No. CCXI. TO R. GRAHAM, Esq. FINTRAY. SIR, December, 1792. I HAVE been surprised, confounded, and distracted by Mr. Mitchel, the collector, telling me that he has received an order from your Board to enquire into my political conduct, and blaming me as a person disaffected to government. Sir, you are a husband and a father. - You know what you would feel, to see the much-loved wife of your bosom, and your helpless, prattling little ones, turned adrift into the world, degraded and disgraced from a situation in which they had been respectable and respected, and left almost without the necessary support of a miserable existence. Alas, Sir! must I think that such, soon, will be my lot! and from the d-mned, dark insinuations of hellish groundless envy too! I believe, Sir, I may aver it, and in the sight of Omniscience, that I would not tell a deliberate falsehood, no, not though even worse horrors, if worse can be, than those I have mentioned, hung over my head; and I say, that the allegation, whatever villain has made it, is a lie! To the British Con stitution, on revolution principles, next after my God, I am most devoutly attached; you, Sir, have been much and generously my friend. Heaven knows how warmly I have felt the obligation, and how gratefully I have thanked you.-Fortune, Sir, has made you powerful, and me impotent; has given you patronage, and me dependance.-I would not for my single self, call on your humanity; were such my insular, unconnected situation, I would despise the tear that now swells in my eyeI could brave misfortune, I could face ruin; for at the worst, "Death's thousand doors stand open;" but, good God! the tender concerns that I have mentioned, the claims and ties that I see at this moment, and feel around me, how they unnerve Courage, and wither Resolution! To your patronage, as a man of some genius, you have allowed me a claim; and your esteem, as an honest man, I know is my due: To these, Sir, permit me to appeal; by these may I adjure you to save me from that misery which threatens to overwhelm me, and which, with my latest breath I will say it, I have not deserved. R. B. [Graham, of Fintray, stood the poet's friend in this hour of peril, and the Board had the generosity to permit him to continue to eat the "bitter bread" of his situation for the remainder of his life. Burns in his letter to Erskine, of Mar, enters fully into the history of this dark transaction. ED.] No. CCXII. TO MRS. DUNLOP. DEAR MADAM, Dumfries, 31st December, 1792. A HURRY of business, thrown in heaps by my absence, has until now prevented my returning my grateful acknowledgements to the good family of Dunlop, and you in particular, for that hospitable kindness which rendered the four days I spent under that genial roof, four of the pleasantest I ever enjoyed.-Alas, my dearest friend! how few and fleeting are those things we call pleasures! on my road to Ayrshire, I spent a night with a friend. whom I much valued; a man whose days promised to be many; and on Saturday last we laid him in the dust! Jan. 2, 1793. I HAVE just received yours of the 30th, and feel much for your situation. However I heartily rejoice in your prospect of recovery from that vile jaundice. As to myself, I am better, though not quite free of my complaint.-You must not think, as you seem to insinuate, that in my way of life I want exercise. Of that I have enough; but occasional hard drinking is the devil to me. Against this I have again and again bent my resolution, and have greatly succeeded. Taverns I have totally abandoned it is the private parties in the family way, among the hard drinking gentlemen of this country, that do me the mischief—but even this, I have more than half given over. : Mr. Corbet can be of little service to me at present; at least I should be shy of applying. I cannot possibly be settled as a supervisor, for several years. I must wait the rotation of the list, and there are twenty names before mine.—I might indeed get a job of officiating, where a settled supervisor was ill, or aged; but that hauls me from my family, as I could not remove them on such an uncertainty. Besides, some envious, malicious devil, has raised a little demur on my political principles, and I wish to let that matter settle before I offer myself too much in the eye of my supervisors. I have set, henceforth, a seal on my lips, as to these unlucky politics; but to you, I must breathe my sentiments. In this, as in every thing else, I shall shew the undisguised emotions of my soul. War I deprecate: misery and ruin to thousands, are in the blast that announces the destructive demon. R. B. ["The following extract," says Cromek, "from a letter addressed by Robert Bloomfield to the Earl of Buchan, contains so interesting an exhibition of the modesty inherent in real worth, and so philosophical, and at the same time so poetical an estimate of the different characters and destinies of Burns and its author, that I should esteem myself culpable were I to withhold it from the public view. The illustrious soul that has left amongst us the name of Burns, has often been lowered down to a comparison with me; but the comparison exists more in circumstances than in essentials. That man stood up with the stamp of superior intellect on his brow; a visible greatness and great and patriotic subjects would only have called into action the powers of his mind, which lay inactive while he played calmly and exquisitely the pastoral pipe. : The letters to which I have alluded in my preface to the "Rural Tales," were friendly warnings, pointed with immediate reference to the fate of that extraordinary man. "Remember Burns," has been the watchword of my friends. I do remember Burns; but I am not Burns! neither have I his fire to fan or to quench; nor his passions to controul! Where then is my merit if I make a peaceful voyage on a smooth sea, and with no mutiny on board? To a lady (I have it from herself), who remonstrated with him on his danger from drink, and the pursuits of some of his associates, he replied, Madam, they would not thank me for my company, if I did not drink with them.—I must give them a slice of my constitution." How much to be regretted that he did not give them thinner slices of his constitution, that it might have lasted longer.' ED.] 66 VOL. VII. |