No More Learning

TO MR. JAMES JOHNSON,

ENGRAVER.

[James Johnson, though not an ungenerous man, meanly refused to give a
copy of the Musical Museum to Burns, who desired to bestow it on one
to whom his family was deeply indebted. This was in the last year of
the poet's life, and after the Museum had been brightened by so much
of his lyric verse. ]

_Mauchline, November 15th, 1788. _

MY DEAR SIR,

I have sent you two more songs. If you have got any tunes, or
anything to correct, please send them by return of the carrier.

I can easily see, my dear friend, that you will very probably have
four volumes. Perhaps you may not find your account lucratively in
this business; but you are a patriot for the music of your country;
and I am certain posterity will look on themselves as highly indebted
to your public spirit. Be not in a hurry; let us go on correctly, and
your name shall be immortal.

I am preparing a flaming preface for your third volume. I see every
day new musical publications advertised; but what are they? Gaudy,
hunted butterflies of a day, and then vanish for ever: but your work
will outlive the momentary neglects of idle fashion, and defy the
teeth of time.

Have you never a fair goddess that leads you a wild-goose chase of
amorous devotion? Let me know a few of her qualities, such as whether
she be rather black, or fair; plump, or thin; short, or tall, &c.
; and
choose your air, and I shall task my muse to celebrate her.

R. B.

* * * * *




CXLI.


TO DR. BLACKLOCK.

[Blacklock, though blind, was a cheerful and good man. "There was,
perhaps, never one among all mankind," says Heron, "whom you might
more truly have called an angel upon earth. "]

_Mauchline, November 15th, 1788. _

REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,

As I hear nothing of your motions, but that you are, or were, out of
town, I do not know where this may find you, or whether it will find
you at all. I wrote you a long letter, dated from the land of
matrimony, in June; but either it had not found you, or, what I dread
more, it found you or Mrs. Blacklock in too precarious a state of
health and spirits to take notice of an idle packet.

I have done many little things for Johnson, since I had the pleasure
of seeing you; and I have finished one piece, in the way of Pope's
"Moral Epistles;" but, from your silence, I have everything to fear,
so I have only sent you two melancholy things, which I tremble lest
they should too well suit the tone of your present feelings.

In a fortnight I move, bag and baggage, to Nithsdale; till then, my
direction is at this place; after that period, it will be at
Ellisland, near Dumfries. It would extremely oblige me, were it but
half a line, to let me know how you are, and where you are. Can I be
indifferent to the fate of a man to whom I owe so much?