Arms inn here, to have at the next county meeting, a large ewe-milk cheese on the table, for the benefit of the Dumfriesshire Whigs, to enable them to digest the Duke of Queensberry's late political conduct. I have just this moment an opportunity of a private hand to Edinburgh, as perhaps you would not digest double postage.-So, God bless you! ROBT. BURNS. () TO MR. ALEX. CUNNINGHAM, WRITER, ST. JAMES'S SQUARE, EDINBURGH. (Partly printed by CURRIE, 1800, and completed by DOUGLAS, 1877.*) ELLISLAND, 11th March 1791. MY DEAR CUNNINGHAM,-I received your first letter two days ago; the last came to hand this moment. I was highly delighted with the well carried on allegory in your friend's letter. friend's letter. I read it to two or three acquaintances who have souls to enjoy a good thing, and we had a very hearty laugh at it. I have felt along the line of my Muse's inclination, and I fear your Archery subject would be up-hill work with her. I have two or three times in my life composed from the wish, rather than from the impulse, but I never succeeded to any purpose. One of these times I shall ever remember with gnashing of teeth. 'Twas on the death of the late Lord President Dundas. My very worthy and most respected friend, Mr. Alex. Wood, Surgeon, urged me to pay a compliment in the way of my trade to his Lordship's memory. Well, to work I went, and produced a copy of Elegiac verses, some of them I own rather common-place, and others rather hide-bound, * Compared with the MS. in the family of the late James Cunningham, Esq., W. S., Edinburgh, the son of our poet's correspondent, whose death at the venerable age of 78, occurred 1879. but on the whole, though they were far from being in my best manner, they were tolerable, and might have been thought very clever. I wrote a letter, which however was in my very best manner; and inclosing my poem, Mr. Wood carried all together to Mr. Solicitor Dundas that then was, and not finding him at home, left the parcel for him. His Solicitorship never took the smallest notice of the letter, the Poem, or the Poet. From that time, highly as I respect the talents of their family, I never see the name Dundas, in the column of a newspaper, but my heart seems straitened for room in my bosom; and if I am obliged to read aloud a paragraph relating to one of them, I feel my forehead flush, and my nether lip quiver. Had I been an obscure scribbler, as I was then in the hey-day of my fame; or had I been a dependent hanger-on for favor or pay; or had the bearer of the letter been any other than a gentleman who has done honor to the city in which he lives, to the country that produced him, and to the God that created him, Mr. Solicitor might have had some apology -but enough of this ungracious subject. A friend of mine who transcribed the last parcel I sent you is to be with me in a day or two, and I shall get him to copy out the two poems you mention. * I have this evening sketched out a song which I had a great mind to send you, though I foresee that it will cost you another groat of postage-by the way, you once mentioned to me a method of franking letters to you, but I have forgotten the direction-My song is intended to sing to a strathspey, or reel, of which I am very fond, called in Cumming's collection of Strathspeys, "Ballendalloch's Reel," and in other * This amanuensis seems to have been the same who about this period transcribed a considerable portion of the poet's unpublished pieces into a bound volume, for Robert Riddell, Esq., of Glenriddell. His name has nowhere been stated, but Burns indicates, in a note to a transcript by him of the Autobiography, that he was a clergyman or a licentiate of the kirk. collections that I have met with, it is known by the name of Camdelmore." It takes three stanzas of four lines each to go through the whole tune. I shall give the song to Johnson for the fourth vol. of his publication of Scots songs, which he has just now in hand. SONG. Sweet are the banks-the banks o' Doon, The spreading flowers are fair, And every thing is blythe and glad, But I am fu' o' care, &c. See p. 24, supra. If the foregoing piece be worth your strictures, let me have them. For my own part, a thing that I have composed, always appears through a double portion of that partial medium in which an Author will ever view his own works. I believe in general Novelty has something in it that inebriates the fancy, and not unfrequently dissipates and fumes away like other intoxication, and leaves the poor patient as usual with an aching heart. A striking instance of this might be adduced in the revolution of many a Hymeneal honeymoon. But lest I sink into stupid prose, and so, sacrilegiously intrude on the office of my Parish-priest, who is in himself one vast Constellation of dulness, and from his weekly Zenith, rays out his contradictory stupidity to the no small edification and enlightening of the heavy and opaque Pericraniums of his gaping admirers, I shall fill up the page in my own way, and give you another song of my late composition which will appear in Johnson's work as well as the former. You must know a beautiful Jacobite air-" There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame." When political combustion ceases to be the object of Princes and Patriots, it then, you know, becomes the lawful prey of Historians and Poets. ÆT. 33.] A BALLAD ON THE TAPIS. 245 SONG. By yon castle wa', at the close of the day, I heard a man sing tho' his head it was grey; And as he was singing, the tears down came There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame, &c., &c. If you like the air, and if the stanzas hit your fancy, you cannot imagine, my dear friend, how much you would oblige me, if, by the charms of your delightful voice, you would give my honest effusion to "the memory of joys that are past," to the few friends whom you indulge in that pleasure. But I have scribbled on till I hear the clock has intimated the near approach of "That hour, o' night's black arch the key-stane." So good-night to you! And sound be your sleep, and delectable your dreams. Apropos, how do you like this thought in a ballad I have just now on the tapis? I look to the west when I gae to rest, That happy my dreams and my slumbers may be; Good night, once more; and God bless you! ROBT. BURNS. () TO JOHN BALLANTINE, ESQ., AYR. WHILE here I sit, sad and solitary, by the side of a fire in a little country inn, and drying my wet clothes, in pops a poor fellow of a sodger, and tells me he is going to Ayr. By heavens! say I to myself, with a tide of good spirits which the magic of that sound "Auld Toon o' Ayr" conjured up, I will send my last song to Mr. Ballantine. Here it is: Ye flowery banks o' bonie Doon, How can ye blume sae fair? How can ye chant, ye little birds, And I sae fu' o' care! &c. &c.-See page 25, supra. (1) TO ALEX. DALZIEL, ESQ., FACTOR, FINDLAYSTON HOUSE. (CROMEK, 1808.) ELLISLAND, March 19, 1791. Not MY DEAR SIR,-I have taken the liberty to frank this letter to you, as it incloses an idle poem of mine, which I send you; and, God knows, you may perhaps pay dear enough for it, if you read it through. that this is my own opinion; but an author, by the time he has composed and corrected his works, has quite pored away all his powers of critical discrimination. I can easily guess from my own heart, what you have felt on a late most melancholy event. God knows what I have suffered, at the loss of my best friend, my first, my dearest patron and benefactor; the man to whom I owe all that I am and have! I am gone into mourning for him, and with more sincerity of grief than I fear some will who by nature's ties ought to feel on the occasion. I will be exceedingly obliged to you indeed, to let me know the news of the noble family, how the poor mother and the two sisters support their loss. I had a packet of poetic bagatelles ready to send to Lady Betty, when I saw the fatal tidings in the newspaper. I see by the same channel that the honored REMAINS |
