Title: The Letters of Robert Burns
Author: Robert Burns
Release date: February 1, 2006 [eBook #9863]
Most recently updated: December 27, 2020
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Charles Franks, Debra Storr and PG Distributed Proofreaders
"You shall write whatever comes first,—what you see, what you read, what you hear, what you admire, what you dislike; trifles, bagatelles, nonsense, or, to fill up a corner, e'en put down a laugh at full length"—Burns."My life reminded me of a ruined temple: what strength, what proportion in some parts! what unsightly gaps, what prostrate ruin in others!"—Burns.
| To Ellison or Alison Begbie (?)
To Ellison Begbie To Ellison Begbie To Ellison Begbie To Ellison Begbie To his Father To Sir John Whitefoord, Bart., of Ballochmyle To Mr. John Murdoch, schoolmaster, Staples Inn Buildings, London To his Cousin, Mr. James Burness, writer, Montrose To Mr. James Burness, writer, Montrose To Mr. James Burness, writer, Montrose To Thomas Orr, Park, Kirkoswald To Miss Margaret Kennedy To Miss——, Ayrshire To Mr. John Richmond, law clerk, Edinburgh To Mr. James Smith, shopkeeper, Mauchline To Mr. Robert Muir, wine merchant, Kilmarnock To Mr. John Ballantine, banker, Ayr To Mr. M'Whinnie, writer, Ayr To John Arnot, Esquire, of Dalquatswood To Mr. David Brice, shoemaker, Glasgow To Mr. John Richmond, Edinburgh To Mr. John Richmond To Mr. John Kennedy To his Cousin, Mr. James Burness, writer, Montrose To Mrs. Stewart, of Stair To Mr. Robert Aikin, writer, Ayr To Dr. Mackenzie, Mauchline; inclosing him verses on dining with Lord Daer To Mrs. Dunlop, of Dunlop To Miss Alexander In the Name of the Nine. Amen To James Dalrymple, Esquire, Orangefield To Sir. John Whitefoord To Mr. Gavin Hamilton, Mauchline To Mr. John Ballantine, banker, at one time Provost of Ayr To Mr. Robert Muir To Mr. William Chambers, writer, Ayr To the Earl of Eglinton To Mr. John Ballantine To Mrs. Dunlop To Dr. Moore To the Rev. G. Lawrie, Newmilns, near Kilmarnock |
To the Earl of Buchan
To Mr. James Candlish, student in physic, Glasgow College To Mr. Peter Stuart, Editor of "The Star," London To Mrs. Dunlop To Mrs. Dunlop To Dr. Moore To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr. William Nicol, classical master, High School, Edinburgh To Mr. William Nicol To Mr. Robert Ainslie To Mr. James Smith, Linlithgow, formerly of Mauchline To Mr. John Richmond To Mr. Robert Ainslie To Dr. Moore To Mr. Archibald Lawrie To Mr. Robert Muir, Kilmarnock To Mr. Gavin Hamilton To Mr. Walker, Blair of Athole To his Brother, Mr. Gilbert Burns, Mossgiel To Mr. Patrick Miller, Dalswinton To Rev. John Skinner To Miss Margaret Chalmers, Harvieston To Mrs. Dunlop of Dunlop House, Stewarton To Mr. James Hoy, Gordon Castle To the Earl of Glencairn To Miss Chalmers To Miss Chalmers To Miss Chalmers To Mr. Richard Brown, Irvine To Mrs. Dunlop To Mrs. Dunlop To the Rev. John Skinner To Mrs. Rose, of Kilravock To Richard Brown, Greenock To Mr. William Cruikshank To Mr. Robert Ainslie To Mr. Richard Brown To Mr. Robert Muir To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr. William Nicol (perhaps) To Miss Chalmers |
| To Mr. Gavin Hamilton
