ET. 34.] PRESENT OF CANNON TO THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.

219

character of the transaction. If, as is likely, Burns sent the guns to Paris immediately on their being bought (for what other purpose could he have made such a purchase?), he must have addressed them to the Legislative Assembly-a body which had as yet done nothing to forfeit the respect of worthy Britons, which was at this moment supporting a ministry of the Constitutional party around Louis XVI., and holding forth every demonstration of pacific feeling towards England. On the 28th of February 1792, it was less than a month from the time when George III. opened parliament with little besides congratulations on the peace and internal prosperity of the country. The three per cents. were above ninetysix, and expected to go up to par. Not a whisper had yet occurred of any proceedings of the British government with regard to the bad blood arising between France and the emperor of Germany. Not till August was the British ambassador recalled from Paris; not till the ensuing January was war proclaimed by England against France. Burns, in short, was entitled, at this particular moment, to make a friendly demonstration towards the French government, without necessarily being presumed to intend a breach of decorum towards his own. It is true we are told that the authorities at Dover intercepted the guns; but we do not know how long it was before they reached that place. In the state of conveyances at that time, it could not be a very short time. If they were not there before the end of April-war having then been proclaimed by the French against the emperor-the British government might feel warranted in stopping the guns, merely from a sense of the impropriety of sending even this small modicum of aid to a power which was arraying itself against one of our allies. Here it must not be supposed that we are unaware that the British court viewed the proceedings of the Legislative Assembly with dislike even so early as February. M. de Perigord-afterwards so well known as Talleyrand-having then come to sound the British ministry as to their sentiments on the possible attack of the French on the emperor's Flemish domains, found himself slighted at the levee, and was passed by the queen in the drawing-room without notice. But these were only premonitory symptoms of what was to follow. The essential fact of the case is, that the minutest daily chronicles of the time bear no trace of an apprehension on the part of the public that we were likely to become the enemies of France.' If

1 A few gleanings from the newspapers of the day will help us to set a right estimate on the act of Burns.

In the summer of 1791, a gentleman of Glasgow had communicated to Lafayette a plan

Burns, then, despatched these guns soon after purchasing them, he may be said at the most to have committed, for a Scottish citizen and public officer, a somewhat eccentric action; but he cannot be accused of an absurd and presumptuous breach of decorum;' nor does it appear that his act was regarded in this light by any person entitled to take notice of his conduct.

One inference hitherto unnoted is to be made from his purchase of the four guns-that he possessed at this time a little spare money. Of this there are other symptoms, as his settling Hill's account for books in December, and his soon after discharging the debt for Fergusson's tombstone. He afterwards made an acknowledgment to his brother Gilbert, that he had incurred some debts in consequence of carelessness about expense on his coming to reside in Dumfries. Thus we see that Burns, when he possessed any money over and above what was immediately required for subsistence, easily allowed it, one way or another, to slip through his hands. The small reversion of his farmingscheme did not probably survive his arrival in Dumfries many months.

An interval of some months elapses, during which we have no letters of Burns, nor any trace of his actions. It seems, however, to have been a cheerful period of his life. He is first found writing in July, on a trivial piece of business, to an Edinburgh musical friend:

TO MR STEPHEN CLARKE, EDINBURG H.

16th July 1792.

Mr Burns begs leave to present his most respectful compliments to Mr Clarke. Mr B. some time ago did himself the honour of writing Mr C. respecting coming out to the country, to give a little musical instruction in a highly respectable family, where Mr C. may have his own terms, and may be as happy as indolence, the devil, and the gout will permit him. Mr B. knows well how Mr C. is engaged with another family; but cannot Mr C. find two or

for artillery carried by horses, and four guns so mounted were in consequence used by his troops with great effect at the battle of Maubeuge, June 9, 1792.

In the latter part of January 1792, a subscription was opened at Glasgow to aid the French in carrying on the war against the emigrant princes, or any foreign power by whom they may be attacked.' In the words of the paragraph: 'It is said that £1200 have already been subscribed.'

In 15th May, it is stated as a report that sixteen sail of the line are to be fitted out; 'but we do not believe it, as we hope our ministry are too prudent to think of involving this nation in any disputes that may arise from the French Revolution.'

three weeks to spare to each of them? Mr B. is deeply impressed with, and awfully conscious of, the high importance of Mr C.'s time, whether in the winged moments of symphonious exhibition, at the keys of harmony, while listening seraphs cease their own less delightful strains; or in the drowsy arms of slumberous Repose, in the arms of his dearly-beloved elbow-chair, where the frowsy but potent power of Indolence circumfuses her vapours round, and sheds her dews on the head of her darling son. But half a line half a meaning from Mr C. would make Mr B. the of mortals.

TO MRS DUNLOP.

ANNAN WATER-FOOT, 22d August 1792. Do not blame me for it, madam-my own conscience, hackneyed and weather-beaten as it is, in watching and reproving my vagaries, follies, indolence, &c., has continued to punish me sufficiently.

