No More Learning

Farewell! _A Dieu, le bon Dieu, je vous commende. _

R. B.

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CLXXII.


TO CAPTAIN RIDDEL,

CARSE.

[The Whistle alluded to in this letter was contended for on the 16th
of October, 1790--the successful competitor, Fergusson, of
Craigdarroch, was killed by a fall from his horse, some time after the
"jovial contest. "]

_Ellisland, 16th Oct. , 1789. _

SIR,

Big with the idea of this important day at Friars-Carse, I have
watched the elements and skies in the full persuasion that they would
announce it to the astonished world by some phenomena of terrific
portent. --Yesternight until a very late hour did I wait with anxious
horror, for the appearance of some comet firing half the sky; or
aerial armies of sanguinary Scandinavians, darting athwart the
startled heavens, rapid as the ragged lightning, and horrid as those
convulsions of nature that bury nations.

The elements, however, seem to take the matter very quietly: they did
not even usher in this morning with triple suns and a shower of blood,
symbolical of the three potent heroes, and the mighty claret-shed of
the day. --For me, as Thomson in his Winter says of the storm--I shall
"Hear astonished, and astonished sing"

The whistle and the man; I sing
The man that won the whistle, &c.

Here are we met, three merry boys,
Three merry boys I trow are we;
And mony a night we've merry been,
And mony mae we hope to be.

Wha first shall rise to gang awa,
A cuckold coward loun is he:
Wha _last_ beside his chair shall fa',
He is the king amang us three.
To leave the heights of Parnassus and come to the humble vale of
prose. --I have some misgivings that I take too much upon me, when I
request you to get your guest, Sir Robert Lowrie, to frank the two
enclosed covers for me, the one of them to Sir William Cunningham, of
Robertland, Bart. at Kilmarnock,--the other to Mr. Allan Masterton,
Writing-Master, Edinburgh. The first has a kindred claim on Sir
Robert, as being a brother Baronet, and likewise a keen Foxite; the
other is one of the worthiest men in the world, and a man of real
genius; so, allow me to say, he has a fraternal claim on you. I want
them franked for to-morrow, as I cannot get them to the post
to-night. --I shall send a servant again for them in the evening.
Wishing that your head may be crowned with laurels to-night, and free
from aches to-morrow,

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your deeply indebted humble Servant,

R. B.

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CLXXIII.


TO CAPTAIN RIDDEL.

[Robert Riddel kept one of those present pests of society--an
album--into which Burns copied the Lines on the Hermitage, and the
Wounded Hare. ]

_Ellisland, 1789. _

SIR,

I wish from my inmost soul it were in my power to give you a more
substantial gratification and return for all the goodness to the poet,
than transcribing a few of his idle rhymes. --However, "an old song,"
though to a proverb an instance of insignificance, is generally the
only coin a poet has to pay with.

If my poems which I have transcribed, and mean still to transcribe
into your book, were equal to the grateful respect and high esteem I
bear for the gentleman to whom I present them, they would be the
finest poems in the language.