At Mr. Dunlop’s, Haddington.
[In this, the poet’s first letter from Ellisland, he lays down his whole system of in-door and out-door economy: while his wife took care of the household, he was to manage the farm, and “pen a stanza” during his hours of leisure.]
Ellisland, 13th June, 1788.
“Where’er I roam, whatever realms I see,
My heart, untravell’d, fondly turns to thee;
Still to my friend it turns with ceaseless pain,
and drags at each remove a lengthening chain.”
Goldsmith.
This is the second day, my honoured friend, that I have been on my farm. A solitary inmate of an old smoky spense; far from every object I love, or by whom I am beloved; nor any acquaintance older than yesterday, except Jenny Geddes, the old mare I ride on; while uncouth cares and novel plans hourly insult my awkward ignorance and bashful inexperience. There is a foggy atmosphere native to my soul in the hour of care; consequently the dreary objects seem larger than life. Extreme sensibility, irritated and prejudiced on the gloomy side by a series of misfortunes and disappointments, at that period of my existence when the soul is laying in her cargo of ideas for the voyage of life, is, I believe, the principal cause of this unhappy frame of mind.
“The valiant, in himself, what can he suffer?
Or what need he regard his single woes?” &c.
Your surmise, Madam, is just; I am indeed a husband.
To jealousy or infidelity I am an equal stranger. My preservative from the first is the most thorough consciousness of her sentiments of honour, and her attachment to me: my antidote against the last is my long and deep-rooted affection for her.