BURNS TO CLARINDA. 187 widow, who has wit and wisdom more murderously fatal than the assassinating stiletto of the Sicilian bandit, or the poisoned arrow of the savage African. My Highland dirk, that used to hang beside my crutches, I have gravely removed into a neighbouring closet, the key of which I cannot command, in case of spring-tide paroxysms. You may guess of her wit by the following verses, which she sent me the other day. My best compliments to our friend Allan. Adieu! * * * R. B. TO CLARINDA. [After New Year, 1788.] You are right, my dear Clarinda: a friendly correspondence goes for nothing, except one write their undisguised sentiments. Yours please me for their intrinsic merit, as well as because they are yours, which, I assure you, is to me a high recommendation. Your religious sentiments, madam, I revere. If you have, on some suspicious evidence, from some lying oracle, learned that I despise or ridicule so sacredly important a matter as real religion, you have, my Clarinda, much misconstrued your friend.-'I am not mad, most noble Festus!' Have you ever met a perfect character? Do we not sometimes rather exchange faults than get rid of them? For instance, I am perhaps tired with, and shocked at a life too much the prey of giddy inconsistencies and thoughtless follies; by degrees I grow sober, prudent, and statedly pious-I say statedly, because the most unaffected devotion is not at all inconsistent with my first character-I join the world in congratulating myself on the happy change. But let me pry more narrowly into this affair. Have I, at bottom, anything of a secret pride in these endowments and emendations? Have I nothing of a Presbyterian sourness, a hypocritical severity, when I survey my less regular neighbours? In a word, have I missed all those nameless and numberless modifications of indistinct selfishness, which are so near our own eyes, that we can scarcely bring them within the sphere of our vision, and which the known spotless cambric of our character hides from the ordinary observer? My definition of worth is short: truth and humanity respecting our fellow-creatures; reverence and humility in the presence of that Being, my Creator and Preserver, and who, I have every reason to believe, will one day be my Judge. The first part of my definition is the creature of unbiassed instinct; the last is the child of after reflection. Where I found these two essentials, I would gently note, and slightly mention, any attendant flaws-flaws, the marks, the consequences of human nature. I can easily enter into the sublime pleasures that your strong imagination and keen sensibility must derive from religion, parti 1 A widow only in one sense. In reality, a deserted wife. cularly if a little in the shade of misfortune; but I own I cannot, without a marked grudge, see Heaven totally engross so amiable, so charming a woman, as my friend Clarinda; and should be very well pleased at a circumstance that would put it in the power of somebody (happy somebody!) to divide her attention, with all the delicacy and tenderness of an earthly attachment. You will not easily persuade me that you have not a grammatical knowledge of the English language. So far from being inaccurate, you are elegant beyond any woman of my acquaintance, except one, whom I wish you knew. Your last verses to me have so delighted me, that I have got an excellent old Scots air that suits the measure, and you shall see them in print in the Scots Musical Museum, a work publishing by a friend of mine in this town. I want four stanzas; you gave me but three, and one of them alluded to an expression in my former letter; so I have taken your two first verses, with a slight alteration in the second, and have added a third; but you must help me to a fourth. Here they are: the latter half of the first stanza would have been worthy of Sappho; I am in raptures with it. The alteration in the second stanza is no improvement, but there was a slight inaccuracy in your rhyme. The third I only offer to your choice, and have left two words for your determination. The air is The Banks of Spey,' and is most beautiful. To-morrow evening I intend taking a chair, and paying a visit at Park Place to a much-valued old friend. If I could be sure of finding you at home (and I will send one of the chairmen to call), I would spend from five to six o'clock with you, as I go past. I cannot do more at this time, as I have something on my hand that hurries me much. I propose giving you the first call, my old friend the second, and Miss -, as I return home. Do not break any engagement for me, as I will spend another evening with you at anyrate before I leave town. Do not tell me that you are pleased when your friends inform you of your faults. I am ignorant what they are; but I am sure they must be such evanescent trifles, compared with your personal and SECOND INTERVIEW OF BURNS AND CLARINDA. 189 mental accomplishments, that I would despise the ungenerous narrow soul who would notice any shadow of imperfections you may seem to have any other way than in the most delicate agreeable raillery. Coarse minds are not aware how much they injure the keenly-feeling tie of bosom-friendship, when, in their foolish officiousness, they mention what nobody cares for recollecting. People of nice sensibility and generous minds have a certain intrinsic dignity, that fires at being trifled with, or lowered, or even too nearly approached. You need make no apology for long letters: I am even with you. Many happy new-years to you, charming Clarinda! I can't dissemble were it to shun perdition. He who sees you as I have done, and does not love you, deserves to be damn'd for his stupidity! He who loves you, and would injure you, deserves to be doubly damn'd for his villany! Adieu. SYLVANDER. P. S.