CORRESPONDENCE WITH MRS M'LEHOSE. 177 tion, if they could be so; and saying-Were I your sister, I would call and see you.' She also enclosed a copy of verses which she had written after reading the little poem he had sent her, but disclaiming the possible imputation of their being poetry. TO MRS M'LEHOSE. I stretch a point, indeed, my dearest madam, when I answer your card on the rack of my present agony. Your friendship, madam! By heavens, I was never proud before. Your lines, I maintain it, are poetry, and good poetry; mine were indeed partly fiction, and partly a friendship which, had I been so blest as to have met with you in time, might have led me-God of love only knows where. Time is too short for ceremonies. I swear solemnly (in all the tenor of my former oath) to remember you in all the pride and warmth of friendship until-I cease to be! To-morrow, and every day, till I see you, you shall hear from me. Farewell! May you enjoy a better night's repose than I am likely to have. Next day, the lady replied with a gentle chiding about his romantic style of address, calling him to remember that she is a married woman, but telling him that it will be his own fault if she ever withdraws the friendship she has promised. Amidst some playful expressions, she asked if he would, Jacob-like, wait seven years for a wife, and even then perhaps be disappointed, like the patriarch. Perhaps in the days of Mrs M'Lehose, women of her grade were less reserved than now; it must be admitted, however, by those who knew the lady, that this example of freedom on her part was in some degree characteristic. Burns replied, apparently on the same day : TO MRS M'LEHOSE. Your last, my dear madam, had the effect on me that Job's situation had on his friends when they sat down seven days and seven nights astonied, and spake not a word.'-Pay my addresses to a married woman!' I started as if I had seen the ghost of him I had injured: I recollected my expressions; some of them indeed were, in the law phrase, 'habit and repute,' which is being half guilty. I cannot positively say, madam, whether my heart might not have gone astray a little; but I can declare, upon the honour of a poet, that the vagrant has wandered unknown to me. I have a pretty handsome troop of follies of my own; and, like some other people's retinue, they H are but undisciplined blackguards: but the luckless rascals have something of honour in them: they would not do a dishonest thing. To meet with an unfortunate woman, amiable and young, deserted and widowed by those who were bound by every tie of duty, nature, and gratitude, to protect, comfort, and cherish her; add to all, when she is perhaps one of the first of lovely forms and noble minds, the mind, too, that hits one's taste as the joys of heaven do a saintshould a vague infant idea, the natural child of imagination, thoughtlessly peep over the fence-were you, my friend, to sit in judgment, and the poor, airy straggler brought before you, trembling, self-condemned, with artless eyes, brimful of contrition, looking wistfully on its judge, you could not, my dear madam, condemn the hapless wretch to death without benefit of clergy?' I wont tell you what reply my heart made to your raillery of 'seven years;' but I will give you what a brother of my trade says on the same allusion: The Patriarch to gain a wife, And never thought it long. Oh were you to reward such cares, And life so long would stay, Not fourteen but four hundred years Would seem but as one day!' I have written you this scrawl because I have nothing else to do, and you may sit down and find fault with it, if you have no better way of consuming your time; but finding fault with the vagaries of a poet's fancy is much such another business as Xerxes chastising the waves of the Hellespont. My limb now allows me to sit in some peace: to walk I have yet no prospect of, as I can't mark it to the ground. I have just now looked over what I have written, and it is such a chaos of nonsense that I daresay you will throw it into the fire, and call me an idle, stupid fellow; but whatever you think of my brains, believe me to be, with the most sacred respect and heartfelt esteem, my dear madam, your humble servant, ROBERT BURNS. It will appear surprising that, at the very time when he was thus acting upon a sudden thought to swear eternal friendship to an acquaintance of three days' standing, his mind was not in a romantic mood, but beset by gloomy and remorseful feeling, resulting from causes within and beyond his own control, some of which have already been hinted at. Had we a full revelation of the circumstances, it would probably present Burns in a predicament such as rarely befalls either poets or ordinary mortals; and the association of these circumstances with the high-flown terms in which he was addressing the sentimental and unconscious Mrs M'Lehose, would produce an incongruity most curious, as an illustration of the character of the Ayrshire Bard. ELEGY ON PRESIDENT DUNDAS. 