To Dr John Moore
Mauchline, 2nd August 1787
For some months past I have been rambling over the country, partly on account of some little business I have to settle in various places; but of late I have been confined with some lingering complaints originating as I take it in the stomach.—To divert my spirits a little this miserable fog of Ennui, I have taken a whim to give you a history of MYSELF—My name has made a small noise in the country; you have done me the honor to interest yourself very warmly in my behalf; and I think a faithful account of, what character of a man I am, and how I came by that character, may perhaps amuse you in an idle moment.—! will give you an honest narrative, though I know it will be at the expence of frequently being laughted at; for I assure you, Sir, I have, like Solomon whose character, excepting the trifling affair of WISDOM, I sometimes think I resemble, I have, I say, like him “Turned my eyes to behold Madness and Folly;” and like him too, frequently shaken hands with their intoxicating friendship—In the very polite letter Miss Williams did me the honor to write me, she tells me you have got a complaint in your eyes—I pray to God that it may be removed; for considering that lady and you are my common friends, you will probably employ her to read this letter; and then goodnight to that esteem with which she was pleased to honor the Scotch Bard—After you have perused these pages, should you think them trifling and impertinent, I only beg leave to tell you that the poor Author wrote them under some very twitching qualms of conscience, that, perhaps he was doing what he ought not to do: a predicament he has more than once been in before.— I have not the most distant pretensions to what the pyecoated guardians of escutcheons call, A Gentleman. —When at Edinburgh last winter, I got acquainted in the Herald’s Office, and looking through that granary of Honors I there found almost every name in the kingdom; but for me,
“—My ancient but ignoble blood Has crept thro’
Scoundrels ever since the flood’’—
Gules, Purpure, Argent, &c. quite disowned me—My Fathers rented land of the noble Keiths of Marshal, and had the honor to share their fate--I do not use the word, Honor, with any reference to Political principles; loyal and disloyal I take to be merely relative terms in that ancient and formidable court known in this Country by the name of CLUB-LAW—Those who dare welcome Ruin and shake hands with Infamy for what they sincerely believe to be the cause of their God or their King—”Brutus and Cassius are honorable men.”— I mention this circumstance because it threw my father on the world at large; where after many years’ wanderings and sojournings, he pickt up a pretty large quantity of Observation and Experience, to which I am indebted for most of my little pretensions to wisdom—I have met with few who understood “Men, their manners and their ways” “equal to him; but stubborn, ungainly Integrity, and headlong, ungovernable Irrascibility are disqualifying circumstances: consequently I was born a very poor man’s son—For the first six or seven years of my life, my father was gardiner to a worthy gentleman of small estate in the neighbourhood of Ayr.—Had my father continued in that situation, I must have marched off to be one of the little underlings about a farm-house; but it was his dearest wish and prayer to have it in his power to keep his children under his own eye till they could discern between good and evil; so with the assistance of his generous Master my father ventured on a small farm in his estate.—At these years I was by no means a favorite with any body—I was a good deal noted for a retentive memory, a stubborn, sturdy something in my disposition, and an enthusiastic, idiot
—l say idiot piety, because I was then but a child—Though I cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made an excellent English scholar, and against the years of ten or eleven, I was absolutely a Critic in substantives, verbs and particles—In my infant and boyish days too, I owed much to an old Maid of my Mother’s, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity and superstition—She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the county of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, inchanted towers, dragons and other trumpery—This cultivated the latent seeds of Poesy; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical in these matters than I, yet it often takes an effort of Philosophy to shake off these idle terrors—The earliest thing of Composition that I recollect taking pleasure in was, The vision of Mirza and a hymn of Addison’s beginning—’ ‘How are Thy servants blest, 0 Lordl” I particularly remember one half-stanza which was music to my boyish ear— “For though in dreadful whirls we hung,
“High on the broken wave”— I met with these pieces in Masson’s English Collection, one of my
school-books.— The two first books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read again, were, the life of Hannibal and the history of Sir William Wallace.— Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bagpipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice in my veins which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest—Polemical divinity about this time was putting the country half-mad; and I, ambitious of shining in conversation parties on sundays between sermons, funerals, &c. used in a few years more to puzzle Calvinism with so much heat and indiscretion that I raised a hue and cry of heresy against me which has not ceased to this hour.— My vicinity to Ayr was of great advantage to me—My social
