I want to show
you that I have honesty enough to tell you what I take to be truths,
even when they are not quite on the side of approbation; and I do it
in the firm faith that you have equal greatness of mind to hear them
with pleasure.
you that I have honesty enough to tell you what I take to be truths,
even when they are not quite on the side of approbation; and I do it
in the firm faith that you have equal greatness of mind to hear them
with pleasure.
Robert Burns
Poor
Fergusson! If there be a life beyond the grave, which I trust there
is; and if there be a good God presiding over all nature, which I am
sure there is; thou art now enjoying existence in a glorious world,
where worth of the heart alone is distinction in the man; where
riches, deprived of all their pleasure-purchasing powers, return to
their native sordid matter; where titles and honours are the
disregarded reveries of an idle dream; and where that heavy virtue,
which is the negative consequence of steady dulness, and those
thoughtless, though often destructive follies which are unavoidable
aberrations of frail human nature, will be thrown into equal oblivion
as if they had never been!
Adieu my dear sir! So soon as your present views and schemes are
concentered in an aim, I shall be glad to hear from you; as your
welfare and happiness is by no means a subject indifferent to
Yours,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXIX.
TO MISS WILLIAMS.
[Helen Maria Williams acknowledged this letter, with the critical
pencilling, on her poem on the Slave Trade, which it enclosed: she
agreed, she said, with all his objections, save one, but considered
his praise too high. ]
_Ellisland, 1789. _
MADAM,
Of the many problems in the nature of that wonderful creature, man,
this is one of the most extraordinary, that he shall go on from day to
day, from week to week, from month to month, or perhaps from year to
year, suffering a hundred times more in an hour from the impotent
consciousness of neglecting what he ought to do, than the very doing
of it would cost him. I am deeply indebted to you, first for a most
elegant poetic compliment; then for a polite, obliging letter; and,
lastly, for your excellent poem on the Slave Trade; and yet, wretch
that I am! though the debts were debts of honour, and the creditor a
lady, I have put off and put off even the very acknowledgment of the
obligation, until you must indeed be the very angel I take you for, if
you can forgive me.
Your poem I have read with the highest pleasure. I have a way whenever
I read a book, I mean a book in our own trade, Madam, a poetic one,
and when it is my own property, that I take a pencil and mark at the
ends of verses, or note on margins and odd paper, little criticisms of
approbation or disapprobation as I peruse along. I will make no
apology for presenting you with a few unconnected thoughts that
occurred to me in my repeated perusals of your poem.
I want to show
you that I have honesty enough to tell you what I take to be truths,
even when they are not quite on the side of approbation; and I do it
in the firm faith that you have equal greatness of mind to hear them
with pleasure.
I had lately the honour of a letter from Dr. Moore, where he tells me
that he has sent me some books: they are not yet come to hand, but I
hear they are on the way.
Wishing you all success in your progress in the path of fame; and that
you may equally escape the danger of stumbling through incautious
speed, or losing ground through loitering neglect.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXX.
TO MR. JOHN LOGAN.
[The Kirk's Alarm, to which this letter alludes, has little of the
spirit of malice and drollery, so rife in his earlier controversial
compositions. ]
_Ellisland, near Dumfries, 7th Aug. 1789. _
DEAR SIR,
I intended to have written you long ere now, and as I told you, I had
gotten three stanzas and a half on my way in a poetic epistle to you;
but that old enemy of all _good works_, the devil, threw me into a
prosaic mire, and for the soul of me I cannot get out of it. I dare
not write you a long letter, as I am going to intrude on your time
with a long ballad. I have, as you will shortly see, finished "The
Kirk's Alarm;" but now that it is done, and that I have laughed once
or twice at the conceits in some of the stanzas, I am determined not
to let it get into the public; so I send you this copy, the first that
I have sent to Ayrshire, except some few of the stanzas, which I wrote
off in embryo for Gavin Hamilton, under the express provision and
request that you will only read it to a few of us, and do not on any
account give, or permit to be taken, any copy of the ballad. If I
could be of any service to Dr.
Fergusson! If there be a life beyond the grave, which I trust there
is; and if there be a good God presiding over all nature, which I am
sure there is; thou art now enjoying existence in a glorious world,
where worth of the heart alone is distinction in the man; where
riches, deprived of all their pleasure-purchasing powers, return to
their native sordid matter; where titles and honours are the
disregarded reveries of an idle dream; and where that heavy virtue,
which is the negative consequence of steady dulness, and those
thoughtless, though often destructive follies which are unavoidable
aberrations of frail human nature, will be thrown into equal oblivion
as if they had never been!
Adieu my dear sir! So soon as your present views and schemes are
concentered in an aim, I shall be glad to hear from you; as your
welfare and happiness is by no means a subject indifferent to
Yours,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXIX.
TO MISS WILLIAMS.
[Helen Maria Williams acknowledged this letter, with the critical
pencilling, on her poem on the Slave Trade, which it enclosed: she
agreed, she said, with all his objections, save one, but considered
his praise too high. ]
_Ellisland, 1789. _
MADAM,
Of the many problems in the nature of that wonderful creature, man,
this is one of the most extraordinary, that he shall go on from day to
day, from week to week, from month to month, or perhaps from year to
year, suffering a hundred times more in an hour from the impotent
consciousness of neglecting what he ought to do, than the very doing
of it would cost him. I am deeply indebted to you, first for a most
elegant poetic compliment; then for a polite, obliging letter; and,
lastly, for your excellent poem on the Slave Trade; and yet, wretch
that I am! though the debts were debts of honour, and the creditor a
lady, I have put off and put off even the very acknowledgment of the
obligation, until you must indeed be the very angel I take you for, if
you can forgive me.
Your poem I have read with the highest pleasure. I have a way whenever
I read a book, I mean a book in our own trade, Madam, a poetic one,
and when it is my own property, that I take a pencil and mark at the
ends of verses, or note on margins and odd paper, little criticisms of
approbation or disapprobation as I peruse along. I will make no
apology for presenting you with a few unconnected thoughts that
occurred to me in my repeated perusals of your poem.
I want to show
you that I have honesty enough to tell you what I take to be truths,
even when they are not quite on the side of approbation; and I do it
in the firm faith that you have equal greatness of mind to hear them
with pleasure.
I had lately the honour of a letter from Dr. Moore, where he tells me
that he has sent me some books: they are not yet come to hand, but I
hear they are on the way.
Wishing you all success in your progress in the path of fame; and that
you may equally escape the danger of stumbling through incautious
speed, or losing ground through loitering neglect.
R. B.
* * * * *
CLXX.
TO MR. JOHN LOGAN.
[The Kirk's Alarm, to which this letter alludes, has little of the
spirit of malice and drollery, so rife in his earlier controversial
compositions. ]
_Ellisland, near Dumfries, 7th Aug. 1789. _
DEAR SIR,
I intended to have written you long ere now, and as I told you, I had
gotten three stanzas and a half on my way in a poetic epistle to you;
but that old enemy of all _good works_, the devil, threw me into a
prosaic mire, and for the soul of me I cannot get out of it. I dare
not write you a long letter, as I am going to intrude on your time
with a long ballad. I have, as you will shortly see, finished "The
Kirk's Alarm;" but now that it is done, and that I have laughed once
or twice at the conceits in some of the stanzas, I am determined not
to let it get into the public; so I send you this copy, the first that
I have sent to Ayrshire, except some few of the stanzas, which I wrote
off in embryo for Gavin Hamilton, under the express provision and
request that you will only read it to a few of us, and do not on any
account give, or permit to be taken, any copy of the ballad. If I
could be of any service to Dr.
