[167] Imitated from Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard.
L.
TO MR. JAMES CANDLISH.
[James Candlish, a student of medicine, was well acquainted with the poetry of Lowe, author of that sublime lyric, “Mary’s Dream,” and at the request of Burns sent Lowe’s classic song of “Pompey’s Ghost,” to the Musical Museum.]
Edinburgh, March 21, 1787.
My ever dear old Acquaintance,
I was equally surprised and pleased at your letter, though I dare say you will think by my delaying so long to write to you that I am so drowned in the intoxication of good fortune as to be indifferent to old, and once dear connexions. The truth is, I was determined to write a good letter, full of argument, amplification, erudition, and, as Bayes says, all that. I thought of it, and thought of it, and, by my soul, I could not; and, lest you should mistake the cause of my silence, I just sit down to tell you so. Don’t give yourself credit, though, that the strength of your logic scares me: the truth is, I never mean to meet you on that ground at all. You have shown me one thing which was to be demonstrated: that strong pride of reasoning, with a little affectation of singularity, may mislead the best of hearts. I likewise, since you and I were first acquainted, in the pride of despising old woman’s stories, ventured in “the daring path Spinosa trod;” but experience of the weakness, not the strength of human powers, made me glad to grasp at revealed religion.
I am still, in the Apostle Paul’s phrase, “The old man with his deeds,” as when we were sporting about the “Lady Thorn.” I shall be four weeks here yet at least; and so I shall expect to hear from you; welcome sense, welcome nonsense.
I am, with the warmest sincerity,
R. B.