To Mr. William Dunbar, W.S., Edinburgh To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr. James Smith, Avon Printfield, Linlithgow To Professor Dugald Stewart To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr. Samuel Brown, Kirkoswald To Mr. James Johnson, engraver, Edinburgh To Mr. Robert Ainslie To Mrs. Dunlop To Mrs. Dunlop, at Mr. Dunlop's, Haddington To Mr. Robert Ainslie To Mr. Robert Ainslie To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr. Peter Hill, bookseller, Edinburgh To Mrs. Dunlop To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr. Beugo, engraver, Edinburgh To Mr. Robert Graham, of Fintry To his Wife, at Mauchline. To Miss Chalmers, Edinburgh To Mr. Morison, wright, Mauchline To Mrs. Dunlop, of Dunlop To Mr. Peter Hill To the Editor of the "Star" To Mrs. Dunlop, at Moreham Mains To Dr. Blacklock To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr. John Tennant To Mrs. Dunlop To Dr. Moore, London To Mr. Robert Ainslie To Professor Dugald Stewart To Mr. Robert Cleghorn, Saughton Mills To Bishop Geddes, Edinburgh To Mr. James Burness To Mrs. Dunlop To, Mrs. M'Lehose (formerly Clarinda) To Dr. Moore To his Brother, Mr. William Burns To Mr. Hill, bookseller, Edinburgh To Mrs. M'Murdo, Drumlanrig To Mr. Cunningham To Mr. Richard Brown To Mr. Robert Ainslie To Mrs. Dunlop To Miss Helen Maria Williams To Mr. Robert Graham, of Fintry. To David Sillar, merchant, Irvine. To Mr. John Logan, of Knock Shinriock To Mr. Peter Stuart, editor, London To his Brother, William Burns, saddler, Newcastle-on-Tyne To Mrs. Dunlop To Captain Riddel, Friars Carse To Mr. Robert Ainslie, W.S. To Mr. Richard Brown, Port-Glasgow To Mr. R. Graham, of Fintry To Mrs. Dunlop To Lady Winifred M. Constable To Mr. Charles K. Sharpe, of Hoddam To his Brother, Gilbert Burns, Mossgiel To Mr. William Dunbar, W.S. |
To Mrs. Dunlop
To Mr. Peter Hill, bookseller, Edinburgh To Mr. W. Nicol To Mr. Cunningham, writer, Edinburgh To Mr. Hill, bookseller, Edinburgh To Mrs. Dunlop To Dr. John Moore, London To Mr. Murdoch, teacher of French, London To Mr. Cunningham To Mr. Crauford Tait, W.S., Edinburgh To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr. William Dunbar, W.S. To Mr. Peter Hill To Dr. Moore To Mrs. Dunlop To the Rev. Arch. Alison To the Rev. G. Haird To Mr. Cunningharn, writer, Edinburgh To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr. Cunningham To Mr. Thomas Sloan To Mr. Ainslie To Miss Davies To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr. William Smellie, printer To Mr. William Nicol To Mr. Francis Grose, F.S.A To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr. Cunningham To Mrs. Dunlop To Mrs. Dunlop To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr. R. Graham, Fintry To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr. Robert Graham, of Fintry To Mr. Alex. Cunningham, W.S., Edinbiugh To Mr. Cunningham To Miss Benson, York, afterwards Mrs. Basil Montagu To Mr. John Francis Erskine, of Mar To Miss M'Murdo, Drumlanrig To John M'Murdo, Esq., Drumlanrig To Mrs. Riddel To Mrs. Riddel To Mrs. Riddel To Mrs. Riddel To Mr. Cunningham To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr. James Johnson To Mr. Peter Hill, Jun., of Dalswinton To Mrs. Riddel To Mrs. Dunlop To Mrs. Dunlop, in London To the Hon. The Provost, etc., of Dumfries To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr James Johnson To Mr. Cunningham To Mr. Gilbert Burns To Mrs. Burns To Mrs. Dunlop To Mr. James Burness, writer, Montrose To his Father-in-law, James Armour, mason, Mauchline |
His prose consists mostly of letters, but it also includes a noble fragment of autobiography; three journals of observations made at Mossgiel, Edinburgh, and Ellisland respectively; two itineraries, the one of his border tour, the other of his tour in the Highlands; and historical notes to two collections of Scottish songs. A full enumeration of his prose productions would take account also of his masonic minutes, his inscriptions, a rather curious business paper drawn up by the poet-exciseman in prosecution of a smuggler, and of course his various prefaces, notably the dedication of his poems to the members of the Caledonian Hunt.
