TO LADY GLENCAIRN.
[Burns, as the concluding paragraph of this letter proves, continued to the last years of his life to think of the composition of a Scottish drama, which Sir Walter Scott laments he did not write, instead of pouring out multitudes of lyrics for Johnson and Thomson.]
My Lady,
The honour you have done your poor poet, in writing him so very obliging a letter, and the pleasure the enclosed beautiful verses have given him, came very seasonably to his aid, amid the cheerless gloom and sinking despondency of diseased nerves and December weather. As to forgetting the family of Glencairn, Heaven is my witness with what sincerity I could use those old verses which please me more in their rude simplicity than the most elegant lines I ever saw.
“If thee, Jerusalem, I forget,
Skill part from my right hand.
My tongue to my mouth’s roof let cleave,
If I do thee forget,
Jerusalem, and thee above
My chief joy do not set.”—
When I am tempted to do anything improper, I dare not, because I look on myself as accountable to your ladyship and family. Now and then, when I have the honour to be called to the tables of the great, if I happen to meet with any mortification from the stately stupidity of self-sufficient squires, or the luxurious insolence of upstart nabobs, I get above the creatures by calling to remembrance that I am patronized by the noble house of Glencairn; and at gala-times, such as new-year’s day, a christening, or the kirn-night, when my punch-bowl is brought from its dusty corner and filled up in honour of the occasion, I begin with,—The Countess of Glencairn! My good woman with the enthusiasm of a grateful heart, next cries, My Lord! and so the toast goes on until I end with Lady Harriet’s little angel! whose epithalamium I have pledged myself to write.
When I received your ladyship’s letter, I was just in the act of transcribing for you some verses I have lately composed; and meant to have sent them my first leisure hour, and acquainted you with my late change of life. I mentioned to my lord my fears concerning my farm. Those fears were indeed too true; it is a bargain would have ruined me, but for the lucky circumstance of my having an excise commission.
People may talk as they please, of the ignominy of the excise; 50l. a year will support my wife and children, and keep me independent of the world; and I would much rather have it said that my profession borrowed credit from me, than that I borrowed credit from my profession. Another advantage I have in this business, is the knowledge it gives me of the various shades of human character, consequently assisting me vastly in my poetic pursuits. I had the most ardent enthusiasm for the muses when nobody knew me, but myself, and that ardour is by no means cooled now that my lord Glencairn’s goodness has introduced me to all the world. Not that I am in haste for the press. I have no idea of publishing, else I certainly had consulted my noble generous patron; but after acting the part of an honest man, and supporting my family, my whole wishes and views are directed to poetic pursuits. I am aware that though I were to give performances to the world superior to my former works, still if they were of the same kind with those, the comparative reception they would meet with would mortify me. I have turned my thoughts on the drama. I do not mean the stately buskin of the tragic muse.
Does not your ladyship think that an Edinburgh theatre would be more amused with affectation, folly, and whim of true Scottish growth, than manners which by far the greatest part of the audience can only know at second hand?
I have the honour to be,
Your ladyship’s ever devoted
And grateful humble servant,
R. B.