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BURNS' CLARINDA 
 
 Brtet papers concetnino tbe poet's 
 IRenowneD Correspondent 
 
 COMPILED BY 
 
 JOHN D.'ROSS, LL.D., 
 
 Author of ''Scottish Poets in America,'' ''A Cluster of Poets,'' etc., etc. 
 
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 THE OFFICERS AND MExMBERS OF 
 
 THE EDINBURGH BURNS CLUB 
 
 BY 
 
 A SCOT ABROAD WHO IS PROUD OF HIS BEING A 
 
 NATIVE OF THEIR ILLUSTRIOUS CITY. 
 
 rOHN D. ROSS. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 One of the most pleasing results of the spread 
 of the Burns cult is the painstaking manner in 
 which the lives and characters of most of those 
 who had any influence in shaping his career 
 have been investigated and made clear to us. 
 Even the lives of those who have been merely 
 casually mentioned in his writings have been 
 made the object of careful study, until now the 
 student of the poet's earthly journey, and of the 
 magnificent legacy he bequeathed to Scotland 
 and the world, not only understands what manner 
 of man he was, but is able to estimate the 
 value to him of his mission to the men — and 
 the women — with whom he associated in all the 
 varied phases of his brief but memorable career. 
 
 As a result of all this scrutiny and investiga- 
 tion, which may be said to have started as the 
 echoes of the birthday centennial of 1859 began 
 
Vlll 
 
 Preface. 
 
 to die away, we know much better than Burns 
 students did before that year the character of 
 the people to whom our country's poet gave his 
 friendship, his respect, his admiration, and his 
 love. Some have suffered in the fierce light 
 which editors and commentators, anxious to 
 present to the world something new, have 
 brought to bear upon lives which, but for his 
 eminence, would long since have passed into 
 such utter forgetfulness as not to leave even a 
 memory behind. We do not, for instance, think 
 so pleasantly now of William Nicol as we did 
 when we simply knew him as the brewer of that 
 "peck o' maut" which still enlivens many a 
 brewing all over the world ; and we have a 
 higher regard, now that we have learned more 
 about him, for the memory of John Wilson, 
 Session Clerk of Tarbolton and afterward school- 
 master in Glasgow, than we did when we knew 
 him only as the subject of that merciless satire, 
 " Death and Dr Hornbook." 
 
 So too with the women who were his 
 charmers, his friends, his advisers. Year by 
 year the fitness of Bonnie Jean to be his 
 life companion has been more acknowledged, 
 while the halo of romance with which he has 
 
Preface. ix 
 
 invested her memory makes her, as the seasons 
 roll, take a higher and tenderer place in our 
 national literature as an inspirer of song, a 
 heroine of poetry. So too, possibly in a more 
 marked degree, has been the development of the 
 reverence for the memory of " Highland Mary," 
 which found its most recent public expression in 
 the statue erected last year at Dunoon. 
 
 The present volume deals with another of the 
 loves of Burns — the hapless Clarinda. It is safe 
 to say that the memory of this gifted but un- 
 fortunate woman is held in high esteem for her 
 genuine worth more than it was forty years ago. 
 Then it was clouded, because people did not 
 understand, did not have the means of under- 
 standing, her character, her career, or the story 
 of her innocent intimacy with the poet. Since 
 then her life-story has been searched, been 
 weighed, been commented on ; the closest 
 scrutiny has been bestowed on her actions, her 
 words, her writings, and the most scalpel-like 
 dissection has been made even of her thoughts 
 as far as they have become recoverable. Out of 
 all this she has emerged without a stain, with 
 the early cloud rolled away, and with, as her 
 only weakness, an acknowledged love for the 
 b 
 
X Preface. 
 
 poet in preference for the heartless scamp who 
 wrecked her life. She once hoped that she 
 might in time be united to the poet, but she 
 never forgot that she was a wedded wife. To 
 her faithless husband she remained loyal, to her 
 children she was a model mother, and to the 
 end of her long life's journey she enjoyed the 
 respect of her wide circle of devoted friends. 
 
 This is brought out very clearly in the present 
 volume, in which the story of her career is told 
 by various writers, and the various incidents in 
 that career — notably of course the " Burns 
 incident" as it has been called — more or less 
 critically analysed. The volume is in reality a 
 tribute to the memory of Clarinda. It could 
 have been made much larger, its size could have 
 been swelled with ease to more stately propor- 
 tions, but enough has been presented, I think, 
 to demonstrate that among the heroines of 
 Burns, Agnes M'Lehose is not the least de- 
 serving of honour as an honest, a beautiful, and 
 a gifted woman. 
 
 JOHN D. ROSS. 
 
 New York, 
 25/// January 1897. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Memoir of Mrs M'Lehose, by her Grand- 
 son, W. C. M'Lehose . . . i 
 
 Letters to Mrs M'Lehose - - - 37 
 
 Notes on the Clarinda Correspondence, 
 
 BY John Muir, F.S.A. Scot. - - - i33 
 
 Glimpse of Clarinda, by James Adams, M.D., 
 
 Glasgow - - - - - i37 
 
 The Real Clarinda, by Peter Ross, LL.D. 
 
 (Author of " The Scot in America ") - - i6o 
 
 A Tribute, by Prof. John Stuart Blackie - i8i 
 
 All About Clarinda, by Robert Ford - i88 
 
 Clarinda, by Rev. J. C. Higgins, A.M., B.D. - 200 
 
 A Brief Sketch, by Principal Shairp - 207 
 
 Views Concerning Clarinda, by Rev. Dr 
 
 P. Hately Waddell - - - 211 
 
N 
 
 xii Co7itents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Visit to Clarinda - - - - 219 
 
 Clarinda in Old Age - - - - 223 
 
 The Original Portrait of Clarinda - 225 
 
 Clarinda and Sylvander, by Alex. Smith - 227 
 
 How I Lost the Opportunity of Meeting 
 
 Burns' Clarinda, by Thomas C. Latto - 231 
 
 Burns and Clarinda, by Rev. A. J. Lockhart 236 
 
 The Poet's Immortal Wreath for Clarinda 241 
 
MEMOIR OF MRS M^LEHOSE. 
 
 BY HER Grandson, 
 
 W. C. M'LEHOSE. 
 
Memoir of Mrs M'Lehose. 
 
 BY 
 
 Her Grandson, W. C. M'Lehose. 
 
 Mrs M'Lehose, whose maiden name was 
 Agnes Craig, was born in Glasgow in April 1759. 
 She was the daughter of Mr Andrew Craig, 
 surgeon in that city — a gentleman of a good 
 family. His brother was the Rev. William 
 Craig, one of the ministers of Glasgow, and 
 father of Lord Craig, a judge of the Court of 
 Session. The mother of Mrs M'Lehose was a 
 daughter of the Rev. John M'Laurin, minister of 
 Luss, and afterwards of St David's, Glasgow. 
 He was a brother of Colin M'Laurin, the cele- 
 brated mathematician and friend of Sir Isaac 
 Newton. Of the early years of Agnes Craig 
 but little is recorded. She was so delicate in 
 infancy that it was hardly expected she would 
 survive childhood. Yet of the four daughters 
 and a son she alone reached old age : all died 
 in childhood except her sister Margaret, who, at 
 
4 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 the age of nineteen, became the wife of Captain 
 Kennedy of Kailzie, and died about a year 
 afterwards. The education of Agnes Craig was 
 very incomplete, as all female education was 
 at that period, compared with the numerous 
 advantages possessed by young people of both 
 sexes in the present day. All the education 
 bestowed upon her was some very imperfect in- 
 struction in English grammar, and that laborious 
 idleness called sampler-work ; even spelling was 
 much neglected. The disadvantages attending 
 such an education she afterwards fully perceived, 
 and partially remedied at a period of life when 
 many women neglect the attainments previously 
 acquired, and but few persevere in the cultivation 
 of further knowledge. 
 
 Agnes lost her mother when she was only 
 eight years old ; and her only surviving sister, 
 Mrs Kennedy, dying about five years afterwards, 
 she was deprived of that compensation for a 
 mother's invaluable influence and superintend- 
 ence which might have been derived from an 
 elder sister's counsels. Her mother's instruc- 
 tions, however, were not lost upon her ; for 
 many years afterwards she referred with heart- 
 felt gratitude to the benefit she derived from 
 
Memoir. 5 
 
 the religious principles instilled into her by her 
 "sainted mother." 
 
 Henceforward, till her marriage, she lived 
 with the father — except that, for half a year, 
 when fifteen years old, she was sent to an 
 Edinburgh boarding - school — a practice ap- 
 parently prevalent in those days as well as 
 now — to finish that education which could not 
 be said to have been properly begun, and had 
 no solid foundation. This circumstance origi- 
 nated an acquaintance which ended in her 
 marriage. Even at this early age she was 
 considered one of the beauties of Glasgow, and 
 was styled " the pretty Miss Nancy." Mr James 
 M'Lehose, a young man of respectable con- 
 nections, and a law agent in that city, had 
 been disappointed in getting introduced to her ; 
 and when he learned that she was going to 
 Edinburgh, he engaged all the seats in the 
 stage-coach, excepting the one taken for her. 
 At that period the coach took the whole day 
 to perform the journey between the two cities, 
 stopping a considerable time for dinner on the 
 road, which thus afforded Mr M'Lehose an 
 excellent opportunity of making himself agree- 
 able — an opportunity which he took the utmost 
 
6 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 pains to improve, and with success, being pos- 
 sessed of an agreeable and attractive person, 
 and most insinuating manners. His deficiency 
 of sound principle was hidden from general 
 observation by great plausibility. After the 
 return of " the pretty Miss Nancy " to Glasgow, 
 Mr M'Lehose followed up the acquaintance thus 
 commenced by paying her the most assiduous 
 attention, and thus succeeded in winning her 
 affections. Being young and inexperienced, 
 deprived of the counsels of a mother and sister, 
 and attached to one whom she thought possessed 
 of every virtue, and who had shown so decided 
 a partiality to her in a manner peculiarly calcu- 
 lated to please a romantic mind, she favourably 
 received his addresses. 
 
 In this she was not encouraged by her friends, 
 who thought that her beauty, talents, and con- 
 nections entitled her to a superior match. How- 
 ever, she became Mrs M'Lehose in July 1776, 
 being then only seventeen years of age, and her 
 husband five years her senior. Their union, she 
 always stated, was the result of disinterested 
 affection on both sides. But this connection 
 proved the bane of her happiness and the 
 source of all her misfortunes. Married at so 
 
Memoir. y 
 
 early an age, before the vivacity of youth was 
 passed, and indeed before it was fully developed, 
 possessed of considerable personal attractions, a 
 ready flow of wit, a keen relish for society, in 
 which her conversational powers fitted her to 
 excel, and a strong love of admiration, she 
 appears to have displeased her husband because 
 she could not at once forego those enjoyments 
 so natural to her time of life and situation. 
 And he, without any cause, seems to have con- 
 ceived the most unworthy jealousy, which led 
 him to treat her with a severity most injudicious, 
 and to one of her disposition, productive of the 
 worst consequences. 
 
 She soon discovered the mistaken estimate 
 she formed of her husband's character ; and 
 being of a high sanguine spirit, could ill brook 
 the unmerited bad treatment she had received. 
 To use her own words, in a statement which 
 she afterwards made for the advice of her 
 friends — " Only a short time had elapsed ere 
 I perceived, with inexpressible regret, that our 
 dispositions, tempers, and sentiments were so 
 totally different as to banish all hopes of happi- 
 ness. Our disagreements rose to such a height, 
 and my husband's treatment was so harsh, that 
 
8 Burns* Clarinda. 
 
 it was thought advisable by my friends a 
 separation should take place, which accordingly 
 followed in December 1780." 
 
 Mrs M'Lehose had at this period only two 
 children living, having lost her first-born. A 
 fourth was born a few months after this separa- 
 tion. Soon after this event her husband took 
 her infant children away from her, in the hopes 
 of thereby working on her maternal feelings, 
 and forcing a reunion, which she firmly refused, 
 being convinced that they could not live happily 
 together. She parted with her children with 
 extreme reluctance, her father being both able 
 and willing to maintain her and them ; while 
 her husband had neglected his business, and 
 entered into every species of dissipation, so that 
 he became unable to maintain his children, and 
 they were distributed among his relations — the 
 youngest infant being, as soon as possible, re- 
 moved from the tender care of his mother, and 
 committed to the charge of a hireling nurse. 
 He even prohibited her from seeing the children, 
 to whom he knew she was devotedly attached. 
 It required the utmost fortitude on her part to 
 bear this cruel deprivation, but by enduring 
 jt she rendered her husband's cruel attempts 
 
Memoir. 9 
 
 abortive. All the children died young, except 
 the late A. C. M'Lehose, W.S. 
 
 Immediately after the separation, she had re- 
 turned to her father's house with her children, 
 where she remained till his death, in the year 
 1782, two years afterwards. He judiciously left 
 his property to be invested in an annuity for 
 her behoof, entirely independent of her hus- 
 band, and beyond his control ; and feeling it 
 unpleasant to remain in the same city with her 
 husband and his relations, and yet in a state 
 of alienation, Mrs M'Lehose, by the advice of 
 her friends, removed to Edinburgh in the same 
 year, 1782. 
 
 Her husband followed her soon after, on his 
 way to London, having formed an intention of 
 going abroad. He solicited an interview in 
 these terms : " Early to-morrow morning I leave 
 this country for ever, and therefore wish much 
 to pass one quarter of an hour with you. Upon 
 my word of honour, my dearest Nancy, it is 
 the last night you probably will ever have an 
 opportunity of seeing me in this world." This 
 appeal she refused for the following reasons : 
 " I consulted my friends : they advised me 
 against seeing him ; and as I thought it could 
 
10 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 be productive of no good, I declined the inter- 
 view." The treatment she received from her 
 husband while living with him must have been 
 bad indeed to make one of her forgiving dis- 
 position so unyielding, and he seems to have 
 been not altogether insensible to his misconduct, 
 for two years later, and just previous to going 
 abroad, he wrote to his wife : " For my own 
 part, I am willing to forget what is past ; neither 
 do I require any apology from you ; for I am 
 heartily sorry for those instances of my behaviour 
 to you which caused our separation. Were it 
 possible to recall them, they should never be 
 repeated." These feelings may have been sin- 
 cere at the moment, but they had no depth or 
 endurance. 
 
 Soon after Mr M'Lehose went to London, in 
 the year 1782 he wrote his wife a very reproachful 
 letter, stating his intention of going abroad, and 
 bidding her take her children home to her. In 
 this letter he observed : " The sooner you return 
 to Glasgow the better, and take under your care 
 and protection those endearing pledges of our 
 once-happier days, as none of my friends will 
 have anything to do with them." After speaking 
 of his prospects of employment, he added : " Yet 
 
Memoir. 1 1 
 
 still, however remote my residence may be from 
 you and those endearing infants, God forbid that 
 I should be so destitute of natural affection for 
 them, as to permit you or them, in the smallest 
 degree, to be burdensome to any of your friends. 
 On the contrary, I shall at all times observe the 
 strictest economy, and exert myself to the utter- 
 most, so that I may be enabled to contribute to 
 your ease and happiness." 
 
 It will be seen in the sequel how this fair 
 promise was observed. The truth is that as he 
 could not prevail on his wife to live with him, 
 even by depriving her of her children, to whom 
 she was tenderly attached, and his relations 
 would no longer support him in his idleness, 
 or his children for his sake, their sympathy for 
 him being blunted, if not deadened, by his mis- 
 conduct, he thus contrived to throw the burden 
 of them on his young wife, whose patrimonial 
 income was very limited. Her situation at this 
 trying period is thus related : " The income left 
 me by my father being barely sufficient to board 
 myself, I was now distressed how to support 
 my three infants. With my spirits sunk in 
 deep dejection, I went to Glasgow to see them. 
 I found arrears due for their board. This I 
 
12 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 paid ; and the goodness of some worthy gentle- 
 men in Glasgow procuring me a small annuity 
 from the writers, and one from the surgeons, 
 I again set out for Edinburgh with them in 
 August 1782 ; and by the strictest economy, 
 made my little income go as far as possible. 
 The deficiency was always supplied by some 
 worthy benevolent friends, whose kindness no 
 time can erase from my grateful heart." 
 
 When Mrs M'Lehose settled in Edinburgh 
 in 1782, though comparatively a stranger, her 
 youth, beauty, and misfortunes, and above all, 
 her exemplary conduct, procured for her the 
 friendship, not only of her own relations, but of 
 many respectable families, till then unknown to 
 her, from whom she received many substantial 
 proofs of kindness. Thus, though deprived of 
 his assistance to whom she had the most sacred 
 claim, she had much reason to bless God for 
 His goodness in raising up so many friends. 
 Among these friends, Lord Craig, her cousin- 
 german, then an advocate at the Scottish bar, 
 is particularly deserving of mention. He be- 
 friended her from her first arrival in Edinburgh, 
 and continued, during his life, her greatest 
 benefactor. Mrs M'Lehose consulted him on 
 
Memoir. 1 3 
 
 all occasions of difficulty ; and when deprived 
 of the annuities from Glasgow, soon after her 
 husband settled in Jamaica, on account of his 
 ability to maintain his children himself, Lord 
 Craig generously continued them, and made up 
 the deficiencies of her income. At his death 
 he left her an annuity, and made her son 
 residuary legatee. Besides these substantial 
 acts of kindness, she enjoyed his friendship, 
 and was a frequent visitor at his house, where 
 the best literary society of Edinburgh used to 
 assemble. During Mrs M'Lehose's early resi- 
 dence in Edinburgh, when she had not joined 
 that social circle of which she soon became an 
 ornament, she devoted much time and attention 
 to remedying the defects of her early educa- 
 tion. She improved her taste by the study of 
 the best English authors, and became profi- 
 cient in English composition. Possessed of a 
 most retentive memory, she often quoted aptly 
 from those authors, both in conversation and in 
 her correspondence, which afterwards became 
 extensive, and in which she excelled. It is to 
 be regretted that so little of that correspond- 
 ence has been preserved ; but Mrs M'Lehose 
 having survived nearly all the friends of her 
 
14 Biirns^ Clarinda. 
 
 early life, applications made in quarters where it 
 was supposed her letters might have been pre- 
 served, have been unsuccessful. 
 
 It was at this period also that Mrs M'Lehose 
 began cultivating the Muses. She produced 
 many short poetical effusions, a few of which have 
 been preserved. Her earliest composition was 
 an " Address to a Blackbird," which she heard 
 singing on a tree near her residence, in the 
 neighbourhood of a spot where St Margaret's 
 Convent has since been placed. The ideas, 
 she stated, came into her mind like inspiration. 
 
 In the rearing and education of her children 
 she took great delight ; and the society of the 
 many friends she acquired yielded her constant 
 enjoyment for a long series of years, until the 
 progress of time thinned their ranks, and in- 
 creasing years and infirmities made her, in some 
 degree, willing to relinquish social intercourse, 
 of which she was so fond, for the retirement 
 befitting old age. Among the literary men 
 who used to visit her, Thomas Campbell, who 
 was then prosecuting his studies at the Univer- 
 sity ; the amiable Graham, the author of " The 
 Sabbath " ; James Gray, author of " Cuna of 
 Cheyd," and "The Sabbath among the Moun- 
 
Memoir. 1 5 
 
 tains " ; and Robert Ainslie, the friend of Burns, 
 author of various religious works addressed to 
 the young, and of a series of political letters, 
 may be enumerated. This gentleman proved 
 throughout life a warm and steady friend. He 
 was an original visitor at Mrs M'Lehose's New 
 Year parties, which were kept up for about 
 forty years, and are still remembered by several 
 of the younger guests for their great convivi- 
 ality, to which the liveliness and vivacity of the 
 hostess greatly contributed. 
 
 Toward the end of the year 1787, Robert 
 Burns was introduced to Mrs M'Lehose in the 
 house of a mutual friend. Miss Nimmo. They 
 spent the evening together ; and we have the 
 sentiments recorded by both parties of the im- 
 pressions reciprocally produced. The poet de- 
 clared, in one of his letters to her : " Of all God's 
 creatures I ever could approach in the beaten 
 way of friendship, you struck me with the 
 deepest, the strongest, the most permanent 
 impression." While she wrote : " Miss Nimmo 
 can tell you how earnestly I had long pressed 
 her to make us acquainted. I had a presenti- 
 ment that we would derive pleasure from the 
 society of each other." The poet was at this 
 
1 6 Bicrns* Clarinda. 
 
 time preparing to depart from Edinburgh ; and 
 under these circumstances, could only regret 
 that he had not possessed the opportunity of 
 cultivating the lady's acquaintance earlier; but 
 a severe accident, which happened a day or two 
 later, when he was engaged to spend the even- 
 ing with her, delayed his departure for some 
 time, and led to a correspondence in which 
 Mrs M'Lehose fancifully adopted the name of 
 " Clarinda," and Burns followed up the idea by 
 signing " Sylvander." As soon as he recovered 
 from his accident, the poet visited the lady, and 
 they enjoyed much of each other's society for 
 several months till he left Edinburgh. They 
 met only once afterwards, in the year 1791, 
 but occasionally corresponded till within a short 
 period of his death. 
 
 When Mr M'Lehose went to London in 
 1782, he found too many opportunities for in- 
 dulging in dissipation and extravagance to go 
 abroad so long as he was able to procure money 
 from his family in Scotland — assistance which 
 they could ill afford, and were obliged finally 
 to refuse, their patience and generosity being 
 exhausted. After two years and a half thus 
 spent in idleness, Mr M'Lehose was thrown 
 
Memoir. \y 
 
 into prison for debt ; and his relatives, being 
 once more appealed to, consented to advance 
 the funds necessary for his release and outfit, 
 on condition that he immediately went abroad. 
 With this he complied, and sailed for Jamaica 
 in November 1784. Before leaving London, 
 and afterwards from Jamaica, where he became 
 very prosperous, he wrote his mother and 
 family most grateful letters for their kindness, 
 but never repaid the debt, though appealed 
 to, when his mother's income became inade- 
 quate to her support. 
 
 Mr M'Lehose did not favour his wife even 
 with grateful letters, though she wrote him re- 
 peatedly respecting her circumstances and the 
 health of their children. The following appeal 
 to him from Lord Craig was equally fruitless : 
 " I write you this letter to represent to you 
 the situation of your family here. Your wife's 
 father left some property in Glasgow, the in- 
 terest of which your wife draws for the support 
 of herself and children ; but this not being 
 sufficient, by the solicitation of some of your 
 friends ^8 a year was obtained from the sur- 
 geons, and £\o a year from the writers in 
 Glasgow. Even this, however, did not do, 
 B 
 
1 8 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 owing to the great rise in the expense of 
 housekeeping, and the necessary outlay for 
 your children and their education ; so that I 
 advanced money to Mrs M. even while she 
 got the above sums. Accounts, I am informed, 
 have lately arrived from Jamaica which I am 
 very glad of, representing you to be in a very 
 good situation, and as having got into very 
 profitable business. The surgeons and writers 
 have withdrawn their allowance, and I have 
 been told their principal reason for doing so is 
 the accounts they have heard of the goodness 
 of your situation. No remittances, however, 
 have as yet come from you ; and in this last 
 year, owing to the withdrawal of the writers 
 and surgeons, I have paid Mrs M'Lehose 
 upwards of £'^0 above what I have received. 
 No person, except my brother, is willing to 
 contribute anything ; and all your own relations 
 have positively refused, from the beginning, to 
 contribute a single farthing. In this situation 
 I am resolved to advance no more money out 
 of my own funds on the account of your family. 
 What I have already given, I have never laid 
 my account in being reimbursed, and it shall 
 never be thought of; but for the future every 
 
MetJioir. 19 
 
 consideration demands that you should yourself 
 contribute for the support of your own chil- 
 dren. I expect, therefore, that you will by the 
 first opportunity write to some of your corre- 
 spondents in this country, giving what direc- 
 tions you think proper about your children, 
 and making some proper remittance on their 
 account, as, I repeat it again, I am deter- 
 mined not to continue to pay money on their 
 account." 
 
 In Mrs M'Lehose's narrative she states : 
 " About the year 1787, my youngest boy, 
 William, fell into ill-health. This increased 
 my expense ; and at this period the annuities 
 from Glasgow were withheld from me, the 
 reason assigned being that Mr M'Lehose was 
 doing well, and in a way to support his chil- 
 dren himself I wrote once more to him, 
 giving him an account of his children, par- 
 ticularly of William's helpless situation, and 
 also my reduced circumstances, warmly expos- 
 tulating with him on the duty and necessity 
 of remitting for their support and education. 
 I anxiously waited for an answer, but received 
 none. In August 1788 my delicate child was 
 happily delivered from his sufferings. I wrote 
 
20 Burns' Clarmda. 
 
 again immediately of his death. Still I received 
 no answer till the following August, when I 
 had a letter, and soon after another, inviting 
 me to come to Jamaica, and enclosing a bill 
 for ;6^50, which was meant, I suppose, to equip 
 me, and containing the most flattering direc- 
 tions to give his only surviving son the best 
 education Edinburgh would afford." " With 
 regard to my dear son," Mr M'Lehose writes, 
 " it is my wish that he should be placed in 
 the first boarding-school for young gentlemen, 
 either in Edinburgh or its environs. Whatever 
 expense may attend it shall be regularly and 
 punctually paid. It is my wish that he should 
 continue at the Latin until he is perfect master 
 of that language; and when that is accom- 
 plished, I wish him to be instructed in the 
 French, which is now become so generally use- 
 ful all over the globe, and in particular here, 
 where I intend to fix him in business. It will 
 be proper also that he be immediately put 
 under a dancing-master, and, what is still more 
 requisite, that he should learn to fence. No 
 expense can be incurred that will not be dis- 
 charged with infinite pleasure and satisfaction, 
 provided he is to benefit by it as I could wish. 
 
Memoir. 1 1 
 
 If you have no inclination to come out to this 
 country, I then have to request you to embrace 
 the first opportunity to inform me of such deter- 
 mination, as in that case I will immediately 
 order my son up to London, and put him 
 under the care of one of the first West India 
 houses in the city to receive the remainder of 
 his education either at Westminster or at Eton, 
 whichever they think most advisable." 
 
 Mrs M'Lehose was much at a loss how to act. 
 At first she felt strongly inclined to remain in 
 this country, but finally resolved to proceed to 
 Jamaica. " I consulted my friends ; they de- 
 clined giving any advice, and referred me to my 
 own mind. After much agitation, and deep and 
 anxious reflection for my only child's sake, for 
 whom he promised such liberal things, and 
 encouraged by flattering accounts of his charac- 
 ter and conduct in Jamaica, I resolved to under- 
 take the arduous voyage." 
 
 The motives which influenced her will best 
 be seen from the letter which she wrote to her 
 friend, Lord Craig, upon the subject : " When I 
 last wrote you, the bidding adieu to my dear 
 boy was my only source of anxiety. I had then 
 no idea whatever of going out to Mr M'Lehose. 
 
22 Burns'^ Clarinda.' 
 
 Next day I learned from Mrs Adair that Captain 
 Liddel told her my husband had the strongest 
 resolution of using me kindly, in case I accepted 
 of his invitation ; and that pride alone hindered 
 his acknowledging his faults a second time, still 
 hurt at my not answering his overtures of recon- 
 ciliation from London. But that, in case I did 
 not choose to come over, I might rest assured 
 I never would hear from him while he existed. 
 Captain Liddel added his opinion, that I ought 
 to go, in the strongest terms. Mrs Adair joins 
 him ; and above all, my poor son adds his 
 entreaties most earnestly. I thought it prudent 
 to inform him, for the first time, of the disagree- 
 ment between his parents, and the unhappy 
 jealousy in his father's temper. Still he argues 
 that his father may be incensed at my refusal. 
 If I go, I have a terror of the sea, and no less of 
 the climate ; above all, the horror of again 
 involving myself in misery in the midst of 
 strangers, and almost without remedy. If I 
 refuse, I must bid my only child (in whom all 
 affections and hopes are entirely centred) adieu 
 for ever : struggle with a straitened income and 
 the world's censure solitary and unprotected. 
 The bright side of these alternatives is, that if 
 
Memoir. 23 
 
 I go my husband's jealousy of temper may be 
 abated, from a better knowledge of the world ; 
 and time and misfortunes, by making alterations 
 both on person and vivacity, will render me 
 less likely to incur his suspicions ; and that ill 
 humour, which partly arose from straitened 
 fortune, will be removed by affluence. I will 
 enjoy my son's society, and have him for a 
 friend ; and who knows what effect so fine a boy 
 may have on a father long absent from his sight. 
 If I refuse, and stay here, I shall continue to 
 enjoy a circle of kind, respectable friends. 
 Though my income be small, I can never be in 
 want, and I shall maintain that liberty which, 
 after nine years' enjoyment, I shall find it hard 
 to forego, even to the degree to which I am 
 sensible every married woman must submit." 
 
 A few days later she wrote again to the same 
 gentleman : " On Friday last I went down to 
 Leith, and had a conversation on board the 
 'Roselle' with Captain Liddel. He told me that 
 Mr M'Lehose had talked of me, and of my 
 coming over, with great tenderness ; and said it 
 would be my fault if we did not enjoy great 
 happiness ; and concluded with assuring me, if 
 I were his own child he would advise me to go 
 
24 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 out. This conversation has tended greatly to 
 decide my accepting my husband's invitation. 
 I have done what you desired me — weighed 
 coolly (as coolly as a subject so interesting 
 would permit) all I have to suffer or expect in 
 either situation ; and the result is, my going to 
 Jamaica. This appears to me the preferable 
 choice ; it is surely the path of duty ; and such, 
 I may look for the blessing of God to attend my 
 endeavours for happiness with him who was the 
 husband of my choice and the father of my 
 children. On Saturday I was agreeably surprised 
 by a call from Mr Kemp. He had received my 
 letter that morning at Glasgow, and had alighted 
 for a few minutes, on his way to Easter Dudding- 
 ston, where his family are for summer quarters. 
 He was much affected with my perplexing situa- 
 tion. Like you, he knew not how to decide, 
 and left me, promising to call early this day, 
 which he has done. I told him of the meeting 
 with Mr Liddel, and enumerated all the argu- 
 ments which I had thought of on both sides of 
 the question. What Mr Liddel (who is a man 
 of known worth) said to me weighed much with 
 him ; and he, too, is now of opinion my going to 
 Jamaica is advisable. He gave me much good 
 
Memoir. 25 
 
 advice as to my conduct towards Mr M'Lehose, 
 and promised to write him himself. Your letter 
 luckily arrived while he was with me. The 
 assurance of my little income being secured me 
 not a little adds both to his opinion of the 
 propriety of my going, and to my ease and 
 comfort, in case (after doing all I can) it should 
 prove impossible to enjoy that peace which I so 
 earnestly pant after ; and I would fain hope for 
 a tender reception. After ten years' separation, 
 and the sacrifice I make bidding adieu (probably 
 for ever) to my friends and my country — indeed, 
 I am much depressed in mind — should I escape 
 the sea, the climate may prove fatal to me ; but 
 should it happen so, I have the satisfaction to 
 think I shall die in attempting to attain happi- 
 ness in that path of duty which Providence and 
 a succession of events seem to point out for the 
 best. You, my dear kind benefactor, have had 
 much trouble with me first and last ; and though 
 others appear ungrateful, neither time nor 
 absence can ever erase from my heart the re- 
 membrance of your past kindness. My prayers 
 shall ascend for the reward of Heaven upon your 
 head. To-morrow I am to write to my husband. 
 Mr Kemp is to see it on Wednesday. If any 
 
26 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 person occurs to you as proper to place Andrew 
 with in Edinburgh, let me know — the sooner 
 the better : the hopes of his rejoining me will help 
 to console my mind in the midst of strangers. 
 I am sorry you are to be so long of coming to 
 town. Meantime I shall be glad to hear from 
 you : for I am, my dear Sir, in every possible 
 situation, your affectionate and obliged friend, 
 A. M." 
 
 " I accordingly wrote my husband in October 
 1791, acquainting him with my resolution of 
 forgetting past differences, and throwing myself 
 on his protection." As the " Roselle " did not 
 leave for Jamaica till spring, she again wrote him 
 in December. 
 
