No More Learning

[To Clarke, the Schoolmaster, Burns, it is said, addressed several
letters, which on his death were put into the fire by his widow,
because of their license of language. ]

_11th June, 1791. _

Let me interest you, my dear Cunningham, in behalf of the gentleman
who waits on you with this. He is a Mr. Clarke, of Moffat, principal
schoolmaster there, and is at present suffering severely under the
persecution of one or two powerful individuals of his employers. He is
accused of harshness to boys that were placed under his care. God help
the teacher, if a man of sensibility and genius, and such is my friend
Clarke, when a booby father presents him with his booby son, and
insists on lighting up the rays of science, in a fellow's head whose
skull is impervious and inaccessible by any other way than a positive
fracture with a cudgel: a fellow whom in fact it savours of impiety to
attempt making a scholar of, as he has been marked a blockhead in the
book of fate, at the almighty fiat of his Creator.

The patrons of Moffat-school are, the ministers, magistrates, and
town-council of Edinburgh, and as the business comes now before them,
let me beg my dearest friend to do everything in his power to serve
the interests of a man of genius and worth, and a man whom I
particularly respect and esteem. You know some good fellows among the
magistracy and council, but particularly you have much to say with a
reverend gentleman to whom you have the honour of being very nearly
related, and whom this country and age have had the honour to produce.
I need not name the historian of Charles V. I tell him through the
medium of his nephew's influence, that Mr. Clarke is a gentleman who
will not disgrace even his patronage. I know the merits of the cause
thoroughly, and say it, that my friend is falling a sacrifice to
prejudiced ignorance.

God help the children of dependence! Hated and persecuted by their
enemies, and too often, alas!
almost unexceptionably, received by
their friends with disrespect and reproach, under the thin disguise of
cold civility and humiliating advice. O! to be a sturdy savage,
stalking in the pride of his independence, amid the solitary wilds of
his deserts; rather than in civilized life, helplessly to tremble for
a subsistence, precarious as the caprice of a fellow-creature! Every
man has his virtues, and no man is without his failings; and curse on
that privileged plain-dealing of friendship, which, in the hour of my
calamity, cannot reach forth the helping hand without at the same time
pointing out those failings, and apportioning them their share in
procuring my present distress. My friends, for such the world calls
ye, and such ye think yourselves to be, pass by my virtues if you
please, but do, also, spare my follies: the first will witness in my
breast for themselves, and the last will give pain enough to the
ingenuous mind without you. And since deviating more or less from the
paths of propriety and rectitude, must be incident to human nature, do
thou, Fortune, put it in my power, always from myself, and of myself,
to bear the consequence of those errors! I do not want to be
independent that I may sin, but I want to be independent in my
sinning.

To return in this rambling letter to the subject I set out with, let
me recommend my friend, Mr. Clarke, to your acquaintance and good
offices; his worth entitles him to the one, and his gratitude will
merit the other. I long much to hear from you.

Adieu!

R. B.

* * * * *




CCXIX.


TO THE EARL OF BUCHAN.

[Lord Buchan printed this letter in his Essay on the Life of Thomson,
in 1792.