Nicol Burns begins nine months before his birth-date in the calendar!

The black seal on the letter, with its symbolic impression, is also pregnant with meaning. No single love affection was capable of filling the heart of Burns; although in his poetic rapture of 1786, when Jean deserted him, he asserted otherwise

"This breast, how dreary now and void,
For her too scanty once of room."

Precisely nine days prior to the birth spoken of in the letter to Mr. Somerville, the poet's "Anna of the gowden-locks was delivered of a daughter who, a few weeks after birth, was conveyed to Ellisland by pre-arrangement, and there suckled at the same breast which fed the stout infant boy above referred to. Of all Burns's children, this second “dear-bought Bess" (for the mother's life was the cost of that birth) the most resembled him in features. To this subject, Robert Chambers has devoted a page or two of generous pleading in behalf of Burns, in which the leading defence is a reflection on Jean's alleged imprudence in absenting herself from the domestic couch during one or more prolonged visits to Ayrshire. Alas! where there is a will there is a way. Mrs. Burns was certainly not in Ayrshire, or beyond her husband's reach, in June and July 1790, nor was she absent from Ellisland at any time before the summer of 1791, so far as appears from the records laid before the public by the poet's biographers.* To countenance his statement, Chambers quotes an alleged saying of the poet's sister Agnes, who superintended the dairy department at Ellisland for a short period:-"I never knew my brother fail to keep good hours at night until Jean's first unlucky absence in Ayrshire." The reader must here be given to understand that this sagacious sister of Burns was the identical "Nannie" of whom another saying is quoted:-"I wonder what gars our Robert make such a wark about the lasses ! For my part, I wad na gie ae lad for half a dizen o' them."

*Jean's first summer at Ellisland was that of 1789, when her son Francis Wallace was born. That event happened in August, and she was attended by the poet's mother, who journeyed to Dumfriesshire for the occasion. Jean was not absent in October thereafter, when the verses to "Mary in Heaven" were composed. The correspondence shews her to have remained at Ellisland during the first half of 1790, and during the latter half her presence there is fully certified, by the accounts of summer visitors, followed by her own description of Burns, while in the act of composing "Tam O'Shanter."

ÆT. 33.]

AN EXCISE DERELICTION.

263

(2) TO MR. ALEX. FINDLATER, SUPERVISOR OF EXCISE.

(Dr. Waddell's Ed., 1869.)*

[ELLISLAND, June, 1791.]

DEAR SIR,—I am both much surprised and vexed at that accident of Lorimer's stock. The last survey I made prior to Mr. Lorimer's going to Edinburgh, I was very particular in my inspection, and the quantity was certainly in his possession, as I stated it. The surveys I made during his absence might as well have been marked "Key absent," as I never found any body but the lady, who I know is not mistress of keys, &c., to know anything of it, and one of the times, it would have rejoiced all Hell to have seen her so drunk. I have not surveyed there since his return. I know the gentleman's ways are, like the grace of G—, past all comprehension; but I shall give the house a severe scrutiny to-morrow morning, and send you in the naked facts.

I know, Sir, and regret deeply that this business. glances with a malign aspect on my character as an officer; but as I am really innocent in the affair, and as the gentleman is known to be an illicit dealer, and particularly as this is the single instance of the least shadow of carelessness or impropriety in my conduct as an officer, I shall be peculiarly unfortunate if my character shall fall a sacrifice to the dark manoeuvres of a smuggler. I am, Sir, your obliged and obedient humble servant, ROBT, BURNS.

Sunday even.

*This undated letter was first made known in its entire form at Dumfries, by the Secretary of the Burns Club there, in 1869. Mr. Findlater had printed the second paragraph in 1814.

I send you some rhymes I have just finished which tickle my fancy a little.

The above picture of a smuggler's house at Cairnmill, Kemishall, forms a strange comment on the poet's character of the man, in the immediately preceding letter, addressed to Mr. Somerville-" a gentleman worth your knowing, both as a man, and as a man of property and consequence !" It is said that eventually he was engulphed in bankruptcy; but we have evidence that Mr. and Mrs. Burns continued to be on the most intimate terms with him and his eldest daughter till within a year of the poet's death. Mrs. Burns, in her conversations with Mr. M'Diarmid, thus speaks of the family :-"Jean Lorimer was the daughter of Wm. Lorimer, farmer at Kemishall, and in good circumstances. He had two daughters and three sons. His wife was given to drinking, and that injured her daughters. Jean used to visit at Ellisland; she had remarkably fair hair, and was perfectly virtuous. She took the fancy of an Englishman at a Moffat Ball, and was married to him at Gretna Green. The man was a reprobate; but his mother allowed her an annuity." Chambers gives the date of that marriage as being March 1793.

