It is not that I _will not_ write to you;
Miss Burnet is not more dear to her guardian angel, nor his grace the
Duke of Queensbury to the powers of darkness, than my friend
Cunningham to me.
Miss Burnet is not more dear to her guardian angel, nor his grace the
Duke of Queensbury to the powers of darkness, than my friend
Cunningham to me.
Robert Forst
I have likewise strung four or five barbarous
stanzas, to the tune of Chevy Chase, by way of Elegy on your poor
unfortunate mare, beginning (the name she got here was Peg Nicholson)
"Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare,
As ever trod on airn;
But now she's floating down the Nith,
And past the mouth o' Cairn. "
My best compliments to Mrs. Nicol, and little Neddy, and all the
family; I hope Ned is a good scholar, and will come out to gather nuts
and apples with me next harvest.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXXXVIII.
TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.
[Burns looks back with something of regret to the days of rich dinners
and flowing wine-cups which he experienced in Edinburgh. Alexander
Cunningham and his unhappy loves are recorded in that fine song, "Had
I a cave on some wild distant shore. "]
_Ellisland, 13th February, 1790. _
I beg your pardon, my dear and much valued friend, for writing to you
on this very unfashionable, unsightly sheet--
"My poverty but not my will consents. "
But to make amends, since of modish post I have none, except one poor
widowed half-sheet of gilt, which lies in my drawer among my plebeian
fool's-cap pages, like the widow of a man of fashion, whom that
unpolite scoundrel, Necessity, has driven from Burgundy and Pineapple,
to a dish of Bohea, with the scandal-bearing help-mate of a
village-priest; or a glass of whisky-toddy, with a ruby-nosed
yoke-fellow of a foot-padding exciseman--I make a vow to enclose this
sheet-full of epistolary fragments in that my only scrap of gilt
paper.
I am indeed your unworthy debtor for three friendly letters. I ought
to have written to you long ere now, but it is a literal fact, I have
scarcely a spare moment.
It is not that I _will not_ write to you;
Miss Burnet is not more dear to her guardian angel, nor his grace the
Duke of Queensbury to the powers of darkness, than my friend
Cunningham to me. It is not that I _cannot_ write to you; should you
doubt it, take the following fragment, which was intended for you some
time ago, and be convinced that I can _antithesize_ sentiment, and
_circumvolute_ periods, as well as any coiner of phrase in the regions
of philology.
_December, 1789. _
MY DEAR CUNNINGHAM,
Where are you? And what are you doing? Can you be that son of levity,
who takes up a friendship as he takes up a fashion; or are you, like
some other of the worthiest fellows in the world, the victim of
indolence, laden with fetters of ever-increasing weight?
What strange beings we are! Since we have a portion of conscious
existence, equally capable of enjoying pleasure, happiness, and
rapture, or of suffering pain, wretchedness, and misery, it is surely
worthy of an inquiry, whether there be not such a thing as a science
of life; whether method, economy, and fertility of expedients be not
applicable to enjoyment, and whether there be not a want of dexterity
in pleasure, which renders our little scantling of happiness still
less; and a profuseness, an intoxication in bliss, which leads to
satiety, disgust, and self-abhorrence. There is not a doubt but that
health, talents, character, decent competency, respectable friends,
are real substantial blessings; and yet do we not daily see those who
enjoy many or all of these good things contrive notwithstanding to be
as unhappy as others to whose lot few of them have fallen? I believe
one great source of this mistake or misconduct is owing to a certain
stimulus, with us called ambition, which goads us up the hill of life,
not as we ascend other eminences, for the laudable curiosity of
viewing an extended landscape, but rather for the dishonest pride of
looking down on others of our fellow-creatures, seemingly diminutive
in humbler stations, &c &c.