 After giving the details of the arrangements 
 she had made for their son's education, in com- 
 pliance with his instructions, she thus proceeds : 
 " I had occasion to be in Glasgow lately for 
 two days only. I called for your mother. I felt 
 much for her — bereaved of so many children. 
 The peculiar circumstances which attended poor 
 Annie's death affected me excessively. They 
 told me you had not written these three years 
 past ; but I assured them (and I hope it is the 
 case) that your letters must have miscarried, as 
 
Memoir. 27 
 
 I could not believe you capable of such unkind 
 neglect. I am certain, inclination, no less than 
 duty, must ever prompt you to pay attention to 
 your mother. She has met with many and sore 
 afflictions, and I feel for her the most sincere 
 sympathy." In the same letter she adds : " I 
 have met with much kindness since I came to 
 Edinburgh, from a set of most agreeable and 
 respectable friends. No ideas of wealth or 
 splendour could compensate for the pain I shall 
 feel in bidding them adieu. Nothing could 
 support me but the fond reliance I have of gain- 
 ing your affections and confidence. To possess 
 these is the dearest wish of my heart, and I 
 trust the Almighty will grant this my ardent 
 desire. I would fain hope to hear from you ere 
 I sail ; a kind letter from you would prove a 
 balm to my soul during the anxieties of a 
 tedious voyage." 
 
 Mrs M'Lehose sailed from Leith in February 
 1792, and arrived at Kingston in April following. 
 The day before her departure she received a 
 letter from her fickle husband, dissuading her 
 from going out, on the pretence that the yellow 
 fever prevailed in the island, and that a revolt 
 had taken place among the negroes ; both of 
 
2S Burns^ Clarinda. 
 
 which statements were false. But having taken 
 leave of her friends, engaged her passage, and 
 made the preparations which the expectation of 
 an absence, prolonged perhaps for years, required, 
 she resolved (unwisely, as the event proved) to 
 proceed. It is a curious coincidence that the 
 vessel she sailed in was the " Roselle," the same 
 in which Burns intended to have sailed for the 
 same destination a few years earlier. 
 
 Mrs M'Lehose suffered much from the voyage, 
 especially in the warmer latitudes, and when she 
 reached Kingston, her husband did not go down 
 to the ship for a length of time. All the other 
 lady passengers had been speedily joined by 
 their friends. When he came, he was very cold, 
 and seemed far from being glad to see his wife ; 
 and even in this interview, before they left the 
 ship, he used some harsh expressions towards 
 her in presence of the captain and others which 
 wounded her feelings much. 
 
 " As my constitution never agreed with heat, 
 I felt its bad effects as soon as we had crossed 
 the Line ; but the very cold reception I received 
 from Mr M'Lehose on landing, gave me a shock 
 which, joined to the climate, deranged my mind 
 to such a degree as made me not answerable for 
 
Memoir. 29 
 
 what I either said or did. My husband's after- 
 kindness could not remove the complication of 
 nervous disorders which seized me. They 
 increased to such a height that Dr Fife, the 
 professional gentleman who attended me, and 
 whose soothing manner I can never forget, was 
 of opinion my going home was absolutely 
 necessary — otherwise my reason, if not my life, 
 would fall a sacrifice. Accordingly, in June I 
 took leave of Mr M'Lehose, and returned home 
 in the ship I had gone out in. Our parting 
 was most affectionate. On my part, it was with 
 sincere regret that my health obliged me to 
 leave him. Upon his, it was to all appearance 
 equally so. However, we parted with mutual 
 promises of constancy, and of keeping up a 
 regular correspondence. After getting into cool 
 air, I gradually recovered my health." 
 
 There were other reasons for leaving Jamaica 
 besides those which she mentioned in the state- 
 ment just quoted. Mr M'Lehose, like most 
 West Indian planters, had a family by a coloured 
 mistress. This could not be otherwise than a 
 source of mortification and annoyance. The 
 ebullition of temper which he had exhibited 
 towards her on their first meeting was a prelude 
 
30 Burns^ Clarinda. 
 
 to more violent outbreaks, which, though not 
 always directed to her personally, paralysed her 
 with fear. His slaves were generally the objects 
 of these fits of wrath ; and seeing that his wife 
 pitied their abject condition, he took pleasure in 
 threatening and abusing them in her presence. 
 
 Circumstances were thus most unfavourable to 
 Mrs M'Lehose's stay in Jamaica ; but, had they 
 been propitious, she was ill calculated to endure 
 a permanent change of habits. That she was 
 undoubtedly very unhappy in the West Indies 
 may be gathered from the following extract from 
 her journal many years afterwards : " Recollect 
 that I arrived in Jamaica this day twenty-two 
 years. What I suffered during the three months 
 I remained there, Lord, make me grateful for Thy 
 goodness in bringing me back to my native 
 country." 
 
 Mrs M'Lehose arrived in Edinburgh in August 
 1792, and soon after resumed housekeeping, and 
 took home her son, who had been placed at Dr 
 Chapman's excellent boarding-school. The first 
 year had now expired without any part of the 
 expense being defrayed by his father, and the 
 debt was ultimately cancelled by the liberality 
 of Lord Craig. As Mr M'Lehose continued 
 
Memoir. 3 1 
 
 thus utterly to neglect his wife and son, she was 
 prevailed on by her friends to institute proceed- 
 ings against him before the Court of Session in 
 order to enforce these obligations. In March 
 1797, accordingly, she obtained a judgment of 
 the Court, ordaining him to pay her a yearly 
 aliment of ;^ioo sterling. From that judgment 
 the following is an extract : "In the close of the 
 year 1784, Mr M'Lehose settled as an attorney- 
 at-law in Kingston, Jamaica ; and business in- 
 creased so rapidly, that he was soon in posses- 
 sion of, and still enjoys, a revenue of ;^ 1,000 a 
 j/ear from his profession." 
 
 This decree, however, owing to Mr M'Lehose 
 being resident in Jamaica, did not add to Mrs 
 M'Lehose's income ; although it was the means 
 ultimately of enabling her to recover in this 
 country some funds belonging to her husband. 
 Thus abandoned by her husband, Mrs M*Lehose 
 and her only son, the late Mr Andrew M'Lehose, 
 W.S., continued to live together. Soon after her 
 return from Jamaica, Mr Robert Ainslie, the 
 friend of Burns, kindly took her son as appren- 
 tice. He continued to live with his mother until 
 the year 1809, when he married. They lived 
 most happily together ; and probably there have 
 
32 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 been few instances of more devoted mutual 
 attachment between parent and child. 
 
 In March 1812, Mr M'Lehose died at King- 
 ston ; and though he had been in receipt of a 
 large income for many years as Chief Clerk of 
 the Court of Common Pleas in Jamaica, no funds 
 were ever received from that island by his family. 
 A report reached this country, as being a matter 
 of notoriety in Kingston, that some of his par- 
 ticular friends had, on the approach of death, 
 sent all his domestics out of the house, and as 
 soon as the breath quitted his body, carried off 
 whatever cash and documents there were. If so, 
 the friends proved befitting the man. Notice, 
 however, was given to Mrs M'Lehose that a 
 balance of several hundred pounds, belonging to 
 her husband, was in the hands of Messrs Coutts 
 in London, which she soon afterwards obtained. 
 
 It was then discovered that he had had an 
 account current at this bank for many years, 
 while he had suffered his family to have their 
 income eked out by the generosity of friends : 
 ;^50 advanced to her, as already mentioned, 
 before she sailed for Jamaica, and a present of 
 ;^2i on leaving that island, being all which this 
 wealthy husband bestowed on his family in the 
 
Memoir. 3J 
 
 long period of thirty-two years. Yet, after her 
 departure from Jamaica, he was in the habit of 
 speaking of his family with great affection, and 
 boasted of the valuable presents which he had 
 made his wife and son. It is known that he was 
 a man of talents and pleasing address, but his 
 temper was occasionally violent and ungovern- 
 able. Yet he was often soft and agreeable. His 
 written correspondence showed the same charac- 
 teristics — alternate passages of the most endear- 
 ing and the most insulting language. 
 
LETTERS TO MRS M'LEHOSE, 
 
Letters to Mrs M'Lehose. 
 
 No. I. 
 To Mrs M'Lehose. 
 
 Tuesday Eve?img {December 6, 1787]. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 I had set no small store by my tea- 
 drinking to-night, and have not often been so 
 disappointed. Saturday evening I shall embrace 
 the opportunity with the greatest pleasure. I 
 leave town this day sennight, and probably for 
 a couple of twelvemonths ; but must ever regret 
 that I so lately got an acquaintance I shall 
 ever highly esteem, and in whose welfare I shall 
 ever be warmly interested. 
 
 Our worthy common friend, in her usual 
 pleasant way, rallied me a good deal on my 
 new acquaintance, and in the humour of her 
 ideas I wrote some lines, which I enclose you, 
 
38 Burns' Clarinda, 
 
 as I think they have a good deal of poetic 
 merit; and Miss [Nimmo] tells me you are 
 not only a critic, but a poetess. Fiction, you 
 know, is the native region of poetry ; and I 
 hope you will pardon my vanity in sending 
 you the bagatelle as a tolerable off-hand jeu 
 d'esprit. I have several poetic trifles, which I 
 will gladly leave with Miss [Nimmo] or you, if 
 they were worth house-room ; as there are 
 scarcely two people on earth by whom it would 
 mortify me more to be forgotten, though at 
 the distance of ninescore miles. 
 
 I am, Madam, with the highest respect. 
 
 Your very humble Servant, 
 
 "k ^ ^ ^ 
 
 No. II. 
 To Mrs M'Lehose. 
 
 Saturday Even \I)eceinber 8]. 
 
 I CAN say with truth, Madam, that I never 
 
 met with a person in my life whom I more 
 
 anxiously wished to meet again than yourself 
 
 To-night I was to have had that very great 
 
Letters. 39 
 
 pleasure — I was intoxicated with the idea ; but 
 an unlucky fall from a coach has so bruised 
 one of my knees, that I can't stir my leg off 
 the cushion. So, if I don't see you again, I 
 shall not rest in my grave for chagrin. I was 
 vexed to the soul I had not seen you sooner. 
 I determined to cultivate your friendship with 
 the enthusiasm of religion ; but thus has For- 
 tune ever served me. I cannot bear the idea 
 of leaving Edinburgh without seeing you. I 
 know not how to account for it — I am strangely 
 taken with some people, nor am I often mis- 
 taken. You are a stranger to me ; but I am an 
 odd being. Some yet unnamed feelings — things, 
 not principles, but better than whims — carry 
 me farther than boasted reason ever did a 
 philosopher. 
 
 Farewell ! every happiness be yours. 
 
 Robert Burns. 
 
 No. III. 
 To Mrs M'Lehose. 
 
 I STRETCH a point indeed, my dearest Madam, 
 when I answer your card on the rack of my 
 
40 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 present agony. Your friendship, Madam ! By 
 heavens, I was never proud before ! Your lines, 
 I maintain it, are poetry, and good poetry; 
 mine were indeed partly fiction, and partly a 
 friendship which, had I been so blest as to 
 have met with you in time, might have led me 
 — God of love only knows where. Time is too 
 short for ceremonies. 
 
 I swear solemnly (in all the tenor of my 
 former oath) to remember you in all the pride 
 and warmth of friendship until — I cease to be ! 
 
 To-morrow, and every day, till I see you, you 
 shall hear from me. 
 
 Farewell ! May you enjoy a better night's 
 repose than I am likely to have ! 
 
 No. IV. 
 
 To Mrs M'Lehose. 
 
 Your last, my dear Madam, had the effect on 
 me that Job's situation had on his friends, when 
 " they sat down seven days and seven nights 
 astonied, and spake not a word." " Pay my 
 addresses to a married woman ! " I started as 
 if I had seen the ghost of him I had injured : 
 
Letters. 41 
 
 I recollected my expressions ; some of them 
 indeed were, in the law phrase, "habit and 
 repute," which is being half guilty. I cannot 
 positively say. Madam, whether my heart might 
 not have gone astray a little ; but I can declare, 
 upon the honour of a poet, that the vagrant has 
 wandered unknown to me. I have a pretty 
 handsome troop of follies of my own ; and, like 
 some other people's retinue, they are but un- 
 disciplined blackguards ; but the luckless rascals 
 have something of honour in them : they would 
 not do a dishonest thing. 
 
 To meet with an unfortunate woman, amiable 
 and young, deserted and widowed by those who 
 were bound by every tie of duty, nature, and 
 gratitude to protect, comfort, and cherish her ; 
 add to all, when she is perhaps one of the first 
 of lovely forms and noble minds, the mind, too, 
 that hits one's taste as the joys of heaven do 
 a saint — should a vague infant idea, the natural 
 child of imagination, thoughtlessly peep over 
 the fence — were you, my friend, to sit in judg- 
 ment, and the poor, airy straggler brought 
 before you, trembling, self-condemned, with 
 artless eyes, brimful of contrition, looking wist- 
 fully on its judge, you could not, my dear 
 
42 Burns' Clarinda, 
 
 Madam, condemn the hapless wretch to death 
 " without benefit of clergy " ? 
 
 I won't tell you what reply my heart made 
 to your raillery of " seven years " : but I will 
 give you what a brother of my trade says on 
 the same allusion : — 
 
 " The Patriarch to gain a wife, 
 Chaste, beautiful and young, 
 Served fourteen years a painful life, 
 And never thought it long. 
 
 " Oh, were you to reward such cares. 
 And life so long would stay. 
 Not fourteen but four hundred years 
 Would seem as but one day." 
 
 I have written you this scrawl because I have 
 nothing else to do, and you may sit down and 
 find fault with it, if you have no better way of 
 consuming your time ; but finding fault with 
 the vagaries of a poet's fancy is much such 
 another business as Xerxes chastising the waves 
 of the Hellespont. 
 
 My limb now allows me to sit in some peace : 
 to walk I have yet no prospect of, as I can't 
 mark it to the ground. 
 
 I have just now looked over what I have 
 written, and it is such a chaos of nonsense that 
 
Letters. 43 
 
 I daresay you will throw it into the fire, and call 
 me an idle, stupid fellow ; but whatever you may 
 think of my brains, believe me to be, with the 
 most sacred respect and heartfelt esteem. 
 
 My dear Madam, your humble Servant, 
 
 Robert Burns. 
 
 No. V. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Friday Evetting {December 21]. 
 I BEG your pardon, my dear " Clarinda," for 
 the fragment scrawl I sent you yesterday. I 
 really do not know what I wrote. A gentleman 
 for whose character, abilities, and critical know- 
 ledge I have the highest veneration, called in 
 just as I had begun the second sentence, and I 
 would not make the porter wait. I read to my 
 much-respected friend several of my own baga- 
 telles, and, among others, your lines, which I 
 had copied out. He began some criticisms on 
 them as on the other pieces, when I informed 
 him they were the work of a young lady in this 
 town, which, I assure you, made him stare. My 
 learned friend seriously protested that he did 
 
44 Burns^ Clarinda. 
 
 not believe any young woman in Edinburgh 
 was capable of such lines ; and if you know 
 anything of Professor Gregory, you will neither 
 doubt of his abilities nor his sincerity. I do 
 love you, if possible, still better for having so 
 fine a taste and turn for poesy. I have again 
 gone wrong in my usual unguarded way, but 
 you may erase the word, and put esteem, respect, 
 or any other tame Dutch expression you please 
 in its place. I believe there is no holding con- 
 verse, or carrying on correspondence, with an 
 amiable woman, much less a gloriously amiable 
 fine wonian^ without some mixture of that 
 delicious passion whose most devoted slave I 
 have more than once had the honour of being. 
 But why be hurt or offended on that account ? 
 Can no honest man have a prepossession for a 
 fine woman, but he must run his head against 
 an intrigue ? Take a little of the tender witch- 
 craft of love, and add to it the generous, the 
 honourable sentiments of manly friendship, and 
 I know but one more delightful morsel, which 
 few, few in any rank ever taste. Such a com- 
 position is like adding cream to strawberries : 
 it not only gives the fruit a more elegant rich- 
 ness, but has a peculiar deliciousness of its own. 
 
Letters. 45 
 
 I enclose you a few lines I composed on a late 
 melancholy occasion.* I will not give above 
 five or six copies of it at all, and I would be 
 hurt if any friend should give any copies without 
 my consent. 
 
 You cannot imagine, Clarinda (I like the idea 
 of Arcadian names in a commerce of this kind), 
 how much store I have set by the hopes of your 
 future friendship. I do not know if you have 
 a just idea of my character, but I wish you to 
 see me as I am. I am, as most people of my 
 trade are, a strange Will-o'-wisp being ; the 
 victim, too frequently, of much imprudence and 
 many follies. My great constituent elements are 
 pride and passion. The first I have endeavoured 
 to humanise into integrity and honour ; the 
 last makes me a devotee to the warmest degree 
 of enthusiasm in love, religion, or friendship — 
 either of them, or all together, as I happen to be 
 inspired. 'Tis true I never saw you but once ; 
 but how much acquaintance did I form with you 
 in that once ! Do not think I flatter you, or 
 have a design upon you, Clarinda : I have too 
 
 * Probably the verses on the Death of the Lord Pre- 
 sident. 
 
4^ Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 much pride for the one, and too Httle cold 
 contrivance for the other ; but of all God's 
 creatures I ever could approach in the beaten 
 way of my acquaintance, you struck me with the 
 deepest, the strongest, the most permanent im- 
 pression. I say the most permanent, because I 
 know myself well, and how far I can promise 
 either in my prepossessions or powers. Why 
 are you unhappy? And why are so many of 
 our fellow-creatures, unworthy to belong to the 
 same species with you, blest with all they can 
 wish ? You have a hand all benevolent to give : 
 why were you denied the pleasure ? You have 
 a heart formed — gloriously formed — for all the 
 most refined luxuries of love : why was that 
 heart ever wrung ? Oh Clarinda ! shall we not 
 meet in a state, some yet unknown state of 
 being, where the lavish hand of plenty shall 
 minister to the highest wish of benevolence, and 
 where the chill north wind of prudence shall 
 never blow over the flowery fields of enjoyment ? 
 If we do not, man was made in vain ! I deserve 
 most of the unhappy hours that have lingered 
 over my head ; they were the wages of my 
 labour : but what unprovoked demon, malignant 
 as hell, stole upon the confidence of unmistrust- 
 
Letters. 47 
 
 ing busy fate, and dashed your cup of life with 
 
 undeserved sorrow ? 
 
 Let me know how long your stay will be out 
 
 of town ; I shall count the hours till you inform 
 
 me of your return. Cursed etiquette forbids your 
 
 seeing me just now ; and so soon as I can walk 
 
 I must bid Edinburgh adieu. Lord ! why was I 
 
 born to see misery which I cannot relieve, and 
 
 to meet with friends whom I cannot enjoy ? I 
 
 look back with the pang of unavailing avarice 
 
 on my loss in not knowing you sooner : all last 
 
 winter, these three months past, what luxury of 
 
 intercourse have I not lost! Perhaps, though, 
 
 'twas better for my peace. You see I am either 
 
 above or incapable of dissimulation. I believe 
 
 it is want of that particular genius. I despise 
 
 design, because I want either coolness or wisdom 
 
 to be capable of it. I am interrupted. Adieu, 
 
 my dear Clarinda ! 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. VI. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 My dear Clarinda, 
 
 Your last verses have so delighted me, that 
 I have copied them in among some of my own 
 
4^^ Burns' Ctarinda. 
 
 most valued pieces, which I keep sacred for my 
 own use. Do let me have a few now and then. 
 
 Did you, Madam, know what I feel when you 
 talk of your sorrows ! 
 
 Good God ! that one who has so much worth 
 in the sight of Heaven, and is so amiable to her 
 fellow-creatures, should be so unhappy. I can't 
 venture out for cold. My limb is vastly better ; 
 but I have not any use of it without my crutches. 
 Monday, for the first time, I dine at a neigh- 
 bour's, next door. As soon as I can go so far, 
 even in a coachy my first visit shall be to you. 
 Write me when you leave town, and immediately 
 when you return ; and I earnestly pray your 
 stay may be short. You can't imagine how 
 miserable you made me when you hinted to me 
 
 not to write. Farewell. 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. VII. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 {After New Yearns Day, 1788.] 
 You are right, my dear Clarinda : a friendly 
 correspondence goes for nothing, except one 
 write their undisguised sentiments. Yours 
 
Letters. 49 
 
 please me for their intrinsic merit, as well as 
 because they are yours, which, I assure you, is to 
 me a high recommendation. Your religious sen- 
 timents. Madam, I revere. If you have, on some 
 suspicious evidence, from some lying oracle 
 learned that I despise or ridicule so sacredly 
 important a matter as real religion, you have, 
 my Clarinda, much misconstrued your friend ; — 
 " I am not mad, most noble Festus ! " Have 
 you ever met a perfect character ? Do we not 
 sometimes rather exchange faults than get rid 
 of them? For instance, I am perhaps tired 
 with and shocked at a life too much the prey 
 of giddy inconsistencies and thoughtless follies ; 
 by degrees I grow sober, prudent, and statedly 
 pious — I say statedly, because the most un- 
 affected devotion is not at all inconsistent with 
 my first character — I join the world in congratu- 
 lating myself on the happy change. But let me 
 pry more narrowly into this affair. Have I, 
 at bottom, anything of a secret pride in these 
 endowments and emendations ? Have I nothing 
 of a Presbyterian sourness, a hypocritical seve- 
 rity, when I survey my less regular neighbours ? 
 In a word, have I missed all those nameless and 
 numberless modifications of indistinct selfishness 
 D 
 
50 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 which are so near our own eyes, we can scarcely 
 bring them within the sphere of our vision, and 
 which the known spotless cambric of our char- 
 acter hides from the ordinary observer. 
 
 My definition of worth is short : truth and 
 humanity respecting our fellow-creatures ; rever- 
 ence and humility in the presence of that Being, 
 my Creator and Preserver, and who, I have 
 every reason to believe, will one day be my 
 Judge. The first part of my definition is the 
 creature of unbiassed instinct ; the last is the 
 child of after reflection. Where I found these 
 two essentials, I would gently note, and slightly 
 mention, any attendant flaws — flaws, the marks, 
 the consequences of human nature. 
 
 I can easily enter into the sublime pleasures 
 that your strong imagination and keen sensi- 
 bility must derive from religion, particularly if a 
 little in the shade of misfortune ; but I own I 
 cannot, without a marked grudge, see Heaven 
 totally engross so amiable, so charming a woman, 
 as my friend Clarinda ; and should be very well 
 pleased at a circumsta7ice that would put it in 
 the power of somebody (happy somebody !) to 
 divide her attention, with all the delicacy and 
 tenderness of an earthly attachment. 
 
Letters. 5 1 
 
 You will not easily persuade me that you 
 have not a grammatical knowledge of the Eng- 
 lish language. So far from being inaccurate, 
 you are elegant beyond any woman of my 
 acquaintance, except one, whom I wish you 
 knew. 
 
 Your last verses to me have so delighted me, 
 that I have got an excellent old Scots air that 
 suits the measure, and you shall see them in 
 print in the "Scots Musical Museum," a work pub- 
 lishing by a friend of mine in this town. I want 
 four stanzas ; you gave me but three, and one 
 of them alluded to an expression in my former 
 letter ; so I have taken your two first verses, 
 with a slight alteration in the second, and have 
 added a third ; but you must help me to a fourth. 
 Here they are : the latter half of the first stanza 
 would have been worthy of Sappho ; I am in 
 raptures with it. 
 
 " Talk not of Love, it gives me pain, 
 For Love has been my foe : 
 He bound me with an iron chain, 
 And sunk me deep in woe. 
 
 " But Friendship's pure and lasting joys 
 My heart was form'd to prove : 
 There, welcome, win and wear the prize. 
 But never talk of love." 
 
52 Burns Clarinda. 
 
 Your friendship much can make me blest, 
 O why that bliss destroy ? 
 [only] 
 Why urge the odious one request, 
 [will] 
 You know I must deny ? 
 
 The alteration in the second stanza is no 
 improvement, but there was a slight inaccuracy 
 in your rhyme. The third I only offer to your 
 choice, and have left two words for your deter- 
 mination. The air is "The Banks of Spey," 
 and is most beautiful. 
 
 To-morrow evening I intend taking a chair, 
 and paying a visit at Park Place to a much- 
 valued old friend. If I could be sure of finding 
 you at home (and I will send one of the chair- 
 men to call), I would spend from five to six 
 o'clock with you, as I go past. I cannot do 
 more at this time, as I have something on my 
 hand that hurries me much. I propose giving 
 you the first call, my old friend the second, and 
 
 Miss , as I return home. Do not break 
 
 any engagement for me, as I will spend another 
 evening with you at any rate before I leave 
 town. 
 
 Do not tell me that you are pleased when 
 your friends inform you of your faults. I am 
 
Letters, 53 
 
 ignorant what they are ; but I am sure they 
 must be such evanescent trifles, compared with 
 your personal and mental accomplishments, that 
 I would despise the ungenerous narrow soul who 
 would notice any shadow of imperfections you 
 may seem to have any other way than in the 
 most delicate agreeable raillery. Coarse minds 
 are not aware how much they injure the keenly- 
 feeling tie of bosom-friendship, when, in their 
 foolish officiousness, they mention what nobody 
 cares for recollecting. People of nice sensibility 
 and generous minds have a certain intrinsic 
 dignity, that fires at being trifled with, or 
 lowered, or even too nearly approached. 
 
 You need make no apology for long letters : 
 I am even with you. Many happy new-years 
 to you, charming Clarinda ! I can't dissemble, 
 were it to shun perdition. He who sees you as 
 I have done, and does not love you, deserves to 
 be damned for his stupidity ! He who loves 
 you, and would injure you, deserves to be doubly 
 damned for his villany ! Adieu. 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 P.S. — What would you think of this for a 
 fourth stanza ? 
 
54 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 Your thought, if love must harbour there, 
 
 Conceal it in that thought, 
 Nor cause me from my bosom tear 
 
 The very friend I sought. 
 
 No. VIII. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Some days, some nights, nay, some hours ^ 
 like the " ten righteous persons in Sodom," save 
 the rest of the vapid, tiresome, miserable months 
 and years of life. One of these hours my dear 
 Clarinda blest me with yesternight. 
 
 " One well-spent hour, 
 In such a tender circumstance for friends. 
 Is better than an age of common time !" — THOMSON. 
 
 My favourite feature in Milton's Satan is his 
 manly fortitude in supporting what cannot be 
 remedied — in short, the wild broken fragments 
 of a noble exalted mind in ruins. I meant no 
 more by saying he was a favourite hero of 
 mine. 
 
 I mentioned to you my letter to Dr Moore, 
 giving an account of my life : it is truth, every 
 word of it, and will give you a just idea of the 
 
Letters. 5 5 
 
 man whom you have honoured with your friend- 
 ship. I am afraid you will hardly be able to 
 make sense of so torn a piece. Your verses I 
 shall muse on deliciously, as I gaze on your 
 image in my mind's eye, in my heart's core : 
 they will be in time enough for a week to come. 
 I am truly happy your headache is better. Oh, 
 how can pain or evil be so daringly unfeeling, 
 cruelly savage as to wound so noble a mind, so 
 lovely a form ! 
 
 My little fellow is all my namesake. Write 
 me soon. My every, strongest good wishes 
 attend you, Clarinda ! 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 I know not what I have written, I am pes- 
 tered with people around me. 
 
 No. IX. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Tuesday Night {^January 8 .?]. 
 I AM delighted, charming Clarinda, with your 
 honest enthusiasm for religion. Those of either 
 sex, but particularly the female, who are luke- 
 
56 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 warm in that most important of all things, " O 
 my soul, come not thou into their secrets ! " 
 I feel myself deeply interested in your good 
 opinion, and will lay before you the outlines of 
 my belief He who is our Author and Pre- 
 server, and will one day be our Judge, must be 
 (not for His sake in the way of duty, but from 
 the native impulse of our hearts) the object of 
 our reverential awe and grateful adoration ; He 
 is almighty and all-bounteous, we are weak and 
 dependent ; hence prayer and every other sort 
 
 of devotion. " He is not willing that any 
 
 should perish, but that all should come to ever- 
 lasting life ; " consequently it must be in every 
 one's power to embrace His offer of " everlasting 
 life " ; otherwise He could not, in justice, con- 
 demn those who did not. A mind pervaded, 
 actuated, and governed by purity, truth, and 
 charity, though it does not merit heaven, yet is 
 an absolutely necessary prerequisite, without 
 which heaven can neither be obtained nor en- 
 joyed ; and, by Divine promise, such a mind 
 shall never fail of attaining " everlasting life " : 
 hence the impure, the deceiving, and the un- 
 charitable extrude themselves from eternal bliss, 
 by their unfitness for enjoying it. The Supreme 
 
Letters. 57 
 
 Being has put the immediate administration of 
 all this, for wise and good ends known to Him- 
 self, into the hands of Jesus Christ — a great 
 personage, whose relation to Him we cannot 
 comprehend, but whose relation to us is [that 
 of] a guide and Saviour ; and who, except for 
 our own obstinacy and misconduct, will bring us 
 all through various ways, and by various means, 
 to bliss at last. 
 
 These are my tenets, my lovely friend ; and 
 which, I think, cannot be well disputed. My 
 creed is pretty nearly expressed in the last 
 clause of Jamie Deans's grace, an honest weaver 
 in Ayrshire : " Lord, grant that we may lead a 
 gude life ! for a gude life makes a gude end ; at 
 least it helps weel." 
 
 I am flattered by the entertainment you tell 
 me you have found in my packet. You see me 
 as I have been, you know me as I am, and may 
 guess at what I am likely to be. I too may 
 say, " Talk not of love," &c., for indeed he has 
 " plunged me deep in woe ! " Not that I ever 
 saw a woman who pleased unexceptionably, as 
 my Clarinda elegantly says, " in the companion, 
 the friend, and the mistress." One indeed I 
 could except — one^ before passion threw its mists 
 
58 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 over my discernment, I knew the first of women ! 
 Her name is indelibly written in my heart's core 
 — but I dare not look in on it — a degree of 
 agony would be the consequence. Oh, thou 
 perfidious, cruel, mischief-making demon, who 
 presidest over that frantic passion — thou mayst, 
 thou dost poison my peace, but thou shalt not 
 taint my honour — I would not, for a single 
 moment, give an asylum to the most distant 
 imagination, that would shadow the faintest 
 outline of a selfish gratification, at the expense 
 of her whose happiness is twisted with the 
 
 threads of my existence. May she be as 
 
 happy as she deserves ! And if my tenderest, 
 faithfulest friendship can add to her bliss, I shall 
 at least have one solid mine of enjoyment in my 
 bosom. DorCt guess at these ravings ! 
 
 I watched at our front window to-day, but 
 was disappointed.* It has been a day of disap- 
 pointments. I am just risen from a two hours' 
 bout after supper, with silly or sordid souls, who 
 could relish nothing in common with me but the 
 
 * Mrs M'Lehose had promised to pass through his 
 Square about two in the afternoon, and give him a nod 
 if he were at the window of his room and she could 
 discover it. 
 
Letters. 59 
 
 port. One 'Tis now "witching time of 
 
 night " ; and whatever is out of joint in the fore- 
 going scrawl, impute it to enchantments and 
 spells ; for I can't look over it, but will seal 
 it up directly, as I don't care for to-morrow's 
 criticisms on it. 
 
 You are by this time fast asleep, Clarinda ; 
 may good angels attend and guard you as con- 
 stantly as my good wishes do ! 
 
 " Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep, 
 Shot forth peculiar graces." 
 
 John Milton, I wish thy soul better rest than 
 I expect on my pillow to-night. Oh, for a little 
 of the cart-horse part of human nature ! Good- 
 night, my dearest Clarinda ! 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. X. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Thursday Noon \^ January 10?]. 
 I AM certain I saw you, Clarinda ; but you don't 
 look to the proper story for a poet's lodging — 
 
 " Where Speculation roosted near the sky." 
 
 I could almost have thrown myself over for very 
 
6o Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 vexation. Why didn't you look higher ? It has 
 spoilt my peace for this day. To be so near my 
 charming Clarinda ; to miss her look while it 
 was searching for me ! I am sure the soul is 
 capable of disease, for mine has convulsed itself 
 into an inflammatory fever. I am sorry for your 
 little boy: do let me know to-morrow how he is. 
 
 You have converted me, Clarinda (I shall love 
 that name while I live : there is heavenly music 
 in it !). Booth and Amelia I know well. Your 
 sentiments on that subject, as they are on every 
 subject, are just and noble. " To be feelingly 
 alive to kindness and to unkindness " is a 
 charming female character. 
 
 What I said in my last letter, the powers of 
 fuddling sociality only know for me. By yours, 
 I understand my good star has been partly in 
 my horizon when I got wild in my reveries. 
 Had that evil planet, which has almost all my 
 life shed its baleful rays on my devoted head, 
 been as usual in its zenith, I had certainly 
 blabbed something that would have pointed out 
 to you the dear object of my tenderest friend- 
 ship, and, in spite of me, something more. Had 
 that fatal information escaped me, and it was 
 merely chance or kind stars that it did not. 
 
