No More Learning

TO MRS. DUNLOP.

[The feeling mood of moral reflection exhibited in the following
letter, was common to the house of William Burns: in a letter
addressed by Gilbert to Robert of this date, the poet is reminded of
the early vicissitudes of their name, and desired to look up, and be
thankful. ]

_Ellisland, New-year-day Morning, 1789. _

This, dear Madam, is a morning of wishes, and would to God that I came
under the apostle James's description! --_the prayer of a righteous man
availeth much. _ In that case, Madam, you should welcome in a year full
of blessings: everything that obstructs or disturbs tranquillity and
self-enjoyment, should be removed, and every pleasure that frail
humanity can taste, should be yours. I own myself so little a
Presbyterian, that I approve of set times and seasons of more than
ordinary acts of devotion, for breaking in on that habitual routine of
life and thought, which is so apt to reduce our existence to a kind of
instinct, or even sometimes, and with some minds, to a state very
little superior to mere machinery.

This day, the first Sunday of May, a breezy, blue-skyed noon some time
about the beginning, and a hoary morning and calm sunny day about the
end, of autumn; these, time out of mind, have been with me a kind of
holiday.

I believe I owe this to that glorious paper in the Spectator, "The
Vision of Mirza," a piece that struck my young fancy before I was
capable of fixing an idea to a word of three syllables: "On the 6th
day of the moon, which, according to the custom of my forefathers, I
always _keep holy_, after washing myself, and offering up my morning
devotions, I ascended the high hill of Bagdat, in order to pass the
rest of the day in meditation and prayer. "

We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the substance or structure of
our souls, so cannot account for those seeming caprices in them, that
one should be particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with
that, which, on minds of a different cast, makes no extraordinary
impression. I have some favourite flowers in spring, among which are
the mountain-daisy, the hare-bell, the fox-glove, the wild
brier-rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and
hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud solitary
whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of
a troop of grey plovers, in an autumnal morning, without feeling an
elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me,
my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of
machinery, which, like the AEolian harp, passive, takes the impression
of the passing accident?
Or do these workings argue something within
us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of
those awful and important realities--a God that made all things--man's
immaterial and immortal nature--and a world of weal or woe beyond
death and the grave.

R. B.

* * * * *




CXLVI.


TO DR. MOORE.

[The poet seems, in this letter, to perceive that Ellisland was not
the bargain he had reckoned it: he intimated, as the reader will
remember, something of the same kind to Margaret Chalmers. ]

_Ellisland, 4th Jan. 1789. _

SIR,

As often as I think of writing to you, which has been three or four
times every week these six months, it gives me something so like the
idea of an ordinary-sized statue offering at a conversation with the
Rhodian colossus, that my mind misgives me, and the affair always
miscarries somewhere between purpose and resolve. I have at last got
some business with you, and business letters are written by the
stylebook. I say my business is with you, Sir, for you never had any
with me, except the business that benevolence has in the mansion of
poverty.

The character and employment of a poet were formerly my pleasure, but
are now my pride. I know that a very great deal of my late eclat was
owing to the singularity of my situation, and the honest prejudice of
Scotsmen; but still, as I said in the preface to my first edition, I
do look upon myself as having some pretensions from Nature to the
poetic character. I have not a doubt but the knack, the aptitude, to
learn the muses' trade, is a gift bestowed by him "who forms the
secret bias of the soul;"--but I as firmly believe, that _excellence_
in the profession is the fruit of industry, labour, attention, and
pains.