No More Learning

You will think it romantic when I tell you, that I find the idea of
your friendship almost necessary to my existence. --You assume a proper
length of face in my bitter hours of blue-devilism, and you laugh
fully up to my highest wishes at my good things. --I don't know upon
the whole, if you are one of the first fellows in God's world, but you
are so to me. I tell you this just now in the conviction that some
inequalities in my temper and manner may perhaps sometimes make you
suspect that I am not so warmly as I ought to be your friend.

R. B.

* * * * *




LXXXVI.


TO THE EARL OF GLENCAIRN.

[The views of Burns were always humble: he regarded a place in the
excise as a thing worthy of paying court for, both in verse and
prose. ]

_Edinburgh_, 1787.

MY LORD,

I know your lordship will disapprove of my ideas in a request I am
going to make to you; but I have weighed, long and seriously weighed,
my situation, my hopes and turn of mind, and am fully fixed to my
scheme if I can possibly effectuate it. I wish to get into the Excise;
I am told that your lordship's interest will easily procure me the
grant from the commissioners; and your lordship's patronage and
goodness, which have already rescued me from obscurity, wretchedness,
and exile, embolden me to ask that interest. You have likewise put it
in my power to save the little tie of home that sheltered an aged
mother, two brothers, and three sisters from destruction. There, my
lord, you have bound me over to the highest gratitude.

My brother's farm is but a wretched lease, but I think he will
probably weather out the remaining seven years of it; and after the
assistance which I have given and will give him, to keep the family
together, I think, by my guess, I shall have rather better than two
hundred pounds, and instead of seeking, what is almost impossible at
present to find, a farm that I can certainly live by, with so small a
stock, I shall lodge this sum in a banking-house, a sacred deposit,
expecting only the calls of uncommon distress or necessitous old age.
These, my lord, are my views: I have resolved from the maturest
deliberation; and now I am fixed, I shall leave no stone unturned to
carry my resolve into execution. Your lordship's patronage is the
strength of my hopes; nor have I yet applied to anybody else. Indeed
my heart sinks within me at the idea of applying to any other of the
great who have honoured me with their countenance. I am ill qualified
to dog the heels of greatness with the impertinence of solicitation,
and tremble nearly as much at the thought of the cold promise as the
cold denial; but to your lordship I have not only the honour, the
comfort, but the pleasure of being

Your lordship's much obliged

And deeply indebted humble servant,

R. B.

* * * * *




LXXXVII.


TO JAMES DALRYMPLE, ESQ.

ORANGEFIELD.

[James Dalrymple, Esq. , of Orangefield, was a gentleman of birth and
poetic tastes--he interested himself in the fortunes of Burns. ]

_Edinburgh_, 1787.

DEAR SIR,

I suppose the devil is so elated with his success with you that he is
determined by a _coup de main_ to complete his purposes on you all at
once, in making you a poet. I broke open the letter you sent me;
hummed over the rhymes; and, as I saw they were extempore, said to
myself, they were very well; but when I saw at the bottom a name that
I shall ever value with grateful respect, "I gapit wide, but naething
spak. " I was nearly as much struck as the friends of Job, of
affliction-bearing memory, when they sat down with him seven days and
seven nights, and spake not a word.

I am naturally of a superstitious cast, and as soon as my
wonder-scared imagination regained its consciousness, and resumed its
functions, I cast about what this mania of yours might portend. My
foreboding ideas had the wide stretch of possibility; and several
events, great in their magnitude, and important in their consequences,
occurred to my fancy.