Letters. 6i 
 
 I had been undone. You would never have 
 written me, except, perhaps, once more. Oh, I 
 could curse circumstances ! and the coarse tie 
 of human laws which keeps fast what common 
 sense would loose, and which bars that happi- 
 ness itself cannot give — happiness which other- 
 wise love and honour would warrant ! But hold 
 — I shall make no more " hairbreadth 'scapes." 
 
 My friendship, Clarinda, is a life-rent business. 
 My likings are both strong and eternal. I told 
 you I had but one male friend : I have but two 
 female. I should have a third, but she is sur- 
 rounded by the blandishments of flattery and 
 courtship. Her I register in my heart's core by 
 Peggy Chalmers : Miss Nimmo can tell you how 
 divine she is. She is worthy of a place in the 
 same bosom with my Clarinda. That is the 
 highest compliment I can pay her. Farewell, 
 Clarinda ! Remember 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XL 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Saturday Morning. 
 Your thoughts on religion, Clarinda, shall be 
 welcome. You may perhaps distrust me when 
 
62 Burns' Clarinda, 
 
 I say 'tis also my favourite topic ; but mine is 
 the religion of the bosom. I hate the very idea 
 of a controversial divinity ; as I firmly believe, 
 that every honest, upright man, of whatever sect, 
 will be accepted of the Deity. If your verses, as 
 you seem to hint, contain censure, except you 
 want an occasion to break with me, don't send 
 them. I have a little infirmity in my disposi- 
 tion, that where I fondly love, or highly esteem, 
 I cannot bear reproach. 
 
 " Reverence thyself" is a sacred maxim, and 
 I wish to cherish it. I think I told you Lord 
 Bolingbroke's saying to Swift — " Adieu, dear 
 Swift, with all thy faults, I love thee entirely ; 
 make an effort to love me with all mine." A 
 glorious sentiment, and without which there can 
 be no friendship. I do highly, very highly 
 esteem you indeed, Clarinda — you merit it all. 
 Perhaps, too, I scorn dissimulation. I could 
 fondly love you ; judge, then, what a madden- 
 ing sting your reproach would be. " Oh, I have 
 sins to Heaven^ but none to you ! " With what 
 pleasure would I meet you to-day, but I cannot 
 walk to meet the Fly. I hope to be able to see 
 you ow foot ^ about the middle of next week. 
 
 I am interrupted — perhaps you are not sorry 
 
Letters, 63 
 
 for it, you will tell me — but I won't anticipate 
 blame. Oh Clarinda ! did you know how dear 
 to me is your look of kindness, your smile of 
 approbation, you would not, either in prose or 
 verse, risk a censorious remark. 
 
 " Curst be the verse, how well soe'er it flow, 
 That tends to make one worthy man my foe ! " 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XII. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 You talk of weeping, Clarinda : some in- 
 voluntary drops wet your lines as I read them. 
 Offend me, my dearest angel ! You cannot 
 offend me — you never offended me. If you had 
 ever given me the least shadow of offence, so 
 pardon me, my God, as I forgive Clarinda. I 
 have read yours again ; it has blotted my paper. 
 Though I find your letter has agitated me into 
 a violent headache, I shall take a chair and be 
 with you about eight. A friend is to be with us 
 at tea, on my account, which hinders me from 
 coming sooner. Forgive, my dearest Clarinda, 
 my unguarded expressions. For Heaven's sake. 
 
64 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 forgive me, or I shall never be able to bear my 
 own mind. 
 
 Your unhappy 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XIII. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Monday Even^ 1 1 d clock. 
 Why have I not heard from you, Clarinda? 
 To-day I expected it ; and before supper, when 
 a letter to me was announced, my heart danced 
 with rapture : but behold, it was some fool, who 
 had taken it into his head to turn poet, and 
 made me an offering of the first-fruits of his 
 nonsense. " It is not poetry, but prose run 
 mad." Did I ever repeat to you an epigram I 
 made on a Mr Elphinstone, who has given a 
 translation of Martial, a famous Latin poet ? 
 The poetry of Elphinstone can only equal his 
 prose notes. I was sitting in a merchant's shop 
 of my acquaintance, waiting somebody ; he put 
 Elphinstone into my hand, and asked my 
 opinion of it ; I begged leave to write it on a 
 blank leaf which I did — 
 
Letters^ 65 
 
 TO MR ELPHINSTONE, ETC. 
 
 Oh thou, whom Poesy abhors ! 
 Whom Prose has turned out of doors ! 
 Heard'st thou yon groan ? — proceed no further ! 
 'Twas laurelled Martial calling murther ! 
 
 I am determined to see you, if at all possible, 
 on Saturday evening. Next week I must sing — 
 
 The night is my departing night, 
 The morn's the day I maun awa' ; 
 
 There's neither friend nor foe o' mine 
 But wishes that I were awa' ! 
 
 What I hae done for lack o' wit, 
 
 I never, never can reca' ; 
 I hope ye're a' my friends as yet — 
 
 Gude night, and joy be wi' you a' ! 
 
 If I could see you sooner, I would be so much 
 the happier ; but I would not purchase the 
 dearest gratification on earth, if it must be at 
 your expense in worldly censure, far less inward 
 peace. 
 
 I shall certainly be ashamed of thus scrawling 
 whole sheets of incoherence. The only unity (a 
 sad word with poets and critics !) in my ideas is 
 Clarin DA. There my heart " reigns and revels ! " 
 
 " What art thou, Love ? whence are those charms. 
 That thus thou bear'st an universal rule ? 
 For thee the soldier quits his arms, 
 The king turns slave, the wise man fool. 
 E 
 
66 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 In vain we chase thee from the field, 
 And with cool thoughts resist thy yoke : 
 
 Next tide of blood, alas, we yield, 
 And all those high resolves are broke ! " 
 
 I like to have quotations for every occasion. 
 They give one's ideas so pat, and save one the 
 trouble of finding expression adequate to one's 
 feelings. I think it is one of the greatest plea- 
 sures attending a poetic genius, that we can give 
 our woes, cares, joys, loves, &c., an embodied 
 form in verse, which to me is ever immediate 
 ease. Goldsmith says finely of his Muse — 
 
 " Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe. 
 Thou found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so." 
 
 My limb has been so well to-day, that I have 
 
 gone up and down stairs often without my staff 
 
 To-morrow I hope to walk once again on my 
 
 own legs to dinner. It is only next street. 
 
 Adieu ! c" 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XIV. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Tuesday Evening \_ January 1 5 ?]. 
 That you have faults, my Clarinda, I never 
 doubted ; but I knew not where they existed, 
 
Letters. 6y 
 
 and Saturday night made me more in the dark 
 than ever. Oh Clarinda ! why will you wound 
 my soul by hinting that last night must have 
 lessened my opinion of you ? True, I was 
 " behind the scenes " with you ; but what did 
 I see? A bosom glowing with honour and 
 benevolence; a mind ennobled by genius, in- 
 formed and refined by education and reflection, 
 and exalted by native religion, genuine as in 
 the climes of heaven ; a heart formed for all the 
 glorious meltings of friendship, love, and pity. 
 These I saw : I saw the noblest immortal soul 
 creation ever showed me. 
 
 I looked long, my dear Clarinda, for your 
 letter ; and am vexed that you are complaining. 
 I have not caught you so far wrong as in your 
 idea, that the commerce you have with one 
 friend hurts you if you cannot tell every tittle 
 of it to another. Why have so injurious a sus- 
 picion of a good God, Clarinda, as to think 
 that Friendship and Love, on the sacred in- 
 violate principles of Truth, Honour, and Reli- 
 gion, can be anything else than an object of 
 His divine approbation ? 
 
 I have mentioned in some of my former 
 scrawls, Saturday evening next. Do allow me 
 
68 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 to wait on you that evening. Oh, my angel ! 
 
 how soon must we part! and when can we' 
 
 meet again ! I look forward on the horrid 
 
 interval with tearful eyes. What have I lost 
 
 by not knowing you sooner? I fear, I fear 
 
 my acquaintance with you is too short, to make 
 
 that lasting impression on your heart I could 
 
 wish. 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XV. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Sunday Night \Ja7tuary 20 .?]. 
 The impertinence of fools has joined with 
 a return of an old indisposition to make me 
 good for nothing to-day. The paper has lain 
 before me all this evening to write to my dear 
 Clarinda ; but 
 
 " Fools rush'd on fools, as waves succeed to waves." 
 
 I cursed them in my soul : they sacrilegiously 
 disturb my meditations on her who holds my 
 heart. What a creature is man ! A little alarm 
 last night and to-day that I am mortal, has 
 made such a revolution in my spirits ! there 
 
Letters. 69 
 
 is no philosophy, no divinity, comes half so 
 home to the mind. I have no idea of the 
 courage that braves Heaven. 'Tis the wild 
 ravings of an imaginary hero in Bedlam. I 
 can no more, Clarinda ; I can scarce hold up 
 my head ; but I am happy you don't know it, 
 you would be so uneasy. 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 Monday Morning. 
 I am, my lovely friend, much better this 
 morning, on the whole ; but I have a horrid 
 languor on my spirits — 
 
 " Sick of the world and all its joy, 
 My soul in pining sadness mourns : 
 Dark scenes of woe my mind employ, 
 The past and present in their turns." 
 
 Have you ever met with a saying of the great 
 and likewise good Mr Locke, author of the 
 famous " Essay on the Human Understand- 
 ing " ? He wrote a letter to a friend, directing 
 it " Not to be delivered till after my decease." 
 It ended thus : — " I know you loved me when 
 living, and will preserve my memory now I am 
 dead. All the use to be made of it is — that 
 this life affords no solid satisfaction, but in 
 
yo Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 the consciousness of having done well, and the 
 hopes of another life. Adieu ! I leave my best 
 wishes with you. — J. LoCKE." 
 
 Clarinda, may I reckon on your friendship for 
 life ? I think I may. Thou Almighty Pre- 
 server of men ! Thy friendship, which hitherto 
 I have too much neglected, to secure it shall all 
 the future days and nights of my life be my 
 steady care ! The idea of my Clarinda fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 " Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise. 
 Where, mix'd with God's, her loved idea lies." 
 
 But I fear inconstancy, the consequent imper- 
 fection of human weakness. Shall I meet with 
 a friendship that defies years of absence, and 
 the chances and changes of fortune? Perhaps 
 " such things are." One honest man I have 
 great hopes from, that way ; but who, except 
 a romance writer, would think on a love that 
 could promise for life, in spite of distance, 
 absence, chance, and change ; and that, too, 
 with slender hopes of fruition ? For my own 
 part, I can say to myself in both requisitions, 
 " Thou art the man " ; I dare in cool resolve, I 
 dare declare myself that friend and that lover. 
 If womankind is capable of such things, Clar- 
 
Letters. 7^ 
 
 inda is. I trust that she is ; and feel I shall 
 be miserable if she is not. There is not one 
 virtue which gives worth, or one sentiment 
 which does honour to the sex, that she does 
 not possess superior to any woman I ever saw : 
 her exalted mind, aided a little perhaps by her 
 situation, is, I think, capable of that nobly- 
 romantic love-enthusiasm. 
 
 May I see you on Wednesday evening, my 
 dear angel ? The next Wednesday again will, 
 I conjecture, be a hated day to us both. I 
 tremble for censorious remarks for your sake ; 
 but in extraordinary cases, may not usual and 
 useful precautions be a little dispensed with? 
 Three evenings, three swift-winged evenings, 
 with pinions of down, are all the past — I dare 
 not calculate the future. I shall call at Miss 
 Nimmo's to-morrow evening; 'twill be a fare- 
 well call. 
 
 I have written out my last sheet of paper, so 
 I am reduced to my last half-sheet. What a 
 strange, mysterious faculty is that thing called 
 imagination ! We have no ideas almost at all 
 of another world ; but I have often amused 
 myself with visionary schemes of what happi- 
 ness might be enjoyed by small alterations — 
 
72 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 alterations that we can fully enter to \sic\ in this 
 present state of existence. For instance, sup- 
 pose you and I just as we are at present, the 
 same reasoning powers, sentiments, and even 
 desires ; the same fond curiosity for knowledge 
 and remarking observation in our minds — and 
 imagine our bodies free from pain, and the 
 necessary supplies for the wants ' of nature at 
 all times and easily within our reach; imagine 
 further that we were set free from the laws of 
 gravitation which bind us to this globe, and 
 could at pleasure fly, without inconvenience, 
 through all the yet unconjectured bounds of 
 creation — what a life of bliss should we lead 
 in our mutual pursuit of virtue and knowledge, 
 and our mutual enjoyment of friendship and 
 love ! 
 
 I see you laughing at my fairy fancies, and 
 calling me a voluptuous Mahometan ; but I am 
 certain I should be a happy creature, beyond 
 anything we call bliss here below ; nay, it would 
 be a paradise congenial to you too. Don't you 
 see us hand in hand, or rather my arm about 
 your lovely waist, making our remarks on Sirius, 
 the nearest of the fixed stars ; or surveying a 
 comet flaming innoxious by us, as we just now 
 
Letters. 73 
 
 would mark the passing pomp of a travelling 
 monarch ; or in a shady bower of Mercury or 
 Venus, dedicating the hour to love and mutual 
 converse, relying honour, and revelling endear- 
 ment — while the most exalted strains of poesy 
 and harmony would be the ready, spontaneous 
 language of our souls ? Devotion is the favour- 
 ite employment of your heart, so is it of mine ; 
 what incentives then to, and powers for rever- 
 ence, gratitude, faith, and hope, in all the 
 fervours of adoration and praise to that Being 
 whose unsearchable wisdom, power, and good- 
 ness, so pervaded, so inspired every sense and 
 feeling! By this time, I daresay, you will be 
 blessing the neglect of the maid that leaves me 
 
 destitute of paper. 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XVI. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Thursday Morning [January 24?]. 
 " Unlavish Wisdom never works in vain." 
 I HAVE been tasking my reason, Clarinda, why 
 a woman, who, for native genius, poignant wit, 
 strength of mind, generous sincerity of soul, and 
 
74 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 the sweetest female tenderness, is without a peer, 
 and whose personal charms have few, very, very 
 few parallels among her sex ; why, or how she 
 should fall to the blessed lot of a poor hairum- 
 scairum poet whom Fortune had kept for her 
 particular use, to wreak her temper on whenever 
 she was in ill-humour. One time I conjectured 
 that as Fortune is the most capricious jade ever 
 known, she may have taken, not a fit of remorse, 
 but a paroxysm of whim, to raise the poor devil 
 out of the mire, where he had so often and so 
 conveniently served her as a stepping-stone, and 
 given him the most glorious boon she ever had 
 in her gift, merely for the maggot's sake, to see 
 how his fool head and his fool heart will bear 
 it. At other times I was vain enough to think 
 that Nature, who has a great deal to say with 
 Fortune, had given the coquettish goddess some 
 such hint as, " Here is a paragon of female ex- 
 cellence, whose equal, in all my former com- 
 positions, I never was lucky enough to hit on, 
 and despair of ever doing so again ; you have 
 cast her rather in the shades of life ; there is a 
 certain poet of my making ; among your frolics 
 it would not be amiss to attach him to this 
 masterpiece of my hand, to give her that 
 
Letters. 75 
 
 immortality among mankind, which no woman 
 of any age ever more deserved, and which few 
 rhymesters of this age are better able to confer." 
 
 Evenmg, 9 o'clock. 
 I am here, absolutely so unfit to finish my 
 letter — pretty hearty after a bowl, which has 
 been constantly plied since dinner till this 
 moment. I have been with Mr Schetki, the 
 musician, and he has set the song finety. I 
 have no distinct ideas of anything, but that I 
 have drunk your health twice to-night, and that 
 you are all my soul holds dear in this world. 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XVII. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Friday {February i ?]. 
 Clarinda, my life, you have wounded my soul. 
 Can I think of your being unhappy, even though 
 it be not described in your pathetic elegance of 
 language, without being miserable ? Clarinda, 
 can I bear to be told from you that " you will 
 not see me to-morrow night — that you wish the 
 
y6 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 hour of parting were come"? Do not let us 
 impose on ourselves by sounds. . . . Why, my 
 love, talk to me in such strong terms ; every 
 word of which cuts me to the very soul ? You 
 know, a hint, the slightest signification of your 
 wish, is to me a sacred command. 
 
 Be reconciled, my angel, to your God, your- 
 self, and me ; and I pledge you Sylvander's 
 honour — an oath I daresay you will trust with- 
 out reserve — that you shall never more have 
 reason to complain of his conduct. Now, my 
 love, do not wound our next meeting with any 
 averted looks. ... I have marked the line of 
 conduct — a line, I know, exactly to your taste — 
 and which I will inviolably keep ; but do not 
 you show the least inclination to make boun- 
 daries. Seeming distrust, where you know you 
 may confide, is a cruel sin against sensibility. 
 
 " Delicacy, you know, it was which won me to 
 you at once : take care that you do not loosen 
 the dearest, most sacred tie that unites us." 
 Clarinda, I would not have stung your soul — I 
 would not have bruised j/^?^r spirit, as that harsh, 
 crucifying "Take care," did mine; no, not to 
 have gained heaven ! Let me again appeal to 
 your dear self, if Sylvander, even when he 
 
Letters. yy 
 
 seemingly half transgressed the laws of decorum, 
 if he did not show more chastised, trembling, 
 faltering delicacy, than the many of the world 
 do in keeping these laws. 
 
 Love and Sensibility, ye have conspired 
 against my peace ! I love to madness, and I 
 feel to torture ! Clarinda, how can I forgive 
 myself that I have ever touched a single chord 
 in your bosom with pain ! Would I do it 
 willingly ? Would any consideration, any grati- 
 fication make me do so ? Oh, did you love like 
 me, you would not, you could not, deny or put 
 off a meeting with the man who adores you ; 
 who would die a thousand deaths before he 
 would injure you ; and who must soon bid you 
 a long farewell ! 
 
 1 had proposed bringing my bosom friend, 
 Mr Ainslie, to-morrow evening, at his strong 
 request, to see you ; as he has only time to stay 
 with us about ten minutes, for an engagement. 
 But I shall hear from you ; this afternoon, for 
 mercy's sake ! — for, till I hear from you, I am 
 wretched. Oh, Clarinda, the tie that binds me 
 to thee is intwisted, incorporated with my 
 dearest threads of life ! 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
yS Bunis^ Clarmda. 
 
 No. XVIII. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 I WAS on my way, my love, to meet you (I 
 never do things by halves) when I got your 
 card. Mr Ainslie goes out of town to-morrow 
 morning to see a brother of his, who is newly 
 arrived from France. I am determined that he 
 and I shall call on you together. So look you, 
 lest I should never see to-morrow, we will call 
 on you to-night. Mary *' and you may put off 
 tea till about seven, at which time, in the 
 Galloway phrase, " an the beast be to the fore, 
 and the branks bide hale," expect the humblest 
 of your humble servants, and his dearest friend. 
 We only propose staying half an hour — "for 
 ought we ken." I could suffer the lash of misery 
 eleven months in the year, were the twelfth to 
 be composed of hours like yesternight. You 
 are the soul of my enjoyment — all else is of the 
 stuff of stocks and stones. 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 * One of Mrs M'Lehose's friends. 
 
Letters. 79 
 
 No. XIX. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Sunday Noon. 
 I HAVE almost given up the Excise idea. I 
 have been just now to wait on a great person, 
 
 Miss 's friend . Why will great people 
 
 not only deafen us with the din of their equipage, 
 and dazzle us with their fastidious pomp, but 
 they must also be so very dictatorily wise ? I 
 have been questioned like a child about my 
 matters, and blamed and schooled for my in- 
 scription on the Stirling window. Come, 
 Clarinda ! — " Come, curse me Jacob ; come, 
 defy me Israel ! " 
 
 Sunday Night. 
 
 I have been with Miss Nimmo. She is indeed 
 " a good soul," as my Clarinda finely says. She 
 has reconciled me, in a good measure, to the 
 world with her friendly prattle. 
 
 Schetki has sent me the song, set to a fine 
 air of his composing. I have called the song 
 " Clarinda " : I have carried it about in my 
 pocket, and hummed it over all day. 
 
8o Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 Monday Morning. 
 If my prayers have any weight in heaven, this 
 morning looks in on you and finds you in the 
 arms of peace, except where it is charmingly 
 interrupted by the ardours of devotion. I find 
 so much serenity of mind, so much positive 
 pleasure, so much fearless daring toward the 
 world, when I warm in devotion, or feel the 
 glorious sensation — a consciousness of Almighty 
 friendship — that I am sure I shall soon be an 
 honest enthusiast. 
 
 " How are Thy servants blest, O Lord ! 
 How sure is their defence ! 
 Eternal wisdom is their guide, 
 Their help Omnipotence ! " 
 
 I am, my dear Madam, yours, 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XX. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Suitday Morning. 
 I HAVE just been before the throne of my 
 God, Clarinda; according to my association of 
 ideas, my sentiments of love and friendship, I 
 
Letters. 8 1 
 
 next devote myself to you. Yesternight I was 
 happy — happiness that the world cannot give. 
 I kindle at the recollection ; but it is a flame 
 where innocence looks smiling on, and honour 
 stands by, a sacred guard. Your heart, your 
 fondest wishes, your dearest thoughts, these are 
 yours to bestow : your person is unapproachable 
 by the laws of your country ; and he loves not 
 as I do who would make you miserable. 
 
 You are an angel, Clarinda : you are surely 
 no mortal that " the earth owns." To kiss your 
 hand, to live on your smile, is to me far more 
 exquisite bliss than the dearest favours that the 
 fairest of the sex, yourself excepted, can bestow. 
 
 Stmday Evening. 
 You are the constant companion of my 
 thoughts. How wretched is the condition of 
 one who is haunted with conscious guilt, and 
 trembling under the idea of dreaded vengeance ! 
 and what a placid calm, what a charming secret 
 enjoyment it gives, to bosom the kind feelings 
 of friendship and the formal throes of love ! 
 Out upon the tempest of anger, the acrimonious 
 gall of fretful impatience, the sullen frost of 
 F 
 
82 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 louring resentment, or the corroding poison of 
 withered envy ! They eat up the immortal part 
 of man. If they spent their fury only on the 
 unfortunate objects of them, it would be some- 
 thing in their favour ; but these miserable 
 passions, like traitor Iscariot, betray their lord 
 and master. 
 
 The Almighty Author of peace, and goodness, 
 and love ! do Thou give me the social heart 
 that kindly tastes of every man's cup ! Is it a 
 draught of joy ? — warm and open my heart to 
 share it with cordial, unenvying rejoicing. Is it 
 the bitter potion of sorrow? — melt my heart 
 with sincerely sympathetic woe. Above all, do 
 Thou give me the manly mind that resolutely 
 exemplifies, in life and manners, those senti- 
 ments which I would wish to be thought to 
 possess. The friend of my soul ; there, may I 
 never deviate from the firmest fidelity and most 
 active kindness ! Clarinda, the dear object of 
 my fondest love ; there, may the most sacred 
 inviolate honour, the most faithful kindling 
 constancy, ever watch and animate my every 
 thought and imagination ! 
 
 Did you ever meet with the following lines 
 spoken of religion — your darling topic ? — 
 
Letters, 83 
 
 " ^Tis this, my friend, that streaks our morning bright ; 
 ^Tis this that gilds the horrors of our night ; 
 When wealth forsakes us, and when friends are few, 
 When friends are faithless, or when foes pursue ; 
 'Tis this that wards the blow, or stills the smart, 
 Disarms affliction, or repels its dart ; 
 Within the breast bids purest rapture rise, 
 Bids smiling Conscience spread her cloudless skies." 
 
 I met with these verses very early in life, and 
 was so delighted with them, that I have them by 
 me, copied at school. 
 
 Good night and sound rest, my dearest 
 Clarinda ! 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XXI. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Thursday Night. 
 I CANNOT be easy, my Clarinda, while any 
 sentiment respecting me in your bosom gives 
 me pain. If there is no man on earth to whom 
 your heart and affections are justly due, it may 
 savour of imprudence, but never of criminality, 
 to bestow that heart and those affections where 
 you please. The God of love meant and made 
 those delicious attachments to be bestowed on 
 
84 Burns* Clarinda, 
 
 somebody ; and even all the imprudence lies 
 in bestowing them on an unworthy object. If 
 this reasoning is conclusive, as it certainly is, 
 I must be allowed to " talk of love." 
 
 It is, perhaps, rather wrong to speak highly 
 to a friend of his letter : it is apt to lay one 
 under a little restraint in their future letters, 
 and restraint is the death of a friendly epistle ; 
 but there is one passage in your last charming 
 letter, Thomson or Shenstone never exceeded it, 
 nor often came up to it. I shall certainly steal 
 it, and set it in some future poetic production, 
 and get immortal fame by it. 'Tis when you 
 bid the scenes of nature remind me of Clarinda. 
 Can I- forget you, Clarinda ? I would detest 
 myself as a tasteless, unfeeling, insipid, infamous 
 blockhead. I have loved women of ordinary 
 merit, whom I could have loved for ever. You 
 are the first, the only unexceptionable individual 
 of the beauteous sex that I ever met with ; and 
 never woman more entirely possessed my soul. 
 I know myself, and how far I can depend on 
 passion's swell. It has been my peculiar study. 
 
 I thank you for going to Miers. Urge him, 
 for necessity calls, to have it done by the middle 
 of next week : Wednesday the latest day. I 
 
Letters. 85 
 
 want it for a breast-pin, to wear next my heart. 
 I propose to keep sacred set times, to wander 
 in the woods and wilds for meditation on you. 
 Then, and only then, your lovely image shall be 
 produced to the day, with a reverence akin to 
 devotion. 
 
 To-morrow night shall not be the last. 
 Good night ! I am perfectly stupid, as I 
 supped late yesternight. 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XXII. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Saturday Morning. 
 There is no time, my Clarinda, when the 
 conscious thrilling chords of love and friendship 
 give such delight, as in the pensive hours of 
 what our favourite Thomson calls " philosophic 
 melancholy." The sportive insects, who bask in 
 the sunshine of prosperity, or the worms, that 
 luxuriant crawl amid their ample wealth of 
 earth ; they need no Clarinda — they would 
 despise Sylvander, if they dared. The family of 
 
86 Burns^ Clarinda. 
 
 Misfortune, a numerous group of brothers and 
 sisters ! they need a resting-place to their souls. 
 Unnoticed, often condemned by the world — in 
 some degree, perhaps, condemned by themselves 
 — they feel the full enjoyment of ardent love, 
 delicate, tender endearments, mutual esteem, 
 and mutual reliance. 
 
 In this light I have often admired religion. 
 In proportion as we are wrung with grief, or 
 distracted with anxiety, the ideas of a com- 
 passionate Deity, an Almighty Protector, are 
 doubly dear. 
 
 " 'Tis this, my friend, that streaks our morning bright ; 
 'Tis this that gilds the horrors of our night." 
 
 I have been this morning taking a peep 
 through, as Young finely says, "the dark 
 postern of time long elapsed " ; and you will 
 easily guess 'twas a rueful prospect. What a 
 tissue of thoughtlessness, weakness, and folly ! 
 My life reminded me of a ruined temple : what 
 strength, what proportion in some parts ! — what 
 unsightly gaps, what prostrate ruins in others ! 
 I kneeled down before the Father of Mercies, 
 and said, " Father, I have sinned against 
 Heaven, and in Thy sight, and am no more 
 
Letters. 87 
 
 worthy to be called Thy son ! " I rose, eased 
 and strengthened. I despise the superstition of 
 a fanatic, but I love the religion of a man. 
 " The future," said I to myself, " is still before 
 me : there let me 
 
 ' On reason build resolve — 
 That column of true majesty in man ! ' 
 
 I have difficulties many to encounter," said I ; 
 " but they are not absolutely insuperable : and 
 where is firmness of mind shown, but in exer- 
 tion ? Mere declamation is bombast rant. 
 Besides, wherever I am, or in whatever situation 
 I may be — 
 
 ' Tis nought to me, 
 
 Since God is ever present, ever felt, 
 
 In the void waste as in the city full ; 
 
 And where He vital breathes, there must be joy.' " 
 
 Saturday Nighty Half after Ten. 
 What luxury of bliss I v/as enjoying at this 
 time yesternight ! My ever dearest Clarinda, 
 you have stolen away my soul : but you have 
 refined, you have exalted it ; you have given it 
 a stronger sense of virtue, and a stronger relish 
 for piety. Clarinda, first of your sex ! if ever I 
 am the veriest wretch on earth to forget you — 
 
88 Btcnis' Clarinda. 
 
 if ever your lovely image is effaced from my 
 soul — 
 
 " May I be lost, no eye to weep my end, 
 And find no earth that's base enough to bury me ! " 
 
 What trifling silliness is the childish fondness 
 of the every-day children of the world ! 'Tis 
 the unmeaning toying of the younglings of the 
 fields and forests ; but, where sentiment and 
 fancy unite their sweets, where taste and deli- 
 cacy refine, where wit adds the flavour, and 
 good sense gives strength and spirit to all, what 
 a delicious draught is the hour of tender 
 endearment ! 
 
 No. XXIII. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 . . . I AM a discontented ghost, a perturbed 
 spirit. Clarinda, if you ever forget Sylvander, 
 may you be happy, but he will be miserable. 
 
 Oh, what a fool I am in love ! what an 
 extravagant prodigal of affection ! Why are 
 your sex called the tender sex, when I never 
 have met with one who can repay me in 
 passion ? They are either not so rich in love 
 as I am, or they are niggards where I am lavish. 
 
Letters. 89 
 
 Thou, whose I am, and whose are all my 
 ways ! Thou see'st me here, the hapless wreck 
 of tides and tempests in my own bosom : do 
 Thou direct to Thyself that ardent love, for 
 which I have so often sought a return in vain 
 from my fellow-creatures ! If Thy goodness 
 has yet such a gift in store for me as an equal 
 return of affection from her who, Thou knowest, 
 is dearer to me than life, do Thou bless and 
 hallow our band of love and friendship ; watch 
 over us, in all our outgoings and incomings for 
 good ; and may the tie that unites our hearts be 
 strong and indissoluble as the thread of man's 
 immortal life ! 
 
 1 am just going to take your blackbird, the 
 sweetest, I am sure, that ever sung, and prune 
 its wings a little. 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XXIV. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Tuesday Morning. 
 I CANNOT go out to-day, my dearest love, 
 without sending you half a line by way of a sin- 
 
90 Burns^ Clarinda. 
 
 offering ; but, believe me, 'twas the sin of ignor- 
 ance. Could you think that I intended to hurt 
 you by anything I said yesternight? Nature 
 has been too kind to you for your happiness, 
 your delicacy, your sensibility. Oh why should 
 such glorious qualifications be the fruitful source 
 of woe ! You have " murdered sleep " to me last 
 night. I went to bed impressed with an idea 
 that you were unhappy ; and every start I 
 closed my eyes, busy Fancy painted you in such 
 scenes of romantic misery, that I would almost 
 be persuaded you are not well this morning. 
 
 " If I unwitting have offended, 
 Impute it not." 
 
 " But while we live 
 But one short hour, perhaps, between us two 
 Let there be peace." 
 
 If Mary has not gone by the time this reaches 
 you, give her my best compliments. She is a 
 charming girl, and highly worthy of the noblest 
 love. 
 
 I send you a poem to read till I call on you 
 this night, which will be about nine. I wish 
 I could procure some potent spell, some fairy 
 charm, that would protect from injury, or restore 
 to rest, that bosom chord, " trembling alive all 
 
Letters. 91 
 
 o'er," on which hangs your peace of mind. I 
 thought, vainly I fear thought, that the devotion 
 of love — love strong as even you can feel, love 
 guarded, invulnerably guarded, by all the purity 
 of virtue, and all the pride of honour — I thought 
 such a love might make you happy. Shall I be 
 mistaken? I can no more, for hurry. 
 
 No. XXV. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Friday Morniiig, 7 o'clock. 
 Your fears for Mary are truly laughable. I 
 suppose, my love, you and I showed her a 
 scene which, perhaps, made her wish that she 
 had a swain, and one who could love like me ; 
 and 'tis a thousand pities that so good a heart 
 as hers should want an aim, an object. I am 
 miserably stupid this morning. Yesterday I 
 dined with a baronet, and sat pretty late over 
 the bottle. And " who hath woe — who hath 
 sorrow ? they that tarry long at the wine ; they 
 that go to seek mixed wine." Forgive me, 
 likewise, a quotation from my favourite author. 
 
