‘Edinburgh, 2nd June 1789.
‘Dear Sir,—I take the first leisure hour I could command, to thank you for your letter and the copy of verses enclosed in it. As there is real poetic merit, I mean both fancy and tenderness, and some happy expressions, in them, I think they well deserve that you should revise them carefully and polish them to the utmost. This I am sure you can do if you please, for you have great command both of expression and of rhymes; and you may judge, from the two last pieces of Mrs Hunter’s poetry that I gave you, how much correctness and high polish enhance the value of such compositions. As you desire it, I shall with great freedom give you my most rigorous criticisms on your verses. I wish you would give me another edition of them, much amended, and I will send it to Mrs Hunter, who, I am sure, will have much pleasure in reading it. Pray give me likewise for myself, and her too, a copy (as much amended as you please) of the “Waterfowl on Loch Turit.”
‘The “Wounded Hare” is a pretty good subject, but the measure or stanza you have chosen for it is not a good one: it does not flow well; and the rhyme of the fourth line is almost lost by its distance from the first, and the two interposed, close rhymes. If I were you I would put it into a different stanza yet.
‘Stanza 1.—The execrations in the first two lines are too strong or coarse, but they may pass. “Murder-aiming” is a bad compound epithet and not very intelligible. “Blood-stained” in Stanza III. line 4 has the same fault: Bleeding bosom is infinitely better. You have accustomed yourself to such epithets and have no notion how stiff and quaint they appear to others and how incongruous with poetic fancy and tender sentiments. Suppose Pope had written “Why that bloodstained bosom gored” how would you have liked it? Form is neither a poetic nor a dignified nor a plain common word: it is a mere sportsman’s word: unsuitable to pathetic or serious poetry.
“Mangled” is a coarse word. “Innocent,” in this sense, is a nursery word; but both may pass.
‘Stanza 4. “Who will now provide that life a mother only can bestow” will not do at all: it is not grammar—it is not intelligible. Do you mean “provide for that life which the mother had bestowed and used to provide for?” There was a ridiculous slip of the pen, “Feeling” (I suppose) for “Fellow,” in the title of your copy of the verses; but even “fellow” would be wrong: it is but a colloquial and vulgar word, unsuitable to your sentiments. “Shot” is improper too. On seeing a person (or a sportsman) wound a hare: it is needless to add with what weapon; but if you think otherwise, you should say with a fowling-piece. Let me see you when you come to town, and I will shew you some more of Mrs Hunter’s poems.’
Perhaps when Burns submitted his lines, ‘On seeing a wounded hare limp by me, which a fellow had just shot at,’ he hoped for as kindly a criticism as Dr Gregory had given to Clarinda’s verses, which the poet had shown him in December 1787; but if so, he was much disappointed. ‘Dr Gregory is a good man, but he crucifies me,’ wrote Burns soon after; and again, ‘I believe in the iron justice of Dr Gregory; but like the devils I believe and tremble.’ It was a curious friendship, but friendship it was. There is an English translation of Cicero, which the physician had given to Burns in Edinburgh in 1787, and on the fly-leaf of this is written, ‘This book, a present from the truly worthy and learned Dr Gregory, I shall preserve to my latest hour as a mark of the gratitude, esteem and veneration I bear the owner—so help me God.—Robert Burns.’ Clarinda’s desire to make Gregory’s acquaintance which is surely an indication of how much her Sylvander admired him, finds utterance in a letter of 1787, ‘Pray is Dr Gregory pious? I have heard so, I wish I knew him.’
It was at Lord Monboddo’s that Gregory first met Burns. Besides the queer old judge, who was made a laughing stock for saying that men originally had tails, there was his charming daughter, the beautiful Miss Burnet, to whom Gregory is said to have offered his heart and hand.