His letters, however, far exceed the sum of his other-prose writings. Close upon five hundred and forty have already been published. These are not all the letters he ever wrote. Where, for example, is the literary correspondence in which he engaged so enthusiastically with his Kirkoswald schoolfellows? "Though I had not three farthings' worth of business in the world, yet every post brought me as many letters as if I had been a broad-plodding son of daybook and ledger." Where are the letters which brought to the ploughman at Lochlie such a constant and copious stream of replies? The circumstances of his position will explain why they perished: he was then "a youth and all unknown to fame." It is even doubtful if the five hundred and forty published letters include all the letters of Burns that now exist. Scarcely a year passes but some epistolary scrap in the well-known handwriting is unearthed and ceremoniously added to the previous sum total, And yet, notwithstanding losses past or within recall, it is probable that we have long had the whole of Burns's most characteristic letters. It was inevitable that these should be preserved and published. His fame was so rooted in the popular regard in his lifetime, that a characteristic letter from his hand was sure to be received as something singularly precious. It must not be forgotten, however, that Burns's personality was so intense as to colour the smallest fragment of his correspondence, and it is on this account desirable that every note he penned that yet remains unpublished should be produced. It might give no new feature to our conception of his character; but it would help the shading—which, in the portraiture of any person, must chiefly be furnished by the minor and more commonplace actions of his everyday life.
The correspondence of Burns, as we have it, commences, presumably, near the close of his twenty-second year, and extends to all but exactly the middle of his thirty-eighth. The dates are a day somewhere at the end of 1780, and Monday, 18th July 1796. Between these limits lies the printed correspondence of sixteen years. The sum total of this correspondence allows about thirty-four letters to each year, but the actual distribution is very unequal, ranging from the minimum, in 1782, of one, a masonic letter addressed to Sir John Whitefoord of Ballochmyle, to the maximum number of ninety-two, in 1788, the great year of the Clarinda episode. It is in 1786, the year of the publication of his first volume at Kilmarnock, the year of his literary birth, that his correspondence first becomes heavy. It rises at a leap from two letters in the preceding year to as many as forty-four. The phenomenal increase is partly explained by the success of his poems. He became a man that was worth the knowing, whose correspondence was worth preserving. The six years of his published correspondence previous to the discovery of his genius in 1786 are represented by only fourteen letters in all. But in those years his letters, though both numerous and prized above the common, were not considered as likely to be of future interest, and were therefore suffered to live or die as chance might determine. They mostly perished, the recipients thinking it hardly worth their while to be sae nice wi' Robin as to preserve them.
After the recognition of his power in 1786, the record of his preserved letters shews, for the ten years of his literary life, several fluctuations which admit of easy explanation. Commencing with 1787, the numbers are:—78, 92, 54, 33, 44, 31, 66, 30, 27, 24. The first of these years was totally severed from rural occupations, or business of any kind, if we except the publication of the first Edinburgh edition of his poems. It was a complete holiday year to him. He was either resident in Edinburgh, studying men and manners, or touring about the country, visiting those places which history, song, or scenery had made famous. Wherever he was, his fame brought him the acquaintance of a great many new people. His leisure and the novelty of his situation afforded him both opportunity and subject for an extensive correspondence. For a large part of the next year, 1788, he was similarly circumstanced, and the number of his letters was exceptionally increased by his entanglement with Mrs. M'Lehose. To her alone, in less than three months of this year, he wrote at least thirty-six letters,—considerably over one-third of the entire epistolary produce of the year. In 1789 we find the number of his letters fall to fifty-four. This was, perhaps, the happiest year of his life. He was now comfortably established as a farmer in a home of his own, busied with healthy rural work, and finding in the happy fireside clime which he was making for wife and weans "the true pathos and sublime" of human duty. He has still, however, time and inclination to write on the average one letter a week. For each of the next three years the average number is thirty-six. In 1793 the number suddenly goes up to sixty-six: the increase is due to the heartiness with which he took up the scheme of George Thomson to popularise and perpetuate the best old Scottish airs by fitting them with words worthy of their merits. He wrote, in this year, twenty-six letters in support of the scheme.
