No More Learning

I duly received your last, enclosing the note: it came
extremely in time, and I am much obliged to your punctuality. Again I
must request you to do me the same kindness. Be so very good as by
return of post to enclose me _another_ note: I trust you can do so
without inconvenience, and it will seriously oblige me. If I must go,
I leave a few friends behind me, whom I shall regret while
consciousness remains. I know I shall live in their remembrance. O,
dear, dear Clarke! that I shall ever see you again is I am afraid
highly improbable. " This remarkable letter proves both the declining
health, and the poverty of the poet: his digestion was so bad that he
could taste neither flesh nor fish: porridge and milk he could alone
swallow, and that but in small quantities. When it is recollected that
he had no more than thirty shillings a week to keep house, and live
like a gentleman, no one need wonder that his wife had to be obliged
to a generous neighbour for some of the chief necessaries for her
coming confinement, and that the poet had to beg, in extreme need, two
guinea notes from a distant friend.

His sinking state was not unobserved by his friends, and Syme and
M'Murdo united with Dr. Maxwell in persuading him, at the beginning of
the summer, to seek health at the Brow-well, a few miles east of
Dumfries, where there were pleasant walks on the Solway-side, and
salubrious breezes from the sea, which it was expected would bring the
health to the poet they had brought to many. For a while, his looks
brightened up, and health seemed inclined to return: his friend, the
witty and accomplished Mrs. Riddel, who was herself ailing, paid him a
visit. "I was struck," she said, "with his appearance on entering the
room: the stamp of death was impressed on his features. His first
words were, 'Well, Madam, have you any commands for the other world?
'
I replied that it seemed a doubtful case which of us should be there
soonest; he looked in my face with an air of great kindness, and
expressed his concern at seeing me so ill, with his usual sensibility.
At table he ate little or nothing: we had a long conversation about
his present state, and the approaching termination of all his earthly
prospects. He showed great concern about his literary fame, and
particularly the publication of his posthumous works; he said he was
well aware that his death would occasion some noise, and that every
scrap of his writing would be revived against him, to the injury of
his future reputation; that letters and verses, written with unguarded
freedom, would be handed about by vanity or malevolence when no dread
of his resentment would restrain them, or prevent malice or envy from
pouring forth their venom on his name. I had seldom seen his mind
greater, or more collected. There was frequently a considerable degree
of vivacity in his sallies; but the concern and dejection I could not
disguise, damped the spirit of pleasantry he seemed willing to
indulge. " This was on the evening of the 5th of July; another lady who
called to see him, found him seated at a window, gazing on the sun,
then setting brightly on the summits of the green hills of Nithsdale.
"Look how lovely the sun is," said the poet, "but he will soon have
done with shining for me. "

He now longed for home: his wife, whom he ever tenderly loved, was
about to be confined in child-bed: his papers were in sad confusion,
and required arrangement; and he felt that desire to die, at least,
among familiar things and friendly faces, so common to our nature. He
had not long before, though much reduced in pocket, refused with scorn
an offer of fifty pounds, which a speculating bookseller made, for
leave to publish his looser compositions; he had refused an offer of
the like sum yearly, from Perry of the Morning Chronicle, for poetic
contributions to his paper, lest it might embroil him with the ruling
powers, and he had resented the remittance of five pounds from
Thomson, on account of his lyric contributions, and desired him to do
so no more, unless he wished to quarrel with him; but his necessities
now, and they had at no time been so great, induced him to solicit
five pounds from Thomson, and ten pounds from his cousin, James
Burness, of Montrose, and to beg his friend Alexander Cunningham to
intercede with the Commissioners of Excise, to depart from their usual
practice, and grant him his full salary; "for without that," he added,
"if I die not of disease, I must perish with hunger. " Thomson sent the
five pounds, James Burness sent the ten, but the Commissioners of
Excise refused to be either merciful or generous. Stobie, a young
expectant in the customs, was both;--he performed the duties of the
dying poet, and refused to touch the salary. The mind of Burns was
haunted with the fears of want and the terrors of a jail; nor were
those fears without foundation; one Williamson, to whom he was
indebted for the cloth to make his volunteer regimentals, threatened
the one; and a feeling that he was without money for either his own
illness or the confinement of his wife, threatened the other.

Burns returned from the Brow-well, on the 18th of July: as he walked
from the little carriage which brought him up the Mill hole-brae to
his own door, he trembled much, and stooped with weakness and pain,
and kept his feet with difficulty: his looks were woe-worn and
ghastly, and no one who saw him, and there were several, expected to
see him again in life. It was soon circulated through Dumfries, that
Burns had returned worse from the Brow-well; that Maxwell thought ill
of him, and that, in truth, he was dying. The anxiety of all classes
was great; differences of opinion were forgotten, in sympathy for his
early fate: wherever two or three were met together their talk was of
Burns, of his rare wit, matchless humour, the vivacity of his
conversation, and the kindness of his heart. To the poet himself,
death, which he now knew was at hand, brought with it no fear; his
good-humour, which small matters alone ruffled, did not forsake him,
and his wit was ever ready.