_
DEAR MADAM,
Will you take the effusions, the miserable effusions of low spirits,
just as they flow from their bitter spring?
DEAR MADAM,
Will you take the effusions, the miserable effusions of low spirits,
just as they flow from their bitter spring?
Robert Forst
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. He is a man famous
for his benevolence, and I revere him; but from such ideas of my
Creator, good Lord deliver me! Religion, my honoured friend, is surely
a simple business, as it equally concerns the ignorant and the
learned, the poor and the rich. That there is an incomprehensible
Great Being, to whom I owe my existence, and that he must be
intimately acquainted with the operations and progress of the internal
machinery, and consequent outward deportment of this creature which he
has made; these are, I think, self-evident propositions. That there is
a real and eternal distinction between virtue and vice, and
consequently, that I am an accountable creature; that from the seeming
nature of the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfection,
nay, positive injustice, in the administration of affairs, both in the
natural and moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene of
existence beyond the grave; must, I think, be allowed by every one who
will give himself a moment's reflection. I will go farther, and affirm
that from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of his doctrine and
precepts, unparalleled by all the aggregated wisdom and learning of
many preceding ages, though, _to appearance_, he himself was the
obscurest and most illiterate of our species; therefore Jesus Christ
was from God.
Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others,
this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at
large, or any individual in it, this is my measure of iniquity.
What think you, madam, of my creed? I trust that I have said nothing
that will lessen me in the eye of one, whose good opinion I value
almost next to the approbation of my own mind.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXVIII.
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. He is a man famous
for his benevolence, and I revere him; but from such ideas of my
Creator, good Lord deliver me! Religion, my honoured friend, is surely
a simple business, as it equally concerns the ignorant and the
learned, the poor and the rich. That there is an incomprehensible
Great Being, to whom I owe my existence, and that he must be
intimately acquainted with the operations and progress of the internal
machinery, and consequent outward deportment of this creature which he
has made; these are, I think, self-evident propositions. That there is
a real and eternal distinction between virtue and vice, and
consequently, that I am an accountable creature; that from the seeming
nature of the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfection,
nay, positive injustice, in the administration of affairs, both in the
natural and moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene of
existence beyond the grave; must, I think, be allowed by every one who
will give himself a moment's reflection. I will go farther, and affirm
that from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of his doctrine and
precepts, unparalleled by all the aggregated wisdom and learning of
many preceding ages, though, _to appearance_, he himself was the
obscurest and most illiterate of our species; therefore Jesus Christ
was from God.
Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others,
this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at
large, or any individual in it, this is my measure of iniquity.
What think you, madam, of my creed? I trust that I have said nothing
that will lessen me in the eye of one, whose good opinion I value
almost next to the approbation of my own mind.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXVIII.