92 Burns' Ctarinda. 
 
 Solomon's knowledge of the world is very great. 
 He may be looked on as the Spectator or 
 Adventurer of his day : and it is, indeed, sur- 
 prising what a sameness has ever been in human 
 nature. The broken, but strongly characterising 
 hints, that the royal author gives us of the 
 manners of the court of Jerusalem and country 
 of Israel are, in their great outlines, the same 
 pictures that London and England, Versailles 
 and France, exhibit some three thousand years 
 later. The loves in the " Song of Songs " are 
 all in the spirit of Lady M. W. Montagu, or 
 Madame Ninon de I'Enclos ; though, for my 
 part, I dislike both the ancient and modern 
 voluptuaries ; and will dare to affirm, that such 
 an attachment as mine to Clarinda, and such 
 evenings as she and I have spent, are what 
 these greatly respectable and deeply experienced 
 judges of life and love never dreamed of. 
 
 I shall be with you this evening between 
 eight and nine, and shall keep as sober hours 
 as you could wish. 
 
 I am ever, my dear Madam, yours, 
 
 SYLVANDER. 
 
Letters. 93 
 
 No. XXVI. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 My ever dearest Clarinda, 
 
 I make a numerous dinner-party wait me 
 while I read yours and write this. Do not 
 require that I should cease to love you, to adore 
 you in my soul ; 'tis to me impossible : your 
 peace and happiness are to me dearer than my 
 soul. Name the terms on which you wish to 
 see me, to correspond with me, and you have 
 them. I must love, pine, mourn, and adore in 
 secret : this you must not deny me. You will 
 ever be to me 
 
 " Dear as the light that visits those sad eyes, 
 Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart." 
 
 I have not patience to read the Puritanic scrawl. 
 Damned sophistry 1 Ye heavens. Thou God of 
 nature. Thou Redeemer of mankind ! ye look 
 down with approving eyes on a passion inspired 
 by the purest flame, and guarded by truth, 
 delicacy, and honour ; but the half-inch soul of 
 an unfeeling, cold-blooded, pitiful Presbyterian 
 bigot cannot forgive anything above his dungeon- 
 bosom and foggy head. 
 
94 Burns' Clarinda, 
 
 Farewell ! I'll be with you to-morrow even- 
 ing ; and be at rest in your mind. I will be 
 yours in the way you think most to your happi- 
 ness. I dare not proceed. I love, and will love 
 you ; and will, with joyous confidence, approach 
 the throne of the Almighty Judge of men with 
 your dear idea ; and will despise the scum of 
 sentiment and the mist of sophistry. 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XXVII. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Wednesday^ Midnight. 
 
 Madam, 
 
 After a wretched day, I am preparing for 
 a sleepless night. I am going to address myself 
 to the Almighty Witness of my actions — some 
 time, perhaps very soon, my Almighty Judge. 
 I am not going to be the advocate of Passion : 
 be Thou my inspirer and testimony, O God, as 
 I plead the cause of truth ! 
 
 I have read over your friend's haughty, dicta- 
 torial letter : you are only answerable to your 
 God in such a matter. Who gave any fellow- 
 
Letters, 95 
 
 creature of yours (a fellow-creature incapable of 
 being your judge, because not your peer) a right 
 to catechise, scold, undervalue, abuse, and insult, 
 wantonly and inhumanly to insult, you thus ? I 
 don't wish, not even wish, to deceive you. Madam. 
 The Searcher of hearts is my witness how dear 
 you are to me ; but though it were possible you 
 could be still dearer to me, I would not even 
 kiss your hand at the expense of your conscience. 
 Away with declamation ! let us appeal to the 
 bar of common sense. It is not mouthing 
 everything sacred ; it is not vague ranting asser- 
 tions ; it is not assuming, haughtily and insult- 
 ingly assuming, the dictatorial language of a 
 Roman pontiff, that must dissolve a union like 
 ours. Tell me. Madam, are you under the least 
 shadow of an obligation to bestow your love, 
 tenderness, caresses, affections, heart and soul, 
 on Mr M'Lehose — the man who has repeatedly, 
 habitually, and barbarously broken through 
 every tie of duty, nature, or gratitude to you? 
 The laws of your country, indeed, for the most 
 useful reasons of policy and sound government, 
 have made your person inviolate ; but are your 
 heart and affections bound to one who gives not 
 the least return of either to you ? You cannot 
 
96 Btcrns^ Clarinda. 
 
 do it ; it is not in the nature of things that you 
 are bound to do it ; the common feelings of 
 humanity forbid it. Have you, then, a heart 
 and affections which are no man's right ? You 
 have. It would be highly, ridiculously absurd 
 to suppose the contrary. Tell me, then, in the 
 name of common sense, can it be wrong, is such 
 a supposition compatible with the plainest ideas 
 of right and wrong, that it is improper to bestow 
 the heart and these affections on another — while 
 that bestowing is not in the smallest degree 
 hurtful to your duty to God, to your children, to 
 yourself, or to society at large ? 
 
 This is the great test ; the consequences : let 
 us see them. In a widowed, forlorn, lonely 
 situation, with a bosom glowing with love and 
 tenderness, yet so delicately situated that you 
 cannot indulge these nobler feelings except you 
 meet with a man who has a soul capable . . . 
 
 No. XXVIII. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 " I AM distressed for thee, my brother Jona- 
 than." I have suffered, Clarinda, from your 
 
Letters. 97 
 
 letter. My soul was in arms at the sad perusal. 
 I dreaded that I had acted wrong. If I have 
 wronged you, God forgive me. But, Clarinda, 
 be comforted. Let us raise the tone of our 
 feelings a little higher and bolder. A fellow- 
 creature who leaves us — who spurns us without 
 just cause, though once our bosom friend — up 
 with a little honest pride : let him go ! How 
 shall I comfort you, who am the cause of the 
 injury? Can I wish that I had never seen you 
 — that we had never met? No, I never will. 
 But, have I thrown you friendless ? — there is 
 almost distraction in the thought. Father of 
 Mercies ! against Thee often have I sinned : 
 through Thy grace I will endeavour to do so no 
 more. She who. Thou knowest, is dearer to me 
 than myself — pour Thou the balm of peace into 
 her past wounds, and hedge her about with 
 Thy peculiar care, all her future days and 
 nights. Strengthen her tender, noble mind 
 firmly to suffer and magnanimously to bear. 
 Make me worthy of that friendship, that love 
 she honours me with. May my attachment to 
 her be pure as devotion, and lasting as immortal 
 life ! O Almighty Goodness, hear me ! Be to 
 her at all times, particularly in the hour of 
 G 
 
g^ Burns* Clarinda. 
 
 distress or trial, a friend and comforter, a guide 
 and guard. 
 
 " How are Thy servants blest, O Lord, 
 How sure is their defence ! 
 Eternal wisdom is their guide, 
 Their help Omnipotence." 
 
 Forgive me, Clarinda, the injury I have done 
 you. To-night I shall be with you, as indeed I 
 shall be ill at ease till I see you. 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XXIX. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Two d clock. 
 I JUST now received your first letter of yester- 
 day, by the careless negligence of the penny- 
 post. Clarinda, matters are grown very serious 
 with us ; then seriously hear me, and hear me, 
 Heaven — I met you, my dear . . . , by far the 
 first of womankind, at least to me ; I esteemed, 
 I loved you at first sight ; the longer I am 
 acquainted with you, the more innate amiable- 
 ness and worth I discover in you. You have 
 suffered a loss, I confess, for my sake : but if the 
 firmest, steadiest, warmest friendship — if every 
 
Letters. 99 
 
 endeavour to be worthy of your friendship — if a 
 love, strong as the ties of nature, and holy as 
 the duties of religion — if all these can make 
 anything like a compensation for the evil I have 
 occasioned you, if they be worth your acceptance, 
 or can in the least add to your enjoyments — so 
 help Sylvander, ye Powers above, in his hour of 
 need, as he freely gives these all to Clarinda ! 
 
 I esteem you, I love you as a friend : I admire 
 you, I love you as a woman beyond any one in 
 all the circle of creation ; I know I shall continue 
 to esteem you, to love you, to pray for you — nay, 
 to pray for myself for your sake. 
 
 Expect me at eight — and believe me to be 
 ever, my dearest Madam, 
 
 Yours most entirely, 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XXX. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 When matters, my love, are desperate, we 
 must put on a desperate face — 
 
 " On reason build resolve, 
 That column of true majesty in man " — 
 
loo Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 or, as the same author finely says in another 
 place — 
 
 " Let thy soul spring up 
 And lay strong hold for help on Him that made thee." 
 
 I am yours, Clarinda, for life. Never be dis- 
 couraged at all this. Look forward : in a few- 
 weeks I shall be somewhere or other, out of the 
 possibility of seeing you ; till then, I shall write 
 you often, but visit you seldom. Your fame, 
 your welfare, your happiness, are dearer to me 
 than any gratification whatever. Be comforted, 
 my love ! the present moment is the worst ; the 
 lenient hand of time is daily and hourly either 
 lightening the burden, or making us insensible 
 to the weight. None of these friends — I mean 
 
 Mr and the other gentleman — can hurt 
 
 your worldly support ; and of their friendship, 
 in a little time you will learn to be easy, and 
 by -and -by to be happy without it. A decent 
 means of livelihood in the world, an approving 
 God, a peaceful conscience, and one firm trusty 
 friend — can anybody that has these be said to 
 be unhappy ? These are yours. 
 
 To-morrow evening I shall be with you about 
 eight, probably for the last time till I return to 
 
Letters. loi 
 
 Edinburgh. In the meantime, should any of 
 these two unlucky friends question you respect- 
 ing me, whether I am the man^ I do not think 
 they are entitled to any information. As to 
 their jealousy and spying, I despise them. 
 
 Adieu, my dearest Madam ! 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XXXI. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Glasgow, Monday Evenings Nine o^ clock. 
 The attraction of love, I find, is in an inverse 
 proportion to the attraction of the Newtonian 
 philosophy. In the system of Sir Isaac, the 
 nearer objects were to one another, the stronger 
 was the attractive force. In my system, every 
 milestone that marked my progress from 
 Clarinda, awakened a keener pang of attach- 
 ment to her. How do you feel, my love? Is 
 your heart ill at ease ? I fear it. God forbid 
 that these persecutors should harass that peace, 
 which is more precious to me than my own. 
 Be assured I shall ever think on you, muse on 
 you, and in my moments of devotion, pray for 
 
102 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 you. The hour that you are not in my thoughts, 
 " be that hour darkness ; let the shadows of 
 death cover it ; let it not be numbered in the 
 hours of the day ! " 
 
 " When I forget the darling theme, 
 Be my tongue mute ! my fancy paint no more ! 
 And, dead to joy, forget my heart to beat ! " 
 
 I have just met with my old friend, the ship 
 captain * — guess my pleasure : to meet you 
 could alone have given me more. My brother 
 William, too, the young saddler, has come to 
 Glasgow to meet me ; and here are we three 
 spending the evening. 
 
 I arrived here too late to write by post ; but 
 I'll wrap half-a-dozen sheets of blank paper 
 together, and send it by the Fly, under the 
 name of a parcel. You will hear from me 
 next post-town. I would write you a longer 
 letter, but for the present circumstances of my 
 friend. 
 
 Adieu, my Clarinda ! I am just going to 
 propose your health by way of grace drink. 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 * Mr Richard Brown. 
 
Letters, 103 
 
 No. XXXII. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Kilmarnock, Friday [Feb. 22]. 
 I WROTE you, my dear Madam, the moment 
 I alighted in Glasgow. Since then I have not 
 had opportunity ; for in Paisley, where I arrived 
 next day, my worthy, wise friend Mr Pattison 
 did not allow me a moment's respite. I was 
 there ten hours ; during which time I was intro- 
 duced to nine men worth six thousands ; five 
 men worth ten thousands ; his brother, richly 
 worth twenty thousands ; and a young weaver, 
 who will have thirty thousands good when his 
 father, who has no more children than the said 
 weaver, and a Whig kirk, dies. Mr P. was bred 
 a zealous Anti-burgher ; but during his widower- 
 hood he has found their strictness incompatible 
 with certain compromises he is often obliged to 
 make with those powers of darkness — the devil, 
 the world, and the flesh. . . . His only daughter, 
 who, " if the beast be to the fore, and the 
 branks bide hale," will have seven thousand 
 pounds when her old father steps into the dark 
 factory-office of eternity with his well-thrummed 
 
I04 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 web of life, has put him again and again in a 
 commendable fit of indignation by requesting 
 a harpsichord. "O these boarding-schools!" 
 exclaims my prudent friend : " she was a good 
 spinner and sewer till I was advised by her foes 
 and mine to give her a year of Edinburgh ! " 
 
 After two bottles more, my much-respected 
 friend opened up to me a project — a legitimate 
 child of Wisdom and Good Sense : 'twas no 
 less than a long-thought-on and deeply-matured 
 design, to marry a girl fully as elegant in her 
 form as the famous priestess whom Saul con- 
 sulted in his last hours, and who had been 
 second maid of honour to his deceased wife. 
 This, you may be sure, I highly applauded ; so 
 I hope for a pair of gloves by-and-by. I spent 
 the two bypast days at Dunlop House, with 
 that worthy family to whom I was deeply in- 
 debted early in my poetic career ; and in about 
 two hours I shall present your "twa wee sarkies" 
 to the little fellow. My dearest Clarinda, you 
 are ever present with me ; and these hours, 
 that drawl by among the fools and rascals of 
 this world, are only supportable in the idea, 
 that they are the forerunners of that happy 
 hour that ushers me to "the mistress of my 
 
Letters. 1 05 
 
 soul." Next week I shall visit Dumfries, and 
 next again return to Edinburgh. My letters, 
 in these hurrying dissipated hours, will be 
 heavy trash ; but you know the writer. God 
 bless you ! 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XXXIII. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Cumnock \Sunday\ March 2, 1788. 
 I HOPE, and am certain, that my generous 
 Clarinda will not think my silence, for now a 
 long week, has been in any degree owing to 
 my forgetfulness. I have been tossed about 
 through the country ever since I wrote you ; 
 and am here, returning from Dumfriesshire, at 
 an inn, the post-office of the place, with just so 
 long time as my horse eats his corn, to write 
 you. I have been hurried with business and 
 dissipation almost equal to the insidious decree 
 of the Persian monarch's mandate, when he for- 
 bade asking petition of God or man for forty 
 days. Had the venerable prophet been as 
 throng [busy] as I, he had not broken the 
 decree, at least not thrice a-day. 
 
io6 Btirns' Clarinda. 
 
 I am thinking my farming scheme will yet 
 hold. A worthy, intelligent farmer, my father's 
 friend and my own, has been with me on the 
 spot : he thinks the bargain practicable. I am 
 myself, on a more serious review of the lands, 
 much better pleased with them. I won't mention 
 this in writing to anybody but you and [Ainslie]. 
 Don't accuse me of being fickle : I have the two 
 plans of life before me, and I wish to adopt the 
 one most likely to procure me independence. I 
 shall be in Edinburgh next week. I long to 
 see you : your image is omnipresent to me ; 
 nay, I am convinced I would soon idolatrize it 
 most seriously — so much do absence and memory 
 improve the medium through which one sees the 
 much-loved object. To-night, at the sacred hour 
 of eight, I expect to meet you — at the Throne 
 of Grace. I hope, as I go home to-night, to 
 find a letter from you at the post-office in 
 Mauchline. I have just once seen that dear hand 
 since I left Edinburgh — a letter indeed which 
 much affected me. Tell me, first of woman- 
 kind ! will my warmest attachment, my sincerest 
 friendship, my correspondence — will they be any 
 compensation for the sacrifices you make for my 
 sake? If they will, they are yours. If I settle 
 
Letters. 107 
 
 on the farm I propose, I am just a day and a 
 half's ride from Edinburgh. We will meet — 
 don't you say " perhaps too often ! " 
 
 Farewell, my fair, my charming poetess ! May 
 all good things ever attend you ! 
 
 I am ever, my dearest Madam, yours, 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XXXIV. 
 Sylvander to Clarinda. 
 
 \March 6, 1788.] 
 I OWN myself guilty, Clarinda : I should 
 have written you last week. But when you 
 recollect, my dearest Madam, that yours of this 
 night's post is only the third I have from you, 
 and that this is the fifth or sixth I have sent 
 to you, you will not reproach me, with a good 
 grace, for unkindness. I have always some kind 
 of idea not to sit down to write a letter, except 
 I have time, and possession of my faculties, so 
 as to do some justice to my letter ; which at 
 present is rarely my situation. For instance, 
 yesterday I dined at a friend's at some distance : 
 
io8 Burns^ Clarinda. 
 
 the savage hospitality of this country spent me 
 the most part of the night over the nauseous 
 potion in the bowl. This day — sick — headache 
 — low spirits — miserable — fasting, except for a 
 draught of water or small beer. Now eight 
 o'clock at night; only able to crawl ten minutes' 
 walk into Mauchline, to wait the post, in the 
 pleasurable hope of hearing from the mistress 
 of my soul. 
 
 But truce with all this ! When I sit down 
 to write to you, all is happiness and peace. A 
 hundred times a day do I figure you before 
 your taper, your book or work laid aside as I 
 get within the room. How happy have I been ! 
 and how little of that scantling portion of time, 
 called the life of man, is sacred to happiness, 
 much less transport. 
 
 I could moralize to-night like a death's-head. 
 
 " Oh what is life, that thoughtless wish of all ! 
 A drop of honey in a draught of gall." 
 
 Nothing astonishes me more, when a little 
 sickness clogs the wheels of life, than the 
 thoughtless career we run in the hour of health. 
 " None saith, Where is God, my Maker, that 
 giveth songs in the night : who teacheth us 
 
Letters. 109 
 
 more knowledge than the beasts of the field, 
 and more understanding than the fowls of the 
 air ? " 
 
 Give me, my Maker, to remember Thee ! 
 Give me to act up to the dignity of my nature ! 
 Give me to feel " another's woe " ; and continue 
 with me that dear loved friend that feels with 
 mine ! 
 
 The dignifying and dignified consciousness of 
 an honest man, and the well-grounded trust in 
 approving Heaven, are two most substantial 
 foundations of happiness. . . . 
 
 I could not have written a page to any 
 mortal except yourself I'll write you by 
 Sunday's post. Adieu! Goodnight! 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XXXV. 
 
 Sylvander to Clarinda. 
 
 MosSGlEL, March 7, 1788. 
 Clarinda, I have been so stung with your 
 reproach for unkindness — a sin so unlike me, a 
 sin I detest more than a breach of the whole 
 
no Burits Clarinda. 
 
 Decalogue, fifth, sixth, seventh, and ninth 
 articles excepted — that I believe I shall not rest 
 in my grave about it, if I die before I see you. 
 You have often allowed me the head to judge 
 and the heart to feel the influence of female 
 excellence : was it not blasphemy then, against 
 your own charms and against my feelings, to 
 suppose that a short fortnight could abate my 
 passion ? 
 
 You, my love, may have your cares and 
 anxieties to disturb you ; but they are the 
 usual occurrences of life. Your future views are 
 fixed, and your mind in a settled routine. 
 Could not you, my ever dearest Madam, make 
 a little allowance for a man, after long absence, 
 paying a short visit to a country full of friends, 
 relations, and early intimates ? Cannot you 
 guess, my Clarinda, what thoughts, what cares, 
 what anxious forebodings, hopes, and fears, 
 must crowd the breast of the man of keen 
 sensibility, when no less is on the tapis than his 
 aim, his employment, his very existence through 
 future life ? 
 
 To be overtopped in anything else, I can 
 bear ; but in the tests of generous love, I defy 
 all mankind ! not even to the tender, the fond. 
 
Letters. 1 1 1 
 
 the loving Clarinda ; she whose strength of 
 attachment, whose melting soul, may vie with 
 Eloise and Sappho ; not even she can overpay 
 the affection she owes me ! 
 
 Now that, not my apology, but my defence 
 is made, I feel my soul respire more easily. 
 I know you will go along with me in my 
 justification : would to Heaven you could in my 
 adoption, too ! I mean an adoption beneath 
 the stars — an adoption where I might revel in 
 the immediate beams of 
 
 " She the bright sun of all her sex." 
 
 I would not have you, my dear Madam, so 
 much hurt at Miss Nimmo's coldness. 'Tis 
 placing yourself below her, an honour she by 
 no means deserves. We ought, when we wish 
 to be economists in happiness — we ought, in 
 the first place, to fix the standard of our own 
 character; and when, on full examination, we 
 know where we stand, and how much ground 
 we occupy, let us contend for it as property ; 
 and those who seem to doubt or deny us what 
 is justly ours, let us either pity their prejudices 
 or despise their judgment. I know, my dear, 
 you will say this is self-conceit ; but I call it 
 
112 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 self-knowledge : the one is the overweening 
 opinion of a fool, who fancies himself to be 
 what he wishes himself to be thought ; the 
 other is the honest justice that a man of sense, 
 who has thoroughly examined the subject, owes 
 to himself. Without this standard, this column 
 in our own mind, we are perpetually at the 
 mercy of the petulance, the mistakes, the pre- 
 judices, nay, the very weakness and wickedness 
 of our fellow-creatures. 
 
 I urge this, my dear, both to confirm myself 
 in the doctrine which, I assure you, I sometimes 
 need, and because I know that this causes you 
 often much disquiet. To return to Miss Nimmo. 
 She is most certainly a worthy soul ; and 
 equalled by very, very few in goodness of heart. 
 But can she boast more goodness of heart than 
 Clarinda ? Not even prejudice will dare to say 
 so. For penetration and discernment, Clarinda 
 sees far beyond her. To wit, Miss Nimmo dare 
 make no pretence : to Clarinda's wit, scarce any 
 of her sex dare make pretence. Personal 
 charms, it would be ridiculous to run the 
 parallel : and for conduct in life. Miss Nimmo 
 was never called out, either much to do, or to 
 suffer. Clarinda has been both ; and has per- 
 
Letters. 113 
 
 formed her part, where Miss Nimmo would 
 have sunk at the bare idea. 
 
 Away, then, with these disquietudes ! Let 
 us pray with the honest weaver of Kilbarchan, 
 " Lord, send us a gude conceit o' oursel' ! " or 
 in the words of the auld sang — 
 
 " Who does me disdain, I can scorn them again. 
 And I'll never mind any such foes." 
 
 There is an error in the commerce of 
 intimacy. . . . 
 
 Happy is our lot, indeed, when we meet with 
 an honest merchant, who is qualified to deal 
 with us on our own terms ; but that is a rarity : 
 with almost everybody we must pocket our 
 pearls, less or more, and learn, in the old Scots 
 phrase, "To gie sic like as we get." For this 
 reason we should try to erect a kind of bank 
 or storehouse in our own mind ; or, as the 
 Psalmist says, "We should commune with our 
 own hearts and be still." . . . 
 
 I wrote you yesternight, which will reach you 
 long before this can. I may write Mr Ainslie 
 before I see him, but I am not sure. 
 
 Farewell ! and remember 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 H 
 
114 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 No. XXXVI. 
 
 Sylvander to Clarinda. 
 
 Monday Noon [March 17]. 
 
 I WILL meet you to-morrow, Clarinda, as you 
 appoint. My Excise affair is just concluded, 
 and I have got my order for instructions : so 
 far good. Wednesday night I am engaged to 
 sup among some of the principals of the Excise, 
 so can only make a call for you that evening ; 
 but next day, I stay to dine with one of 
 the Commissioners, so cannot go till Friday 
 morning. 
 
 Your hopes, your fears, your cares, my love, 
 are mine ; so don't mind them. I will take you 
 in my hand through the dreary wilds of this 
 world, and scare away the ravening bird or 
 beast that would annoy you. I saw Mary in 
 town to-day, and asked her if she had seen you. 
 I shall certainly bespeak Mr Ainslie, as you 
 desire. 
 
 Excuse me, my dearest angel, this hurried 
 scrawl and miserable paper ; circumstances 
 make both. Farewell till to-morrow. 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
Letters. 115 
 
 No. XXXVII. 
 
 Sylvander to Clarinda. 
 
 Tuesday Morning {March 18]. 
 I AM just hurrying away to wait on the 
 Great Man, Clarinda ; but I have more respect 
 to my own peace and happiness than to set out 
 without waiting on you ; for my imagination, 
 Hke a child's favourite bird, will fondly flutter 
 along with this scrawl, till it perch on your 
 bosom. I thank you for all the happiness you 
 bestowed on me yesterday. The walk — de- 
 lightful ; the evening — rapture. Do not be 
 uneasy to-day, Clarinda ; forgive me. I am in 
 rather better spirits to-day, though I had but 
 an indifferent night. Care, anxiety sat on my 
 spirits ; and all the cheerfulness of this morning 
 is the fruit of some serious, important ideas that 
 lie, in their realities, beyond " the dark and the 
 narrow house," as Ossian, prince of poets, says. 
 The Father of Mercies be with you, Clarinda ! 
 and every good thing attend you ! 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
ii6 Bairns' Clarinda. 
 
 No. XXXVIII. 
 Sylvander to Clarinda. 
 
 Wednesday Morning {.March 19]. 
 
 Clarinda, will that envious night-cap hinder 
 you from appearing at the window as I pass? 
 " Who is she that looketh forth as the morning ; 
 fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an 
 army with banners ? " 
 
 Do not accuse me of fond folly for this line ; 
 you know I am a cool lover. I mean by these 
 presents greeting, to let you to wit, that arch- 
 rascal Creech has not done my business yester- 
 night, which has put off my leaving town till 
 Monday morning. To-morrow at eleven I 
 meet with him for the last time ; just the hour 
 I should have met far more agreeable company. 
 
 You will tell me this evening whether you 
 
 cannot make our hour of meeting to-morrow 
 
 one o'clock. I have just now written Creech 
 
 such a letter, that the very goose-feather in my 
 
 hand shrunk back from the line, and seemed to 
 
 say, " I exceedingly fear and quake ! " I am 
 
 forming ideal schemes of vengeance. . . . 
 
 Adieu, and think on 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
Letters. li^ 
 
 No. XXXIX. 
 Sylvander to Clarinda. 
 
 Friday^ Nine dclock^ Night {March 21]. 
 I AM just now come in, and have read your 
 letter. The first thing I did was to thank the 
 divine Disposer of events, that He has had such 
 happiness in store for me as the connexion I 
 have with you. Life, my Clarinda, is a weary, 
 barren path ; and woe be to him or her that 
 ventures on it alone! For me, I have my 
 dearest partner of my soul : Clarinda and I will 
 make out our pilgrimage together. Wherever I 
 am, I shall constantly let her know how I go on, 
 what I observe in the world around me, and 
 what adventures I meet with. Will it please 
 you, my love, to get every week, or at least 
 every fortnight, a packet, two or three sheets, 
 full of remarks, nonsense, news, rhymes, and old 
 songs? Will you open, with satisfaction and 
 delight, a letter from a man who loves you, who 
 has loved you, and who will love you to death, 
 through death, and for ever ? Oh, Clarinda ! 
 what do I owe to Heaven for blessing me with 
 such a piece of exalted excellence as you ! I 
 call over your idea, as a miser counts over his 
 
Ii8 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 treasure. Tell me, were you studious to please 
 me last night ? I am sure you did it to 
 transport. How rich am I who have such a 
 treasure as you ! You know me ; you know 
 how to make me happy ; and you do it most 
 effectually. God bless you with 
 
 " Long life, long youth, long pleasure, and a friend ! " 
 
 To-morrow night, according to your own 
 direction, I shall watch the window : 'tis the 
 star that guides me to paradise. The great 
 relish to all is, that Honour, that Innocence, 
 that Religion, are the witnesses and guarantees 
 of our happiness. " The Lord God knoweth," 
 and perhaps " Israel he shall know," my love 
 and your merit. Adieu, Clarinda ! I am going 
 to remember you in my prayers. 
 
 Sylvander. 
 
 No. XL. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Madam, March 9, 1789. 
 
 The letter you wrote me to Heron's carried 
 
 its own answer in its bosom ; you forbade me to 
 
 write you, unless I was willing to plead guilty 
 
 to a certain indictment that you were pleased to 
 
Letters. 119 
 
 bring against me. As I am convinced of my 
 own innocence, and though conscious of high 
 imprudence and egregious folly, can lay my 
 hand on my breast and attest the rectitude of 
 my heart, you will pardon me. Madam, if I do 
 not carry my complaisance so far as humbly to 
 acquiesce in the name of villain, merely out of 
 compliment to your opinion, much as I esteem 
 your judgment, and warmly as I regard your 
 worth. 
 
 I have already told you, and I again aver it, 
 that at the period of time alluded to I was not 
 under the smallest moral tie to Mrs Burns ; nor 
 did I, nor could I, then know all the powerful 
 circumstances that omnipotent necessity was 
 busy laying in wait for me. When you call 
 over the scenes that have passed between us, 
 you will survey the conduct of an honest man, 
 struggling successfully with temptations the 
 most powerful that ever bese"- humanity, and 
 preserving untainted honour in situations where 
 the austerest virtue would have forgiven a fall ; 
 situations that, I will dare to say, not a single 
 individual of all his kind, even with half his 
 sensibility and passion, could have encountered 
 without ruin ; and I leave you to guess. Madam, 
 
120 Burns' Clarmda. 
 
 how such a man is Hkely to digest an accusation 
 of perfidious treachery. 
 
 Was I to blame, Madam, in being the dis- 
 tracted victim of charms which, I afifirm it, no 
 man ever approached with impunity? Had I 
 seen the least glimmering of hope that these 
 charms could ever have been mine, or even had 
 not iron necessity — but these are unavailing 
 words. 
 
 I would have called on you when I was in 
 town — indeed, I could not have resisted it — but 
 that Mr Ainslie told me that you were deter- 
 mined to avoid your windows while I was in 
 town, lest even a glance of me should occur in 
 the street. 
 
 When I have regained your good opinion, 
 perhaps I may venture to solicit your friend- 
 ship ; but, be that as it may, the first of her sex 
 I ever knew shall always be the object of my 
 warmest good wishes. R. B. 
 
 No. XLI. 
 Sylvander to Clarinda. 
 
 February 1790 (?). 
 I HAVE indeed been ill, Madam, the whole 
 winter. An incessant headache, depression of 
 
Letters. 121 
 
 spirits, and all the truly miserable consequences 
 of a deranged nervous system, have made 
 dreadful havoc of my health and peace. Add 
 to all this a line of life into which I have lately 
 entered obliges me to ride, on the average, at 
 least 200 miles every week. However, thank 
 Heaven, I am now greatly better in my 
 health. . . . 
 
 I cannot, will not, enter into extenuatory 
 circumstances ; else I could show you how 
 my precipitate, headlong, unthinking conduct 
 leagued with a conjuncture of unlucky events 
 to thrust me out of a possibility of keeping the 
 path of rectitude to curse me, by an irrecon- 
 cilable war between my duty and my nearest 
 wishes, and to damn me with a choice only of 
 different species of error and misconduct. 
 
 I dare not trust myself further with this 
 subject. The following song is one of my 
 latest productions, and I send it you as I 
 would do anything else, because it pleases 
 myself 
 
 [Here follows " My Lovely Nancy."] 
 
122 Burns^ Clarinda. 
 
 No. XLII. 
 Sylvander to Clarinda. 
 
 [Burns had been to Edinburgh at the end of November 
 and beginning of December, and had there seen Mrs 
 M'Lehose. She had resolved to go to her worthless but 
 repentant husband in Jamaica, and sailed in February 
 1792.] 
 
 I HAVE received both your last letters, 
 Madam, and ought and would have answered 
 the first long ago. But on what subject shall 
 I write you? How can you expect a corre- 
 spondent should write you when you declare 
 that you mean to preserve his letters, with a 
 view, sooner or later, to expose them in the 
 pillory of derision and the rock of criticism? 
 This is gagging me completely as to speaking 
 the sentiments of my bosom ; else, Madam, I 
 could perhaps too truly 
 
 " Join grief with grief, and echo sighs to thine ! " 
 
 I have perused your most beautiful but most 
 pathetic poem ; do not ask me how often or 
 with what emotions. You know that " I dare 
 to j/«, but not to Her Your verses wring the 
 confession from my inmost soul, that — I will 
 say it, expose it if you please — that I have 
 
Letters. 123 
 
 more than once in my life been the victim of 
 a damning conjuncture of circumstances ; and 
 that to see you must be ever 
 
 " Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes." 
 I have just, since I had yours, composed the 
 following stanzas. Let me know your opinion 
 of them. 
 
 [Here are transcribed the lines beginning, "Sweet 
 Sensibility, how charming," &c.] 
 
 No. XLIII. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 [Enclosing the " Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots," 
 Burns wrote as follows :— ] 
 
 Leadhills, Thursday Noon \Pcc. ii, 1791]. 
 Such, my dearest Clarinda, were the words of 
 the amiable but unfortunate Mary. Misfortune 
 seems to take a peculiar pleasure in darting her 
 arrows against " honest men and bonnie lasses." 
 Of this you are too, too just a proof; but may 
 your future be a bright exception to the remark. 
 In the words of Hamlet — 
 
 "Adieu, adieu, adieu ! Remember me." 
 
