No More Learning

I enclose you a proof copy of the "Banks of the Devon," which present
with my best wishes to Charlotte. The "Ochel-hills" you shall probably
have next week for yourself. None of your fine speeches!

R. B.

* * * * *




XCII.


TO MISS CHALMERS.

[The eloquent hypochondriasm of the concluding paragraph of this
letter, called forth the commendation of Lord Jeffrey, when he
criticised Cromek's Reliques of Burns, in the Edinburgh Review. ]

_Edinburgh, Dec. _ 19, 1787.

I begin this letter in answer to yours of the 17th current, which is
not yet cold since I read it. The atmosphere of my soul is vastly
clearer than when I wrote you last. For the first time, yesterday I
crossed the room on crutches. It would do your heart good to see my
hardship, not on my poetic, but on my oaken stilts; throwing my best
leg with an air! and with as much hilarity in my gait and countenance,
as a May frog leaping across the newly harrowed ridge, enjoying the
fragrance of the refreshed earth, after the long-expected shower!
I can't say I am altogether at my ease when I see anywhere in my path
that meagre, squalid, famine-faced spectre, Poverty; attended as he
always is, by iron-fisted oppression, and leering contempt; but I have
sturdily withstood his buffetings many a hard-laboured day already,
and still my motto is--I DARE! My worst enemy is _moi-meme. _
I lie so miserably open to the inroads and incursions of a
mischievous, light-armed, well-mounted banditti, under the banners of
imagination, whim, caprice, and passion: and the heavy-armed veteran
regulars of wisdom, prudence, and forethought move so very, very slow,
that I am almost in a state of perpetual warfare, and, alas! frequent
defeat. There are just two creatures I would envy, a horse in his wild
state traversing the forests of Asia, or an oyster on some of the
desert shores of Europe. The one has not a wish without enjoyment, the
other has neither wish nor fear.

R. B.

* * * * *




XCIII.


TO SIR JOHN WHITEFOORD.

[The Whitefoords of Whitefoord, interested themselves in all matters
connected with literature: the power of the family, unluckily for
Burns, was not equal to their taste. ]

_Edinburgh, December_, 1787.

SIR,

Mr. Mackenzie, in Mauchline, my very warm and worthy friend, has
informed me how much you are pleased to interest yourself in my fate
as a man, and (what to me is incomparably dearer) my fame as a poet.
I have, Sir, in one or two instances, been patronized by those of your
character in life, when I was introduced to their notice by * * * * *
friends to them and honoured acquaintances to me! but you are the
first gentleman in the country whose benevolence and goodness of heart
has interested himself for me, unsolicited and unknown.