disposition, when not checked by some modification of spired pride, like our catechism definition of Infinitude, was “without bounds or limits.”—l formed many connections with other Youngkers who possessed superiour advantages; the youngling Actors who were busy with the rehearsal of PARTS in which they were shortly to appear on that STAGE where, Alas! I was destined to druge behind the SCENES—It is not commonly at these green years that the young Noblesse and Gentry have a just sense of the immense distance between them and their ragged Playfellows.—lt takes a few dashes into the world to give the young Great man that proper, decent, unnoticing disregard for the poor, insignificant, stupid devils, the mechanics and peasantry around him; who perhaps were born in the same village—My young Superiours never insulted the clouterly appearance of my ploughboy carcase, the two extremes of which were often exposed to all the inclemencies of all the seasons—They would give me stray volumes of books; among them, even then, I could pick up some observations; and ONE, whose heart I am sure not even the MUNNY BEGUM’S scenes have tainted, helped me to a little French—Parting with these, my young friends and benefactors, as they dropped off for the east or west Indies, was often to me a sore affliction; but I was soon called to more serious evils—My father’s generous Master died; the farm proved a ruinous bargain; and, to clench the curse, we fell into the hands of a Factor who sat for the picture I have drawn of one in my Tale of two dogs—My father was advanced in life when he married; I was the eldest of seven children; and he, worn out by early hardship, was unfit for labour—My father’s spirit was soon irritated, but not easily broken.
—There was a freedom in his lease in two years more, and to weather these two years we retrenched expences.—We lived very poorly; I was a dextrous Ploughman for my years; and the next eldest to me was a brother, who could drive the plough very well and help me to thrash—A Novel-Writer might perhaps have viewed these scenes with some satisfaction, but so did not I: My indignation yet boils at the recollection of the scoundrel tyrant’s insolent, threatening epistles, which used to set us all in tears.— This kind of life, the chearless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave, brought me to my sixteenth year; a little before which period I first committed the sin of RHYME—You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together as Partners in the labors of Harvest—In my fifteenth autumn, my Partner was a bewitching creature who just counted an autumn less.
—My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language; but you know the Scotch idiom, She was a bonie, sweet, sonsie lass—In short, she altogether unwittingly to herself, initiated me in a certain delicious Passion, which in spite of acid Disappointment, gin-horse Prudence and bookworm Philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest pleasure here below.— How she caught the contagion I can’t say; you medical folks talk much of infection by breathing the same air, the touch, &c. but I never expressly told her that I loved her—Indeed I did not well know myself, why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like an Eolian harp; and particularly, why my pulse beat such a furious ratann when I looked and fingered over her hand, to pick out the nettle-stings and thistles.—Among her other love-inspiring qualifications, she sung sweetly; and ‘twas her favorite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme—I was not so presumtive as to imagine that I could make verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin; but my girl sung a song which was said to be composed by a small country laird’s son, on one of his father’s maids, with whom he was in love; and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he, for excepting smearing sheep and casting peats, his father living in the moors, he had no more Scholarcraft than I had.— Thus with me began Love and Poesy; which at times have been my
only, and till within this last twelvemonth have been my highest enjoyment.—My father struggled on till he reached the freedom in his lease, when he entered on a larger farm about ten miles farther in the country—The nature of the bargain was such as to throw a little ready money in his hand at the commencement, otherwise the affair would have been impractible.—For four years we lived comfortably here; but a lawsuit between him and his Landlord commencing, after three years tossing and whirling in the vortex of Litigation, my father was just saved from absorption in a jail by phthisical consumption, which after two years promises, kindly stept in and snatch’d him away—”To where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary beat rest.”—
It is during this climacterick that my little story is most eventful—I was, at the beginning of this period, perhaps the most ungainly, aukward being in the parish—No Solitaire was less acquainted with the ways of the world.—My knowledge of ancient story was gathered from Salmon’s and Guthrie’s geographical grammars; my knowledge of modern manners, and of literature and criticism, I got from the Spectator.—These, with Pope’s works, some plays of Shakespear, Tull and Dickson on Agriculture, The Pantheon, Locke’s Essay on the human understanding, Stackhouse’s history of the bible, Justice’s British Gardiner’s directory, Boyle’s lectures, Allan Ramsay’s works, Taylor’s scripture doctrine of original sin, a select Collection of English songs, and Hervey’s meditations had been the extent of my reading. —The Collection of Songs was my vade mecum.