There is a sad falling off in Burns's ordinary correspondence in the last three years of his life. The amount of it scarcely touches twenty letters per year. Even the correspondence with Thomson, though on a subject so dear to the heart of Burns, rousing at once both his patriotism and his poetry, sinks to about ten letters per year, and is irregular at that. Burns was losing hope and health, and caring less and less for the world's favour and the world's friendships. He had lost largely in self-respect as well as in the respect of friends. The loss gave him little heart to write.
Burns's correspondents, as far as we know them, numbered over a hundred and fifty persons. The number is large and significant. Neither Gray, nor Cowper, nor Byron commanded so wide a circle. They had not the far-reaching sympathies of Burns. They were all more or less fastidious in their choice of correspondents. Burns, on the contrary, was as catholic, or as careless, in his friendships as his own Cæsar—who
"Wad spend an hour caressin'
Ev'n wi' a tinkler gipsy's messan."
It is rather remarkable that so few of the letters are addressed to his own relatives. His cousin, James Burness of Montrose, and his own younger brother William receive, indeed, ten and eight respectively; but to his other brother Gilbert, with whom he was on the most affectionate and confidential terms, there fall but three; to his wife only two; one to his father; and none to either his sisters or his mother. A maternal uncle, Samuel Brown, is favoured with one—if, indeed, the old man was not scandalised with it—and there are two to James Armour, mason in Mauchline, his somewhat stony-hearted father-in-law.
Burns's letters exhibit quite as much variety of mood—seldom, of course, so picturesquely conveyed—as his poems. He is, in promiscuous alternation, refined, gross, sentimental, serious, humorous, indignant, repentant, dignified, vulgar, tender, manly, sceptical, reverential, rakish, pathetic, sympathetic, satirical, playful, pitiably self-abased, mysteriously self-exalted. His letters are confessions and revelations. They are as sincerely and spontaneously autobiographical of his inner life as the sacred lyrics of David the Hebrew. They were indited with as much free fearless abandonment. The advice he gave to young Andrew to keep something to himsel', not to be told even to a bosom crony, was a maxim of worldly prudence which he himself did not practice. He did not "reck his own rede." And, though that habit of unguarded expression brought upon him the wrath and revenge of the Philistines, and kept him in material poverty all his days, yet, prompted as it always was by sincerity, and nearly always by absolute truth, it has made the manhood of to-day richer, stronger, and nobler. The world to-day has all the more the courage of its opinions that Burns exercised as a right the freedom of sincere and enlightened speech—and suffered for his bravery.
The subjects of his letters are numerous, and, to a pretty large extent, of much the same sort as the subjects of his poems. Often, indeed, you have the anticipation of an image or a sentiment which his poetry has made familiar. You have a glimpse of green buds which afterwards unfold into fragrance and colour. This is an interesting connection, of which one or two examples may be given. So early as 1781 he wrote to Alison Begbie—"Once you are convinced I am sincere, I am perfectly certain you have too much goodness and humanity to allow an honest man to languish in suspense only because he loves you too well." Alison Begbie becomes Mary Morison, and the sentiment, so elegantly turned in prose for her, is thus melodiously transmuted for the lady-loves of all languishing lovers—
"O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace
Wha for thy sake would gladly dee,
Or canst thou break that heart of his
Wha's only faut is loving thee?If love for love thou wiltna gie,
At least be pity on me shown:
A thocht ungentle canna be
The thocht o' Mary Morison!"