-What would you think of this for a fourth stanza? Your thought, if love must harbour there, Conceal it in that thought, Nor cause me from my bosom tear The very friend I sought. The visit promised by the poet in his last letter took place, and seems to have afforded an opportunity for his giving Clarinda some account of his past life and present circumstances. He had, amongst other things, spoken of his infant son, now the only survivor of the twins borne by Jean Armour in September of the year before last. TO CLARINDA. Some days, some nights, nay, some hours, like the 'ten righteous persons in Sodom,' save the rest of the vapid, tiresome, miserable months and years of life. One of these hours my dear Clarinda blest me with yesternight. - One well-spent hour, In such a tender circumstance for friends, THOMSON. My favourite feature in Milton's Satan, is his manly fortitude in supporting what cannot be remedied—in short, the wild broken fragments of a noble exalted mind in ruins. I meant no more by saying he was a favourite hero of mine. I mentioned to you my letter to Dr Moore, giving an account of my life it is truth, every word of it, and will give you the just idea of a man whom you have honoured with your friendship. I am afraid you will hardly be able to make sense of so torn a piece. Your verses I shall muse on, deliciously, as I gaze on your image in my mind's eye, in my heart's core: they will be in time enough for a week to come. I am truly happy your headache is better.-Oh, how can pain or evil be so daringly, unfeelingly, cruelly savage as to wound so noble a mind, so lovely a form! My little fellow is all my namesake :-Write me soon. My every, strongest good wishes attend you, Clarinda! SYLVANDER. I know not what I have written-I am pestered with people around me. In this letter was enclosed his autobiography, apparently in consequence of a promise he had made at the late interview. Clarinda told him, in answer, that she had read it as Desdemona listened to the narration of Othello. One thing, however, affected her painfully-his hostility to Calvinism, of which she, from conviction, was an adherent. She wished him seriously to examine the subject, as she had done. She also glanced at a declaration he had once made to her, that he never could find a woman who could love as ardently as himself. She can well believe it, and would have him rather not marry at all than join himself to any other person. 6 Unless,' she says, 'a woman were qualified for the companion, the friend, and the mistress, she would not do for you. The last may gain Sylvander, but the others alone can keep him.' In a postscript, she announced-and perhaps Burns felt that this was a very important postscript-that she was to be in his square this afternoon near two o'clock,' when, if his room was towards the street, she would have the pleasure of giving him a nod. TO CLARINDA. Tuesday Night [Jan. 8 ?] I am delighted, charming Clarinda, with your honest enthusiasm for religion. Those of either sex, but particularly the female, who are lukewarm in that most important of all things, 'O my soul, come not thou into their secrets!' I feel myself deeply interested in your good opinion, and will lay before you the outlines of my belief. He who is our Author and Preserver, and will one day be our Judge, must be (not for his sake in the way of duty, but from the native impulse of our hearts) the object of our reverential awe and grateful adoration: He is Almighty and all-bounteous, we are weak and dependent; hence prayer and every other sort of devotion.' He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to everlasting life; consequently it must be in every one's power to embrace his offer of 'everlasting life; otherwise he could not, in justice, condemn those who did not. A mind pervaded, actuated, BURNS'S RELIGIOUS PROFESSIONS. 191 and governed by purity, truth, and charity, though it does not merit heaven, yet is an absolutely necessary pre-requisite, without which heaven can neither be obtained nor enjoyed; and, by divine promise, such a mind shall never fail of attaining everlasting life:' hence the impure, the deceiving, and the uncharitable, extrude themselves from eternal bliss, by their unfitness for enjoying it. The Supreme Being has put the immediate administration of all this, for wise and good ends known to himself, into the hands of Jesus Christ-a great personage, whose relation to him we cannot comprehend, but whose relation to us is [that of] a guide and Saviour; and who, except for our own obstinacy and misconduct, will bring us all, through various ways, and by various means, to bliss at last. These are my tenets, my lovely friend; and which, I think, cannot be well disputed. My creed is pretty nearly expressed in the last clause of Jamie Deans's grace, an honest weaver in Ayrshire: 'Lord, grant that we may lead a gude life! for a gude life maks a gude end; at least it helps weel!' I am flattered by the entertainment you tell me you have found in my packet. You see me as I have been, you know me as I am, and may guess at what I am likely to be. I too may say, ' Talk not of love,' &c. for indeed he has plunged me deep in wo!' Not that I ever saw a woman who pleased unexceptionably, as my Clarinda elegantly says, 'in the companion, the friend, and the mistress.' One indeed I could except-One, before passion threw its mists over my discernment, I knew the first of women! Her name is indelibly written in my heart's core-but I dare not look in on it—a degree of agony would be the consequence. Oh! thou perfidious, cruel, mischief-making demon, who presidest over that frantic passion— thou may'st, thou dost poison my peace, but thou shalt not taint my honour-I would not, for a single moment, give an asylum to the most distant imagination, that would shadow the faintest outline of a selfish gratification, at the expense of her whose happiness is twisted with the threads of my existence.- -May she be as happy as she deserves ! And if my tenderest, faithfulest friendship, can add to her bliss, I shall at least have one solid mine of enjoyment in my bosom! Don't guess at these ravings! I watched at our front window to-day, but was disappointed. It has been a day of disappointments. I am just risen from a two hours' bout after supper, with silly or sordid souls, who could relish nothing in common with me but the port.- -One- "Tis now 'witching time of night;' and whatever is out of joint in the foregoing scrawl, impute it to enchantments and spells; for I can't look over it, but will seal it up directly, as I don't care for to-morrow's I criticisms on it. You are by this time fast asleep, Clarinda; may good angels attend and guard you as constantly and faithfully as my good wishes do. 'Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep, Shot forth peculiar graces.' |