No More Learning

HILL.

[The Monkland Book Club existed only while Robert Riddel, of the
Friars-Carse, lived, or Burns had leisure to attend: such
institutions, when well conducted, are very beneficial, when not
oppressed by divinity and verse, as they sometimes are. ]

_Ellisland, 2d April, 1789. _

I will make no excuse, my dear Bibliopolus (God forgive me for
murdering language! ) that I have sat down to write you on this vile
paper.

It is economy, Sir; it is that cardinal virtue, prudence: so I beg you
will sit down, and either compose or borrow a panegyric. If you are
going to borrow, apply to * * * * to compose, or rather to compound,
something very clever on my remarkable frugality; that I write to one
of my most esteemed friends on this wretched paper, which was
originally intended for the venal fist of some drunken exciseman, to
take dirty notes in a miserable vault of an ale-cellar.

O Frugality! thou mother of ten thousand blessings--thou cook of fat
beef and dainty greens! --thou manufacturer of warm Shetland hose, and
comfortable surtouts! --thou old housewife darning thy decayed
stockings with thy ancient spectacles on thy aged nose! --lead me, hand
me in thy clutching palsied fist, up those heights, and through those
thickets, hitherto inaccessible, and impervious to my anxious, weary
feet:--not those Parnassian crags, bleak and barren, where the hungry
worshippers of fame are breathless, clambering, hanging between heaven
and hell; but those glittering cliffs of Potosi, where the
all-sufficient, all powerful deity, Wealth, holds his immediate court
of joys and pleasures; where the sunny exposure of plenty, and the hot
walls of profusion, produce those blissful fruits of luxury, exotics
in this world, and natives of paradise! --Thou withered sibyl, my sage
conductress, usher me into thy refulgent, adored presence! --The power,
splendid and potent as he now is, was once the puling nursling of thy
faithful care, and tender arms! Call me thy son, thy cousin, thy
kinsman, or favourite, and adjure the god by the scenes of his infant
years, no longer to repulse me as a stranger, or an alien, but to
favour me with his peculiar countenance and protection?
--He daily
bestows his greatest kindness on the undeserving and the
worthless--assure him, that I bring ample documents of meritorious
demerits! Pledge yourself for me, that, for the glorious cause of
Lucre, I will do anything, be anything--but the horse-leech of private
oppression, or the vulture of public robbery!

But to descend from heroics.

I want a Shakspeare; I want likewise an English dictionary--Johnson's,
I suppose, is best. In these and all my prose commissions, the
cheapest is always best for me. There is a small debt of honour that I
owe Mr. Robert Cleghorn, in Saughton Mills, my worthy friend, and your
well-wisher. Please give him, and urge him to take it, the first time
you see him, ten shillings worth of anything you have to sell, and
place it to my account.

The library scheme that I mentioned to you, is already begun, under
the direction of Captain Riddel. There is another in emulation of it
going on at Closeburn, under the auspices of Mr. Monteith, of
Closeburn, which will be on a greater scale than ours. Capt. Riddel
gave his infant society a great many of his old books, else I had
written you on that subject; but one of these days, I shall trouble
you with a commission for "The Monkland Friendly Society"--a copy of
_The Spectator_, _Mirror_, and _Lounger_, _Man of Feeling, Man of the
World_, _Guthrie's Geographical Grammar_, with some religious pieces,
will likely be our first order.

When I grow richer, I will write to you on gilt post, to make amends
for this sheet. At present, every guinea has a five guinea errand
with,

My dear Sir,

Your faithful, poor, but honest, friend,

R. B.