"But, Davie lad, ne'er fash your head
Though we hae little gear;
We're fit to win our daily bread
As lang's we're hale an' fier;
Mair speer na, nor fear na;
Auld age ne'er mind a fig,
The last o't, the warst o't,
Is only for to beg!"
"To catch dame Fortune's golden smile,
Assiduous wait upon her,
And gather gear by every wile
That's justified by honour:—
Not for to hide it in a hedge,
Nor for a train attendant,
But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent."
There is nothing morbid or narrow in Burns's letters. They are frank and healthy. You can spend a day over them, and feel at the end of it as if you had been wandering at large through the freedom of nature. They seem to have been written in the open air. The first condition necessary to an appreciative understanding of them is to concern yourself with the sentiment. And, indeed, the strength and sincerity of the sentiment by-and-by draw you away to oblivion of the style, however much it may at first strike you as redundant and affected. They are not the letters of a literary man. They have nothing suggestive of the studious chamber and the midnight lamp. There is often a narrowness of idea in the merely literary man which limits his auditory to men of his peculiar pattern. To this narrowness Burns, with all his faults of style, was a stranger. His letters are the utterances of a man who refused to be imprisoned in any single department of human thought. He was no specialist, pinned to one standpoint, and making the width of the world commensurate with the narrowness of his own horizon. He moved about, he looked abroad; he had no pet subject, no restricted field of study; nature and human nature in their multitudinous phases and many retreats were his range, and he expressed his views as freely and vigorously as he took them.
The general tone of the letters is high. The subject is not seldom of supreme interest. Questions are discussed which are rarely discussed in ordinary correspondence. The writer rises above creeds and formularies and arbitrarily established rule. He speculates on a theology beyond the bounds of Calvinism, on a philosophy of the soul above the dialectics of the schoolmen, on a morality at variance with conventional law. He interrogates the intuitions of the mind and the intimations of nature in order that, if possible, he may learn something of the soul's origin, destiny, and supremest duty. But let us hear himself:—
(a) "I have ever looked on mankind in the lump to be nothing better than a foolish, head-strong, credulous, unthinking mob; and their universal belief has ever had extremely little weight with me.... I am drawn by conviction like a Man, not by a halter like an Ass."(b) "'On Earth Discord! A gloomy Heaven above opening its jealous gates to the nineteen-thousandth part of the tithe of mankind! And below an inexorable Hell expanding its leviathan jaws for the vast residue of mortals!' O doctrine comfortable and healing to the weary wounded soul of man! Ye sons and daughters of affliction, to whom day brings no pleasure and night yields no rest, be comforted! 'Tis one to but nineteen hundred housand that your situation will mend in this world, and 'tis nineteen hundred thousand to one, by the dogmas of theology, that you will be damned eternally in the world to come."
(c) "A pillar that bears us up amid the wreck of misfortune and misery is to be found in those feelings and sentiments which, however the sceptic may deny or the enthusiast disfigure them, are yet, I am convinced, original and component parts of the human soul; those; senses of the mind, if I may be allowed the expression, which link us to the awful obscure realities of an all-powerful and equally beneficent God and a world-to-come beyond death and the grave."
(d) "Can it be possible that when I resign this frail, feverish being I shall still find myself in conscious existence?... Shall I yet be warm in life, seeing and seen, enjoying and enjoyed? Ye venerable Sages and holy Flamens, is there probability in your conjectures, truth in your stories, of another world beyond death, or are they all alike baseless visions and fabricated fables? If there is another life, it must only be for the just, the benevolent, the amiable, and the humane; what a flattering idea then is a world to come! Would to God I as firmly believed it as I ardently wish it!... Jesus Christ, thou amiablest of characters! I trust thou art no impostor.... I trust that in Thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed."
