No. CCLXVII. TO THE HON. THE PROVOST, BAILIES, AND TOWN COUNCIL OF DUMFRIES. GENTLEMEN, THE literary taste and liberal spirit of your good town has so ably filled the various departments of your schools, as to make it a very great object for a parent to have his children educated in them. Still, to me, a stranger, with my large family, and very stinted income, to give my young ones that education I wish, at the high-school fees which a stranger pays, will bear hard upon me. Some years ago your good town did me the honour of making me an honorary Burgess.-Will you allow me to request that this mark of distinction may extend so far, as to put me on a footing of a real freeman of the town, in the schools? If you are so very kind as to grant my request, it will certainly be a constant incentive to me to strain every nerve where I can officially serve you; and will, if possible, increase that grateful respect with which I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, Your devoted humble Servant, R. B.* • With the Poet's request the Magistrates of Dumfries very handsomely complied.-M. No. CCLXVIII. TO MRS RIDDEL. DUMFRIES, 20th January, 1796. I CANNOT express my gratitude to you for allowing me a longer perusal of ‘Anacharsis.' In fact, I never met with a book that bewitched me so much; and I, as a member of the library, must warmly feel the obligation you have laid us under. Indeed to me, the obligation is stronger than to any other individual of our society; as 'Anacharsis' is an indispensable desideratum to a son of the muses. The health you wished me in your morning's card, is, I think, flown from me for ever. I have not been able to leave my bed to-day till about an hour ago. These wickedly unlucky advertisements I lent (I did wrong) to a friend, and I am ill able to go in quest of him. The muses have not quite forsaken me. The following detached stanzas I intend to interweave in some disastrous tale of a shepherd. R. B. No. CCLXIX. TO MRS DUNLOP. DUMFRIES, 31st January, 1796. THESE many months you have been two packets in my debt-what sin of ignorance I have committed against so highly valued a friend I am utterly at a loss to guess. Alas! Madam, ill can I afford, at this time, to be deprived of any of the small remnant of my pleasures. I have lately drunk deep of the cup of affliction. The autumn robbed me of my only daughter and darling child, and that at a distance too, and so rapidly, as to put it out of my power to pay the last duties to her. I had scarcely begun to recover from that shock, when I became myself the victim of a most severe rheumatic fever, and long the die spun doubtful; until after many weeks of a sick bed, it seems to have turned up life, and I am beginning to crawl across my room, and once indeed have been before my own door in the street. "When pleasure fascinates the mental sight, Religion hails the drear, the untried night, And shuts, for ever shuts! life's doubtful day." R. B. No. CCLXX. TO MRS RIDDEL, Who had desired him to go to the Birth-Day Assembly on DUMFRIES, 4th June, 1796. I AM in such miserable health as to be utterly incapable of showing my loyalty in any way. Rackt as I am with rheumatisms, I meet every face with a greeting, like that of Balak to Balaam-" Come curse me Jacob; and come defy me Israel!" So say I-Come curse me that east wind; and come, defy me the north! Would you have me in such circumstances copy you out a love-song? I may perhaps see you on Saturday, but I will not be at the ball. Why should I? "man delights not me, nor woman either!" Can you supply me with the song, “Let us all be unhappy together"-do if you can, and oblige le pauvre miserable. R. B. No. CCLXXI TO MR JAMES JOHNSON, EDINBURGH. DUMFRIES, 4th July, 1796. How are you, my dear friend, and how comes on your fifth volume? You may probably think that for some time past I have neglected you and your work; but, alas! the hand of pain, and sorrow, and care, has these many months lain heavy on me! Personal and domestic affliction have almost entirely banished that alacrity and life with which I used to woo the rural muse of Scotia. You are a good, worthy, honest fellow, and have a good right to live in this world—because you deserve it. Many a merry meeting this publication has given us, and possibly it may give us more, though, alas! I fear it. This protracting, slow, consuming illness which hangs over me, will, I doubt much, my ever dear friend, arrest my sun before he has well reached his middle career, and will turn over the poet to far more important concerns than studying the brilliancy of wit, or the pathos of sentiment! However, hope is the cordial of the human heart, and I endeavour to cherish it as well as I can. Your work Let me hear from you as soon as convenient. is a great one; and now that it is finished, I see, if we were to begin again, two or three things that might be mended; yet I will venture to prophesy, that to future ages your publication will be the text-book and standard of Scottish song and music. I am ashamed to ask another favour of you, because you have been so very good already; but my wife has a very particular friend of hers, a young lady who sings well, to whom she wishes to present the Scots Musical Museum.' If you have a spare copy, will you be so obliging as to send it by the very first fly, as I am anxious to have it soon. Yours ever, R. B.* No. CCLXXII. TO MR CUNNINGHAM. BROW, Sea-bathing quarters, 7th July, 1796. MY DEAR CUNNINGHAM, I RECEIVED yours here this moment, and am indeed highly flattered with the approbation of the literary circle you mention; a literary circle inferior to none in the two kingdoms. Alas! my friend, I fear the voice of the bard will soon be heard among you no more! For these eight or ten months I have been ailing, sometimes bedfast and sometimes not; but these last three months I have been tortured with an excruciating rheumatism, which has reduced me to nearly the last stage. You actually would not know me if you saw me.-Pale, emaciated, and so feeble, as occasionally to need help from my chair-my spirits fled! fled!--but I can no more on the subject-only the medical folks tell me that my last and only chance is bathing and country quarters, and riding.-The deuce of the matter is this; when an exciseman is off duty, his salary is reduced to 357. instead of 50%.-What way, in the name of thrift, shall I maintain myself, and keep a horse in country quarters— with a wife and five children at home, on 357.? I mention this, because I had intended to beg your utmost interest, and that of all the friends you can muster, to move our commissioners of Excise to grant me the full salary; I "In this humble and delicate manner did poor Burns ask for a copy of a work of which he was principally the founder, and to which he had contributed, gratuitously, not less than 184 original, altered, and collected songs! The editor has seen 180 transcribed by his own hand for the Museum. Cromek. |