Do you think it possible, my dear and honoured friend, that I could be so lost to gratitude for many favours, to esteem for much worth, and to the honest, kind, pleasurable tie of, now old acquaintance, and I hope and am sure of progressive, increasing friendship -as for a single day, not to think of you-to ask the Fates what they are doing and about to do with my much-loved friend and her wide-scattered connections, and to beg of them to be as kind to you and yours as they possibly can?

Apropos !-though how it is apropos I have not leisure to explain -do you know that I am almost in love with an acquaintance of yours? Almost! said I-I am in love, souce over head and ears, deep as the most unfathomable abyss of the boundless ocean!-but the word love, owing to the intermingledoms of the good and the bad, the pure and the impure, in this world, being rather an equivocal term for expressing one's sentiments and sensations, I must do justice to the sacred purity of my attachment. Know, then, that the heart-struck awe; the distant humble approach; the delight we should have in gazing upon and listening to a messenger of Heaven, appearing in all the unspotted purity of his celestial home, among the coarse, polluted, far inferior sons of men, to deliver to them tidings that make their hearts swim in joy, and their imaginations soar in transport-such, so delighting and so pure, were the emotions of my soul on meeting the other day with Miss Lesley Baillie, your neighbour at M [ayfield]. Mr B., with his two daughters, accompanied by Mr H. of G., passing through Dumfries a few days ago, on their way to England, did me the honour of calling on me; on which I took my horse-though, God knows, I could ill spare the time—and accompanied them fourteen or fifteen miles, and dined and spent the day with them. "Twas about nine, I think, when I left them, and riding home, I composed the following ballad,

of which you will probably think you have a dear bargain, as it will cost you another groat of postage. You must know that there

is an old ballad beginning with:

'My bonny Lizzie Baillie,

I'll rowe thee in my plaidie,' &c.

So I parodied it as follows, which is literally the first copy, 'unanointed, unannealed,' as Hamlet says:

BONNY LESLEY.

O saw ye bonny Lesley,

As she gaed owre the Border?
She's gane, like Alexander,

To spread her conquests further.

To see her is to love her,

And love but her for ever;
For nature made her what she is,
And never made anither!

Thou art a queen, fair Lesley,
Thy subjects we, before thee;
Thou art divine, fair Lesley,

The hearts o' men adore thee.

The deil he couldna scaith thee,

Or aught that wad belang thee;
He'd look into thy bonny face,

And say: 'I canna wrang thee !'

The powers aboon will tent thee;
Misfortune sha' na steer thee;
Thou 'rt like themselves sae lovely,
That ill they'll ne'er let near thee.

Return again, fair Lesley,

Return to Caledonie !

That we may brag, we hae a lass

There's nane again sae bonny.'

So much for ballads. I regret that you are gone to the east country, as I am to be in Ayrshire in about a fortnight. This world of ours, notwithstanding it has many good things in it, yet it has ever had this curse-that two or three people, who would be the happier the oftener they met together, are, almost without exception, always so placed as never to meet but once or twice a year, which,

1 Miss Lesley Baillie became Mrs Cumming of Logie, and died in Edinburgh, July 1843.

considering the few years of a man's life, is a very great evil under the sun,' which I do not recollect that Solomon has mentioned in his catalogue of the miseries of man. I hope and believe that there is a state of existence beyond the grave, where the worthy of this life will renew their former intimacies, with this endearing additionthat we meet to part no more.'

'Tell us, ye dead,

Will none of you in pity disclose the secret,

What 'tis you are, and we must shortly be ?'1

A thousand times have I made this apostrophe to the departed sons of men, but not one of them has ever thought fit to answer the question. 'O that some courteous ghost would blab it out!' But it cannot be you and I, my friend, must make the experiment by ourselves and for ourselves. However, I am so convinced that an unshaken faith in the doctrines of religion is not only necessary, by making us better men, but also by making us happier men, that I should take every care that your little godson, and every little creature that shall call me father, shall be taught them.

So ends this heterogeneous letter, written at this wild place of the world, in the intervals of my labour of discharging a vessel of rum from Antigua.

R. B.

TO MR CUNNINGHAM.

DUMFRIES, 10th September 1792. No! I will not attempt an apology. Amid all my hurry of business, grinding the faces of the publican and the sinner on the merciless wheels of the Excise; making ballads, and then drinking and singing them; and, over and above all, the correcting the press-work of two different publications: still, still I might have stolen five minutes to dedicate to one of the first of my friends and fellow-creatures. I might have done, as I do at present, snatched an hour near 'witching-time of night,' and scrawled a page or two. I might have congratulated my friend on his marriage; or I might have thanked the Caledonian Archers for the honour they have done me (though, to do myself justice, I intended to have done both in

1 Blair's Grave.

3

Mr Creech to Mr Cadell, June 13, 1792: 'I enclose a sheet of Burns's Poems, now going on, that you may have the plate in readiness. There will be fifty pages of additional poems to this edition.'

The other work now in the course of being corrected by Burns as it passed through the press, was probably Johnson's Musical Museum.

36 [Married] at Edinburgh (April 13, 1792), Mr Alexander Cunningham, writer, to Miss Agnes Moir, youngest daughter of the late Rev. Henry Moir, minister of the gospel at Auchtertool.'-Scots Magazine.

The diploma sent by this honourable body to the poet is in possession of his son, Major J. G. Burns,