(e) "From the seeming nature of the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfections in the administration of affairs, in both the natural and moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene of existence beyond the grave."
(f) "I never hear the loud solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer's noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of grey plover in an autumn morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of Devotion or Poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, that, like the Æolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod?"
(g) "Gracious Heaven! why this disparity between our wishes and our powers? Why is the most generous wish to make others blest, impotent and ineffectual?... Out upon the world! say I, that its affairs are administered so ill."
(h) "At first glance, several of your propositions startled me as paradoxical. That the martial clangour of a trumpet had something in it vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime than the twingle-twangle of a jew's-harp; that the delicate flexure of a rose-twig, when the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of the dawn, was infinitely more beautiful and elegant than the upright stub of a burdock; and that, from something innate and independent of all associations of ideas—these I had set down as irrefragable orthodox truths."[a]
(i) "O, I could curse circumstances, and the coarse tie of human laws which keeps fast what common-sense would loose, and which bars that happiness it cannot give—happiness which otherwise love and honour would warrant!"
(j) "If there is no man on earth to whom your heart and affections are justly due, it may savour of imprudence, but never of criminality, to bestow that heart and those affections where you please. The God of love meant and made those delicious attachments to be bestowed on somebody."
While both the verse and the prose of Burns are revelations, his letters reveal more than his poems the failings and frailties of the man. His poems, taken altogether, shew him at his best, as we wish to—and as we mainly do—remember him; a man to be loved, admired, even envied, and by no means pitied, for his soul, though often vexed with the irritations incidental to an obscure and toiling lot, has a strength and buoyancy which readily raise it to divine altitudes, where it might well be content to see and smile at the petty class distinctions and the paltry social tyranny from which those irritations chiefly spring. His letters, on the other hand, present him to us less frequently on those commanding altitudes. He is oftener careful and concerned about many things, groping occasionally in the world's ways for the world's gifts, and handicapped in the struggle for them by a contemptuous and half-hearted adoption of the world's methods of winning them.
The same personality that stands forth in the poems is everywhere present in all essential features in the letters. We have in the latter the same view of life, present and future; the same fierce contentment with honest poverty; the same aggressive independency of manhood; the same patriotism, susceptibility to female loveliness, love of sociality, undaunted likes and dislikes. The humour is the same, though often too elaborately expressed.[d] In one important respect, however, his letters fail to reflect that image of him which his poetry presents. It is remarkable that his descriptions of rural nature, and one might add of rustic life, so full and plentiful in his verse, are so few and slight in his letters. He seems to have reserved these descriptions for his verse.
The best, because the most genuine, biography of Burns is furnished by his own writings. His letters will, if carefully studied, disprove many of the positions taken up so confidently by would-be interpreters of his history. It is not the purpose of this discursive paper to take up the details of the Clarinda episode; but philandering is scarcely the word by which to describe the mutual relations of the lovers. As for Mrs. M'Lehose, the severest thing that can with justice be said against her is that, if she maintained her virtue, she endangered her reputation. One remarkable position taken up by a recent writer[e] on the subject of Burns's amours is, that he never really loved any woman, and least of all Jean Armour. The letters would rather warrant the converse of his statement. They go to prove that while Burns's affections were more than oriental in their strength and liberality, they were especially centred upon Jean. He felt "a miserable blank in his heart with want of her;" "a rooted attachment for her;" "had no reason on her part to rue his marriage with her;" and "never saw where he could have made it better." If Burns was never really in love, it is more than probable that the whole world has been mistaking some other passion for it. It is this same writer who in one breath speaks of Burns philandering with Clarinda, and yet declaring his attachment to her in the best songs he ever wrote. Another error which the letters should correct is the belief expressed in some quarters that Burns was no longer capable of producing poetry after his fatal residence in Edinburgh. It was, as a matter of fact, subsequent to his residence in Edinburgh that he wrote the poems for which he is now, and for which he will be longest, famous—namely, his songs. The writer already referred to compares the composition of these songs to the carving of cherry-stones. They were, he says in effect, the amusement of a man who could do nothing better in literature! The world has agreed that they are the best things Burns has done; and rates him for their sake in the highest rank of its poets. The truth is that Burns came to Ellisland with numerous schemes of future poetical work, vigorous hopes of carrying some of them, and an inspiration and faculty of utterance unimpaired. It was in Dumfriesshire that he composed the most tenderly and melodiously seraphic of his lyrics—"To Mary in Heaven" and "Highland Mary;" the most powerful and popular of his narrative poems—"Tam O' Shanter;" the first of all patriotic odes—"Bruce's Address to his Army"; and the noblest manifesto of the rights and hopes of manhood—"A Man's a Man for a' that."