 Sylvan DER. 
 
124 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 No. XLIV. 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Dumfries \_Decejnber 15 (?), 1791]. 
 
 I HAVE some merit, my ever dearest of women, 
 in attracting and securing the honest heart of 
 Clarinda. In her I meet with the most accom- 
 plished of all womankind, the first of all God's 
 works, and yet I, even I, have the good fortune 
 to appear amiable in her sight. 
 
 By the by, this is the sixth letter that I have 
 written since I left you ; and if you were an 
 ordinary being, as you are a creature very ex- 
 traordinary — an instance of what God Almighty, 
 in the plenitude of His power and the fulness 
 of His goodness, can make ! — I would never 
 forgive you for not answering my letters. 
 
 I have sent your hair, a part of the parcel 
 you gave me, with a measure, to Mr Brice, the 
 jeweller, to get a ring done for me. I have 
 likewise sent in the verses " On Sensibility," 
 altered to — 
 
 " Sensibility, how charming, 
 Dearest Nancy, thou can tell," &c., 
 
 to the editor of " Scots Songs," of which you 
 
Letters. 125 
 
 have three volumes, to set to a most beautiful 
 
 air — out of compliment to the first of women, 
 
 my ever-beloved, my ever-sacred Clarinda. I 
 
 shall probably write you to-morrow. In the 
 
 meantime, from a man who is literally drunk 
 
 accept and forgive ! 
 
 R. B. 
 
 No. XLV. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 I SUPPOSE, my dear Madam, that by your 
 neglecting to inform me of your arrival in 
 Europe — a circumstance that could not be in- 
 different to me, as indeed no occurrence relating 
 to you can — you meant to leave me to guess 
 and gather that a correspondence I once had 
 the honour and felicity to enjoy is to be no 
 more. Alas! what heavy-laden sounds are 
 these — "No more!" The wretch who has never 
 tasted pleasure has never known woe : what 
 drives the soul to madness is the recollection 
 of joys that are " no more ! " But this is not 
 language to the world : they do not understand 
 it. But come, ye few — the children of feeling 
 and sentiment! — ye whose trembling bosom- 
 chords ache to unutterable anguish as recol- 
 
126 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 lection gushes on the heart! — ye who are 
 capable of an attachment keen as the arrows 
 of Death, and strong as the vigour of immortal 
 being — come ! and your ears shall drink a tale — 
 But hush ! I must not, cannot, tell it ; agony is 
 in the recollection, and frenzy in the recital ! 
 
 But, Madam, to leave the paths that lead to 
 madness, I congratulate your friends on your 
 return; and I hope that the precious health, 
 which Miss P. tells me is so much injured, is 
 restored or restoring. . . . 
 
 I present you a book : may I hope you will 
 accept it? I daresay you will have brought 
 your books with you. The fourth vol. of the 
 "Scots Songs" is published. {^August 1792.] 
 I will presume to send it you. Shall I hear 
 from you? But first hear me. No cold language 
 — no prudential documents : I despise advice 
 and scorn control. If you are not to write such 
 language, such sentiments, as you know I shall 
 wish, shall delight to receive, I conjure you, by 
 wounded pride, by ruined peace, by frantic dis- 
 appointed passion, by all the many ills that 
 constitute that sum of human woes, a broken 
 heart ! ! ! to me be silent for ever. . . . 
 
 R. B. 
 
Letters. 1 27 
 
 No. XLVI. 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Before you ask me why I have not written 
 you, first let me be informed by you, how I shall 
 write you ? "In friendship," you say ; and I 
 have many a time taken up my pen to try an 
 epistle of " friendship " to you, but it will not 
 do ; 'tis like Jove grasping a popgun after hav- 
 ing wielded his thunder. When I take up the 
 pen, recollection ruins me. Ah, my ever-dearest 
 Clarinda ! Clarinda ! What a host of memory's 
 tenderest offspring crowd on my fancy at that 
 sound ! But I must not indulge that subject ; 
 you have forbid it. 
 
 I am extremely happy to learn that your 
 precious health is re-established, and that you 
 are once more fit to enjoy that satisfaction in 
 existence which health alone can give us. My 
 old friend AinsHe has indeed been kind to you. 
 Tell him, that I envy him the power of serving 
 you. I had a letter from him a while ago, but 
 it was so dry, so distant, so like a card to one of 
 his clients, that I could scarce bear to read it, 
 and have not yet answered it. He is a good, 
 
128 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 honest fellow, and can write a friendly letter, 
 which would do equal honour to his head and 
 his heart, as a whole sheaf of his letters which 
 I have by me will witness ; and though Fame 
 does not blow her trumpet at my approach now 
 as she did then, when he first honoured me with 
 his friendship, yet I am as proud as ever ; and 
 when I am laid in my grave, I wish to be 
 stretched at my full length, that I may occupy 
 every inch of ground I have a right to. 
 
 You would laugh were you to see me where I 
 am just now. Would to Heaven you were here 
 to laugh with me, though I am afraid that crying 
 would be our first employment ! Here am I 
 set, a solitary hermit, in the solitary room of a 
 solitary inn, with a solitary bottle of wine by 
 me, as grave and as stupid as an owl, but, like 
 that owl, still faithful to my old song ; in con- 
 firmation of which, my dear Mrs Mac, here is 
 your good health ! May the hand-waled beni- 
 sons o' Heaven bless your bonnie face ; and the 
 wratch wha skellies at your welfare, may the 
 auld tinkler deil get him, to clout his rotten 
 heart ! Amen. 
 
 You must know, my dearest Madam, that 
 these now many years, wherever I am, in what- 
 
Letters. i 29 
 
 ever company, when a married lady is called as 
 a toast, I constantly give you ; but as your 
 name has never passed my lips, even to my most 
 intimate friend, I give you by the name of Mrs 
 Mac. This is so well known among my acquaint- 
 ances, that when any married lady is called for, 
 the toast-master will say : " Oh, we need not 
 ask him who it is : here's Mrs Mack ! " I have 
 also, among my convivial friends, set on foot a 
 round of toasts, which I call a round of Arcadian 
 Shepherdesses — that is, a round of favourite 
 ladies, under female names celebrated in ancient 
 song ; and then you are my Clarinda. So, my 
 lovely Clarinda, I devote this glass of wine to a 
 most ardent wish for your happiness. 
 
 In vain would Prudence, with decorous sneer, 
 Point out a censuring world, and bid me fear : 
 Above that world on wings of love I rise ; 
 I know its worst, and can that worst despise. 
 
 " Wronged, injured, shunned, unpitied, unredrest — 
 The mocked quotation of the scorner's jest " — 
 Let Prudence' direst bodements on me fall, 
 Clarinda, rich reward ! o'erpays them all. 
 
 I have been rhyming a little of late, but I do 
 not know if they are worth postage. 
 I 
 
i30 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 Tell me what you think of the following 
 monody. 
 
 The subject of the foregoing is a woman of 
 fashion in this country,* with whom at one 
 period 1 was well acquainted. By some scan- 
 dalous conduct to me, and two or three other 
 gentlemen here as well as me, she steered so 
 far to the north of my good opinion, that I 
 have made her the theme of several ill-natured 
 things. . . . 
 
 R. B. 
 
 * Mrs Riddel. 
 
NOTES ON CLARINDA 
 AND HER CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
Notes on the 
 Clarinda Correspondence. 
 
 By John Muir, F.S.A. Scot. 
 
 In the letter with which he opens his cele- 
 brated correspondence with Clarinda, Burns 
 mentions some lines of his which he commends 
 in a style so unwonted when speaking of his 
 own work, that we cannot but regret that they 
 have not been preserved. He writes, December 
 
 3, ^7^7 :— 
 
 "Our worthy friend, in her usual pleasant 
 way, rallied me a good deal on my new 
 acquaintance, and in the humour of her ideas 
 I wrote some lines, which I enclose you, as 
 I think they have a good deal of poetic merit ; 
 and Miss Nimmo tells me you are not only a 
 critic but a poetess. Fiction, you know, is the 
 native region of poetry ; and I hope you will 
 pardon my vanity in sending you the bagatelle 
 as a tolerable off-hand y^//-^Vjs^;V/." 
 
 Clarinda replied, December 8, 1787 : — 
 
134 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 " Your lines were truly poetical ; give me all 
 you can spare. Not one living has a higher 
 relish for poetry than I have ; and my reading 
 everything of the kind makes me a tolerable 
 judge. Ten years ago such lines from such a 
 hand would have half turned my head. Perhaps 
 you thought it might have done so even j/et, 
 and wisely premised that ' fiction was the 
 native region of poetry.' Read the enclosed, 
 which I scrawled just after reading yours. Be 
 sincere, and own that, whatever merit it has, it 
 has not a line resembling poetry." 
 
 Clarinda's lines in reply to those of Burns 
 seem not to have been preserved. 
 
 In the fifth letter from Burns to Mrs 
 M'Lehose, and the first letter in which the fair 
 correspondent is described Clarinda by the poet, 
 who signs himself Sylvander, he refers to a short 
 letter, which has also been lost, accompanying 
 some impromptu verses. In that letter the poet 
 very probably explained the reason for using the 
 Arcadian appellations ; but it is just possible 
 Mrs M'Lehose was the first to sign herself 
 Clarinda, and that the poet followed suit by 
 adopting Sylvander as his nam de guen^e. On 
 December 28, 1787, he writes : — 
 
Notes. 135 
 
 " I beg your pardon, my dear ' Clarinda,' for 
 the fragment scrawl I sent you yesterday. I 
 really don't know what I wrote." 
 
 " Yesterday " would be the 27th of December; 
 but the letter from the poet immediately pre- 
 ceding the one from which our extract is made, 
 is dated Thursday, 20th December. 
 
 Clarinda, writing under date January 3, 1788, 
 says : — 
 
 "I got your lines: they are * in kind!' I 
 can't but laugh at my presumption in pretending 
 to send my poor ones to you ! but it was to 
 amuse myself." 
 
 Here, again, remarks Mr W. Scott Douglas, 
 the lines of Burns have been lost through 
 some unaccountable remissness on the part of 
 his correspondent. But, indeed, when scraps of 
 the bard's handwriting grew invaluable, Clarinda 
 became the prey of covetous collectors. 
 
 These notes may be appropriately brought 
 to a conclusion by a few remarks on the mis- 
 readings of Burns's manuscripts to be noticed 
 in collating the originals with the printed letters 
 given in the Clarinda correspondence. 
 
 In the letter assigned to December 20, 1787, 
 " I cannot positively say " has been misprinted 
 
136 Burns' Clarinda, 
 
 " I cannot possibly say " ; " something of 
 honour" has been altered to "something like 
 honour " ; and " a vague infant idea " to " a 
 faint idea " ; while inverted commas have been 
 inserted after, instead of before, " death," in 
 " death without benefit of clergy." 
 
 In another letter, dated February 20, 1788, 
 " concubinage " is represented by asterisks, and 
 " hinted at " has been substituted for " insisted 
 on." " Good things " should be in italics. 
 
 One other letter of the series, assigned to 
 January 29, 1788, first printed by Stewart in 
 1802, should be dated at the top "Tuesday 
 Morn," and " Love " should be substituted for 
 " Clarinda " in the first line. The MS. is de- 
 fective at the end, the last word being " hurry," 
 as printed. 
 
A Glimpse of Clarinda. 
 
 In Edinburgh "Sixty Years Since.' 
 
 By James Adams, M.D., Glasgow. 
 
 {From Glasgow Daily Mail^ I'jth Atigiist 1S95.) 
 Printed by permission of the Author. 
 
 " Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, 
 And did he stop and speak to you. 
 And did you speak to him again ? 
 How strange it seems, and new." 
 
 " Oh yes, I knew the Duke of Wellington," 
 said one of " the masses." " Well, we hadn't 
 much talk ; for he was riding on horseback, and 
 I was walking in the middle of the road, and — 
 yes — he damned me to get out of the way. Oh, 
 he was a big, brave man, and very easy in his 
 manners." 
 
 By how many has it been regarded as a dis- 
 tinction or a memory worth recalling that he 
 has shaken hands with O'Connell or Gladstone, 
 
138 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 hobnobbed with Pritchard the poisoner, or 
 " rubbed shouthers wi' Burns." For he can say 
 better than his neighbour whether they were 
 tall, thin or squat, fair or dark, old or young, 
 pleasant or grim of visage. Very trivial are 
 such particulars, but they fill in lights or 
 shadows of an otherwise imperfect sketch, which 
 no mere portrait-painter's brush can give. Thus, 
 I have never been able to see in my " mind's 
 eye " the everyday aspect of Burns so well as 
 through the presentment given in Sir Walter 
 Scott's reminiscence of one meeting. And I 
 never, without having my conception blurred, 
 can look upon that commonplace map of Burns' 
 features delineated in the cheap copies of the 
 familiar Nasmyth portrait (not his full-length 
 picture) which a loyal Burnsite has termed 
 " that wishy-washy sheep-like face," but with a 
 conviction that, if the striped vest with collar 
 and coat with broad lapels were removed, and 
 the face of any stout man of about twenty-eight 
 years substituted, it would be a case of " take 
 your choice." It is stated that Disraeli would 
 not believe the oath of a man who could declare 
 he preferred dry to sweet champagne ; and I 
 have similar disbelief of the person who pro- 
 
A Glimpse of Clarinda. 139 
 
 fesses to see in the frequent tea-tray portraits 
 of Burns, the characteristic man, so instantly 
 cognoscible in caricatures even of Napoleon, 
 Gladstone, Bismarck, and such notabilities. 
 " Burns' features," says Sir W. Scott, " are re- 
 presented in Mr Nasmyth's picture, but to me 
 it conveys the idea that they are diminished as 
 if seen in perspective, . . . there was a strong 
 expression of sense and shrewdness in all his 
 lineaments. . . . The eye was large, and of a 
 dark cast, which glowed (I say literally glowed) 
 when he spoke with feeling or interest. I 
 never saw such another eye in a human head, 
 and he rewarded me with a look and a word, 
 which, although of mere civility, I then received, 
 and still recollect with very great pleasure." 
 Such is Scott's record of the impression made 
 on him, a lad of fifteen, when he met Burns in 
 a company "where youngsters sate silent and 
 listened." 
 
 Referring to Clarinda, it has been long known 
 to some of my intimate friends that I passed an 
 entire evening in a social party with that lady, 
 when I was of sufficient age to observe, and 
 they have often urged on me, as one of the 
 very few surviving links between the era of 
 
140 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 Burns and the present, that I should narrate 
 that experience, which, however trivial or plainly 
 told, cannot fail to be interesting, because re- 
 lating to an individual who occupied so much 
 of the thoughts and pen of Burns. But so little 
 of a story have I to tell, that it is with 
 much misgiving I have yielded to persistent 
 insistence. 
 
 It chanced in Edinburgh (my birthplace) that, 
 when more than half-way through my "teens," 
 and at the beginning of my medical curriculum, 
 I formed a temporary intimacy with a much 
 older fellow-student, who, beyond any individual 
 I have ever known, was stuffed with Scottish 
 songs, stories, and drolleries, as full as is a 
 linnet with melodious impulse. He resided with 
 his parents at the Calton Hill, in a little by- 
 street which branched off to the left from the 
 east end of Waterloo Place, just where that 
 main thoroughfare reaches the Calton Hill. My 
 friend invited me to a small evening party, 
 where he assured me I would have a "bellyful 
 of Scottish song," that being, as he knew, my 
 weakness. It was no juvenile or dancing affair, 
 but a company of about a dozen middle-aged 
 individuals — decent tradesmen, with their wives 
 
A Glimpse of Clarinda. 141 
 
 and other relatives — and I was the youngest 
 person present. There was a supper, at which 
 port and sherry in decanters were on the table, 
 but scarcely touched ; and whisky toddy was 
 served with the viands. Song, toast, sentiment, 
 and story were the order of the evening, con- 
 tributed by all in rotation under the option of 
 drinking a glass of salt and water, placed in 
 readiness, but on this occasion left untouched. 
 There was present a chirpy old lady, who, from 
 subsequent information, I know must have been 
 about seventy-five years of age, but it was a 
 considerable time afterwards I learned that in 
 her an angel had entertained me unawares ; and 
 that the " Mrs M'Lehose," with whom I shook 
 hands and interchanged ordinary civilities dur- 
 ing the evening, was the far-famed "Clarinda, 
 mistress of the soul," of Burns. It was evident 
 that she was an intimate friend, and highly re- 
 garded by the household. My friend, the son 
 of our host, whispered to me early in the even- 
 ing that she was a next-door neighbour, " a real 
 game old lady," and an old sweetheart of Burns ; 
 but he did not further enlighten me ; and at the 
 moment I gave her little more consideration than 
 I did others present, of all of whom I retain 
 
142 Bur7ts^ Clarinda. 
 
 quite as vivid a recollection. The company was 
 what many might consider very commonplace. 
 Our host was a respectable master tailor ; one 
 of the ladies a prosperous ladies' milliner — a 
 fact impressed on me during a discussion on 
 bonnets, then of a coal-scuttle shape, and made 
 of Leghorn straw, both of which peculiarities, 
 she confidently affirmed, would never be out 
 of fashion ; a taciturn ship captain from Leith, 
 with his sister, a lackadaisical, old-maidish 
 damsel, bedecked with numerous thin corkscrew 
 curls ; a hard-featured schoolmaster, or student's 
 "grinder" in classics and mathematics; a coarse- 
 mannered, boisterous master baker ; while a few 
 others, more vaguely recollected, made up the 
 company. To many the songs now before my 
 retrospection may be familiar, but to me the 
 musical part of the proceedings was most 
 gratifying, some of the songs being heard by 
 me for the first time. Indeed, I have a much 
 more perfect recollection of the songs than of 
 the conversation. The sentimental young lady 
 sang " Alice Gray," and the " Meeting of the 
 Waters " ; her brother, " The Carse o' Gowrie " ; 
 the baker, " The Auld Man's Mear's Deid," and 
 " The Haughs of Cromdale," both of which he 
 
A Glimpse of Clarinda. 143 
 
 gave with a " birr " and intensity of feeling that 
 seemed to thrill him to the soul. The school- 
 master sang " Tak' your auld Cloak about ye," 
 and " O Nanny, wilt thou gang wi' me," with a 
 sweetness, tenderness, and humour that irradi- 
 ated his countenance and showed how little 
 one's outer aspect may correspond with the 
 inner nature. Indeed, often as I have heard 
 these songs, I have never since been so im- 
 pressed, and all the more because his outer 
 man seemed so rigidly severe. The ladies' 
 milliner, a jolly -featured stout lady, with a 
 deep contralto voice, excited our admiring 
 merriment by the petulant girlish manner in 
 which she sang " I won't be a Nun," which 
 begins, I think — 
 
 " Now is it not a pity, such a pretty girl as I 
 Should be sent into a Nunnery, to pine away and die ; 
 But I won't be a Nun— I shan't be a Nun," &c. &c. 
 
 The plaudits she elicited would in a concert- 
 room have meant a determined encore, and 
 therefore with little pause she gave us, in 
 great contrast, a very pathetic rendering of 
 " Her eyes with her pale hands are shaded." 
 I was much taken aback for the moment when 
 
144 Burns^ Clarindd, 
 
 she concluded and (with scarce an interval) 
 abruptly called upon me for a song, for it was 
 a privilege of the last singer to have " the call " 
 for the next. I, however, gave, and doubtless 
 in my very best style con amove con spirito, my 
 pet song, " She says she lo'es me best of a' " ; 
 and I have often regretted I did not take note 
 of Clarinda's face as she listened to almost the 
 only song of Burns' that was sung that evening. 
 A fount of memories must surely have been 
 opened. Of two songs, one a solo, the other 
 a chorus, I have a very special recollection, as 
 they were both heard by me for the first time — 
 indeed of the latter I should say, the only time, 
 although I have since been told that it is well 
 enough known. These two songs brought Mrs 
 M'Lehose conspicuously under my observation. 
 The solo was contributed by my student- friend, 
 evidently a favourite with Clarinda, who seemed 
 to relish his pawky drolleries and broad humour 
 much more than the ambitious efforts of some 
 others of the company. 
 
 And here I have found myself almost uncon- 
 sciously, or rather unavoidably, drifted into 
 details of this to me very memorable evening, 
 because they illustrate, and were in some respects 
 
A Glimpse of Clarinda. 145 
 
 characteristic of, middle-class social gatherings 
 of the Edinburgh of that day, or "sixty years 
 since." There was no "wet blanket" in the 
 company to damp the current of song, recitation, 
 toast, and anecdote, which, with little inter- 
 mission, incited animated conversation. Indeed, 
 I never formed one of a group of more keenly 
 appreciative listeners and commentators. The 
 solo to which I refer was " My Wife has ta'en 
 the Gee," and the boyish Lord-Rosebery cast 
 of my friend's countenance as he enacted the 
 henpecked husband deprecating the sulks of his 
 wife, contrasted so much with his enactment of 
 a married man that the effect was irresistibly 
 ludicrous. The merriment became contagious, 
 and the company was convulsed with sympa- 
 thetic laughter. Clarinda in particular went off 
 into frequent " kinks," ejaculating now and 
 again, " Oh, stop him ! take him away ! put him 
 out ! " while he perforce made occasional pauses, 
 gravely resuming as an interval of quiet per- 
 mitted. When he finished, she declared, while 
 breathlessly panting and wiping her eyes, that 
 " she did not know what he deserved for causing 
 her to make such an object of herself." I re- 
 member being strongly impressed with the old 
 K 
 
146 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 lady's vivacious manner and lively spirits, so 
 rare in one of her advanced years. 
 
 As " the night drave on wi' sangs and clatter," 
 and toasts were being drunk, the ladies approv- 
 ing by sipping modestly at their small glasses 
 duly kept charged from big " rummers " by the 
 beau selected by each lady for that duty, the 
 gentlemen showed their disposition to "let the 
 toast pass" as "an excuse for the glass," by 
 occasionally crying "clean caup out," and de- 
 monstrating by turning their glass upside down 
 that it had been fairly emptied. Mrs M'Lehose, 
 although she did not contribute solos, joined in 
 the choruses with the youngest, and took her 
 turn in proposing toasts and sentiments. These 
 were varied, being personal, general, and some 
 more homely than polished, as " May ne'er waur 
 be amang us," " Our noble selves," " Thumpin' 
 luck and fat weans," &c. Clarinda's first toast 
 tickled very much our sense of humour. Look- 
 ing round on the expectant company to be 
 assured that all were charged, she proposed in 
 impressive tone, " Our foes " — carrying her glass 
 to her lips, but pausing as if from an after- 
 thought while the company waited in puzzled 
 suspense, she sharply added, " Short shoes and 
 
A Glimpse of Clarinda. 147 
 
 corny toes," and took off her glass with a smack. 
 This, of course, was rapturously applauded, and 
 her health drunk " clean caup out." One of the 
 chorus songs, which included " Blythe, blythe, 
 and merry are we," I heard, or rather saw, per- 
 formed for the first and, indeed, only time, al- 
 though it is not so rare as I long supposed. 
 The company were called to their feet by him 
 who for the nonce acted as leader or " fugle- 
 man," viz., the baker aforesaid, and we were 
 instructed to follow and imitate him exactly. 
 He stepped a pace behind his chair, and chanted 
 a doggerel lilt with corresponding gestures — 
 
 " A' your right hands in, an' a' your left hands out, 
 Gie yoursel's a skelp, an' turn ye round about. 
 
 Chorus— 
 An' hey for Ronald Macdonald,and ho for Ronald Macdhu, 
 An' hey for Ronald Macdonald ; we'll a' get roarin' fu' ! " 
 
 Whereupon all, with one hand elevated in front 
 and one extended behind, slapped our thighs, 
 wheeled and turned vigorously, coming back to 
 precision, as soldiers do at "present arms." Some- 
 times our fugleman directed " fore ends in " and 
 " back ends out," " noses in " and " lang tongues 
 out": the wheeling, singing, and skelping giving 
 
148 Burns^ Clarinda. 
 
 us all an exhilarating variety from the monotony 
 of a long sitting, equal to that of Sir Roger 
 de Coverley, or other spirited country dance. 
 Clarinda sang, postured, skelped, and wheeled 
 as vigorously as the foremost, and clearly with 
 as much enjoyable abandon as she could have 
 done sixty years previously, when amid her 
 school companions she danced " Here we go by 
 jingo-ring, and round the merry ma-tanzie," or 
 any other of the out-of-door sports of Scottish 
 girls. 
 
 We are all but children of a larger growth, and 
 man is ever the same in his modes of thought 
 and incentives to action. The Modern, trained 
 in " dancing - school deportment," who may be 
 reading with disdainful smile my reminiscences 
 of the free and easy habits I am describing of 
 middle-class Edinburgh society sixty years since, 
 must be reminded of the saying that if you 
 "scratch the Russian you will find the Tartar"; 
 that if you strip the toga from the man you will 
 reveal the pinafore of the boy. These sayings 
 are true at all times, and equally true that " a 
 little nonsense now and then is relished by the 
 wisest men." " Leave off," said a great man 
 when caught at some boy-play, " leave off, for 
 
A Glimpse of Clarinda. 149 
 
 here comes a fool,'' that fool being a Court 
 functionary of many titles. 
 
 And here I admit that I had many misgivings 
 that in venturing to pen my " Glimpse of 
 Clarinda," there was risk of making sport for the 
 Philistines, and grating the teeth of those who 
 can only contemplate Burns' heroines through 
 roseate curtains of the poet's imagination, if I 
 described her, the inspirer of " Sensibility, how 
 charming," while engaged in a game of romps, 
 where refinement, modish tinsel, and varnish 
 seemed to have no place. But in contrasting the 
 manners of Clarinda's bygone time with those 
 of the present, I think there is little to be noted 
 of material change save variation or " marking 
 time," as soldiers do while actively moving but 
 not advancing. There has been no real progress 
 in refinement since her day. The usages of a 
 hundred or a hundred and fifty years back of the 
 best Scotch society, to which Burns had occasional 
 access, he has indicated in a letter describing his 
 visit to a country mansion, where he with other 
 guests and the young ladies of the family played 
 "high jinks" in the drawing-room, "flying at 
 Bab at the Bowster " and other romping games 
 till early in the morning. His intercourse with 
 
150 Burns^ Clarinda. 
 
 male society — with the Crochallan Club in Edin- 
 burgh — the dining parties at country gentlemen's 
 houses (as illustrated in Sir W. Scott's " Guy 
 Mannering," wherein the frolics of Councillor 
 Pleydell with his brother lawyers in Edinburgh 
 are recorded), show that even the usages of 
 middle-class life in the Edinburgh of sixty years 
 ago compare not unfavourably with those of the 
 sister country then or now. " There is a deal of 
 human natur* about," we are told by that astute 
 philosopher, Sam Slick. In his " Experiences 
 of a Barrister's Life" (1882), Serjeant Ballantine 
 refers to his pupilage in the early part of the 
 present century, and tells us that in London, 
 " vice clothed in its most repulsive garb stalked 
 publicly through the streets ; . . . there was an 
 atmosphere of coarseness and slang, and even in 
 private society toasts were given and conversa- 
 tion tolerated that would now shock the least 
 refined ; . . . and songs of a degrading and 
 filthy character were sung. . . . Most of my 
 readers will remember a scene described by 
 Thackeray in his novel of ' The Newcomes,' 
 referring to this subject, which is far more 
 graphic and powerful than any I can attempt." 
 If we seek evidence in support of Serjeant 
 
A Glimpse of Clarinda. 151 
 
 Ballantine's belief in a better state of present 
 things, what do we find ? We need only look 
 at the current periodical press — whether of the 
 masses or classes is immaterial. I take up a 
 London weekly journal called Modern Society, 
 which professedly holds the mirror up to nature, 
 and has for its motto, " Society sayings and 
 doings " — the sayings and doings of one week 
 being nearly a repetition of the last, and that 
 the counterpart of the next. In an issue of July 
 
 1894, with reference to "Lady B 's dance," 
 
 the editor of Society remarks : " What a relief 
 it is to every one when there are few boys {i.e., 
 young gentlemen]. . . . One of the most 
 objectionable habits of ' boydom ' of the present 
 day is the habit of gathering in groups at the 
 supper table, and relating stories which are only 
 fit for the smoking room, quite regardless of the 
 presence of ladies." Here this censor of a com- 
 munity that has a Royal Court for its centre, 
 suggests that habits and conversation that are 
 everywhere degrading and unfit for gentlemen 
 and ladies, are nevertheless to be tolerated if 
 reserved " for the smoking - room." Quis cus- 
 todiet ipsos custodes? See also the writings of 
 George Moore or Zola, characterised by the 
 
152 Bums' Clarinda. 
 
 Examiner as fit objects for being burned by the 
 common hangman. Surely there is no need for 
 me to excuse the revelry of that evening when I 
 had my glimpse of Clarinda ! In fancy, never- 
 theless, I hear whisperings of " Vulgar," " In- 
 decorous," and similar murmurs. 
 
 But in modern social habits there is a poverty 
 of resources in promoting hilarity, and much 
 therefore to be said in extenuation of that spirit 
 of " gamesomeness," or kindly sympathy, that 
 links us in active movements on a broad and 
 general basis where all can personally join. It 
 is this impulse of "human natur'" that sets a 
 crowd of students singing " Pour out the Rhine 
 Wine," when mugs of small beer sparkle on the 
 board. It is this which incites immense political 
 assemblies of city aldermen, merchants, and 
 members of Parliament, to hail with harmonious 
 welcome the patrician features of a Gladstone, 
 the far-from-jolly countenance of a Beaconsfield, 
 or perky phiz of a Chamberlain, by joining in 
 the festive hymn, " He's a jolly good fellow," 
 Despite the anachronism of " fellow," I can recall 
 having joined lustily in thus acclaiming a former 
 hostess, a benevolent, smiling old lady, and seal- 
 ing pledges of hearty goodwill, with " three times 
 
A Glimpse of Clarinda. 153 
 
 three and a tiger." I discriminate widely between 
 such innocent demonstrations of social glee and 
 that " fascination for the unclean," indicated by 
 Serjeant Ballantine and the editor of Modern 
 Society. Naturally the soul repeats to itself all 
 that is beautiful, or all that seems so. A writer, 
 reader, or conversationalist writes, reads, and 
 speaks of what he likes — of what is to his taste. 
 And there is undeniably a strain in the taste of 
 some men and women which enjoys the idea of 
 temptation and of evil pleasures, even while 
 resolving and holding on by his or her own 
 rectitude. As there was no sign of evil proclivity 
 in the social party I have described, I do not 
 look back with any apologetic feeling for myself 
 or my company in recalling the cheap and 
 cheery " high jinks " in which I participated some 
 sixty years ago with Clarinda. 
 
 I have never been able to blend my reminis- 
 cence of Clarinda with the familiar silhouette, 
 in which she is pleasingly depicted, at the age of 
 about thirty years (as I guess), in "full voluptuous 
 but not o'er-grown bulk," decked with graceful, 
 gauzy head-dress. I saw her a shrunken old 
 woman, about five feet one inch in height, her 
 head surmounted with a toppling, stiff, bunchy 
 
154 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 " mob " cap, reminding me of old Mother Shipton 
 and of the refrain of a Hit I often heard crooned 
 over by an old nursemaid to the tune of " High- 
 land Laddie" — 
 
 " O what shall I do for starch and blue 
 For my high Caul Cap— for my high Caul Cap," &c. 
 
 It is true there are few of us who recognise 
 ourselves or our nearest friends in portraits taken 
 at five or ten years of age, when contrasted 
 with one some forty years thereafter. In recent 
 numbers of the Strand Magazine I saw a series 
 of portraits of individuals portrayed from their 
 infancy up till the present day ; and among 
 them such notables as Disraeli, Bismarck, Patti, 
 Bernhardt, &c., and surely contrasts could not 
 be more dissimilar or less cognoscible. Of 
 Clarinda's lively vivacity and graceful manner 
 I have a very clear impression, because asso- 
 ciated with a large lace shawl that floated from 
 her shoulders and waved gracefully while she was 
 gyrating in the " Ronald Macdhu " chorus, in 
 singing which, notwithstanding the chorus, no 
 one got " roarin' fu'." 
 
