TO CAPTAIN RIDDEL. ELLISLAND, 1789. SIR-I wish from my inmost soul it were in my power to give you a more substantial gratification and return for all the goodness to the poet, than transcribing a few of his idle rhymes. However, 'an old song,' though to a proverb an instance of insignificance, is generally the only coin a poet has to pay with. If my poems which I have transcribed, and mean still to transcribe, into your book, were equal to the grateful respect and high esteem I bear for the gentleman to whom I present them, they would be the finest poems in the language. As they are, they will at least be a testimony with what sincerity I have the honour to be, sir, your devoted humble servant, R. B. The irritable genius of Burns led him often to view persons and things very much as they affected himself. The same lord, gentleman, or lady, who, receiving him with urbanity, became the theme of his kindest feelings, might have come in for the eternal stigma of his satire, if, by a slight change of circumstances, he or she had been a cause of personal annoyance to him, or awakened his jealous apprehensions regarding his own dignity. In the course of the present month, an example of this infirmity of temper occurs. Let himself be the recorder of the incident, it being premised that the lady whom he thus holds up to execration was one fairly liable to no such censure: 'In January last, on my road to Ayrshire, I had to put up at Bailie Whigham's in Sanquhar, the only tolerable inn in the place. The frost was keen, and the grim evening and howling wind were ushering in a night of snow and drift. My horse and I were both much fatigued with the labours of the day; and just as my friend the bailie and I were bidding defiance to the storm, over a smoking bowl, in wheels the funeral pageantry of the late Mrs Oswald,' and poor I am forced to brave all the terrors of the tempestuous night, and jade my horse-my young favourite horse, whom I had just christened Pegasus-further on through the wildest hills and moors of Ayrshire to the next inn! The powers of poetry and prose sink under me when I would describe what I felt. Suffice it to say, that when a good fire at New Cumnock had 1 Dec. 6, 1788, died at her house in Great George Street, Westminster, Mrs Oswald, widow of Richard Oswald, Esq., of Auchincruive.-Magazine Obituary. so far recovered my frozen sinews, I sat down and wrote the enclosed ode.' ODE: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF MRS OSWALD. Dweller in yon dungeon dark, Baited with many a deadly curse! STROPHE. View the withered beldam's face- Aught of humanity's sweet melting grace? See these hands, ne'er stretched to save, Keeper of Mammon's iron chest, Lo! there she goes, unpitied and unblest She goes, but not to realms of everlasting rest! ANTIS TROPHE. Plunderer of armies, lift thine eyes 'Tis thy trusty quondam mate, Doomed to share thy fiery fate, She, tardy, hellward plies. EPODE. And are they of no more avail, Ten thousand glittering pounds a year? Omnipotent as he is here? O bitter mockery of the pompous bier, While down the wretched vital part is driv'n! There is a pleasanter memorial of one of his Ayrshire journeys. To quote a narrative first presented by Allan Cunningham: 'He had arrived at Wanlockhead on a winter day, when the roads were slippery with ice, and Jenny Geddes, or Peg Nicolson [more likely, Pegasus] kept her feet with difficulty. The blacksmith of the place was busied with other pressing matters in the forge, and could not spare time for frosting the shoes of the poet's mare; and it is likely he would have proceeded on his dangerous journey, had he not bethought himself of propitiating the son of Vulcan with verse. He called for pen and ink, and wrote these verses to John Taylor, a person of influence in Wanlockhead : TO JOHN TAYLOR. With Pegasus upon a day, Through frosty hills the journey lay, Poor slipshod giddy Pegasus Obliging Vulcan fell to work, Ye Vulcan's sons of Wanlockhead, My Pegasus is poorly shod- RAMAGE'S, 3 o'clock. 'When he had done, a gentleman of the name of Sloan, who accompanied him, endorsed the note in prose in these words: "J. Sloan's best compliments to Mr Taylor, and it would be doing him and the Ayrshire Bard a particular favour if he would oblige them instanter with his agreeable company. The road has been so slippery, that the riders and the brutes were equally in danger of getting some of their bones broken. For the Poet, his life and limbs are of some consequence to the world; but for poor Sloan, it matters very little what may become of him. The whole of this business is to ask the favour of getting the horses' shoes sharpened." On the receipt of this, Taylor spoke to the smith, and the smith flew to his tools, and sharpened the horses' shoes. It is recorded that Burnewin lived thirty years to say "he had never been weel paid but ance, and that was by a poet, who paid him in money, paid him in drink, and paid him in verse." TO BISHOP GEDDES.' ELLISLAND, 3d Feb. 1789. VENERABLE FATHER-As I am conscious that, wherever I am, you do me the honour to interest yourself in my welfare, it gives me pleasure to inform you that I am here at last, stationary in the serious business of