With one word on his style as a prose-writer this short paper must close. The most diverse opinions have been uttered on the subject. The critics trip up each other with charming independency. To Jeffrey they seemed to be "all composed as exercises and for display." Carlyle declared that they were written "for the most part with singular force and even gracefulness," and that when Burns wrote "to trusted friends on real interests, his style became simple, vigorous, expressive, sometimes even beautiful." Dr. Waddell prefers him to Cowper and Byron as a letter-writer. Scott, while allowing passages of great eloquence, found in the letters "strong marks of affectation, with a tincture of pedantry." Taine thinks "Burns brought ridicule on himself by imitating the men of the academy and the court." Lockhart thought, with Walker, that "he accommodated his style to the tastes" of his correspondents. And so on.
It is worth while to learn from Burns himself what he thought of his talent for prose-composition. And in the first place it is to be noted that he practised prose-composition before he took to poetry. At sixteen he was carrying on an extensive literary correspondence, which was virtually a competition in essay-writing. He kept copies of the letters he liked best, and was flattered to find that he was superior to his correspondents. He studied the essayists of Queen Anne's time, and formed his style upon theirs, and that of their most distinguished followers. Steele, Addison, Swift, Sterne, and Mackenzie were his models. He liked their rounded sentences, and caught their conventional phrases. He found delight in imitating them. He volunteered his services with the pen on behalf of his fellow-swains. He became the "Complete Letter-Writer" of his parish, and was proud of his function and his faculty. He was aware of his "abilities at a billet-doux." To the very last he had a high opinion of himself as a writer of letters. He speaks of one letter being in his "very best manner;" and of waiting for an hour of inspiration to write another that should be as good. He retained copies of about thirty of his longer letters, and had them bound for preservation.
The most serious, almost the only charge brought against the prose style of Burns is the charge of affectation more or less occasional. All the earlier critics make it or imply it, and with such an apparent show of proof that it has generally been believed. Later critics, while unable to deny the feature of his style which so looks like affectation, have explained it to such good effect as to make it appear a beauty; they have asked us to regard it as the happy result of a sympathetic mind adapting itself to the object of its address. This looks very like blaming Burns's correspondents for the badness of his style. There is some truth in the explanation, putting it even so extremely. But when this allowance is made, there still remains a wide and well-marked difference between his use of English prose and his mastery of Scottish verse. The latter is complete—it is the mastery of an originator of style. The former, on the other hand, is the attainment of a clever pupil when the sentiment is commonplace; when it is deep and vehement, it is often, in the language of Carlyle, "the effort of a man to express something which he has no organ fit for expressing." Common people, to whom niceties of style are unknown, and who read primarily or exclusively for the sake of the matter, perceive nothing of this affectation, and think scarcely less highly of Burns's letters than they do of his poetry.
[a] This is
really the exposure of an absurdity.
[b] By
Jeffrey.
[c] Dr. Hately
Waddell.