 Little doubt it is because of some disillusion- 
 ising personal accompaniments — such as snuff- 
 taking, to which she was addicted — that I do 
 
A Glimpse of Clarinda. 155 
 
 not participate in the extravagant laudation 
 bestowed by some on the Sylvander and 
 Clarinda correspondence ; nor do I share the 
 feeling which some Burns critics evince in re- 
 viewing that relation, or their indiscriminating 
 apportionment of blame because of his conse- 
 cutive association with Highland Mary, Jean 
 Armour, and Clarinda. He could not marry 
 Mary, for his liaison with Jean was " the clash 
 of the haill country side," and as such, no 
 doubt, was well known to Mary. But he could 
 philander and flirt as " a free bachelor " amid 
 " the banks and braes and streams around the 
 Castle of Montgomery," for the ethics of humble 
 country life were not more exacting than those 
 of the so-called better classes. It is unprofitable 
 to speculate from the meagre, verifiable facts 
 known what kind of wife Highland Mary would 
 have proved, for we know scarce anything of 
 her but what Burns tells us, although we love to 
 believe his conception. We cannot, therefore, 
 speculate with regrets, inasmuch as " fell death's 
 untimely frost, that nipped his flow'r sae early," 
 left Burns doubly a widower — by death from 
 Mary, while her own resolve had widowed him 
 from Jean. 
 
156 Burns^ Clarinda. 
 
 It cannot be denied that Burns was sincere in 
 his admiration for Clarinda, which even he could 
 not find words to adequately express in almost 
 daily efforts, during their few weeks (about ten) 
 of epistolary correspondence, and the few — 
 not numerous — personal meetings. Through- 
 out their short association he lived a lifetime of 
 poetically ardent conceptions, and during the 
 last eight days he was, he tells us, "literally 
 crazed." For when Burns fell in love, as he so 
 frequently did, "he liked to put his strength to it," 
 as the Irishman said when excusing himself for 
 sleeping twenty-four hours at a stretch. But after 
 eight days' absence from Clarinda's immediate 
 association, he did not at any time seek its re- 
 newal ; not, I believe, because of any revulsion 
 of feeling, but because of the sight of his truly 
 loved Jean Armour, and because of her protesta- 
 tions that he had been misinformed regarding 
 her real sentiments towards him. The renewed 
 meetings, and Jean's assurances, evoked the real 
 passion which had perhaps slumbered, but had 
 ever been cherished, for the woman who, till his 
 latest hour, continued to be his " Jean." I doubt, 
 indeed, if Burns, until this critical time, ever 
 fully understood, or seriously analysed, the 
 
A Glimpse of Clarinda. 157 
 
 nature of his regard for and his relations to- 
 wards Clarinda, in which there was so much 
 more of the intellectual than of the animal that 
 usually predominated in him, as we are assured 
 by his brother Gilbert. For no sooner was he 
 outside Edinburgh, and removed from Clarinda's 
 immediate presence — no sooner did he rejoin 
 the long and always cherished object of that 
 real passion — no sooner was he assured by his 
 Jean that, despite her forced renunciation, she 
 loved him as heretofore — no sooner did he learn 
 from her family that the obstacles previously 
 interposed were swept aside in view of his im- 
 proved fortunes and rising social position, than 
 he hastened to renew the broken link by a 
 second and more formal marriage under Church 
 sanction ; and thus he broke for ever from the 
 craze of " infirm resolves," which for some time 
 after his temporary estrangement from Jean 
 Armour had characterised his actions in relation 
 to her. He now saw clearly that the happiness 
 or misery of a much-loved and much-trusting 
 woman was in his hands — that immediate 
 decision was imperative, and some discredit 
 unavoidable, but least discredit to those he had 
 unwisely involved, if he accepted for himself the 
 
158 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 larger share ; and he then resolutely selected 
 that path which duty and long-enduring affec- 
 tion alike indicated. And Clarinda was there- 
 after avoided by him, but she continued to be 
 tenderly recollected, respected, and admired. 
 " Had Burns deserted her (Jean Armour), he 
 had merely been a heartless villain," says Pro- 
 fessor Wilson. " In making her his lawful 
 wedded wife, he did no more than any other 
 man, deserving the name of man, in the same 
 circumstances would have done ; and had he not, 
 he would have walked in shame before men, and 
 in fear and trembling before God." 
 
 He reaped the reward of an honest resolve in 
 his calm domestic hearth, and did the best that 
 the circumstances allowed ; and the best for, and 
 by Clarinda ; who, although in many respects 
 " a charming woman," showed in her brief rela- 
 tions with Burns that " charming women are apt 
 to have wills of their own " — a will with which 
 that of the poet would assuredly have clashed, 
 as it never did with that of his evenly-minded 
 Jean. It should, therefore, be matter of con- 
 gratulation that it was never of his much-loved 
 respected wife, Jean Armour, but only of Clarinda, 
 that Burns spoke when he referred to her as " a 
 
A Glimpse of Clarinda. 159 
 
 ci-devant goddess of mine," and to whom he 
 wrote, " But, by heavens, madam, I will not be 
 bullied." And those who lament the Sylvander 
 and Clarinda correspondence may take com- 
 fort, despite the poetic " heart-wrung tears and 
 warring sighs and groans," that all happened for 
 the best ; and that the end fitly crowned the 
 whole. 
 
 Some weeks after the meeting I have endea- 
 voured to describe, and during which I had that 
 glimpse of Clarinda which has aided my judg- 
 ment of her character, I met casually the school- 
 master, and in the gossip that followed I learned 
 much that made the evening more remarkable, 
 and riveted on my memory some of the details. 
 " Ay," he said, with a tenderly regretful smile 
 as we parted, " it was indeed a sunny blink " — 
 
 "It was but ae night o' our lives, 
 And wha wad grudge though it were twa?" 
 
The Real Clarinda. 
 
 By Peter Ross, LL.D., Author of "The Scot in 
 America," &c. &c. 
 
 The loves of Burns are among the most in- 
 teresting studies in the career of that most gifted 
 of men. His love passages were so many, and 
 had such an influence in shaping the events and 
 fortunes of his life, that we must study them, 
 patiently and thoroughly, to understand his 
 character and much of the apparent weakness 
 and carelessness which came over him at times ; 
 and to discover how a being so wondrously 
 endowed could exhibit so many peculiar incon- 
 sistencies in his mental make up. It is not 
 going beyond the authentic facts which we have 
 concerning that life of thirty-seven years, to say 
 that it was mainly directed, controlled, and in- 
 fluenced, and to a very great extent inspired, by 
 its love for the society of the sex opposite to its 
 own. The peculiar thing about the love passages 
 of Burns is that they all continued to preserve for 
 him a niche in the hearts of those who won his 
 
The Real Clarinda. i6i 
 
 affections long after each reign was over, no matter 
 what changes afterward took place in their lives, 
 their conditions, their circumstances. Burns was 
 his mother's favourite as a boy, and until the 
 close of her long life he had the dearest place in 
 her heart. Jean Armour, in her years of widow- 
 hood, seemed only, as time sped on, to live in 
 the hope of being again united to him for whom 
 she had once sacrificed all, and who had raised 
 her, a peasant girl, to a place among the most 
 noted women of the world ; and Clarinda, with 
 the weight of eighty years of life — a life which 
 early was clouded with sorrow — remembered 
 keenly, yet affectionately, the incidents of her 
 love passage with the poet till the last. 
 
 The biographers and critics of Burns treat the 
 Clarinda love episode in a rather peculiar fashion. 
 Some of them barely mention it ; others do not 
 seem able to understand it exactly. Robert 
 Chambers, the best of them all, seemingly has 
 suspicions that it was very wrong, very indis- 
 creet altogether ; and gravely moralises con- 
 cerning it at intervals, — a course which was not 
 very usual with him. He does not exactly 
 assert that the love passage had any illicit 
 details ; he presents the case as fully as pos- 
 L 
 
1 62 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 sible, and renders a verdict of not proven. Scott 
 Douglas, by implication rather than assertion, 
 would have us believe that the love was not 
 altogether innocent. Hately Waddell roundly 
 denounces " Clarinda," and says in effect that 
 " she was no better than she should be." Blackie 
 thinks the interlude perfectly innocent. Prin- 
 cipal Shairp does not discuss the nature of the 
 intimacy, but condemns the artificial style of 
 Burns's letters, and is disposed to frown upon the 
 woman. Lockhart calls the passage " a little 
 romance." The others are more or less non- 
 committal, or unjust, or supercilious. The in- 
 cident has been treated in a really critical 
 fashion only by Chambers, and, as we have said, 
 he did not express an opinion with any definite- 
 ness either way. But he really sums up all that 
 can be said truthfully on the subject from the 
 point of one who believes in the existence of 
 something more than mere words. The other 
 side is stated, by one who evidently never con- 
 ceived that there was anything in the friend- 
 ship that was not in every way commendable, in 
 the little book on Clarinda issued in 1843 by her 
 grandson. 
 
 It is a significant fact, we think, that none of 
 
The Real Clarinda. 163 
 
 Clarinda's friends believed that her relations 
 with Burns were anything but what might be 
 perfectly proper between a married woman on 
 the one hand and a warm personal friend on the 
 other. Edinburgh, at the time the episode took 
 place, was little better than a big village, where 
 the people revelled in gossip, where scandal was 
 always a timely topic, and each morsel acquired 
 new importance as it came from the lips of a 
 new whisperer. If the relations between Burns 
 and Clarinda had been such as to afford any 
 room for doubt, or for ill-natured suspicion, some- 
 thing of it would undoubtedly have reached the 
 ears of Clarinda's kinsman and benefactor. Lord 
 Craig, one of the Judges of the Court of Session. 
 But until his death, in 181 3, that upright and 
 amiable man continued to the lady his kindly 
 protection, and never entertained any doubt as 
 to the rectitude of her moral character, even 
 although the extraordinary letters which passed 
 between her and the poet had been printed and 
 published several years before. Her personal 
 friends seemed to have entertained no thought 
 of there being anything unworthy in her 
 friendship with the poet, and those who were 
 acquainted with her at a later period of her life 
 
164 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 held her in too high esteem, and judged her 
 character too noble and kindly, to permit them 
 to imagine for a moment that she had ever 
 exceeded the bounds of discretion even in her 
 admiration for her country's bard. 
 
 That Clarinda truly loved Burns there seems 
 no reason to doubt. Her own words, as we 
 read them, impress that fact even on a casual 
 reader. If we study her letters closely we can 
 follow the progress of her sentiments through 
 simple friendship, induced primarily for the poet 
 who had won such extraordinary fame by the 
 manner in which he had interpreted the hearts of 
 his countrymen, until we find friendship develop 
 into love, and then that love become so intense 
 that it throws off all reserve and delights in 
 acknowledgment. That Clarinda would have 
 united her fortunes with those of the poet had 
 the divorce machinery in the Scotch Courts been 
 as easily worked then as now, seems reasonable 
 to assume. But divorce was little thought of 
 in Scotland in her day, and she could only bid 
 him wait and hope, two qualities which seem to 
 have been lacking in the poet's mental equip- 
 ment. That she grieved when Burns by his 
 open marriage with Jean Armour increased the 
 
The Real Clarinda. 165 
 
 barriers between them is certain ; that she then 
 abandoned all hope of being to him any more 
 than a casual friend is equally certain. But it 
 is true, too, that she never gave up her love, 
 that time only deepened the impression he had 
 made on her heart, and that the 6th of each 
 December was always a sad anniversary for her, 
 as on that date, to quote her own words, written 
 many, many years after, she " parted with Burns 
 in the year 1791, never more to meet in this 
 world," and she added to the record the touching 
 words, " Oh, may we meet in heaven." 
 
 It is probable that in his whole career Burns 
 met no woman who, to adapt the Duchess of 
 Gordon's expression, carried him " off his feet " 
 more completely than did Clarinda. This we 
 say with full knowledge of the true wifely 
 qualities of " Bonnie Jean," the mysterious 
 passion for Highland Mary, and the undis- 
 guised admiration which the poet so freely 
 expressed for others of the " darling sex " in all 
 ranks of life. Chambers rightly gives the reason 
 for this when he says : " Mrs M'Lehose was 
 exactly the kind of woman to fascinate Burns. 
 She might indeed be described as the town-bred 
 or lady analogue of the country maidens who 
 
1 66 Burns Clarinda. 
 
 had exercised the greatest power over him in 
 his earlier days." She had been unfortunate in 
 her marriage, and moved in her own circle with 
 the freedom which marriage, no matter how un- 
 fortunate, bestowed upon women. Her husband 
 had deserted her ; his conduct was little short 
 of brutal ; and she evidently had done nothing 
 to merit her misfortunes or to be placed in the 
 dubious position of a wife who had been aban- 
 doned by him to whom she had once given her 
 heart, and who had sworn to protect her. Every 
 one pitied her, no one had a word to say in 
 defence of her husband, and as we read the 
 entire history of the ill-assorted couple, now 
 that the record is complete, we can regard him 
 as nothing else than a base wretch, who passed 
 through life, for some inscrutable reason, with- 
 out receiving the punishment which his cruel 
 and heartless conduct to his wife and children 
 would have justified. Clarinda, in spite of the 
 blandishments of the poet, and in spite, too, of 
 her own evident infatuation, remained true to the 
 vows she took upon herself when she became 
 the wife of James M'Lehose until the end of her 
 career. James M'Lehose, on the other hand, 
 violated them all. He was regarded as a 
 
The Real Clarinda. 167 
 
 " respectable " man until the close of his ignoble 
 life, in 18 12. She was regarded soon after the 
 publication of her correspondence with Burns 
 with suspicion, and even till the present day the 
 literary ghouls, who have tried to blacken the 
 memory of " Scotia's darling poet," still affect to 
 sneer at the conduct of a woman who in reality 
 lived an honourable life, who devoted herself to 
 her children, and whose almost last words were, 
 " I go to Jesus." Surely, too, the ingenuity of 
 evil conjecture might have spared the heroine 
 who inspired that sweetest of songs, " My 
 Nannie's Awa'." 
 
 Burns was not attracted to Clarinda solely by 
 her misfortunes. She was a beautiful woman, 
 accomplished beyond most women in her station 
 of life, sprightly in her manners, agreeable in 
 her conversation, and possessing considerable 
 poetic ability as well as excellent literary taste. 
 If we were to judge of her relations with Burns 
 by the code of morals which is presumed to 
 prevail in our day, were her letters and his to be 
 presented as proofs of wrongdoing under present 
 conditions, they might, we freely admit, give 
 rise to conjecture. But we must remember they 
 were written in a time when people were more 
 
1 68 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 outspoken than now, when manners were not 
 so strait-laced, when people talked more 
 freely concerning many matters than they now 
 dare to think of them. We should also re- 
 member that Mrs M'Lehose, as a married 
 woman, had no need of comporting herself with 
 the reserve that would be natural in a spinster, 
 that her disposition was inclined to be gay 
 and happy, and her desire was to forget the sad 
 position in which she was placed by her hus- 
 band's selfish conduct. But, even before the 
 Burns interlude in her career had reached much 
 headway, she complained in a letter to the poet 
 that the world regarded her natural inclination 
 for gaiety with grave doubt. " In reading the 
 account," she wrote, " you gave of your invete- 
 rate turn for social pleasures, I smiled at its 
 resemblance to my own. It is so great that I 
 often think I had been a man but for some 
 mistake of nature. If you saw me in a merry 
 party you would suppose me only an enthusiast 
 in fun ; but I now avoid parties. My spirits 
 are sunk for days after ; and what is worse, 
 there are sometimes dull or malicious souls who 
 censure me loudly for what their sluggish nature 
 cannot comprehend." 
 
The Real Clarinda. 169 
 
 While, doubtless, Clarinda's beauty and 
 sprightliness had much to do with attracting 
 the fancy of Burns, it was her accomplish- 
 ments, her sentiments, that really threw him at 
 her feet. Except in religion, her views generally 
 were more like those entertained by the poet 
 than, so far as we know, were held by any other 
 woman of his acquaintance, no matter in what 
 rank. She was at least equal to the poet in her 
 ability to converse on philosophical, social, or 
 abstruse questions, and her conversation seems 
 seldom to have been commonplace. She could 
 be frivolous, but never insipid ; she could ap- 
 preciate his varying moods; she knew enough 
 of human nature to overlook his moral trans- 
 gressions ; she had the same profound contempt 
 for cant that he had, the same lack of apprecia- 
 tion of rank for the sake of rank alone, the same 
 ideas of human equality. There was nothing 
 squeamish in her disposition. She met the poet 
 on an equal footing, but never forgot, even when 
 he held full possession of her heart, that there 
 was a barrier between them which time alone 
 had any chance of removing. 
 
 Such sentiments as those indicated in the 
 following lines must have went directly to the 
 
I/^O Burns^ Clarinda. 
 
 heart of the poet as he read them in one of her 
 impassioned letters : " A recontre to-day I will 
 relate to you, because it will show you I have 
 my own share of pride. I met with a sister of 
 Lord Napier at the house of a friend with whom 
 I sat between sermons. I knew who she was, 
 but paid her no other marks of respect than I 
 do to any gentlewoman. She eyed me with 
 minute supercilious attention, never looking at 
 me when I spoke, but even half interrupted me 
 before I had done addressing the lady of the 
 house. I felt my face glow with resentment, 
 and consoled myself with the idea of being her 
 superior in every respect but the accidental, 
 trifling one of birth ! I was disgusted at the 
 fawning deference the lady showed her ; and 
 when she told me at the door that it was my 
 Lord Napier's sister, I replied, * Is //, indeed ! 
 by her ill-breeding I should have taken her for 
 the daughter of some upstart tradesman.' " The 
 following is another picture which, we may feel 
 sure, impressed itself vividly on the imagination, 
 as it undoubtedly must have fired the heart of 
 the poet : " I'll tell you a pretty apt quotation 
 I made to-day, warm from my heart. I met the 
 Judges [Lords of Session] in the morning as I 
 
The Real Clarinda. 171 
 
 went into the Parliament Square, among whom 
 
 was Lord Dreghorn in his new robes of purple. 
 
 He was my mother's cousin-german, the greatest 
 
 honour he ever could claim ; but used me in a 
 
 manner harsh beyond description at one of the 
 
 darkest periods of my chequered life. I looked 
 
 steadfastly at his sour face ; his eye met mine. 
 
 I was a female, and therefore he stared ; but 
 
 when he knew who it was he averted his eyes 
 
 suddenly. Instantaneously these lines darted 
 
 into my mind : — 
 
 ' Would you the purple should your limbs adorn, 
 Go, wash the conscious blemish with a tear.' " 
 
 Judging Clarinda by all the facts known of 
 her career, she had three leading traits in her 
 character — love, duty, religion. That she 
 surrendered her early heart to him whose 
 name she bore through her matronhood and 
 old age seems clear enough. That when he 
 forsook her, and she had abandoned all idea of 
 ever again being to him anything but a memory, 
 she yearned for some one to cling to, to love, 
 is evident to any person who reads her letters. 
 In one of them she freely says : " For many 
 years have I sought for a male friend endowed 
 with sentiments like yours ; one who could love 
 
172 Burns^ Ciarmda. 
 
 me with tenderness, yet unmixed with selfish- 
 ness ; who could be my friend, companion, 
 protector, and who would die sooner than 
 injure me." That she gave forth all the love 
 in her nature to the poet is also evident ; every 
 one of her letters is sufficient testimony to that, 
 and also to the fact that her love developed and 
 strengthened as the days passed on, and the two 
 became more thoroughly acquainted with each 
 other's brilliant qualities. But duty forbade her 
 doing aught that might injure her fair reputation 
 or cause her children, as they grew up, a tinge 
 of shame. Her letters are invariably clear and 
 emphatic on this point. In an early epistle she 
 warns the poet : " I am your friend, Sylvander ; 
 take care lest virtue demand even friendship as 
 a sacrifice." Toward the close of the episode 
 she wrote : " I believe our friendship will be 
 lasting ; its basis has been similarity of tastes, 
 feelings, and sentiments ; " and once she uttered 
 the key-note of her own position in these words : 
 " I laugh to myself at the recollection of your 
 earnest asseverations as to being anti-platonic. 
 Want of passions is not merit. Strong ones 
 under the control of reason and religion — let 
 these be our glor}/." 
 
The Real Clarinda. I73 
 
 Her strong sense of duty, mingled with love, 
 entered into all the other details of her life. 
 To her children she was devoted, and her de- 
 votion was inspired not merely by maternal 
 instinct, but also by an elevated view of her 
 moral obligations and accountability. This is 
 sufficiently shown by the following words : " I 
 have slept little these two nights. My child 
 was uneasy, and that kept me awake watching 
 him. Sylvander, if I have merit in anything, 
 'tis in an unremitting attention to my two 
 children ; but it cannot be denominated merit, 
 since 'tis as much inclination as duty. A 
 prudent woman (as the world goes) told me 
 she was surprised I loved them, 'considering 
 what a father they had.' I replied with acri- 
 mony, I could not but love my children in any 
 case ; but my having given them the misfortune 
 of such a father endears them doubly to my heart. 
 They are innocent ; they depend on me, and I 
 feel this the most tender of all claims. While 
 I live, my fondest attention shall be theirs." On 
 a later occasion, when she accepted her rascally 
 husband's overtures, and accepted his proposal 
 to join him in Jamaica (a proposal which he 
 never dreamed would be accepted), it was a 
 
174 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 sense of what was right that influenced her 
 decision, not inclination or returning love. To 
 her kinsman, Lord Craig, she wrote on this 
 subject : " I have done what you desired me 
 — weighed coolly (as coolly as a subject so 
 interesting would permit) all I have to suffer 
 or expect in either situation, and the result is 
 my going to Jamaica. This appears to me the 
 preferable choice ; it is surely the path of duty, 
 and as such I may look for the blessing of God 
 to attend my endeavours for happiness with him 
 who was the husband of my choice and the 
 father of my children." 
 
 But religion was the foundation of this 
 woman's entire conduct, of her walk and con- 
 versation through life. She derived her fixed 
 religious principles from the teachings of her 
 mother — a clergyman's daughter — and in all the 
 tribulations, humiliations, sorrows, and cares of 
 her many years, she ever found in the applica- 
 tion of these principles her firmest stay, her 
 surest hope. Burns' want of fixed religious 
 belief she deplored as the greatest of all imper- 
 fections, the one that could not be overlooked ; 
 and she lost no opportunity of making the poet 
 think on " the theme of all themes," as some 
 
The Real Clarinda. 175 
 
 one has expressed it. His apparent disregard of 
 or unconcern about spiritual matters she appa- 
 rently could not forget or forgive, although she 
 thought little, as did most women of her time, 
 of his social excesses and his unconcealed lapses 
 into immorality. Some of her letters, indeed, are 
 mainly devoted to the discussion of this subject. 
 " Ah, my friend," she once wrote, " religion con- 
 verts our heaviest misfortunes into blessings." 
 Again she defines the fixity of her own belief 
 and the want of any fixity in the religious 
 sentiments of Burns in the following clear-cut 
 words : "In most points we seem to agree ; 
 only I found all my hopes of pardon and accept- 
 ance with Heaven upon the merits of Christ's 
 atonement — whereas you do upon a good life. 
 You think ' it helps weel, at least' If anything 
 we could do had been able to atone for the 
 violation of God's Law, where was the need (I 
 speak it with reverence) of such an astonishing 
 Sacrifice? . . . Ah, my friend, 'tis pride that 
 hinders us from embracing Jesus ! We would 
 be our own saviour, and scorn to be indebted 
 even to the * Son of the Most High.' But this is 
 the only sure foundation of our hopes." Surely 
 no one can say these words (and there are very 
 
176 Ewns' Clarhida. 
 
 many like them scattered through her letters) 
 could be expressed by a " flirting grass widow," 
 a woman who did not possess in her heart that 
 consciousness of rectitude of conduct and life 
 which is the best human safeguard of virtue and 
 honour. 
 
 No one knew better than Clarinda did the 
 weaknesses of her own character, and she was 
 constantly on her guard lest these weaknesses 
 might, in an unguarded moment, lead her from 
 the ideal of womanly honesty which she had set 
 up for herself. She was not unmindful of the 
 danger of incurring censorious remarks, nor was 
 she above the feminine dread of causing sus- 
 picion by misjudged incidents in her daily life ; 
 but, fully conscious of her own perfect innocence 
 in thought, word, or deed, she did not always 
 shrink from occasion for giving rise to remark 
 as perhaps she ought to have done, and therein 
 lies all that is to be condemned by any unpre- 
 judiced mind, if any unprejudiced mind could 
 condemn at all, in her relations with Robert 
 Burns. Her love for him was real, but it was 
 purely platonic, although she would during the 
 time the incident lasted have hailed with plea- 
 sure any lawful means by which Burns might 
 
The Real Clarinda. 177 
 
 have changed the status of a friend for the 
 dearer one of a husband. " If a confession of 
 my warmest, tenderest friendship does not 
 satisfy you, duty forbids Clarinda should do 
 more," were the words she had written when the 
 flame of love between them was at its brightest 
 stage. So she had written at the beginning of 
 the correspondence, and her sentiments con- 
 tinued the same until the end. She conceived 
 the idea that Burns and she were made for one 
 another ; and as her hopes could not be accom- 
 plished on earth she cherished the wish, long 
 after he had been laid at rest in auld St 
 Michael's Churchyard, that she would meet 
 with him once more in another and a brighter 
 world, a world where sorrow and separation 
 are unknown. 
 
 That Clarinda was a woman of superior in- 
 tellect her correspondence sufficiently shows. 
 Her letters, indeed, are brighter, more logical, 
 and far more interesting than are those she 
 received in exchange from the poet. They 
 are natural, unpremeditated, and evidently the 
 simple expressions of her heart's thoughts. 
 Those of Burns, on the other hand, are so pain- 
 fully artificial, so commonplace at one time, so 
 M 
 
178 BiLrns' Clarinda. 
 
 bombastic at another, and at all times so stilted 
 in their style, so burdened with the effort to 
 produce effect, that it is with difficulty we can 
 keep the poet in our mind as we labour through 
 them. It would seem as though he knew he 
 was addressing a woman of superior intellect, 
 and dropped his own natural self in an effort to 
 present to her something particularly striking, 
 something worthy of her exalted taste and 
 sentiments — and failed. In his letters we find 
 plenty of Sylvander, but very little of Robert 
 Burns. 
 
 That the poet loved Clarinda we do not 
 doubt. That, had she permitted, he would have 
 exceeded the bounds of friendship and pro- 
 priety is only too evident. That he tired of 
 waiting is also true, and that his love changed 
 to feelings simply of friendship may also be 
 allowed as fully demonstrated. When he left 
 Edinburgh the spell of Jean Armour was again 
 cast round him, and in his marriage to her he 
 did what has redounded more to his credit as 
 a man than anything else in his brilliant life. 
 That he also loved Jean Armour is beyond 
 question, but he was fitful and capricious, and 
 wavered in his devotion. At these times other 
 
The Real Clarinda. 179 
 
 women charmed his heart. Some of them had 
 cause to " rue the day " they attracted the pass- 
 ing attention of the gay, dark-eyed, lady-killing 
 young farmer-poet, or filled a temporary void in 
 his roving and wayward heart. Such certainly, 
 from the evidence alone afforded by the letters, 
 would have been the fate of Clarinda had she 
 not been fortified and strengthened by the fixed 
 religious sentiments which sustained her in so 
 many trials, and by her elevated views of life 
 and duty. 
 
 A true wife, a warm-hearted friend, a good 
 mother, a sincere, humble Christian, a philan- 
 thropic spirit, a creature of generous impulses, 
 Clarinda passed through her allotted years with 
 hosts of friends who loved, honoured, and in the 
 end revered her. Her life was wrecked almost 
 when she entered upon its pleasures ; she had to 
 dree a terrible, a weary weird ; but she never 
 faltered or lost heart, even when the darkness 
 gathered around her the deepest and the sea 
 of fate moaned the most hopelessly. Who can 
 blame her for valuing the friendship of that most 
 lion-hearted yet most tender-hearted of poets, or 
 censure her for, under the circumstances, freely 
 acknowledging that her heart was his ? 
 
i8o Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 And that was all. Everything seems to 
 prove it, and the only detraction to her fair 
 character comes from the surmises, the " ifs," 
 the doubts, the contemptible insinuations and 
 suspicions of a few literary vampires, who try 
 to win notoriety or attention by their wanton 
 liberties with the reputations of the dead. 
 
A Tribute. 
 
 By Prof. John Stuart Blackie. 
 
 At the house of an Edinburgh lady, Miss 
 Nimmo, Burns had been introduced to a lady 
 named M'Lehose, who being a spinner of verses 
 herself, and of warm human sympathies, had 
 naturally formed a desire to make a more 
 intimate acquaintance with the acknowledged 
 greatest master of the Scottish lyre. The meet- 
 ing produced its natural result — a mutual recog- 
 nition of social and intellectual kinship on both 
 sides. The lady being of a frank and open 
 character, and anxious to know something per- 
 sonally of such an extraordinary genius whom 
 in his works she passionately admired, invited 
 the poet to visit her at her lodgings a few days 
 after the meeting. Burns agreed, and was to 
 have taken tea with her in her lodgings on the 
 evening of Saturday, 8th December ; but the 
 night before he was tumbled out of a cab by a 
 
1 82 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 drunken coachman, and got home painfully and 
 with a severe bruise on his leg. The tea, of 
 course, was suspended ; but a lively correspond- 
 ence was immediately set agoing, in which, from 
 the high-flown and rapturous style of the poet, 
 the lady had instant occasion to remind him 
 that she was a married woman with a living 
 husband, and he must address her only as a 
 friend — the fact being that she had the mis- 
 fortune, at the early age of eighteen, to have 
 been united to a worthless husband, a Glasgow 
 merchant, she residing in Edinburgh while he 
 was holding his establishment in Jamaica. 
 
 But Burns was not a man to understand how 
 friendship with a woman whom he greatly 
 admired could be cultivated without passing 
 into love ; and so the lady forthwith found her- 
 self in the delicate position of being passionately 
 admired by a man whose admiration she cor- 
 dially returned, and that a man whose headlong 
 impetuosity of temper was continually leading 
 him to overstep those bounds which, in the 
 intercourse of the sexes, are the shield of honour 
 and the safeguard of innocence. Feeling her- 
 self in this situation, it might have seemed wise 
 in a lady of religious principle and virtuous 
 
A Tribute. 183 
 
 habits — which Agnes M'Lehose essentially was 
 — to have shut the door after the first interview 
 with so perilous an acquaintance ; but her frank, 
 unconventional nature combined with her pro- 
 found respect for the poet to prevent this. 
 Besides, she felt herself firmly fenced with the 
 mail of a severe creed, and if she were able to 
 maintain her own position, as she did nobly, 
 she might also hope to use her moral influence 
 effectively in restraining the passions and guid- 
 ing the counsels of her admirer. The corre- 
 spondence of these two remarkable persons, 
 continued with little interruption for more than 
 three months, is in the highest degree interest- 
 ing, exhibiting perhaps even more strikingly, if 
 not more classically, than his love songs the 
 leading features in the character of this wonder- 
 ful genius. Love and religion certainly never 
 were so strangely tossed together as in those 
 impassioned epistles. In the following letter, 
 dated 21st December, after alluding to the 
 strong terms in which the poet had expressed 
 his admiration of her poetical talents, she goes 
 on to say : " Take care, many a ' glorious ' 
 woman has been undone by having her head 
 turned. ' Know you ! ' I know you far better 
 
184 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 than you do me. Like yourself, I am a bit of 
 an enthusiast. In religion and friendship quite 
 a bigot — perhaps I could be so in love too, 
 but everything dear to me in heaven and earth 
 forbids ! This is my fixed principle, and the 
 person who would dare to endeavour to remove 
 it I would hold as my chief enemy. Like you, I 
 am incapable of dissimulation ; nor am I, as you 
 suppose, unhappy. I have been unfortunate ; 
 but guilt alone could make me unhappy. Pos- 
 sessed of fine children — competence — fame — 
 friends, kind and attentive — what a monster of 
 ingratitude should I be in the eye of Heaven 
 were I to style myself unhappy ! True, I have 
 met with scenes horrible to recollection — even 
 at six years' distance ; but adversity, my friend, 
 is allowed to be the school of virtue. It oft con- 
 fers that chastened softness which is unknown 
 among the favourites of fortune ! Even a mind 
 possessed of natural sensibility, without this, 
 never feels that exquisite pleasure which nature 
 has annexed to our sympathetic sorrows. Reli- 
 gion, the only refuge of the unfortunate, has 
 been my balm in every woe. Oh ! could I make 
 her appear to you as she has done to me ! 
 Instead of ridiculing her tenets, you would fall 
 
A Tribute. 185 
 
 down and worship her very semblance wherever 
 you found it." 
 