179 TO MISS CHALMERS. EDINBURGH, Dec. 12, 1787. I am here under the care of a surgeon, with a bruised limb extended on a cushion; and the tints of my mind vying with the livid horror preceding a midnight thunder-storm. A drunken coachman was the cause of the first, and incomparably the lightest evil; misfortune, bodily constitution, hell, and myself, have formed a 'quadruple alliance' to guarantee the other. I got my fall on Saturday, and am getting slowly better. I have taken tooth and nail to the Bible, and am got through the five books of Moses, and half way in Joshua. It is really a glorious book. I sent for my bookbinder to-day, and ordered him to get me an octavo Bible in sheets, the best paper and print in town, and bind it with all the elegance of his craft. I would give my best song to my worst enemy-I mean the merit of making it-to have you and Charlotte by me. You are angelic creatures, and would pour oil and wine into my wounded spirit. I enclose you a proof copy of the Banks of the Devon, which present with my best wishes to Charlotte. The Ochil-hills you shall probably have next week for yourself. None of your fine speeches! R. B. The Lord President of the Court of Session (Dundas) died on the 13th December, and it seems to have been suggested to Burns by Mr Charles Hay, advocate,2 that he should bring his muse into play for the celebration of the event. There must have been soine reason beyond the merits of the president for Hay having advised this step, and for the proud soul of Burns having stooped to adopt it. He set to bewailing the decease of the great man in the usual style of the venal bards of the age of patronage, and, as might be expected, with no great success:— ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF LORD PRESIDENT DUNDAS.3 Lone on the bleaky hills the straying flocks 1 The song in honour of Miss Chalmers, beginning, 'Where braving angry winter's storms.' ? Ultimately a judge, under the designation of Lord Newton. He died, October 19, 1811, leaving a strong reputation for his bacchanalianism, of which many whimsical anecdotes are told. 3 Robert Dundas of Arniston, elder brother of Viscount Melville, was born 1713, appointed president in 1760, and died December 13, 1787, after a short illness. Ye hills, ye plains, ye forests, and ye caves, Wrongs, injuries, from many a darksome den, Mark ruffian Violence, distained with crimes, Ye dark waste hills, and brown unsightly plains, TO CHARLES HAY, ESQ., ADVOCATE. (ENCLOSING VERSES ON THE DEATH OF THE LORD PRESIDENT.) SIR-The enclosed poem was written in consequence of your suggestion last time I had the pleasure of seeing you. It cost me an hour or two of next morning's sleep, but did not please me; so it lay by, an ill-digested effort, till the other day that I gave it a critic brush. These kind of subjects are much hackneyed; and, besides, the wailings of the rhyming tribe over the ashes of the great are cursedly suspicious, and out of all character for sincerity. These LETTER TO FRANCIS HOWDEN. 181 ideas damped my muse's fire; however, I have done the best I could, and, at all events, it gives me an opportunity of declaring that I have the honour to be, sir, your obliged humble servant, R. B. Burns sent a copy of the poem to Dundas's son, afterwards Lord Advocate and Lord Chief-Baron, but received no answer to it, which he greatly resented. A business note which Burns wrote about this time may be introduced, as shewing how apt his mind was, even on the most trivial subjects, to scintillate out vivid expressions and droll or fanciful ideas: The bearer of this will deliver you a small shade 2 to set; which, my dear sir, if you would highly oblige a poor cripple devil as I am at present, you will finish at farthest against to-morrow evening. It goes a hundred miles into the country; and if it is at me by five o'clock tomorrow evening, I have an opportunity of a private hand to convey it; if not, I don't know how to get it sent. Set it just as you did the others you did for me, 'in the neatest and cheapest manner;' both to answer as a breast-pin, and with a ring to answer as a locket. Do despatch it; as it is, I believe, the pledge of love, and perhaps the prelude to ma-tri-mo-ny. Everybody knows the auld wife's observation when she saw a poor dog going to be hanged-'God help us! it's the gate we ha'e a' to gang!' The parties, one of them at least, is a very particular acquaintance of mine the honest lover. He only needs a little of an advice which my grandmother, rest her soul, often gave me, and I as often neglected 'Leuk twice or [ere] ye loup ance. Let me conjure you, my friend, by the bended bow of Cupid-by the unloosed cestus of Venus-by the lighted torch of Hymen-that you will have the locket finished by the time mentioned! And if your worship would have as much Christian charity as call with it yourself, and comfort a poor wretch, not wounded indeed by Cupid's arrow, but bruised by a good, serious, agonizing, damned, hard knock on the knee, you will gain the earnest prayers, when he does pray, of, dear sir, your humble servant, ROBT. BURNS. ST JAMES'S SQUARE, No. 2, Attic Storey. A relative of Mr Howden communicates the following anecdote:-At Lord Monboddo's, Burns met Dr Gregory, who, 1 Mr Francis Howden, who died at an advanced age in 1848, was well known in his native city as an energetic reformer. He was the last surviving person I am aware of who remembered Robert Fergusson ? A silhouette portrait. |