life, and have now not only the retired leisure, but the hearty inclination, to attend to those great and important questions-what I am, where I am, and for what I am destined. In that first concern, the conduct of the man, there was ever but one side on which I was habitually blamable, and there I have secured myself in the way pointed out by nature and nature's God. I was sensible that, to so helpless a creature as a poor poet, a wife and family were incumbrances, which a species of prudence would bid him shun; but when the alternative was, being at eternal warfare with myself, on account of habitual follies, to give them no worse name, which no general example, no licentious wit, no sophistical infidelity, would to me ever justify, I must have been a fool to have hesitated, and a madman to have made another choice. Besides, I had in my 'Jean' a long and much-loved fellow-creature's happiness or misery among my hands; and who could trifle with such a deposit? In the affair of a livelihood, I think myself tolerably secure: I have good hopes of my farm; but should they fail, I have an Excise commission, which, on my simple petition, will at any time procure me bread. There is a certain stigma affixed to the character of an Excise-officer, but I do not pretend to borrow honour from my profession; and though the salary be comparatively small, it is luxury to anything that the first twenty-five years of my life taught me to expect. Thus, with a rational aim and method in life, you may easily guess, my reverend and much-honoured friend, that my characteristical trade is not forgotten. I am, if possible, more than ever an enthusiast to the Muses. I am determined to study man and nature, and in that view incessantly; and to try if the ripening and corrections of years can enable me to produce something worth preserving. 1 Alexander Geddes, born at Arradowl, in Banffshire, in 1737, was reared as a Catholic clergyman, and long officiated in that capacity in his native county and elsewhere. As humbly born as Burns, he possessed much of his strong and eccentric genius; and it is not surprising that he and the Ayrshire Bard should have become friends. After 1780, his life was spent in London, chiefly under the fostering patronage of a generous Catholic nobleman-Lord Petre. The heterodox opinions of Dr Geddes, his extraordinary attempts to translate the Bible, and his numerous fugitive publications on controversial divinity, made much noise at the time; but he is now only remembered for some successful Scotch verses. This singular man died in London, February 20, 1802, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. You will see in your book-which I beg your pardon for detaining so long-that I have been tuning my lyre on the banks of Nith. Some large poetic plans that are floating in my imagination, or partly put in execution, I shall impart to you when I have the pleasure of meeting with you, which, if you are then in Edinburgh, I shall have about the beginning of March. That acquaintance, worthy sir, with which you were pleased to honour me, you must still allow me to challenge; for with whatever unconcern I give up my transient connection with the merely great, I cannot lose the patronising notice of the learned and good without the bitterest regret. R. B. TO MR JAMES BURNES. ELLISLAND, 9th Feb. 1789. MY DEAR SIR-Why I did not write to you long ago, is whateven on the rack-I could not answer. If you can in your mind form an idea of indolence, dissipation, hurry, cares, change of country, entering on untried scenes of life-all combined-you will save me the trouble of a blushing apology. It could not be want of regard for a man for whom I had a high esteem before I knew him-an esteem which has much increased since I did know him; and this caveat entered, I shall plead guilty to any other indictment with which you shall please to charge me. After I parted from you, for many months my life was one continued scene of dissipation. Here at last I am become stationary, and have taken a farm and a wife. The farm is beautifully situated on the Nith, a large river that runs by Dumfries, and falls into the Solway Frith. I have gotten a lease of my farm as long as I pleased; but how it may turn out is just a guess, and it is yet to improve and enclose, &c.: however, I have good hopes of my bargain on the whole. My wife is my Jean, with whose story you are partly acquainted. I found I had a much-loved fellow-creature's happiness or misery among my hands, and I durst not trifle with so sacred a deposit. Indeed, I have not any reason to repent the step I have taken, as I have attached myself to a very good wife, and have shaken myself loose of a very bad failing. I have found my book a very profitable business; and with the profits of it I have begun life pretty decently. Should Fortune not favour me in farming, as I have no great faith in her fickle ladyship, I have provided myself in another resource, which, however some folks may affect to despise it, is still a comfortable shift in the day of misfortune. In the heyday of my fame, a gentleman, whose 1 A copy of Burns's Poems, belonging to Dr Geddes, into which the poet had transferred some of his more recent verses. |