 Here, and in some other communications, she 
 reveals herself as the most gracious and oppor- 
 tune of preachers. Calvinism from such sweet 
 lips would sound quite differently than when 
 thundered from the throat of the Rev. Dr 
 Auld, of Mauchline, or any of his condemnatory 
 brethren of the Evangelical type. From her 
 elevated point of view, unsoiled by the mire 
 through which her correspondent had some- 
 times dragged his eagle plumes, she saw clearly 
 through his character, and interpreted the his- 
 tory of his religious experiences and moral 
 aberrations, with that keenness and sureness of 
 glance which belong to the moral superiority of 
 the interpreter : — " One thing alone hurt me, 
 though I regretted many — your avowal of being 
 an enemy to Calvinism. I guessed it was so by 
 some of your pieces, but the confirmation of it 
 gave me a shock I could only have felt for one 
 I was interested in. You will not wonder at 
 this, when I inform you that I am a strict 
 Calvinist, one or two dark tenets excepted, 
 which I never meddle with. Like many others, 
 you are so either from never having examined it 
 
1 86 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 with candour and impartiality, or from having 
 unfortunately met with weak professors who did 
 not understand it, and hypocritical ones who 
 made it a cloak for their knavery. Both of 
 these, I am aware, abound in country life ; nor 
 am I surprised at their having had this effect 
 upon your more enlightened understanding. I 
 fear your friend, the captain of the ship, was of 
 no advantage to you in this and many other 
 respects." 
 
 These earnest appeals and serious warnings of 
 the good lady had the valuable effect of drawing 
 from the poet his confession of faith in a more 
 complete form than we find it in any other part 
 of his works. A Calvinist certainly Burns was 
 not ; but though, like all emotional persons, 
 repelled rather than attracted by the dogmas of a 
 systematic theology, and though not infrequently 
 seduced by his passions from his loyalty to his 
 principles, he was by no means an irreligious 
 man. . . . Our limited space forbids to enter 
 more largely into these revelations from the 
 inner soul of this man of large intelligence, 
 noble aspirations, and ill - regulated passions. 
 The more intimate relations with Mrs M'Lehose, 
 or Clarinda, as she is poetically called, were 
 
A Tribute. 187 
 
 abruptly broken off in March, when the poet 
 left the metropolis for the scene of his early 
 loves and rustic occupations in Ayrshire. . . . 
 In the month of February 1792, Mrs 
 M'Lehose, after due consideration of a pro- 
 posal of reunion on the part of her husband, 
 set sail from Leith to join him in Jamaica ; but 
 she had not been long there before, from the 
 continued unkindly conduct of her worthless 
 mate, partly from the evil effects of the climate 
 on her constitution, she was obliged to return to 
 Edinburgh, where she lived and died at a ripe 
 old age, beloved and respected by all who knew 
 her. 
 
All About Clarinda. 
 
 By Robert Ford, Author of " Thistledown," &c. &c. 
 {From the '■'■ People^ s Friend,^'') 
 
 To the question, " Who was Clarinda ? " there 
 are few persons of mature growth in Scotland 
 who would not glibly answer, " Mrs M'Lehose." 
 And further to this the most elementary and 
 superficial student of Scottish poetical literature 
 could tell that she formed a conspicuous figure 
 among the dozen or more women who at one 
 time or another made havoc of the heart of the 
 National Poet. The full and particular account 
 of the sadly chequered and interesting career 
 of Clarinda, however, who, according to Burns* 
 own written statement, had "wit and wisdom 
 more murderously fascinating than the stiletto 
 of the Sicilian bandit or the poisoned arrow of 
 the savage African," is common knowledge only 
 to the curious, who are the few. A brief sketch 
 of the lady's career, together with a bird's-eye 
 review of the Clarinda-Sylvander correspond- 
 
All About Clarinda. 189 
 
 ence, will therefore not be unwelcome here ; as 
 nought can ever be unwelcome to Scottish 
 readers which comes so near to the heart of 
 Robert Burns as to treat of one whose grace 
 and beauty and intellectual superiority evoked 
 his unqualified admiration — one who loved him 
 with her whole heart and soul, and was the 
 heroine of at least two of the most vivid and 
 tenderly passionate lyrics that came from his pen. 
 I mean " Ae Fond Kiss " and '* My Nannie's 
 Awa' " — the former a parting song in which the 
 stanza occurs — 
 
 " Had we never loved sae kindly, 
 Had we never loved sae blindly, 
 Never met — or never parted, 
 We had ne'er been broken-hearted." 
 
 Making four lines of which Sir Walter Scott has 
 proudly remarked, " They contain the essence of 
 a thousand love tales." 
 
 Mrs M'Lehose, whose maiden name was 
 Agnes Craig, was no ordinary person, and had 
 no ordinary antecedents. She was grandniece 
 by her mother's side of the house of Colin 
 M'Laurin, the celebrated mathematician and 
 friend of Sir Isaac Newton ; and he was brother 
 of M'Laurin, the divine, at one time the minister 
 
IQO Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 of Luss, on Lochlomondside, and latterly of St 
 David's parish in Glasgow, whose sermon, 
 " Glorying in the Cross of Christ," has been 
 described as the most eloquent in the English 
 language. The daughter of a Glasgow surgeon 
 named Craig— a gentleman also of good family, 
 which had its representatives on the judicial 
 bench as well as in the pulpit — she was born 
 here in April 1759 — the same year, be it noted, 
 in which the song-celebrated " blast o' Jan'war' 
 win' blew han'sel in on Robin " — Miss Craig, 
 when only eight years old, had the misfortune 
 to lose her mother. But she grew and prospered 
 apace, and by the time she had reached her 
 fifteenth birthday she was regarded as one of 
 the beauties of the western capital, and had 
 received the distinctive and complimentary title 
 of " Pretty Miss Nancy." In her sixteenth year 
 she was sent to an Edinburgh boarding-school 
 to complete her education. But previous to this 
 her beauty had attracted the attention of a Mr 
 James M'Lehose, a law agent in Glasgow. Up 
 to this time he had failed to obtain an introduc- 
 tion to her ; but on learning that she was going 
 to Edinburgh, he engaged all the seats on the 
 stage-coach except the one which he studiously 
 
All About Clarinda. 191 
 
 allowed to be taken for her. The opportunity 
 thus secured of ingratiating himself in the favour 
 of the handsome young damsel Mr M'Lehose 
 took the utmost pains to improve, and being pos- 
 sessed of an attractive person and most insinu- 
 ating manners, by the time their forty miles' 
 journey was completed he had made a very 
 favourable impression on the young lady's mind. 
 On her return to Glasgow, after an absence of 
 six months, he resumed his suit, and pretty Miss 
 Nancy Craig duly became Mrs M'Lehose in 
 July 1776, being then little more than seventeen 
 years old. The union was not a happy one, and 
 when two children had been born to them a 
 separation ensued. 
 
 " Only a short time had elapsed," said Mrs 
 M'Lehose, many years afterwards, "ere I per- 
 ceived, with inexpressible regret, that our dis- 
 positions, tempers, and sentiments were so 
 totally different as to banish all hopes of happi- 
 ness. Our disagreements rose to such a height, 
 and my husband's treatment was so cruel, that 
 it was thought advisable by my friends that a 
 separation should take place, which accordingly 
 followed in December 1780." 
 
 Shortly afterwards the husband, who seems to 
 
192 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 have been in no way worthy of such an amiable 
 and attractive wife, sailed for Jamaica in the 
 West Indies, where he held latterly the post of 
 chief clerk of the Court of Common Pleas, and 
 died in March 1812. 
 
 After the separation, Mrs M'Lehose, with her 
 two children, returned to her father's house, 
 where she remained till his death, which event 
 occurred two years subsequently. She then 
 took up her permanent residence in Edinburgh, 
 and lived in comfortable enough circumstances 
 on the proceeds of a life annuity judiciously 
 invested in her behalf by her deceased parent. 
 Here, though comparatively a stranger, we are 
 told, her youth, beauty, and exemplary conduct, 
 together with the story of her domestic misfor- 
 tunes, procured her many valuable and interesting 
 friends. 
 
 In the closing months of the year 1787 the 
 Scottish capital literally rang with the praises of 
 the ploughman-poet. He was the local intel- 
 lectual star of the period, and nightly claimed 
 the admiration of all admirers. Everybody who 
 was anybody was securing an introduction to 
 him, and enjoying the luxury of an evening in 
 his company in the house of one or other of the 
 
All About Clarinda. 193 
 
 literary savants of the city. By the good offices 
 of a mutual friend — Miss Nimmo — it was ar- 
 ranged that Mrs M'Lehose should meet the 
 poet. They accordingly met and spent an 
 agreeable evening together, just as the poet was 
 preparing to leave Edinburgh, and a mutual 
 esteem — perhaps we should say admiration — 
 instantly sprang up between them. A second 
 meeting was arranged ; but in the interval 
 Burns had an unlucky fall from a coach, which 
 so bruised one of his knees that when the even- 
 ing in question arrived he found himself unable 
 to leave his room. This circumstance delayed 
 his departure, and led to a correspondence — 
 which each of the two parties began by signing 
 the initials of their own names to their epistles — 
 and, after the first few letters had passed, con- 
 ducted as between " Sylvander" and " Clarinda," 
 the first being the counterfeit signature of the 
 poet, and the latter that of his fair innamorata. 
 How much Burns was disappointed by not 
 being able to keep his tryst is shown by his 
 letter of the 8th December, wherein he wrote : 
 " I never met with a person in my life whom I 
 more anxiously wished to meet again than your- 
 self To-night I was to have that very great 
 N 
 
194 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 pleasure. I was intoxicated with the idea, and 
 if I don't see you again I shall not rest in my 
 grave for chagrin." Mrs M'Lehose's reply on 
 the same date is : " You shall not leave town 
 without seeing me, if I should come along with 
 good Miss Nimmo, and call for you. I am 
 determined to see you." As soon as Burns was 
 sufficiently recovered from his accident he visited 
 Clarinda at her own house, on Saturday, the 19th 
 January, and the result of the meeting was the 
 intensification of their mutual regard and es- 
 teem. Indeed, it was now the utter intoxication 
 of love between them, and the poet is ready to 
 exclaim, " Clarinda, first of your sex ! if ever 
 I am the veriest wretch on earth to forget you ! 
 if ever your lovely image is effaced from my 
 soul — 
 
 ' May I be lost, no eye to weep my end, 
 And find no earth that's base enough to bury me.' " 
 
 The awkwardness of their relationship, it is 
 fair to state, was ever present to both. Clarinda 
 warns her admirer again and again that he is 
 corresponding with a married woman, and how 
 imperative it is for the fair reputation of both 
 that reason should govern all their words and 
 
All About Clarinda. 195 
 
 actions ; from affairs of the heart she bytimes 
 endeavours to engage the poet in concerns of 
 the soul, but they are both hopelessly entangled 
 in the meshes of Love's subtle net, and only the 
 enforced departure of Burns from Edinburgh in 
 the middle of February could make them " tear 
 themselves asunder." 
 
 They met only once afterwards, in 1791, but 
 occasionally corresponded until within a short 
 period of the poet's death, which occurred in 
 July 1796. 
 
 Burns has been blamed by several of his 
 biographers for his connection with Clarinda in 
 the face of his previous engagement with Jean 
 Armour, while others have contended that he 
 was justified in believing that his engagement 
 with Jean had come to an end. All we know 
 with certainty is, that soon after his return to 
 the country, his differences with Jean Armour 
 and her family were speedily made up, and Jean 
 and he forthwith became man and wife. So far 
 as Burns was affected by it, the subsequent 
 events fairly proved that the Sylvander-Clarinda 
 affair was only for the moment rapturous, and 
 once out of his sight, Clarinda was soon very 
 much out of his mind. With the lady, however, 
 
196 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 it was markedly different. She loved the poet 
 with a burning and imperishable love — a love 
 which did not fade when she knew of his mar- 
 riage with another — a love which did not cease 
 when she heard of his death. In one of her 
 warm, beautiful, and undoubtedly sincere letters 
 we find her saying : " Never were there two hearts 
 formed so exactly alike as ours. Oh, let the 
 scenes of Nature remind you of Clarinda ! In 
 winter remember the dark shades of her fate ; 
 in summer, the warmth of her friendship ; in 
 autumn, her glowing wishes to bestow plenty on 
 all ; and let spring animate you with hopes that 
 your friend may yet surmount the wintry blasts 
 of life, and revive to taste a springtime of happi- 
 ness. At all events, Sylvander, the storms of life 
 will quickly pass, and 'one unbounded spring 
 encircle all.' Love there is not a crime. I 
 charge you to meet me there. O God ! I must 
 lay down my pen." In her private diary, written 
 forty years after the date of her last interview 
 with the poet, she has this entry : — " 6th Decem- 
 ber 183 1, — This day I never can forget. Parted 
 with Robert Burns in the year 1791, never more 
 to meet in this world. Oh, may we meet in 
 heaven ! " And Robert Chambers says : " I 
 
All About Clarinda. 197 
 
 have heard Clarinda, at seventy-five, express 
 the same hope to meet in another sphere the 
 one heart that she had ever found herself able 
 entirely to sympathise with, but which had been 
 divided from her by such pitiless obstacles." 
 
 Subsequent to Burns' death, editor after 
 editor of the poet's complete works — including 
 Currie and Cunningham — endeavoured to get 
 hold of the entire correspondence herein referred 
 to, but Mrs M'Lehose, long and oft, with stern 
 resolution, refused to deliver up her replies for 
 publication. Allan Cunningham, when pre- 
 paring the last volumes of his edition of Burns, 
 penned the lady a long and earnest request, in 
 which he said : " Without the letters of Clarinda, 
 the Works of Burns will be incomplete. I wish 
 to publish them at the beginning of the eighth 
 volume, with a short introduction, in which their 
 scope and aim will be characterised. You will 
 oblige me and delight your country by giving 
 permission for this. I will do it with all due 
 tenderness. I have a high respect for your 
 character and talents, and wish you to reflect 
 that the world will in time have a full command 
 over the letters, and that ruder hands than mine 
 will likely deal with them." But still she would 
 
IqB Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 not be drawn, and many years had to elapse 
 until the main bulk of the curious and interest- 
 ing correspondence was laid bare to the public 
 eye. Even now, it is only included in the more 
 sumptuous and expensive of the recent editions 
 of the poet's works, and in no single instance 
 with so full an account of Clarinda and her 
 relationship to Burns as is contained in this brief 
 paper. 
 
 Mrs M'Lehose died in 1843, having survived 
 Burns by the long period of forty-five years. In 
 the poet's time she lived with her two children 
 in a tenement-house in General's Entry, Edin- 
 burgh, the position of which is now occupied by 
 one of the public schools of the city. It is due 
 to her memory to state here that once at least in 
 the course of her unfortunate grass-widowhood 
 she evinced an inclination to rejoin her faithless 
 husband, and with this purpose set sail with her 
 children to Jamaica in the year 1792. On pre- 
 senting herself there, however, Mr M'Lehose 
 insisted upon her immediate return, on the 
 ground that the climate would not agree with 
 her, and she accordingly returned in the same 
 ship that had taken her out. Latterly in Edin- 
 burgh she lived in rather humble circumstances 
 
All About Clarinda. 199 
 
 in a small flat in a house in Greenside. In 
 the last days of her life she never wearied of 
 telling the story of her flirtation with Burns, and 
 when showing to her cronies his faded love- 
 letters, it has been said "she would just greet 
 like a bairn." 
 
 Poor, loving, charming, trusting, witty, un- 
 happy Clarinda ! She loved not wisely, but too 
 well. 
 
Clarinda. 
 
 By Rev. J. C. HiGGiNS, A.M., B.D. 
 
 Agnes Craig was come of good family. 
 Only a few months younger than Burns, then 
 twenty -eight, she was clever, cultured, good- 
 looking, and possessed of no mean literary and 
 poetic gifts. At their very first meeting there 
 sprang up a strong mutual attraction. To her 
 the poet wrote, " Of all God's creatures I ever 
 could approach in the beaten way of friendship, 
 you struck me with the deepest, the strongest, 
 the most permanent impression," which warm 
 avowal Mrs M'Lehose in reply as warmly re- 
 ciprocated. The evening of that day on which 
 he was thrown from the coach he had arranged 
 to spend at her house ; but being by his 
 accident confined for a considerable time to 
 his room, he began those remarkable com- 
 munications which went on between them 
 (sometimes at but a few hours' interval) for over 
 
Clarinda. 20 1 
 
 three months. After a week or two they 
 adopted towards each other the fanciful names 
 Sylvander and Clarinda, and so they carried on 
 a correspondence quite unique in the history of 
 letter -writing. We further gather that after 
 he was able to move about again, Burns paid 
 Clarinda about a dozen visits before he left 
 Edinburgh in the spring of 1788. Mrs M'Lehose 
 lived until 1841, her eighty-third year, thus sur- 
 viving Burns for forty-five years. After various 
 ups and downs of fortune, she attained to better 
 circumstances, and moved for many years in 
 the best Edinburgh literary and social circles. 
 Until her dying day she fondly cherished the 
 memory of the poet — ''that great genius," as 
 she refers to him in her diary, under date 
 25th January 1813. Another entry, dated 
 6th December 1831, was found: "This day I 
 can never forget. Parted with Burns in 1791, 
 never more to meet in this world. May we 
 meet in heaven ! " Here we shall only add 
 that, after a careful and candid study of this 
 remarkable episode, we are able to believe that, 
 though the position which Burns and Clarinda 
 took up towards each other was, to say the 
 least, a somewhat equivocal and dangerous 
 
202 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 one, it passed off free from actual moral stain. 
 Clarinda's letters, being pervaded by an un- 
 questionably earnest religious tone, drew from 
 Burns sundry statements of his ideas on religion, 
 of which we reproduce one passage in par- 
 ticular : — 
 
 " I am delighted, charming Clarinda, with 
 your honest enthusiasm for religion. Those of 
 either sex, but particularly the female, who are 
 lukewarm in that most important of all things, 
 * O my soul, come not thou into their secrets ! ' 
 I feel myself deeply interested in your good 
 opinion, and will lay before you the outlines of 
 my belief He who is our Author and Preserver, 
 and will one day be our Judge, must be (not 
 for His sake in the way of duty, but from the 
 native impulse of our hearts) the object of our 
 reverential awe and grateful adoration. He is 
 Almighty and All-bounteous, we are weak and 
 dependent ; hence prayer and every other sort 
 of devotion. He is not willing that any should 
 perish, but that all should come to everlasting 
 life ; otherwise He could not, in justice, condemn 
 those who did not. A mind pervaded, actuated, 
 and governed by purity, truth, and charity, 
 though it does not merit heaven, yet is an 
 
Clarinda. 203 
 
 absolute necessary pre-requisite, without which 
 heaven can neither be obtained nor enjoyed ; 
 and by Divine promise, such a mind shall never 
 fail of attaining * everlasting life ' ; hence the 
 impure, the deceiving, and the uncharitable ex- 
 trude themselves from eternal bliss by their 
 unfitness for enjoying it. The Supreme Being 
 has put the immediate administration of all 
 this, for wise and good ends known to Himself, 
 into the hands of Jesus Christ— a great per- 
 sonage, whose relation to Him we cannot com- 
 prehend, but whose relation to us is a Guide 
 and Saviour ; and who, except for our own 
 obstinacy and misconduct, will bring us all, 
 through various ways, and by various means, to 
 bliss at last. These are my tenets, my lovely 
 friend, which, I think, cannot be well disputed. 
 My creed is pretty nearly expressed in the last 
 clause of Jamie Deas's grace, an honest weaver 
 in Ayrshire : ' Lord, grant that we may lead a 
 gude life ! for a gude life mak's a gude end ; 
 at least it helps weel ! ' " 
 
 Side by side with his many rapturous out- 
 pourings to Clarinda, we find letters containing 
 perhaps the most terrible expressions of unrest 
 and self-upbraiding which even he ever penned. 
 
204 Burns* Clarinda. 
 
 On the 1 2th of December he wrote to Miss 
 Chalmers : — 
 
 " I am here under the care of a surgeon, with 
 a bruised limb extended on a cushion ; and the 
 tints of my mind vying with the livid horror 
 preceding a midnight thunderstorm. A drunken 
 coachman was the cause of the first, and incom- 
 parably the lightest evil ; misfortune, bodily 
 constitution, hell, and myself, have formed a 
 * quadruple alliance ' to guarantee the other." 
 Again a little later to the same lady : — 
 " Now for that wayward, unfortunate thing, 
 myself. I have broke measures with Creech, and 
 last week I wrote him a frosty, keen letter. He 
 replied in terms of chastisement, and promised 
 me upon his honour that I should have the 
 account on Monday ; but this is Tuesday, and 
 yet I have not heard a word from him. God 
 have mercy on me ! a poor, damned, incautious, 
 duped, unfortunate fool ! The sport, the miser- 
 able victim of rebellious pride, hypochondriac 
 imagination, agonising sensibility, and bedlam 
 passions ! I wish that I were dead, but I'm 
 no like to die ! I had lately * a hair-breadth 
 'scape in th' imminent deadly breach' of love, 
 too. Thank my stars, I got off heart-whole. 
 
Clarinda. 205 
 
 *waur fleyed than hurt.' I have this moment 
 got a hint. I fear I am something like undone, 
 but I hope for the best. Come, stubborn pride 
 and unshrinking resolution, accompany me 
 through this, to me, miserable world ! You 
 must not desert me. Your friendship I think I 
 can count on, though I should date my letters 
 from a marching regiment. Early in life, and 
 all my life, I reckoned on a recruiting drum as 
 my forlorn hope. Seriously, though, life presents 
 me with but a melancholy path; but my limb 
 will soon be sound, and I shall struggle on." 
 And on the 21st January to Mrs Dunlop : — 
 "After six weeks' confinement, I am beginning 
 to walk across the room. They have been six 
 horrible weeks ; anguish and low spirits made 
 me unfit to read, write, or think. I have a 
 hundred times wished that one could resign 
 life as an officer resigns a commission, for I 
 would not take in any poor ignorant wretch by 
 selling out. Lately I was a sixpenny private ; 
 and, God knows, a miserable soldier enough ; 
 now I march to the campaign a starving cadet : 
 a little more conspicuously wretched. I am 
 ashamed of all this; for though I do want 
 bravery for the welfare of life, I could wish, like 
 
2o6 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 some other soldiers, to have as much fortitude 
 or cunning as to dissemble or conceal my 
 cowardice." 
 
 A comparison of these passages with the 
 contemporaneous Clarinda correspondence once 
 more shows, in strong light, what tumultuous 
 fiery elements combined to make up the great, 
 impassioned nature of the Immortal Bard — " So 
 miserably open," as he himself has put it, " to 
 the incursions of a mischievous, light-armed, 
 well-mounted banditti, under the banners of 
 imagination, whim, caprice, and passion." 
 
A Brief Sketch 
 
 By Principal Shairp. 
 
 Just at the time when he met with his acci- 
 dent, he had made the acquaintance of a certain 
 Mrs M'Lehose, and acquaintance all at once 
 became a violent attachment on both sides. 
 This lady had been deserted by her husband, 
 who had gone to the West Indies, leaving her 
 in poverty and obscurity to bring up two young 
 boys as best she might. We are told that she 
 was " of a somewhat voluptuous style of beauty, 
 of lively and easy manners, of a poetical fabric 
 of mind, with some wit, and not too high a 
 degree of refinement or delicacy — exactly the 
 kind of woman to fascinate Burns." Fascinated 
 he certainly was. On the 30th of December he 
 writes : " Almighty love still reigns and revels 
 in my bosom, and I am at this moment ready 
 to hang myself for a young Edinburgh widow, 
 who has wit and wisdom more murderously fatal 
 
2o8 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 than the assassinating stiletto of the Sicilian 
 bandit, or the poisoned arrow of the savage 
 African." For several months his visits to her 
 house were frequent, his letters unremitting. 
 The sentimental correspondence which they 
 began, in which Burns addresses her as Clar- 
 inda, assuming to himself the name of Syl- 
 vander, has been published separately, and 
 became notorious. Though this correspond- 
 ence may contain, as Lockhart says, " passages 
 of deep and noble feeling, which no one but 
 Burns could have penned," it cannot be denied 
 that it contains many more of such fustian, such 
 extravagant bombast, as Burns or any man 
 beyond twenty might well have been ashamed 
 to write. One could wish that for the poet's 
 sake this correspondence had never been pre- 
 served. It is so humiliating to read this torrent 
 of falsetto sentiment now, and to think that a 
 man gifted like Burns should have poured it 
 forth. How far his feelings towards Clarinda 
 were sincere, or how far they were wrought 
 up to amuse his vacancy by playing at love- 
 making, it is hard to say. Blended with a 
 profusion of forced compliments and unreal 
 raptures, there are expressions in Burns' letters 
 
A Brief Sketch. 209 
 
 which one cannot but believe that he meant in 
 earnest at the moment when he wrote them. 
 Clarinda, it would seem, must have regarded 
 Burns as a man wholly disengaged, and have 
 looked forward to the possible removal of Mr 
 M'Lehose, and with him of the obstacle of a 
 union with Burns. How far he may have 
 really shared the same hopes it is impossible 
 to say. We only know that he used again and 
 again language of deepest devotion, vowing to 
 " love Clarinda to death, through death, and 
 for ever." 
 
 While this correspondence between Sylvander 
 and Clarinda was in its highest flight of rapture. 
 Burns received, in January or February 1788, 
 news from Mauchline which greatly agitated 
 him. His renewed intercourse with Jean Armour 
 had resulted in consequences which again stirred 
 her father's indignation ; this time so power- 
 fully, that he turned his daughter to the door. 
 Burns provided a shelter for her under the roof 
 of a friend ; but for a time he does not seem to 
 have thought of doing more than this. Whether 
 he regarded the original private marriage as 
 entirely dissolved, and looked on himself as 
 an unmarried man, does not quite appear. 
 O 
 
2l6 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 Anyhow, he and Clarinda, who knew all that 
 had passed with regard to Jean Armour, seem 
 to have then thought that enough had been 
 done for the seemingly discarded Mauchline 
 damsel, and to have carried on their corre- 
 spondence as rapturously as ever for fully 
 another six weeks, until the 21st of March 
 (1788). On that day Sylvander wrote to Clar- 
 inda a final letter, pledging himself to everlast- 
 ing love, and following it by a copy of verses 
 beginning — 
 
 " Fair empress of the poet's soul," 
 
 presenting her at the same time with a pair of 
 wine glasses as a parting gift. 
 
 On the 24th of March he turned his back 
 on Edinburgh, and never returned to it for 
 more than a day's visit. 
 
Rev. Dr P. Hately Waddell's 
 Views concerning Clarinda. 
 
 It was on the occasion of his second visit to 
 the capital, and some eight or nine months 
 after the pubHcation of his new edition, that his 
 introduction took place, at her own solicitation, 
 to Mrs M'Lehose, the celebrated Clarinda, a 
 woman of genius by inheritance, and of fashion 
 to a certain extent by birth and education ; 
 whose misfortunes excited his sympathy, and 
 admiration affected his heart ; who exercised 
 upon him for the moment an exceptional but 
 seductive power, more dangerous and discredit- 
 able to himself than anything that had yet 
 occurred. In the lady herself there was frantic, 
 hopeless passion, being still a wife, although 
 practically widowed ; in Burns there was, to 
 say the least of it, reprehensible acquiescence 
 and collusion. All obstacles apart, he might 
 have married Clarinda, of similar tastes, of 
 
212 Burns^ Clarinda. 
 
 similar constitution, and of the same age with 
 himself — and would certainly have repented 
 afterwards : as matters then irrevocably stood, 
 he only dallied with her affections, and with her 
 own deliberate acquiescence so far mocked her. 
 To investigate this strange and questionable 
 relationship would imply an analysis that must 
 carry us far beyond herself; for the extra- 
 ordinary moral problem presented to us by 
 the competing claims of Mary Campbell, Jean 
 Armour, and Mrs M'Lehose, for supreme domina- 
 tion in this man's soul within so short a period, 
 is in fact the mystery that requires solution. 
 It is as a matter of speculation, however, only, 
 that it has engrossing interest now : for the 
 death of the one, the repentance of the other, 
 and the impossibility of success for the third, 
 have solved it as a matter of history for us 
 long ago. Mary Campbell, with her own rich 
 freight of love and immortality, in the sea of 
 hope, on the very poop of betrothal, sank and 
 died — a loss that shall be gazetted for the 
 world as that of an argosy ; Jean, the survivor 
 of many a jeopardy and peril of her own 
 creating, was acknowledged for wife at Mauch- 
 line, but with as little ostentation as possible. 
 
Views Concerning Clarinda. 213 
 
 having first had to brook her own shame ; and 
 Mrs M'Lehose, after the distraction of such a 
 desperate venture for the possession of such a 
 man, had to console herself that nothing worse 
 had befallen than her own inevitable disappoint- 
 ment. These are the matters of fact, and were 
 the final issues of the case, with pain, with 
 difficulty, and not without social damage to the 
 man himself, ultimately determined ; at which, 
 by -and -by for a moment, we shall hereafter 
 glance. But now, whilst his correspondence 
 with Clarinda, newly begun, still progresses, 
 and final separation, with seeming despair on 
 both sides, is not quite inevitable, the cor- 
 respondence itself, so remarkable in every way, 
 is what directly claims our attention. 
 
 That correspondence, the reader is probably 
 aware, was never an acknowledged literary 
 labour of Robert Burns — was conducted, in fact, 
 both by himself and the lady under fictitious 
 names ; and, for that reason alone, should never 
 have been intruded on the world as theirs. 
 Secrecy, and perhaps a sense of shame, were 
 connected with it. Towards the end of the 
 correspondence, which was long after he was a 
 married man, this is manifest — her very name, 
 
214 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 according to his own explicit declaration, being 
 still a mystery. It is not, however, to be re- 
 gretted, in a psychological point of view, that 
 such an extraordinary revelation has finally, 
 even with indiscretion on the part of some, 
 been authorised ; for it is in this correspondence 
 that the very essence of his imago life, burnished 
 like a sunbeam, but drenched in aconite, is 
 really to be found. Beyond all mere fictitious 
 imaginary love-correspondence in its vehemence, 
 being prompted manifestly both by passion and 
 by rivalry, and having conquest in both alike 
 clearly in view, is this wonderful series of 
 epistolary outpourings ; but distinguishable for 
 ever from all genuine correspondence of love 
 by the hardihood that flashes through every 
 line. Through all imaginable disguises of 
 Platonism, of theology, of moral respect, of 
 sympathy, of deference, of friendship and con- 
 cern for one another, the fever of eloquent 
 expostulation and remonstrance and petulant 
 entreaty rages, till both man and woman are 
 overwhelmed and exhausted with their own 
 theme. To be born of indubitable frenzy every 
 hour, and maintained at its zenith for months, 
 within the limits of propriety and reason, nay 
 
Views Concerning Clarinda. 215 
 
 with the solemnest recognitions of religion 
 itself, when appeals to the Deity were proper, 
 scarcely any extant correspondence of the kind 
 can be compared with the letters of Robert 
 Burns to this woman ; and the secret of this 
 is to be found unquestionably in the one source 
 of rivalry, as much as in the other of love. His 
 letters to other women on the same theme, 
 and with the same object in view, might, no 
 doubt, have been equally eloquent and pas- 
 sionate, if other women had been able to reply ; 
 which they never were, except with bewildered 
 silence. It was Clarinda's own faculty of re- 
 joinder that stimulated him to such efforts of 
 eloquence ; and his own love of victory, con- 
 joined with his belief in the possibility of 
 dissolving adamant with words, that carried 
 him ultimately beyond the veracities of his 
 nature in such a perilous encounter. Alas ! 
 for such unlicensed and seductive war. For 
 his own credit and peace of mind it should have 
 been honestly abandoned when the inevitable 
 issue was foreseen ; and for her credit it should 
 never have been renewed. But a man of his 
 stamp once harnessed for competition with a 
 woman, and furnished incessantly with artillery 
 
2i6 Burns Clarinda. 
 
 by her own hand, was not likely to retire from 
 the contest whilst a shaft in the quiver remained. 
 For himself it was disastrous, and for her sor- 
 rowful. No good could come of it. There 
 were ominous shadows of disgrace for him in 
 such equivocal sunshine, and mischief for them 
 both in such dread purgatorial kissings of the 
 soul. 
 