—l pored over them, driving my cart or walking to labor, song by song, verse by verse; carefully noting the true tender or sublime from affectation and fustian—I am convinced I owe much to this for my critic-craft such as it is.— In my seventeenth year, to give my manners a brush, I went to a country dancing school—My father had an unaccountable antipathy against these meetings; and my going was, what to this hour I repent, in absolute defiance of his commands—My father, as I said before, was the sport of strong passions: from that instance of rebellion he took a kind of dislike to me, which, I believe was one cause of that dissipation which marked my future years—I only say, Dissipation, comparative with the strictness and sobriety of Presbyterean country life; for through the will-o’-wisp meteors of thoughtless Whim were almost the sole lights of my path, yet early ingrained Piety and Virtue never failed to point me out the line of Innocence—The great misfortune of my life was, never to have AN AIM—I had felt early some stirrings of Ambition, but they were the blind gropings of Homer’s Cyclops round the walls of his cave: I saw my father’s situation entailed on me perpetual labor—The only two doors by which I could enter the fields of fortune were, the most niggardly economy, or the little chicaning art of bargain-making: the first is so contracted an aperture, I never could squeeze myself into it; the last, I always hated the contamination of the threshold—Thus, abandoned of aim or view in life; with a strong appetite for sociability, as well from native hilarity as from a pride of observation and remark; a constitutional hypochondriac taint which made me fly solitude; add to all these incentives to social life, my reputation for bookish knowledge, a certain wild, logical talent, and a strength of thought something like the rudiments of good sense, made me generally a welcome guest; so ‘tis no great wonder that always “where two or three were met together, there was I in the midst of them”—But far beyond all the other impulses of my heart was, un penchant I l’adorable moitife du genre humain.—My heart was compleatly tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some Goddess or other; and like every warfare in this world, I was sometimes crowned with success, and sometimes mortified with defeat.—At the plough, scythe or reap-hook I feared no competitor, and set Want at defiance: and as I never cared farther for my labors than while I was in actual exercise, I spent the evening in the way after my own heart.
—A country lad rarely carries on an amour without an assisting confident—I possessed a curiosity, zeal and intrepid dexterity in these matters which recommended me a proper Second in duels of that kind; and I dare say, I felt as much pleasure at being in the secret of half the amours in the parish, as ever did Premier at knowing the intrigues of half the courts of Europe.— The very goosefeather in my hand seems instinctively to know thewell-worn path of my imagination, the favorite theme of my song; and is with difficulty restrained from giving you a couple of paragraphs on the amours of my Compeers, the humble Inmates of the farm-house and cottage; hut the grave sons of Science, Ambition or Avarice baptize these things by the name of Follies—To the sons and daughters of labor and poverty they are matters of the most serious nature: to them, the ardent hope, the stolen interview, the tender farewell, are the greatest and most delicious part of their enjoyments.— Another circumstance in my life which made very considerable alterations in my mind and manners was, I spent my seventeenth summer on a smuggling coast a good distance from home, at a noted school, to learn Mensuration, Surveying, Dialling, &c. in which I made a pretty good progress—But I made greater progress in the knowledge of mankind—The contraband trade was at that time very successful; scenes of swaggering riot and roaring dissipation were as yet new to me; and I was no enemy to social life—Here, though I learned to look unconcernedly on a large tavern-bill, and mix without fear in a drunken squabble, yet I went on with a high hand in my Geometry; till the sun entered Virgo, a month which is always a carnival in my bosom, a charming Fillette who lived next door to the school overset my Trigonometry and set me off in a tangent from the sphere of my studies—I struggled on with my Sines and Co-sines for a few days more; but stepping out to the garden one charming noon, to take the sun’s altitude, I met with my Angel,
—“Like Proserpine gathering flowers,
“Herself a fairer flower”—
It was vain to think of doing any more good at school—The remaining week I staid, I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet with her; and the two last nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, I was innocent.— I returned home very considerably improved—My reading was
enlarged with the very important addition of Thomson’s and Shenstone’s works; I had seen mankind in a new phasis; and I engaged several of my schoolfellows to keep up a literary correspondence with me.—This last helped me much on in composition—I had met with a collection of letters by the Wits of Queen Ann’s reign, and I pored over them most devoutly—I kept copies of any of my own letters that pleased. me, and a comparison between them and the composition of most of my correspondents flattered my vanity—I carried this whim so far that though I had not three farthings worth of business in the world, yet every post brought me as many letters as if I had been a broad, plodding son of Day-book & Ledger.— My life flowed on much in the same tenor till my twenty third year.