[d] See, for
example, the Cheese Letter to Peter Hill, or the
Snail's-horns Letter to Mrs. Dunlop.
[e] Mr. R. L.
Stevenson.
I have more than once come into your company with a resolution to say what I have just now told you; but my resolution always failed me, and even now my heart trembles for the consequence of what I have said. I hope, my dear A——, you will not despise me because I am ignorant of the flattering arts of courtship: I hope my inexperience of the work will plead for me. I can only say I sincerely love you, and there is nothing on earth I so ardently wish for, or that could possibly give me so much happiness, as one day to see you mine.
I think you cannot doubt my sincerity, as I am sure that whenever I see you my very looks betray me: and when once you are convinced I am sincere, I am perfectly certain you have too much goodness and humanity to allow an honest man to languish in suspense only because he loves you too well. And I am certain that in such a state of anxiety as I myself at present feel, an absolute denial would be a much preferable state.
[1] The original MS. of the foregoing letter is the property of John Adam, Esquire, Greenock, and the letter was first published in 1878. If it is a genuine love-letter, and not a mere exercise in love-letter writing, it was probably the first of the short series to Alison Begbie, who is supposed to have been the daughter of a small farmer, and who has been identified with the Mary Morison of the well-known lyric. The sentiment of the last paragraph of the letter agrees with the sentiment of the last stanza of the song.
MY DEAR E.,—I do not remember, in the course of your acquaintance and mine, ever to have heard your opinion on the ordinary way of falling in love, amongst people in our station in life; I do not mean the persons who proceed in the way of bargain, but those whose affection is really placed on the person.
Though I be, as you know very well, but a very awkward lover myself, yet, as I have some opportunities of observing the conduct of others who are much better skilled in the affair of courtship than I am, I often think it is owing to lucky chance, more than to good management, that there are not more unhappy marriages than usually are.
It is natural for a young fellow to like the acquaintance of the females, and customary for him to keep them company when occasion serves; some one of them is more agreeable to him than the rest; there is something, he knows not what, pleases him, he knows not how, in her company. This I take to be what is called love with the greater part of us; and I must own, my dear E., it is a hard game such a one as you have to play when you meet with such a lover. You cannot refuse but he is sincere, and yet though you use him ever so favourably, perhaps in a few months, or at farthest in a year or two, the same unaccountable fancy may make him as distractedly fond of another, whilst you are quite forgot. I am aware that perhaps the next time I have the pleasure of seeing you, you may bid me take my own lesson home, and tell me that the passion I have professed for you is perhaps one of those transient flashes I have been describing; but I hope, my dear E., you will do me the justice to believe me, when I assure you that the love I have for you is founded on the sacred principles of virtue and honour, and by consequence so long as you continue possessed of those amiable qualities which first inspired my passion for you, so long must I continue to love you. Believe me, my dear, it is love like this alone which can render the marriage state happy. People may talk of flames and raptures as long as they please, and a warm fancy, with a flow of youthful spirits, may make them feel something like what they describe; but sure I am the nobler faculties of the mind with kindred feelings of the heart can only be the foundation of friendship, and it has always been my opinion that the married life was only friendship in a more exalted degree.
If you will be so good as to grant my wishes, and it should
please Providence to spare us to the latest periods of life, I
can look forward and see that, even then, though bent down with
wrinkled age—even then, when all other worldly circumstances
will be indifferent to me, I will regard my E. with the tenderest
affection, and for this plain reason, because she is still
possessed of those noble qualities, improved to a much higher
degree, which first inspired my affection for her.
O! happy state, when souls each other draw,
Where love is liberty, and nature law.
I know, were I to speak in such a style to many a girl, who thinks herself possessed of no small share of sense, she would think it ridiculous—but the language of the heart is, my dear E., the only courtship I shall ever use to you.
When I look over what I have written, I am sensible it is
vastly different from the ordinary style of courtship—but I
shall make no apology—I know your good nature will excuse what
your good sense may see amiss.