No More Learning

[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. At least I am resolved to try my doctrine by the test of
experience. Another appearance from the press I put off to a very
distant day, a day that may never arrive--but poesy I am determined to
prosecute with all my vigour. Nature has given very few, if any, of
the profession, the talents of shining in every species of
composition. I shall try (for until trial it is impossible to know)
whether she has qualified me to shine in any one. The worst of it is,
by the time one has finished a piece, it has been so often viewed and
reviewed before the mental eye, that one loses, in a good measure, the
powers of critical discrimination. Here the best criterion I know is a
friend--not only of abilities to judge, but with good-nature enough,
like a prudent teacher with a young learner, to praise perhaps a
little more than is exactly just, lest the thin-skinned animal fall
into that most deplorable of all poetic diseases--heart-breaking
despondency of himself.
Dare I, Sir, already immensely indebted to
your goodness, ask the additional obligation of your being that friend
to me? I enclose you an essay of mine in a walk of poesy to me
entirely new; I mean the epistle addressed to R. G. Esq. or Robert
Graham of Fintray, Esq. , a gentleman of uncommon worth, to whom I lie
under very great obligations. The story of the poem, like most of my
poems, is connected with my own story, and to give you the one, I must
give you something of the other. I cannot boast of Mr. Creech's
ingenuous fair dealing to me. He kept me hanging about Edinburgh from
the 7th August, 1787, until the 13th April, 1788, before he would
condescend to give me a statement of affairs; nor had I got it even
then, but for an angry letter I wrote him, which irritated his pride.
"I could" not a "tale" but a detail "unfold," but what am I that
should speak against the Lord's anointed Bailie of Edinburgh?

I believe I shall in the whole, 100_l. _ copyright included, clear
about 400_l. _ some little odds; and even part of this depends upon
what the gentleman has yet to settle with me. I give you this
information, because you did me the honour to interest yourself much
in my welfare. I give you this information, but I give it to yourself
only, for I am still much in the gentleman's mercy.