—Vive l’amour et vive Ia bagatelle, were my sole principles of action.
—The addition of two more Authors to my library gave me great pleasure; Sterne and Mckenzie.—Tristram Shandy and the Man of Feeling were my bosom favorites—Poesy was still a darling walk for my mind, but ‘twas only the humour of the hour—I had usually half a dozen or more pieces on hand; I took up one or other as it suited the momentary tone of this mind, and dismissed it as it bordered on fatigue—My Passions when once they were lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they got vent in rhyme; and then conning over my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet—None of the rhymes of those days are in print, except, Winter, a dirge, the eldest of my printed pieces; The death of Poor Mailie, John Barleycorn, And songs first, second and third: song second was the ebullition of that passion which ended the forementioned school-business.— My twenty third year was to me an important era—Partly thro’whim, and partly that I wished to set about doing something in life, I joined with a flax-dresser in a neighbouring town, to learn his trade and carry on the business of manufacturing and retailing flax—This
turned out a sadly unlucky affair—My Partner was a scoundrel of the first water who made money by the mystery of thieving; and to finish the whole, while we were given a welcoming carousal to the New year, our shop, by the drunken carelessness of my Partner’s wife, took fire and was burnt to ashes; and left me like a true Poet, not worth sixpence.—l was oblidged to give up business; the clouds of misfortune were gathering thick round my father’s head, the darkest of which was, he was visibly far gone in a consumption; and to crown all, a belle-fille whom I adored and who had pledged her soul to meet me in the field of matrimony, jilted me with peculiar circumstances of mortification—The finishing evil that brought up the rear of this infernal file was my hypochondriac complaint being irritated to such a degree, that for three months I was in diseased state of body and mind, scarcely to be envied by the hopeless wretches who have just got their mittimus, ‘Depart from me, ye Cursed.” — From this adventure I learned something of a town-life.- But the principal thing which gave my mind a turn was, I formed a bosom-friendship with a young fellow, the first created being I had ever seen, but a hapless son of misfortune—He was the son of a plain mechanic; but a great Man in the neighbourhood taking him under his patronage gave him a genteel education with a view to bettering his situation in life—The Patron dieing just as he was ready to launch forth into the world, the poor fellow in despair went to sea; where after a variety of good and bad fortune, a little before I was acquainted with him, he had been set ashore by an American Privateer on the wild coast of Connaught, stript ot every thing--I cannot quit this poor fellow’s story without adding that he is at this moment Captain of a large westindian man belonging to the Thames.— This gentleman’s mind was fraught with courage, independance, Magnanimity, and every noble, manly virtue—I loved him, I admired him, to a degree of enthusiasm; and I strove to imitate him—In some measure I succeeded; I had the pride before, but he taught it to flow in proper channels—His knowledge of the world was vastly superiour to mine, and I was all attention to learn—lie was the only man I ever saw who was a greater fool than myself when WOMAN was the presiding star; but he spoke of a certain fashionable failing with levity, which hitherto I had regarded with horror.—Here his friendship did me a mischief; and the consequence was, that soon after I resumed the plough, I wrote the WELCOME inclosed.—My reading was only encreased by two stray volumes of Pamela, and one of Ferdinand Count Fathom, which gave me some idea of Novels.— Rhyme, except some religious pieces which are in print, I had given up; but meeting with Fergusson’s Scotch Poems, I strung anew my wildly-sounding, rustic lyre with emulating vigour.—When my father died, his all went among the rapacious hell-hounds that growl in the kennel of justice; but we made a shift to scrape a little money in the family amongst us, with which, to keep us together, my brother and I took a neighbouring farm—My brother wanted my harebrained imagination as well as my social and amorous madness, but in good sense and every sober qualification he was far my superiour.—
I entered on this farm with a full resolution, “Come, go to, I will be wise!’’ —l read farming books; I calculated crops; I attended markets; and in short, in spite of “The devil, the world and the flesh,” I believe I would have been a wise man; but the first year from unfortunately buying in bad seed, the second from a late harvest, we lost half of both our crops; this overset all my wisdom, and I returned “Like the dog to his vomit, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire _“
