I have not a moment more. Blessed be he that blesseth thee, and cursed be he that curseth thee! And the wretch whose envious malice would injure thee, may the Giver of every good and perfect gift say unto him-"Thou shalt not prosper!" R. B. (1) TO MRS. RIDDELL, WOODLEY PARK. (Dr. WADDELL'S ED., 1869.) FRIDAY, NOON, [April 1793.] of *** * I MUST tell you that all the haberdashers here are on the alarm as to the necessary article French gloves. You must know that French gloves are contraband goods, and expressly forbidden by the laws of this wisely-governed realm of ours. A satirist would say this is the reason why the ladies are so fond of them; but I, who have not one grain of gall in my composition, shall allege that it is the patriotism of the dear goddess of man's idolatry that makes them so fond of dress from the land of liberty and equality. . . I have discovered one haberdasher who, at my request, will clothe your fair hands as they ought to be, to keep them from being profaned by the rude gaze of the gloating eye, or (horrid !) by the unhallowed lips of that Satyr man. So much for this important matter. I have received a long letter from Mr. Thomson, who presides over the publication of Scotch music, &c., which I mentioned to you. Would you honor the publication with a song from you? I have just sent him a new song to "The last time I came o'er the moor; "'* but I don't know if I have succeeded. See page 162 supra. I enclose it for your strictures. Mary was the name I intended my heroine to bear, but I altered it into your ladyship's as being infinitely more musical. R. B. (5) TO MRS. RIDDELL, WOODLEY PARK. (DR. WADDELL'S ED., 1869.) [April 1793.] ON Monday, my dear Madam, I shall most certainly do myself the honor of waiting on you, whether the Muses will wait on me is, I fear, dubious. Please accept a new song which I have this moment received from Urbani. It is a trifling present, but "Give all thou can'st." R. B. () TO MRS. RIDDELL, WOODLEY PARK. (CURRIE, 1800.) [April 1793.] I HAVE often told you, my dear friend, that you had a spice of caprice in your composition, and you have as often disavowed it; even perhaps while your opinions were, at the moment, irrefragably proving it. Could anything estrange me from a friend such as you? No! To-morrow I shall have the honor of waiting on you. Farewell, thou first of friends, and most accomplished of women; even with all thy little caprices! R. B. (15) TO ROBERT AINSLIE, ESQ., EDINBURGH. I AM d-nably out of humor, my dear Ainslie, and that is the reason why I take up the pen to you: 'tis the nearest way (probatum est) to recover my spirits again. I received your last, and was much entertained with it; but I will not at this time, or at any other time, answer it.-Answer a letter! I never could answer a letter in my life!-I have written many a letter in return for letters I have received; but then-they were original matter-spurtaway! zig, here; zag, there; as if the devil that, my grannie (an old woman indeed!) often told me, rode on Will-o'-wisp, or, in her more classic phrase, SPUNKIE, were looking over my elbow.-Happy thought that idea has engendered in my head! SPUNKIE,-thou shalt henceforth be my symbol, signature, and tutelary genius! Like thee, hap-step-and-lowp, here-awa-there-awa, higglety, pigglety, pell-mell, hither-and-yon, ram-stam, happy-golucky, up tails-a'-by-the-light-o'-the-moon; has been, is, and shall be, my progress through the mosses and moors of this vile, bleak, barren wilderness of a life of ours. Come then, my guardian Spirit; like thee, may I skip away, amusing myself by and at my own light: and if any opaque-souled lubber of mankind complain. that my elfine, lambent, glimmerous wanderings have misled his stupid steps over precipices, or into bogs; let the thick headed blunderbuss recollect, that he is not SPUNKIE :-that Spunkie's wanderings could not copied be; In 1834 the Ettrick Shepherd made a note here, thus:-"What a strange hipperty-skipperty letter this is to Ainslie! that is to say, to Ainslie as we know him now-the author of "The Father's Gift," and many beautiful little religious works! Ainslie, since ever I knew him,-and that is considerably upwards of twenty years, has been much the same-a downright honest, sleepy-headed, kind-hearted gentleman, his good humor never failing him, not even in his sleep, with which he generally favors the company once or twice in an evening. But even then, there is a benevolence in his countenance, that beams more intensely than when he is awake. I have seen him fall asleep in the blue parlor at Ambrose's, with North in the chair, and myself as croupier. Honest Ainslie! ÆT. 35.] SCHOLARCRAFT AND THEOLOGY. 355 I have no doubt but scholarcraft may be caught as a Scotsman catches the itch,-by friction. How else can you account for it, that born blockheads, by mere dint of handling books, grow so wise that even they themselves are equally convinced of and surprised at their own parts? I once carried this philosophy to that degree that in a knot of country folks who had a library amongst them, and who, to the honor of their good sense, made me factotum in the business; one of our members-a little, wise-looking, squat, upright, jabbering body of a tailor-I advised him, instead of turning over the leaves, to bind the book on his back.-Johnnie took the hint; and as our meetings were every fourth Saturday, and Pricklouse having a good Scots mile to walk in coming, and of course another in returning, Bodkin was sure to lay his hand on some heavy quarto or ponderous folio, with, and under which, wrapt up in his grey plaid, he grew wise as he grew weary, all the way home. He carried this so far, that an old musty Hebrew concordance, which we had a present of from a neighboring priest, by mere dint of applying it, as doctors do a blistering plaster, between his shoulders, Stitch, in a dozen pilgrimages, acquired as much rational theology as the said priest had done by forty years' perusal of the pages. Tell me, and tell me truly, what you think of this theory! Yours, SPUNKIE. At Whitsunday 1793, after a residence of eighteen months in the house before described, the poet with his family removed to a small self-contained abode of two floors with an attic flat, in the Mill Vennel, now called Burns Street. Ascending three steps to the front door, we find in the lower story a kitchen and parlor, the latter, a fine commodious room; and in the that is a constitutional failing which he cannot help; for a man of kinder or better intentions was never born. He is now, alas! the only relic I know of the real intimate acquaintances of Burns." Ainslie survived to 1838. floor above are two rooms of unequal size, the smaller one being that in which the poet breathed his last. Above all are two attic bedrooms where the children slept, and between these a closet, nine feet square, which the bard used as a study, or private retiring place. "It is just possible," wrote Robert Chambers, "that by the time the house came to be occupied, the cheerful views under which it had been taken were somewhat overcast; for the first few months of the war had intervened, producing a general difficulty throughout the nation." So far as now appears, the first lyric suggested to Burns in the little sanctum sanctorum we have just described, was a song dedicated to the charms of Miss Lesley Baillie, of whom he had lately said "To see her is to love her, and love but her for ever; For Nature made her what she is, and never made anither." He now addressed to her the following letter enclosing the new song referred to. () TO MISS LESLEY BAILLIE, OF MAYFIELD. (DOUGLAS, 1877.) [DUMFRIES, end of May, 1793-] MADAM, I have just put the last hand to the enclosed song, and I think that I may say of it, as Nature can say of you-" There is a work of mine, finished in my very finest style." Among your sighing swains, if there should be one whose ardent sentiment and ingenuous modesty fetter his power of speech in your presence; with that look and attitude so native to your manner, and of all others the most bewitching-beauty listening to compassion-put my ballad in the poor fellow's hand, just to give a little breathing to the fervor of his soul.* I have some pretence, Madam, to make you up the * Marriage, June 1799.—" At Mayville, Robert Cumming of Logie, Esq., to Miss Lesley Baillie, daughter of Robert Baillie of Mayfield, Esq."-Scots Mag. |