_Sunday, 14th February, 1790. _
God help me! I am now obliged to
"Join night to day, and Sunday to the week. "[197]
If there be any truth in the orthodox faith of these churches, I am
d--mned past redemption, and what is worse, d--mned to all eternity. I
am deeply read in Boston's Four-fold State, Marshal on Sanctification,
Guthrie's Trial of a Saving Interest, &c. ; but "there is no balm in
Gilead, there is no physician there," for me; so I shall e'en turn
Arminian, and trust to "sincere though imperfect obedience.
stanzas, to the tune of Chevy Chase, by way of Elegy on your poor
unfortunate mare, beginning (the name she got here was Peg Nicholson)
"Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare,
As ever trod on airn;
But now she's floating down the Nith,
And past the mouth o' Cairn. "
My best compliments to Mrs. Nicol, and little Neddy, and all the
family; I hope Ned is a good scholar, and will come out to gather nuts
and apples with me next harvest.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXXXVIII.
TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.
[Burns looks back with something of regret to the days of rich dinners
and flowing wine-cups which he experienced in Edinburgh. Alexander
Cunningham and his unhappy loves are recorded in that fine song, "Had
I a cave on some wild distant shore. "]
_Ellisland, 13th February, 1790. _
I beg your pardon, my dear and much valued friend, for writing to you
on this very unfashionable, unsightly sheet--
"My poverty but not my will consents. "
But to make amends, since of modish post I have none, except one poor
widowed half-sheet of gilt, which lies in my drawer among my plebeian
fool's-cap pages, like the widow of a man of fashion, whom that
unpolite scoundrel, Necessity, has driven from Burgundy and Pineapple,
to a dish of Bohea, with the scandal-bearing help-mate of a
village-priest; or a glass of whisky-toddy, with a ruby-nosed
yoke-fellow of a foot-padding exciseman--I make a vow to enclose this
sheet-full of epistolary fragments in that my only scrap of gilt
paper.
I am indeed your unworthy debtor for three friendly letters. I ought
to have written to you long ere now, but it is a literal fact, I have
scarcely a spare moment.
It is not that I _will not_ write to you;
Miss Burnet is not more dear to her guardian angel, nor his grace the
Duke of Queensbury to the powers of darkness, than my friend
Cunningham to me. It is not that I _cannot_ write to you; should you
doubt it, take the following fragment, which was intended for you some
time ago, and be convinced that I can _antithesize_ sentiment, and
_circumvolute_ periods, as well as any coiner of phrase in the regions
of philology.
_December, 1789. _
MY DEAR CUNNINGHAM,
Where are you? And what are you doing? Can you be that son of levity,
who takes up a friendship as he takes up a fashion; or are you, like
some other of the worthiest fellows in the world, the victim of
indolence, laden with fetters of ever-increasing weight?
What strange beings we are! Since we have a portion of conscious
existence, equally capable of enjoying pleasure, happiness, and
rapture, or of suffering pain, wretchedness, and misery, it is surely
worthy of an inquiry, whether there be not such a thing as a science
of life; whether method, economy, and fertility of expedients be not
applicable to enjoyment, and whether there be not a want of dexterity
in pleasure, which renders our little scantling of happiness still
less; and a profuseness, an intoxication in bliss, which leads to
satiety, disgust, and self-abhorrence. There is not a doubt but that
health, talents, character, decent competency, respectable friends,
are real substantial blessings; and yet do we not daily see those who
enjoy many or all of these good things contrive notwithstanding to be
as unhappy as others to whose lot few of them have fallen? I believe
one great source of this mistake or misconduct is owing to a certain
stimulus, with us called ambition, which goads us up the hill of life,
not as we ascend other eminences, for the laudable curiosity of
viewing an extended landscape, but rather for the dishonest pride of
looking down on others of our fellow-creatures, seemingly diminutive
in humbler stations, &c &c.
_Sunday, 14th February, 1790. _
God help me! I am now obliged to
"Join night to day, and Sunday to the week. "[197]
If there be any truth in the orthodox faith of these churches, I am
d--mned past redemption, and what is worse, d--mned to all eternity. I
am deeply read in Boston's Four-fold State, Marshal on Sanctification,
Guthrie's Trial of a Saving Interest, &c. ; but "there is no balm in
Gilead, there is no physician there," for me; so I shall e'en turn
Arminian, and trust to "sincere though imperfect obedience.