I now began to be known in the neighbourhood as a maker of rhymes—The first of my poetic offspring that saw the light was a burlesque lamentation on a quarrel between two reverend Calvinists, both of them dramatis personae in my Holy Fair—I had an idea myself that the piece had some merit; but to prevent the worst, I gave a copy -of it to a friend who was very fond of these things, and told him I could not guess who was the Author of it, but that I thought it pretty clever—With a certain side of both clergy and laity it met with a roar of applause—Holy Willie’s Prayer next made its appearance, and alarmed the kirk-Session so’much that they held three several meetings to look over their holy artillery, if any of it was pointed against profane Rhymers—Unluckily for me, my idle wanderings led me, on another side, point blank within the reach of their heaviest metal—This is the unfortunate story alluded to in my printed poem, The Lament.—’Twas a shocking affair, which I cannot yet bear to recollect; and had very nearly given me one or two of the principal qualifications for the place among those who have lost the chart and mistake the reckoning of Rationality—I gave up my part of the farm to my brother, as in truth it was only nominally mine; and made what little preparation was in my power for Jamaica. Before leaving my native country for ever, I resolved to publish my Poems—I weighed my productions as impartially as in my power; I thought they had merit; and ‘twas a delicious idea that 1 would be called a clever fellow, even though it should never reach my ears a poor Negro-driver, or perhaps a victim to that inhospitable clime gone to the world of Spirits—I can truly say that pauvre Inconnu as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high an idea of myself and my works as I have at this moment—It is ever my opinion that the great, unhappy mistakes and blunders, both in a rational and religious point of view, of which we see thousands daily guilty, are owing to their ignorance, or mistaken notions of themselves—To know myself had been all along my constant study—I weighed myself alone - 1 balanced myself with others; I watched every means of information how much ground I occupied both as a Man and as a Poet: 1 studied assiduously Nature’s DESIGN where she seem’d to have intended the various LIGHTS and SHADES in my character—I was pretty sure my Poems would meet with some applause; but at the worst, the roar of the Atlantic would deafen the voice of Censure, and the novelty of west-Indian scenes make me forget Neglect.— I threw off six hundred copies, of which I had got subscriptions for about three hundred and fifty.—My vanity was- highly gratified by the reception I met with from the Publick; besides pocketing, all expences deducted, near twenty pounds.—This last came very
seasonable, as I was about to indent myself for want of money to pay my freight.- So soon as 1 was master of nine guineas, the price of wafting me to the torrid zone, I bespoke a passage in the very first ship that was to sail, for
“Hungry ruin had me in the wind”—
I had for some time been sculking from covert to covert under all the terrors of a Jail; as some ill-advised, ungrateful people had uncoupled the merciless-legal Pack at my heels.— I had taken the last farewel of my few friends; my chest was on the road to Greenock; I had composed my last song I should ever measure in Caledonia. “The gloomy night is gathering fast,” when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes by rousing my poetic ambition—The Doctor belonged to a set of Critics for whose applause I had not even dared to hope—His idea that I would meet with every encouragement for a second edition fired me so much that away I posted to Edinburgh without a single acquaintance in town, or a single letter of introduction in my pocket—The baneful Star that had so long shed its blasting influence in my Zenith, for once made a revolution to the Nadir; and the providential care of a good God placed me under the patronage of one of his noblest creatures, the Earl of Glencairn: “Oublie moi, Grand Dieu, si jamais je l’oublie!”— I need relate no farther—At Edinburgh I was in a new world: I mingled among many classes of men, but all of them new to me and I was all attention “to catch the manners living as they rise.”—1’
You can now, Sir, form a pretty near guess what sort of a Wight he is whom for some time you have honored with your correspondence.— That Fancy & Whim, keen Sensibility and riotous Passions may still make him zig-zag in his future path of life, is far from being improbable; but come what will, I shall answer for him the most determinate integrity and honor; and though his evil star should again blaze in his meridian with tenfold more direful influence, he may reluctantly tax Friendship with Pity but no more.— My most respectful Compliments to Miss Williams—Her very elegant and friendly letter I cannot answer at present, as my presence is requisite in Edinburgh, and I set off tomorrow.— If you will oblidge me so highly and do me so much honor as now and then to drop me a letter, Please direct to me at Mauchline, Ayrshire.—
I have the honor to be, Sir
your ever grateful humble servant
Robt Burns
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