You see, Sir, what it is to
patronize
a poet.
Robert Burns
If
the relations we stand in to king, country, kindred, and friends, be
anything but the visionary fancies of dreaming metaphysicians; if religion,
virtue, magnanimity, generosity, humanity and justice, be aught but empty
sounds; then the man who may be said to live only for others, for the
beloved, honourable female, whose tender faithful embrace endears life, and
for the helpless little innocents who are to be the men and women, the
worshippers of his God, the subjects of his king, and the support, nay the
vital existence of his COUNTRY in the ensuing age;--compare such a man with
any fellow whatever, who, whether he bustle and push in business among
labourers, clerks, statesmen; or whether he roar and rant, and drink and
sing in taverns--a fellow over whose grave no one will breathe a single
heigh-ho, except from the cobweb-tie of what is called good-fellowship--who
has no view nor aim but what terminates in himself--if there be any
grovelling earth-born wretch of our species, a renegado to common sense,
who would fain believe that the noble creature man, is no better than a
sort of fungus, generated out of nothing, nobody knows how, and soon
dissipated in nothing, nobody knows where; such a stupid beast, such a
crawling reptile, might balance the foregoing unexaggerated comparison, but
no one else would have the patience.
Forgive me, my dear Sir, for this long silence. _To make you amends_,
I shall send you soon, and more encouraging still, without any
postage, one or two rhymes of my later manufacture.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXVI.
TO MR. M'MURDO.
[John M'Murdo has been already mentioned as one of Burns's firmest
friends: his table at Drumlanrig was always spread at the poet's
coming: nor was it uncheered by the presence of the lady of the house
and her daughters. ]
_Ellisland, 19th June, 1789. _
SIR,
A poet and a beggar are, in so many points of view, alike, that one
might take them for the same individual character under different
designations; were it not that though, with a trifling poetic license,
most poets may be styled beggars, yet the converse of the proposition
does not hold, that every beggar is a poet. In one particular,
however, they remarkably agree; if you help either the one or the
other to a mug of ale, or the picking of a bone, they will very
willingly repay you with a song. This occurs to me at present, as I
have just despatched a well-lined rib of John Kirkpatrick's
Highlander; a bargain for which I am indebted to you, in the style of
our ballad printers, "Five excellent new songs. " The enclosed is
nearly my newest song, and one that has cost me some pains, though
that is but an equivocal mark of its excellence. Two or three others,
which I have by me, shall do themselves the honour to wait on your
after leisure: petitioners for admittance into favour must not harass
the condescension of their benefactor.
You see, Sir, what it is to patronize a poet. 'Tis like being a
magistrate in a petty borough; you do them the favour to preside in
their council for one year, and your name bears the prefatory stigma
of Bailie for life.
With, not the compliments, but the best wishes, the sincerest prayers
of the season for you, that you may see many and happy years with Mrs.
M'Murdo, and your family; two blessings by the bye, to which your rank
does not, by any means, entitle you; a loving wife and fine family
being almost the only good things of this life to which the farm-house
and cottage have an exclusive right,
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your much indebted and very humble servant,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXVII.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The devil, the pope, and the Pretender darkened the sermons, for more
than a century, of many sound divines in the north. As a Jacobite,
Burns disliked to hear Prince Charles called the Pretender, and as a
man of a tolerant nature, he disliked to hear the Pope treated unlike
a gentleman: his notions regarding Satan are recorded in his
inimitable address. ]
_Ellisland, 21st June, 1789. _
DEAR MADAM,
Will you take the effusions, the miserable effusions of low spirits,
just as they flow from their bitter spring? I know not of any
particular cause for this worst of all my foes besetting me; but for
some time my soul has been beclouded with a thickening atmosphere of
evil imaginations and gloomy presages.
_Monday Evening. _
I have just heard Mr. Kirkpatrick preach a sermon.
the relations we stand in to king, country, kindred, and friends, be
anything but the visionary fancies of dreaming metaphysicians; if religion,
virtue, magnanimity, generosity, humanity and justice, be aught but empty
sounds; then the man who may be said to live only for others, for the
beloved, honourable female, whose tender faithful embrace endears life, and
for the helpless little innocents who are to be the men and women, the
worshippers of his God, the subjects of his king, and the support, nay the
vital existence of his COUNTRY in the ensuing age;--compare such a man with
any fellow whatever, who, whether he bustle and push in business among
labourers, clerks, statesmen; or whether he roar and rant, and drink and
sing in taverns--a fellow over whose grave no one will breathe a single
heigh-ho, except from the cobweb-tie of what is called good-fellowship--who
has no view nor aim but what terminates in himself--if there be any
grovelling earth-born wretch of our species, a renegado to common sense,
who would fain believe that the noble creature man, is no better than a
sort of fungus, generated out of nothing, nobody knows how, and soon
dissipated in nothing, nobody knows where; such a stupid beast, such a
crawling reptile, might balance the foregoing unexaggerated comparison, but
no one else would have the patience.
Forgive me, my dear Sir, for this long silence. _To make you amends_,
I shall send you soon, and more encouraging still, without any
postage, one or two rhymes of my later manufacture.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXVI.
TO MR. M'MURDO.
[John M'Murdo has been already mentioned as one of Burns's firmest
friends: his table at Drumlanrig was always spread at the poet's
coming: nor was it uncheered by the presence of the lady of the house
and her daughters. ]
_Ellisland, 19th June, 1789. _
SIR,
A poet and a beggar are, in so many points of view, alike, that one
might take them for the same individual character under different
designations; were it not that though, with a trifling poetic license,
most poets may be styled beggars, yet the converse of the proposition
does not hold, that every beggar is a poet. In one particular,
however, they remarkably agree; if you help either the one or the
other to a mug of ale, or the picking of a bone, they will very
willingly repay you with a song. This occurs to me at present, as I
have just despatched a well-lined rib of John Kirkpatrick's
Highlander; a bargain for which I am indebted to you, in the style of
our ballad printers, "Five excellent new songs. " The enclosed is
nearly my newest song, and one that has cost me some pains, though
that is but an equivocal mark of its excellence. Two or three others,
which I have by me, shall do themselves the honour to wait on your
after leisure: petitioners for admittance into favour must not harass
the condescension of their benefactor.
You see, Sir, what it is to patronize a poet. 'Tis like being a
magistrate in a petty borough; you do them the favour to preside in
their council for one year, and your name bears the prefatory stigma
of Bailie for life.
With, not the compliments, but the best wishes, the sincerest prayers
of the season for you, that you may see many and happy years with Mrs.
M'Murdo, and your family; two blessings by the bye, to which your rank
does not, by any means, entitle you; a loving wife and fine family
being almost the only good things of this life to which the farm-house
and cottage have an exclusive right,
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your much indebted and very humble servant,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXVII.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The devil, the pope, and the Pretender darkened the sermons, for more
than a century, of many sound divines in the north. As a Jacobite,
Burns disliked to hear Prince Charles called the Pretender, and as a
man of a tolerant nature, he disliked to hear the Pope treated unlike
a gentleman: his notions regarding Satan are recorded in his
inimitable address. ]
_Ellisland, 21st June, 1789. _
DEAR MADAM,
Will you take the effusions, the miserable effusions of low spirits,
just as they flow from their bitter spring? I know not of any
particular cause for this worst of all my foes besetting me; but for
some time my soul has been beclouded with a thickening atmosphere of
evil imaginations and gloomy presages.
_Monday Evening. _
I have just heard Mr. Kirkpatrick preach a sermon.
