the way of telling a tale.

I am, Sir, &c.

R. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 198: Tam O' Shanter]

* * * * *




[Illustration: A NAVAL BATTLE. ]

CCIX.


TO DR. MOORE.

[Moore admired but moderately the beautiful ballad on Queen Mary, and
the Elegy on Captain Matthew Henderson: Tam o' Shanter he thought full
of poetical beauties. --He again regrets that he writes in the language
of Scotland. ]

_Ellisland, 20th February, 1791. _

I do not know, Sir, whether you are a subscriber to _Grose's
Antiquities of Scotland. _ If you are, the enclosed poem will not be
altogether new to you. Captain Grose did me the favour to send me a
dozen copies of the proof sheet, of which this is one. Should you have
read the piece before, still this will answer the principal end I have
in view: it will give me another opportunity of thanking you for all
your goodness to the rustic bard; and also of showing you, that the
abilities you have been pleased to commend and patronize are still
employed in the way you wish.