 This absorbing, and it must again be ad- 
 mitted, most questionable relationship, seems to 
 date from the beginning of December 1787 — 
 from the hour of their first introduction, in fact ; 
 and may be traced by correspondence, with 
 some slight interruptions and gradual diminu- 
 tion of enthusiasm on his part, till 1793 ; dis- 
 tinctly marked at its conclusion with anger, 
 recrimination, and passionate regret. During 
 the whole of the latter period misunderstanding 
 prevails, for which the lady herself was un- 
 questionably to blame ; and the correspondence 
 of these years, apparently renewed by herself 
 also, seems to be little more than a series of 
 hopeless and fatiguing attempts to readjust a 
 balance of respect for ever dislocated. But on 
 a review of the whole, the difficulty to which 
 we formerly adverted returns again — namely, 
 
Vietvs Concerning Clarinda, 217 
 
 how to explain the mystery of a threefold love 
 during so long a period in one man's soul ; 
 for that Mary and Jean, the one in heaven 
 and the other on earth, were still there is in- 
 disputable ; and that Clarinda was there too, 
 although with weakened sway, cannot be denied. 
 The most exquisite lyrics to each of these three 
 women are all to be found within this period — 
 not fictitious poetry, but genuine effusions of 
 the heart. All lower self-indulgence, disastrous 
 and sorrowful, in which he sometimes com- 
 promised his own dignity for the delight of 
 others, we omit to account for here : this 
 alone — this triple waltzing of the soul, purely 
 spiritual with one among the clouds ; honest 
 and affectionate with another on the cottage 
 floor ; questionable, but real, with a third 
 through the post-office — with holy memories, 
 with living love, with half-guilty fiction in the 
 name of love — was indeed the great enigma 
 of his life, and altogether inexplicable on any 
 ordinary psychological principles. Could there 
 be any serious delinquency, any practical moral 
 disloyalty here? Difficult it would be to be- 
 lieve this ; still more difficult with some not 
 to believe it — for sin will be imputed by a 
 
2i8 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 few, where there is no sin, who cannot imagine 
 such amorous extravagance as a normal con- 
 dition of the soul. Be it so ; then David, 
 Solomon, Sappho, and Petrarch were all in 
 similar condemnation. He goes along with 
 these in the biographies of the world, and 
 was not unconscious of his own resemblance 
 to the greatest of them during these very 
 hours. 
 
A Visit to Clarinda. 
 
 {From " Old a7id New Edinburgh") 
 
 General's Entry is, perhaps, now most in- 
 timately associated with one of Burns' heroines, 
 Mrs M^Lehose, the romantic Clarinda of the 
 notorious correspondence, in which the poet 
 figured as Sylvander. He was introduced to 
 her in the house of a Miss Nimmo, on the 
 first floor of an old tenement on the north 
 side of Alison Square. A little parlour, a 
 bedroom, and kitchen, according to Chambers, 
 constituted the accommodation of Mrs Agi-^es 
 M'Lehose, " now the residence of two, if not 
 three, families in the extreme of humble life." 
 In December 1787, Burns met at a tea party 
 this lady, then a married woman of great 
 beauty, about his own age, and who, with her 
 two children, had been deserted by a worthless 
 husband. She had wit, could use her pen 
 had read " Werther " and his sorrows, was 
 
220 Burns* Clarinda. 
 
 sociable and flirty, and possessed a voluptuous 
 loveliness, if we may judge by the silhouette 
 of her in Scott Douglas's edition of the poet's 
 works. She and Burns took a fancy to each 
 other on the instant. She invited him to tea, 
 but he offered a visit instead. An accident 
 confined him for about a month to his room, 
 and this led to the famous Clarinda and 
 Sylvander correspondence. At about the fifth 
 or sixth exchange of their letters she wrote : 
 It is really curious, so much fun passing 
 between two persons who saw each other only 
 once." During the few months of his fascina- 
 tion for this fair one in General's Entry, Burns 
 showed more of his real self, perhaps, than can 
 be traced in other parts of his published cor- 
 respondence. In his first letter to her after 
 his marriage, he says, in reply to her senti- 
 mental reproaches : " When you call over the 
 scenes that have passed between us, you will 
 survey the conduct of an honest man struggling 
 successfully with temptations the most power- 
 ful that ever beset humanity, and preserving 
 untainted honour in situations where the 
 severest virtue would have forgiven a fall." 
 But had Clarinda been less accessible, she 
 
A Visit to Clarinda. 221 
 
 might have discovered eventually that much 
 of the poet's warmth was fanciful and melo- 
 dramatic. From their correspondence it would 
 appear that she was in expectation of Burns 
 visiting her again in Alison Square in 1788. 
 She was the cousin-german of Lord Craig, 
 who, at his death in York Place in 181 3, left 
 her an annuity, and thirty years after still 
 found her living in Edinburgh. " She is now 
 nearly eighty years of age, but enjoys excellent 
 health," says Kay's editor in February 1837. 
 " We found her sitting in the parlour, with 
 some papers on the table. Her appearance at 
 first betrayed a little of that languor and 
 apathy which attend age and solitude ; but 
 the moment she comprehended the object of 
 our visit, her countenance — which even yet re- 
 tains the lineaments of what Clarinda may be 
 supposed to have been — became animated and 
 intelligent. ' That,' said she, rising up, and 
 pointing to an engraving over the mantelpiece, 
 * is a likeness of my relative (Lord Craig), 
 about whom you have been inquiring. He 
 was the best friend I ever had.' After a little 
 conversation about his lordship, she directed 
 our attention to a picture of Burns by Hors- 
 
222 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 burgh, after Taylor. ' You will know who that 
 is ; it was presented to me by Constable & 
 Co., for having simply declared what I know 
 to be true — that the likeness was good.' We 
 spoke of the correspondence between the poet 
 and Clarinda, at which she smiled, and plea- 
 santly remarked on the great change which 
 lapse of so many years had produced in her 
 personal appearance. Indeed, any observation 
 respecting Burns seemed to afford her pleasure. 
 Having prolonged our intrusion to the limits 
 of courtesy, and conversed on various topics, 
 we took leave of the venerable lady, highly 
 gratified by the interview. To see and talk 
 with one whose name is so indissolubly as- 
 sociated with the fame of Burns, and whose 
 talents and virtues were so much esteemed by 
 the bard — who has now (in 1837) been sleep- 
 ing the sleep of death for upwards of forty 
 years — may well give rise to feelings of no 
 ordinary description. In youth Clarinda must 
 have been about the middle size. 'Burns,' she 
 said, * if living, would have been about her 
 own age, probably a few months older.' " 
 
Clarinda in Old Age, 
 
 When Burns revisited Edinburgh in 1787-88 
 he lodged with William Cruikshank, a teacher 
 of the High School, in a house on the south- 
 west corner of St James Square, in the New 
 Town, and his was the topmost or attic window 
 in the gable looking towards the General Post- 
 Office in Waterloo Place. Herefrom Burns 
 wrote : "I am certain I saw you, Clarinda ; 
 but you don't look to the proper story for a 
 poet's lodgings — ' where speculation roosted 
 near the sky.' I could almost have thrown 
 myself over for very vexation. Why don't 
 you look higher? It has spoiled my peace for 
 the day. To be so near my charming Clarinda 
 — to miss her look when it was searching for 
 me ! . . . I am sure the soul is capable of 
 disease, for mine has convulsed itself into an 
 inflammatory fever." 
 
 The window of Burns was pointed out to an 
 enthusiastic pilgrim, one summer morning in 
 1889, by an old resident of St James Square, to 
 whom Clarinda had pointed it out herself. He 
 
224 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 remembered Clarinda (Mrs M'Lehose) in her 
 old age, when she lived beneath his own father 
 in a small flat at Greenside upon an insignificant 
 annuity allowed her by her brother. She went 
 once to her husband in Jamaica, but she did not 
 leave the ship, as Mr M'Lehose insisted upon 
 her immediate return on the ground that the 
 climate would not agree with her. She was in 
 very poor circumstances during her later years, 
 but never wearied of telling the story of her 
 flirtation with Burns. As the aged residenter 
 remarked : " The auld donnert leddy body 
 spoke o' her love for the poet jist like a bit 
 hellicat lassie in her teens, and while exhibitin' 
 to her cronies the faded letters from her Robbie 
 she would just greet like a bairn. Puir auld 
 creature, she never till the moment o' her death 
 jaloused or dooted Robbie's professed love for 
 her ; but, sir, you ken he was just makin' a fule 
 o' her, as his letters amply show." 
 
 Mrs M'Lehose, deserted by her husband, lived 
 in Burns' time with two young children in 
 General's Entry, which lay between the Potter- 
 row and Bristo Street ; but no houses dating 
 back to Clarinda's day stand within a stone's- 
 throw of Clarinda's flat. 
 
The Original Portrait of Clarinda. 
 
 The portrait of Clarinda, which Mr W. G. 
 Roy, S.S.C., handed round for inspection at one 
 of the Edinburgh Burns Club dinners, was the 
 original picture which was specially drawn by 
 the celebrated silhouettist, Miers, for Burns, and 
 which was in the poet's possession at the time 
 of his death. It latterly belonged to the late 
 Mr James Gibson Craig, and was sold at the 
 sale of his effects. It is now the property of 
 Mr William Campbell of Cammo, and he has 
 consented to its being preserved in the National 
 Portrait Gallery, where it will be deposited 
 through the Royal Scottish Academy. The 
 presentation will take place shortly. The 
 picture, which is in beautiful preservation, is 
 very faithfully reproduced in Paterson's six- 
 volume edition of the poet's works, edited by 
 the late Mr Scott Douglas. The following are 
 the letters which passed between Clarinda and 
 the poet on the subject of the portrait :— 
 P 
 
226 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 Thursday Noon, February 7, 1788. 
 " I shall go to-morrow forenoon to Miers 
 alone. What size do you want it about? O 
 Sylvander, if you wish my peace, let friendship 
 be the word between us. I tremble at more." 
 
 Thursday Night, February 7, 1788. 
 " I thank you for going to Miers. Urge him, 
 for necessity calls, to have it done by the middle 
 of next week. Wednesday the latest day. I 
 want it for a breast-pin to wear next my heart. 
 I propose to keep sacred set times to wander in 
 the woods and wilds for meditation on you. 
 Then, and only then, your lovely image shall be 
 produced to the day, with a reverence akin to 
 devotion." 
 
Clarinda and Sylvander. 
 
 By Alexander Smith. 
 
 This lady, who was possessed of no common 
 beauty and intelligence, had been deserted by 
 her husband, and was bringing up her children 
 in somewhat narrow circumstances. They met 
 at tea in the house of a common friend, and 
 were pleased with each other's conversation. 
 The second night after Burns was to have 
 drunk tea by invitation at the house of Mrs 
 M'Lehose, but having been upset the previous 
 evening by a drunken coachman, and brought 
 home with a knee severely bruised, he was 
 obliged to forego that pleasure. He wrote the 
 lady, giving the details of the accident, and ex- 
 pressing regret that he was unable to leave his 
 room. The lady, who was of a temperament 
 generous and impulsive, replied at once, giving 
 utterance to her regret, and making Burns a 
 formal proffer of her sympathy and friendship. 
 
228 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 Burns was enraptured, and returned an answer 
 after the following fashion : " I stretch a point, 
 indeed, my dearest Madam, when I answer your 
 card on the rack of my present agony. Your 
 friendship, Madam ! By heavens ! I was never 
 proud before. ... I swear solemnly (in all the 
 terror of my former oath) to remember you in 
 all the pride and warmth of friendship until — I 
 cease to be ! To-morrow, and every day till I 
 see you, you shall hear from me. Farewell ! 
 May you enjoy a better night's repose than I 
 am likely to have." The correspondence so 
 rapturously opened, proceeded quite as raptur- 
 ously. It was arranged that in the future Burns 
 should sign himself Sylvander^ and the lady 
 Clarinda. Each day gave rise to its epistle. 
 Poems were interchanged. Sighs were wafted 
 from St James Square to the Potterrow. 
 Clarinda was a " gloriously amiable, fine 
 woman," and Sylvander was her "devoted 
 slave." Clarinda chid Sylvander tenderly for 
 the warmth of his expressions. Sylvander was 
 thrown into despair by the rebuke, but pro- 
 tested that he was not to blame. Who could 
 behold her superior charms, her fine intelligence, 
 and not love? Who could love and be silent? 
 
Clarinda and Sylvander. 229 
 
 Clarinda had strong Calvinistic leanings, and 
 Sylvander, who could not pardon these things 
 in Ayrshire clergymen, and was accustomed to 
 call them by quite other names, was " delighted 
 by her honest enthusiasm for religion." Clarinda 
 was to be passing on a certain day through the 
 Square in which Sylvander lived, and promised 
 to favour him with a nod should she be so 
 fortunate as to see him at his window, and 
 wrote sorrowing, the day after, that she had 
 been unable to discover his window. Sylvander 
 was inconsolable. Not able to discover his 
 window ! He could almost have thrown him- 
 self over it for very vexation. His peace is 
 spoiled for the day. He is sure the soul is 
 capable of disease, for his has convulsed itself 
 into an inflammatory fever, and so on. During 
 this period of letter writing. Burns and Mrs 
 M'Lehose had met several times in her own 
 house, and on these occasions he had oppor- 
 tunities of making her aware of his dismal 
 prospects. The results of his renewed inter- 
 course with Jean on his return to Ayrshire 
 were now becoming apparent. This was com- 
 municated to her along with other matters, and 
 Mrs M'Lehose was all forgiveness, tempered 
 
230 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 with rebuke, and a desire for a more Calvinistic 
 way of thinking on his part on religious subjects. 
 That the affection of Burns for the lady was 
 rooted in anything deeper than fancy, and a 
 natural delight in intelligence and a pleasing 
 manner, may be doubted. His Clarinda letters 
 are artificial, and one suspects the rhetorician in 
 the swelling sentences and the exaggerated senti- 
 ment. With regard to Mrs M'Lehose there can 
 be no mistake. Pier letters are far superior 
 to Burns', being simple, natural, and with a 
 pathetic cadence in some portions which has 
 not yet lost the power to affect. She loved 
 Burns, and hoped, if he would but wait till 
 existing ties were broken, to be united to him. 
 But Burns could not wait, the correspondence 
 drooped, and a year saw all passion 
 
 " die away, 
 And fade into the light of common day " — 
 
 the common day of Jean Armour, Ellisland, 
 and the Excise. 
 
How I Lost the Opportunity of 
 Meeting Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 By Thomas C. Latto. 
 
 One balmy afternoon in 1841 I was sauntering 
 along the western slope of Calton Hill, Edin- 
 burgh, with my old friend Captain Charles Gray, 
 lately retired from an active service of six and 
 thirty years in the Royal Marine Corps, a poet 
 himself, and one of the most enthusiastic ad- 
 mirers of Robert Burns that the Ayrshire 
 ploughman ever had. The Captain, in his 
 somewhat halting manner, for he had an im- 
 pediment in his speech like Charles Lamb and 
 Leigh Hunt, was never tired of discussing 
 Robbie and his songs. Indeed, they formed 
 the warp and woof of his conversation. Every- 
 thing connected with Burns was grist to his mill. 
 
 At that moment a lean, thin-cheeked, sallow- 
 faced man passed us. " Ha ! " said the Captain, 
 " a Yankee I'll be bound. There are unco few 
 Scotsmen of that type." 
 
232 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 " Correctly diagnosed, Captain," was my reply; 
 " a genuine down-easter beyond question, but 
 you can never guess who he is. Why, that is 
 a grandson of Burns' Clarinda, bearing the same 
 name too, M'Lehose. He has been in town 
 some months trying to get some business 
 settled in the Court of Session. I see him in 
 the Parliament House nearly every day." 
 
 " Indeed," rejoined my friend, " that is some- 
 what strange. I was just about to touch on 
 that very subject. Do you see that white- 
 gabled house in the Low Calton, glittering in 
 the sunlight ? " 
 
 " Yes ; I had observed it." 
 
 "Well, within that house lives the far-famed 
 Clarinda herself I visited her last week, and 
 found her lively as ever, still worshipping the 
 great poet's memory, and by no means dis- 
 inclined to joke on the superlative devotion 
 evinced towards herself in days of yore by the 
 impassioned Sylvander. I have met her several 
 times at the house of Robert Chambers, where 
 she kept up the liveliest of talk with David 
 Vedder, the host, and myself, and was quite 
 the belle of the party." 
 
 " But she must be much changed," I remarked, 
 
Lost Opportunity of Meeting Clarinda. 233 
 
 " since the days when she proved so formidable 
 a rival to Jeanie Armour." 
 
 " Oh ! that of course. The features are now 
 somewhat harsh and haggard, very different 
 from the rather attractive silhouette hanging in 
 her little parlour. I cannot promise that you 
 would discern in her now any traces of her once 
 remarkable grace and beauty, but her interesting 
 talk would be ample compensation for loss of 
 personal charm." 
 
 " How I wish that I could see her," was my 
 eager reply. 
 
 " Nothing more easy. To-morrow, or say 
 Saturday evening, if that would suit you 
 better," said the Captain ; " and I shall be de- 
 lighted to accompany and introduce you. She 
 knows something of you already, and will be 
 pleased to have a chat with you." 
 
 But that Saturday's interview was fated never 
 to come off. There are so many slips between 
 the cup and the lip in this uncertain world, and 
 one must not count on many opportunities of 
 meeting when the party to be interviewed is 
 turned of ninety. 
 
 On Friday I read in the newspapers the 
 announcement of her death. 
 
234 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 A week or two afterwards I attended with the 
 Captain a sale in Hanover Street, at the Auction 
 Mart of C. B. Tait & Co., where the precious 
 letters of Sylvander to Clarinda, preserved by 
 her with loving care for half a century, were, by 
 order of the grandson, her heir, disposed of to 
 the highest bidder. To me it seemed like 
 desecration to stand and witness these inflated 
 effusions of genius at its worst, enriched, how- 
 ever, with various verses that had years ago 
 "taken arles of immortality," dispersed in so 
 summary a style. " Ae Fond Kiss and then 
 we Sever," "My Nanny O," Agnes M'Lehose 
 being the heroine of both lyrics, " The Queen o' 
 Scots in Prison," going, going, gone for the few 
 shillings that they would fetch. Alas for the 
 poor widow's love-letters ! 
 
 It may scarcely be worth while remarking 
 that the casket in which the poor old lady had 
 for so many years locked up these jealously 
 guarded literary treasures was an oblong box 
 about the length and depth of a fiddle-case, 
 rounded on top, covered completely with a 
 cheap, clay-coloured wall-paper, such as servant 
 girls were wont to use in packing up their odds 
 and ends when at Martinmas term contem- 
 
Lost Opportunity of Meeting Clarinda. 235 
 
 plating migration from one farm - house to 
 another. Such a "kist" as the sweet and 
 guileless damsel portrayed by Willie Laidlaw 
 in his delicious, imperishable song, " Lucy's 
 Flittin'," represents as the receptacle in which 
 the fair lassie rowed up her claes, not forgetting 
 the bonnie blue ribbon that Jamie had given 
 her for a keepsake and pledge of unchanging 
 affection. 
 
 Some years after the worthy Captain's 
 lamented death I scribbled off the following 
 doggerel sonnet, which recently turned up in 
 overhauling my memorabilia. 
 
 BURNS' CLARINDA. 
 
 As on the western slope of Calton Hill 
 
 Old Captain Gray and I had dimbed the stair, 
 
 " See ! " said the veteran, " yon white cottage ; there 
 
 Clarinda, Burns's goddess, Hngers still ; 
 
 Still is she proud of that long-vanished time, 
 
 When the great bard would to her bower repair, 
 
 Fleech for a kiss from lips so ripe and rare, 
 
 And read her samples of his new-made rhyme." 
 
 " Oh, could I see her ! " was my muttered thought. 
 
 " Why, yes, my boy — in very deed you may ; 
 
 She'll like it ; for she smiled o'er what you wrote : 
 
 To-morrow morning, or, say Saturday." 
 
 But many a slip I've found this one beside ; 
 
 We never met — on Friday eve she died. 
 
Burns and Clarinda. 
 
 By the Rev. Arthur John Lockhart. 
 
 I. 
 
 She was sae bricht, she was sae fair, 
 
 She was of a' the warl' sae dear, 
 How could I choose but linger there, 
 
 Wi' tranced e'e, an' charmed ear ! 
 This is luve's morning-tide o' bliss, 
 
 Wi' mony a meeting, heart to heart ; 
 But, oh ! luve's anguish, it is this — 
 
 To kiss ance mair, an' then depart ! 
 
 She was sae bricht, she was sae braw, 
 
 Wi' sic a grace her charms she bore, 
 How could I bear to turn awa' 
 
 An' look upon her face nae more ! 
 Ah, we, wha did sae blindly luve ! 
 
 Felt we nae madness in the thrill ? 
 Our dream is o'er, — yet, while we wove 
 
 The flowery band, we dream'd nae ill. 
 
Burns and Clarinda. 237 
 
 She was sae bricht, she was sae fair ! 
 
 Now she ayont the sea is gane, 
 How can I seek the banks of Ayr, 
 
 An' dwell wi' musin' thocht alane ! 
 What solitude in ilka street ! 
 
 How gloomy seems each ancient pile, 
 Since fortune yields me not the licht, 
 
 The gladness, o' her perfect smile ! 
 
 She was sae bricht, she was sae fair ! 
 
 Ah, how will haunted Doon appear. 
 When simmer sweetens a' the air. 
 
 An' a' her birds are singin' clear ? 
 There must I sit me doun to sigh. 
 
 As bitter memory comes again. 
 While the heart's ghaists gae flittin' by. 
 
 An' a' the past is changed to pain. 
 
 She was sae bricht, she was sae fair ! 
 
 Her kiss was sweeter than the wine : 
 Now spare, ye win's, thou ocean, spare, 
 
 The lovely form I dreamed was mine. 
 'Neath ither stars, on ither shores. 
 
 When she has crossed the ragin' sea, 
 Ah, will the ane my soul adores 
 
 Gie whiles a passin' thocht to me ? 
 
238 Burns' Clarinda, 
 
 She was sae bricht, she was sae fair, 
 
 And, oh, we lo'ed each ither weel ! 
 My easy heart I'll blame nae mair, 
 
 To lo'e her not it wad be steel. 
 Dear city o' my early fame. 
 
 An' my ill-fated luve, adieu ! 
 I seek the fields whence erst I came. 
 
 To toil, an' weep, an' dream o' you. 
 
 II. 
 
 Ah, must we sever? 
 
 Ah, must we sever. 
 
 Dearest, for ever. 
 After the days we together have known ? 
 
 Yet, let me yet bless thee, 
 
 Clasp and caress thee. 
 Ere thou wilt leave me to sorrow alone ! 
 
 Soft be thy pillow. 
 
 Far on the billow ; 
 Bright be thy dreams while thou speedest away! 
 
 Every wave charm thee, 
 
 Never one harm thee. 
 Cause thee commotion, or work thee delay. 
 
Burns and Clarinda. 239 
 
 Others shall greet thee, 
 
 Claim and entreat thee, 
 Yield thee affection, and make thee a home : 
 
 Thou may'st not ponder, 
 
 Hearts truer and fonder, 
 When dreams of the past o'er thy spirit may come. 
 
 Ah ! should aught grieve thee. 
 
 Wrong thee, deceive thee, 
 When we asunder for ever are torn, 
 
 Think of me, parted, 
 
 Sunk, and sad-hearted, — 
 Oh, but thou knowest how deeply I mourn ! 
 
 Let one thought move thee, — 
 
 Still do I love thee ! 
 Think me not cold who am only distress'd : 
 
 Come, if aught harm thee. 
 
 Shake or alarm thee, — 
 Fly like a bird to this sheltering breast ! 
 
 Yet, why this yearning 
 
 For thy returning 
 Back to my arms, from that southern shore ! 
 
 Passion beseeches. 
 
 While my heart teaches 
 That I, who have loved, shall behold thee no 
 more. 
 
240 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 I have aspired, 
 
 Dared and desired, — 
 I have not striven for laurels in vain : 
 
 Song Cometh, welling 
 
 From my heart, telling 
 All the sweet tale of our passionate pain. 
 
 I took Scotia's lyre 
 
 And lifted it higher ; 
 Thou art its theme, and its glory shalt see. 
 
 Past is its prime, now. 
 
 Brief is its time, now, — 
 Hush'd its wild music for ever will be. 
 
 Here must we sever, 
 
 Now, and for ever ! 
 Sweet are the joys we together have known ; 
 
 But, with the morrow, 
 
 All shall be sorrow, 
 Thou wilt be absent, and I shall be gone. 
 
The Poet's Immortal Wreath for 
 Clarinda. 
 
 Sylvander's Reply to Clarinda. 
 
 When dear Clarinda, matchless fair, 
 First struck Sylvander's raptured view, 
 
 He gazed, he listened to despair, 
 Alas ! 'twas all he dared to do. 
 
 Love, from Clarinda's heavenly eyes, 
 Transfixed his bosom thro' and thro' ; 
 
 But still in Friendship's guarded guise, 
 For more the demon feared to do. 
 
 That heart, already more than lost, 
 The imp beleaguer'd all perdue ; 
 
 For frowning Honour kept his post. 
 To meet that frown he shrunk to do. 
 
 His pangs the Bard refused to own, 
 Tho' half he wished Clarinda knew ; 
 
 But Anguish wrung th' unweeting groan — 
 Who blames what frantic Pain must do ? 
 Q 
 
^42 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 That heart, where mostly follies blend, 
 Was sternly still to Honour true : 
 
 To prove Clarinda's fondest friend 
 Was what a lover sure might do. 
 
 The Muse his ready quill employed, 
 No dearer bliss he could pursue ; 
 
 That bliss Clarinda cold denied, — 
 
 " Send word by Charles how you do ! " 
 
 The chill behest disarmed his Muse, 
 Till Passion all impatient grew : 
 
 He wrote, and hinted for excuse, 
 
 " 'Twas 'cause he'd nothing else to do." 
 
 But by those hopes I have above ! 
 
 And by those faults I dearly rue ! 
 The deed, the boldest mark of love — 
 
 For thee that deed I dare to do ! 
 
 O could the Fates but name the price 
 
 Would bless me with your charms and you! 
 
 With frantic joy I'd pay it thrice. 
 If human art and power could do ! 
 
 Then take, Clarinda, friendship's hand, 
 (Friendship, at least, I may avow ;) 
 
 And lay no more your chill command, 
 I'll write, whatever I've to do. 
 
The Poefs Immortal Wreath. 243 
 
 To Clarinda, 
 With a Present of a Pair of Drinking Glasses. 
 Fair Empress of the Poet's soul, 
 
 And Queen of Poetesses ; 
 Clarinda, take this little boon, 
 This humble pair of glasses ! 
 
 And fill them high with generous juice, 
 
 As generous as your mind ; 
 And pledge me in the generous toast — 
 
 " The whole of human kind ! " 
 
 " To those who love us ! " — second fill ; 
 
 But not to those whom we love ; 
 Lest we love those who love not us ! — 
 
 A third—" To thee and me, love ! " 
 
 Clarinda. 
 Clarinda, mistress of my soul. 
 
 The measur'd time is run ! 
 The wretch beneath the dreary Pole, 
 
 So marks his latest sun. 
 
 To what dark cave of frozen night 
 
 Shall poor Sylvander hie ? 
 Depriv'd of thee, his life and light, 
 
 The sun of all his joy. 
 
244 Bmnis' Clarinda. 
 
 We part, — but by these precious drops 
 That fill thy lovely eyes ! 
 
 No other light shall guide my steps 
 Till thy bright beams arise. 
 
 She, the fair sun of all her sex. 
 Has blest my glorious day ; 
 
 And shall a glimmering planet fix 
 My worship to its ray ? 
 
 To Clarinda. 
 
 Before I saw Clarinda's face 
 My heart was blythe and gay, 
 
 Free as the wind, or feathcr'd race 
 That hop from spray to spray. 
 
 But now dejected I appear, 
 
 Clarinda proves unkind ; 
 I, sighing, drop the silent tear, 
 
 But no relief can find. 
 
 In plaintive notes my tale rehearses 
 When I the fair have found ; 
 
 On every tree appear my verses 
 That to her praise resound. 
 
 But she, ungrateful, shuns my sight. 
 My faithful love disdains, 
 
The Poets Immortal Wreath. 245 
 
 My vows and tears her scorn excite, 
 Another happy reigns. 
 
 Ah, though my looks betray, 
 
 I envy your success, 
 Yet love to friendship shall give way — 
 
 I cannot wish it less. 
 
 "I Burn, I Burn." 
 
 " I BURN, I burn, as when thro' ripen'd corn 
 By driving winds the crackling flames are borne," 
 Now maddening, wild, I curse that fatal night ; 
 Now bless the hour which charm'd my guilty 
 
 sight. 
 In vain the laws their feeble force oppose : 
 Chain'd at his feet they groan. Love's vanquish'd 
 
 foes : 
 In vain religion meets my sinking eye ; 
 I dare not combat — but I turn and fly ; 
 Conscience in vain upbraids th' unhallow'd fire ; 
 Love grasps his scorpions — stifled they expire ! 
 Reason drops headlong from his sacred throne, 
 Your dear idea reigns and reigns alone : 
 Each thought intoxicated homage yields. 
 And riots wanton in forbidden fields ! 
 
246 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 By all on high adoring mortals know ! 
 
 By all the conscious villain fears below ! 
 
 By your dear self ! — the last great oath I swear ; 
 
 Nor life nor soul were ever half so dear ! 
 
 Ae Fond Kiss. 
 
 Ae fond kiss, and then we sever ; 
 Ae fareweel, and then for ever ! 
 Deep in heart- wrung tears I'll pledge thee, 
 Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee. 
 Who shall say that fortune grieves him, 
 While the Star of Hope she leaves him ? 
 Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me ; 
 Dark despair around benights me. 
 
 I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy, 
 Naething could resist my Nancy ; 
 And jto see her, was to love her ; 
 Love but her, and love for ever. 
 Had we never loved sae kindly, 
 Had we never loved sae blindly. 
 Never met or never parted, 
 We had ne'er been broken-hearted. 
 
 Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest ! 
 Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest ! 
 
The Poefs Immortal Wreath. 247 
 
 Thine be ilka joy and treasure, 
 
 Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure ! 
 
 Ae fond kiss, and then we sever, 
 
 Ae fareweel, alas ! for ever ! 
 
 Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, 
 
 Warring sighs and groans Til wage thee. 
 
 The Dearest o' the Quorum. 
 
 O May, thy morn was ne'er so sweet 
 As the mirk night o' December, 
 
 For sparkling was the rosy wine, 
 And private was the chamber : 
 
 And dear was she I darena name. 
 But I will aye remember. 
 And dear, &c. 
 
 And here's to them that, like oursel', 
 Can push about the jorum, 
 
 And here's to them that wish us weel. 
 May a' that's guid watch o'er them ; 
 
 And here's to them we darena tell. 
 The dearest of the quorum. 
 And here's to, &c. 
 
248 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 Gloomy December. 
 
 Ance mair I hail thee, thou gloomy December ! 
 
 Ance mair I hail thee wi' sorrow and care ; 
 Sad was the parting thou makes me remember, 
 
 Parting wi' Nancy, oh, ne'er to meet mair ! 
 Fond lovers' parting is sweet painful pleasure, 
 
 Hope beaming mild on the soft parting hour ; 
 But the dire feeling, oh, farewell for ever ! 
 
 Is anguish unmingled and agony pure. 
 
 Wild as the winter now tearing the forest. 
 
 Till the last leaf o' the summer is flown ; 
 Such is the tempest has shaken my bosom. 
 
 Since my last hope and last comfort is gone. 
 Still as I hail thee, thou gloomy December, 
 
 Still shall I hail thee wi' sorrow and care ; 
 For sad was the parting thou makes me re- 
 member, — 
 
 Parting wi' Nancy, oh, ne'er to meet mair ! 
 
 My Nannie's Awa'. 
 
 Now in her green mantle blythe Nature arrays. 
 An' listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the 
 
 braes. 
 While birds warble welcome in ilka green shaw ; 
 But to me it's delightless — my Nannie's awa'. 
 
The Poet's Iminortal Wreath. 249 
 
 The snaw-drap an' primrose our woodlands 
 
 adorn, 
 An' violets bathe in the weet o' the morn ; 
 They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they 
 
 blaw, 
 They mind me o' Nannie — an' Nannie's awa'. 
 
 Thou lav'rock that springs frae the dews of the 
 
 lawn, 
 The shepherd to warn o' the gray-breaking dawn, 
 An' thou mellow mavis that hails the night-fa', 
 Give over for pity — my Nannie's awa'. 
 
 Come, autumn, sae pensive, in yellow an' gray, 
 An' soothe me wi' tidings o' nature's decay ; 
 The dark, dreary winter, an' wild-driving snaw, 
 Alane can delight me — now Nannie's awa'. 
 
 My Lovely Nancy. 
 
 Thine am I, my faithful fair, 
 
 Thine, my lovely Nancy ; 
 Every pulse along my veins. 
 
 Every roving fancy. 
 
 To thy bosom lay my heart. 
 There to throb and languish : 
 
 Though despair had wrung its core. 
 That would heal its anguish. 
 R 
 
250 Burns' Clarinda. 
 
 Take away those rosy lips, 
 Rich with balmy treasure : 
 
 Turn away thine eyes of love, 
 Lest I die with pleasure. 
 
 What is life when wanting love ? 
 
 Night without a morning : 
 Love's the cloudless summer sun, 
 
 Nature gay adorning. 
 
 Printed at The Darien Press, Edinburghi