TO MR. THOMSON.
[Burns in this letter speaks of the pecuniary present which Thomson sent him, in a lofty and angry mood: he who published poems by subscription might surely have accepted, without any impropriety, payment for his songs.]
July, 1793.
I assure you, my dear Sir, that you truly hurt me with your pecuniary parcel. It degrades me in my own eyes. However, to return it would savour of affectation; but, as to any more traffic of that debtor and creditor kind, I swear by that honour which crowns the upright statue of Robert Burns’s Integrity—on the least motion of it, I will indignantly spurn the by-past transaction, and from that moment commence entire stranger to you! Burns’s character for generosity of sentiment and independence of mind, will, I trust, long outlive any of his wants which the cold unfeeling ore can supply; at least, I will take care that such a character he shall deserve.
Thank you for my copy of your publication. Never did my eyes behold in any musical work such elegance and correctness. Your preface, too, is admirably written, only your partiality to me has made you say too much: however, it will bind me down to double every effort in the future progress of the work. The following are a few remarks on the songs in the list you sent me. I never copy what I write to you, so I may be often tautological, or perhaps contradictory.
“The Flowers o’ the Forest,” is charming as a poem, and should be, and must be, set to the notes; but, though out of your rule, the three stanzas beginning,
“I’ve seen the smiling of fortune beguiling,”
are worthy of a place, were it but to immortalize the author of them, who is an old lady of my acquaintance, and at this moment living in Edinburgh. She is a Mrs. Cockburn, I forget of what place, but from Roxburghshire.[228] What a charming apostrophe is
“O fickle fortune, why this cruel sporting,
Why thus perplex us, poor sons of a day?”
The old ballad, “I wish I were where Helen lies,” is silly to contemptibility. My alteration of it, in Johnson’s, is not much better. Mr. Pinkerton, in his, what he calls, ancient ballads (many of them notorious, though beautiful enough, forgeries), has the best set. It is full of his own interpolations—but no matter.
In my next I will suggest to your consideration a few songs which may have escaped your hurried notice. In the meantime allow me to congratulate you now, as a brother of the quill. You have committed your character and fame, which will now be tried, for ages to come, by the illustrious jury of the Sons and Daughters of Taste—all whom poesy can please or music charm.
Being a bard of nature, I have some pretensions to second sight; and I am warranted by the spirit to foretell and affirm, that your great-grand-child will hold up your volumes, and say, with honest pride, “This so much admired selection was the work of my ancestor!”
R. B.