(8) TO ALEXANDER CUNNINGHAM, ESQ.,

EDINBURGH,

INTRODUCING CLARKE THE SCHOOLMASTER.

(CURRIE, 1800.)

11th June, 1791.

Let me interest you, my dear Cunningham, in behalf of the gentleman who gives you this. He is a Mr. Clarke, of Moffat, principal schoolmaster there, and is at present suffering severely under the persecution of one or two powerful individuals of his employers. He is accused of harshness to some perverse dunces that were placed under his care. God help the teacher, if a man of genius and sensibility, for such is my friend Clarke-when a blockhead father presents him his booby son, and insists on having the

ET. 33.]

CLARKE, THE SCHOOLMASTER.

265

rays of science lighted up in a fellow's head whose skull is impervious and inaccessible, by any other way than a positive fracture with a cudgel: a fellow whom in fact it savors of impiety to attempt making a scholar of, as he has been marked a blockhead in the book of fate, at the almighty fiat of his Creator.

The patrons of Moffat School are, the ministers, magistrates, and town-council of Edinburgh, and as the business comes now before them, let me beg my dearest friend to do every thing in his power to serve the interests of a man of genius, a man of worth, and a man whom I particularly respect and esteem. You know some good fellows among the magistrates and council, though, God knows, 'tis generally a very unfit soil for good fellowship to flourish in, but particularly you have much to say with a reverend gentleman to whom you have the honor of being very nearly related, and whom this country and age have had the honor to produce. I need not name the historian of Charles V.* I tell him through the medium of his nephew's influence, that Mr. Clarke is a gentleman who will not disgrace even his patronization. I know the merits of the cause thoroughly, and I say it, that my friend is falling a sacrifice to prejudiced ignorance, and envious, causeless malice.

God help the children of dependence! Hated and persecuted by their enemies, and too often (alas! almost unexceptionally always) received by their friends with insulting disrespect and heart-stinging reproach, under the thin disguise of cold civility and humiliating advice. O! to be a sturdy savage, stalking in the pride of his independence, amid the solitary wilds of his deserts; rather than in civilized life, helplessly to tremble for a subsistence, precarious as the caprice of a fellow-creature! Every man has his

* Dr. Robertson, the historian, was Cunningham's uncle.

266

"INDEPENDENT IN MY SINNING."

[1791.

virtues, and no man is without his failings; and curse on that privileged plain-dealing of friendship, which, in the hour of my calamity, cannot reach forth the helping hand without at the same time pointing out those failings, and assigning their share in my present distress. My friends, for such the world calls you, and such ye think yourselves to be, pass by my virtues if you please, but do also spare my follies the first will witness in my breast for themselves, and the last will give pain enough to the ingenuous mind without you. And since deviating more or less from the paths of propriety and rectitude must be incident to human nature, do thou, Fortune, put it in my power, always from my own pocket, to pay the penalty of those errors ! I do not want to be independent that I may sin, but I want to be independent in my sinning.

To return in this rambling letter to the subject I set out with, let me recommend my friend Clarke to your acquaintance and good offices; his worth entitles him to the one, and his gratitude will merit the other. R. B.

The variations in our text from Currie's version of the above letter are taken from the Glenriddell MS. Chambers remarks concerning it, that "there is a condition of great suffering when, though the main source of grief cannot be spoken of, smaller evils will be denounced with a superfluity of splenetic effusion not a little startling to a bystander." Burns here, while merely sympathizing with a persecuted schoolmaster, launches out into an indignant protest against the friendship which would venture to preach against a man's errors or failings, while kindly endeavoring to redeem their consequences. The exasperation of spirit and occasional acrimony which his letters manifest again and again, from this period of his career, seem to have been caused more by the reckless violence of his own passions, with their bitter after-fruits, than from disappointed ambition or social disregard of any kind. The cause of his unfortunate friend Clarke he seems to have taken up as a pet subject, as will be evinced from several hitherto suppressed letters on that topic now here made public.