No More Learning

[The elegy on the beautiful Miss Burnet, of Monboddo, was laboured
zealously by Burns, but it never reached the excellence of some of his
other compositions. ]

_Ellisland, 7th Feb. 1791. _

When I tell you, Madam, that by a fall, not from my horse, but with my
horse, I have been a cripple some time, and that this is the first day
my arm and hand have been able to serve me in writing; you will allow
that it is too good an apology for my seemingly ungrateful silence. I
am now getting better, and am able to rhyme a little, which implies
some tolerable ease, as I cannot think that the most poetic genius is
able to compose on the rack.

I do not remember if ever I mentioned to you my having an idea of
composing an elegy on the late Miss Burnet, of Monboddo. I had the
honour of being pretty well acquainted with her, and have seldom felt
so much at the loss of an acquaintance, as when I heard that so
amiable and accomplished a piece of God's work was no more. I have, as
yet, gone no farther than the following fragment, of which please let
me have your opinion. You know that elegy is a subject so much
exhausted, that any new idea on the business is not to be expected:
'tis well if we can place an old idea in a new light. How far I have
succeeded as to this last, you will judge from what follows. I have
proceeded no further.

Your kind letter, with your kind _remembrance_ of your godson, came
safe. This last, Madam, is scarcely what my pride can bear. As to the
little fellow, he is, partiality apart, the finest boy I have for a
long time seen. He is now seventeen months old, has the small-pox and
measles over, has cut several teeth, and never had a grain of doctor's
drugs in his bowels.
I am truly happy to hear that the "little floweret" is blooming so
fresh and fair, and that the "mother plant" is rather recovering her
drooping head. Soon and well may her "cruel wounds" be healed. I have
written thus far with a good deal of difficulty. When I get a little
abler you shall hear farther from,

Madam, yours,

R. B.

* * * * *




CCVIII.


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.