No More Learning

[The Provost and Bailies complied at once with the modest request of
the poet: both Jackson and Staig, who were heads of the town by turns,
were men of taste and feeling. ]

GENTLEMEN,

The literary taste and liberal spirit of your good town has so ably
filled the various departments of your schools, as to make it a very
great object for a parent to have his children educated in them.
Still, to me, a stranger, with my large family, and very stinted
income, to give my young ones that education I wish, at the high fees
which a stranger pays, will bear hard upon me.

Some years ago your good town did me the honour of making me an
honorary burgess. --Will you allow me to request that this mark of
distinction may extend so far, as to put me on a footing of a real
freeman of the town, in the schools?

If you are so very kind as to grant my request, it will certainly be a
constant incentive to me to strain every nerve where I can officially
serve you; and will, if possible, increase that grateful respect with
which I have the honour to be,

Gentlemen,

Your devoted humble servant,

R. B.

* * * * *




CCCXXVIII.


TO MRS. RIDDEL.

[Mrs. Riddel was, like Burns, a well-wisher to the great cause of
human liberty, and lamented with him the excesses of the French
Revolution. ]

_Dumfries, 20th January, 1796. _

I cannot express my gratitude to you, for allowing me a longer perusal
of "Anacharsis. " In fact, I never met with a book that bewitched me so
much; and I, as a member of the library, must warmly feel the
obligation you have laid us under.
Indeed to me the obligation is
stronger than to any other individual of our society; as "Anacharsis"
is an indispensable desideratum to a son of the muses.

The health you wished me in your morning's card, is, I think, flown
from me for ever. I have not been able to leave my bed to-day till
about an hour ago. These wickedly unlucky advertisements I lent (I did
wrong) to a friend, and I am ill able to go in quest of him.

The muses have not quite forsaken me. The following detached stanza I
intend to interweave in some disastrous tale of a shepherd.

R. B.

* * * * *




CCCXXIX.


TO MRS. DUNLOP.

[It seems that Mrs. Dunlop regarded the conduct of Burns, for some
months, with displeasure, and withheld or delayed her usual kind and
charming communications. ]

_Dumfries, 31st January, 1796. _

These many months you have been two packets in my debt--what sin of
ignorance I have committed against so highly-valued a friend I am
utterly at a loss to guess. Alas!