ADDENDA

TO

MRS DUNLOP BURNS'S CANDID FRIEND."

W

HEN arranging our notes for the above-named article, which appeared in last year's Chronicle, we overlooked an important one-inadvertently mislaidbearing on the last letter Burns received from Mrs Dunlop, which contained a reference to a letter, or copy of a letter, preserved in the University Library, Edinburgh, which put beyond doubt that the Poet did receive a communication from Mrs Dunlop a day or two before he died. We have since verified the said reference, and hasten to correct the impression left by our last year's article by laying a copy of said letter before our readers.

MADAM,-At the desire of Mrs Burns I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, and at same time to inform you of the melancholy and much-regretted event of Mr Burns's death. He expired on the morning of the 21st., after a long and severe illness. Your kind letter gave him great ease and satisfaction, and was the last thing he was capable of perusing or understanding. The situation of his unfortunate widow and family of most promising boys, Mrs Dunlop's feelings and affection for them will much easier paint than I can possibly express, more particularly when Mrs Dunlop is informed that Mrs Burns's situation is such that she is expected to ly-in dayly. I am certain that a letter from Mrs Dunlop to Mrs Burns would be a very great consolation, and her kind advice most thankfully received. I am, with the greatest respect, your most obedient and very humble servant.

JNO. LEWARS.

Dumfries, 22nd July, 1796."

The letter is addressed, as its contents indicate, to Mrs Dunlop; that to which it is evidently a reply has unfortunately disappeared. John Lewars, the Poet's fellow-officer, and brother of Jessie Lewars, assisted the

widow in her distress by writing the necessary letters to her friends, including Captain Crosbie, James Burness, and Wm. Nicol.* It is satisfactory to be assured that the Dunlop correspondence continued to the very last, and that Dr Currie's statement regarding the last letter addressed to Burns by her is absolutely correct. Burns died on 21st July, and the funeral took place on the 25th -not 26th according to Currie, Lockhart, Cunningham, and others.

We were then unable to state definitely where Mrs Dunlop's remains were interred, but the following, forwarded to us by an esteemed correspondent, may be taken as settling the question:

"The Air Advertiser and Scots Magazine of 1815 both state that Mrs Dunlop, of Dunlop, died at Dunlop House on 24th May, 1815." The place of interment is not given, but it is not at all likely that her remains would find resting-place elsewhere than in the local family buryingplace. When we visited the vault last year, we found only one large casquet and three small coffins within the walls. On enquiry we learned that, at a recent renovation of the building, the vault was cleared out and the more decayed remains removed elsewhere. The plate on the casquet bears that it contains the remains of her fifth son, Lieutenant-General Dunlop, who died in 1832, and who fought in the Peninsular War under Sir John Moore.

EDITOR.

* Nicol's reply is preserved in this collection.

WAS BURNS MELANCHOLY?

I.

I if a discover that melancholyl

T may be doubted if any man understands the real

or at least pensiveness, to use a lighter term-is not the basal mood of his mind. It is venturesome to assert this of one whose wit was the flick of a perfect diamond, and who wrote "The Jolly Beggars" and "Holy Willie " and "Tam o' Shanter," but the affirmation carries no inconsistency. Mark Twain said that gravity is the soil of humour, and declared that he was a grave man himself at the core a fact vouched for by those who knew him best.

In one of his letters, Burns makes a similar confession. "My constitution and frame," he writes, "were ab origine blasted with a deep and incurable taint of hypochondria which poisons my existence." Allowing for a dash of generous extravagance in this revelation, its main truth is capable of some significant justification. To Mr Robert

Muir he writes: "You and I have often agreed that life is no great blessing on the whole." Even to his captivating Clarinda he vents a similar opinion. "How happy I

have been!" he cries; then adds-" How little of that scantling portion of time, called the life of man, is sacred to happiness! much less to transport! I could moralise 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! '

Such sentiments from the pen of Burns may seem strange; but that it expressed a general mood of his is clear enough His ode on "Despondency" drips with melancholy of a personal quality. The opening

Take another quotation from his letters :-" Life is a fairy scene; almost all that deserves the name of enjoyment or happiness is only a charming delusion; and in comes repining age, in all the gravity of hoary wisdom, and wretchedly chases away the bewitching phantom." This is from Burns in his top-day; it was written to Richard Brown, Greenock, from Mossgiel, in 1788-eight years before his death. Yes, and even in the opening of his career, he sends such lines as these to his father: "I am quite transported at the thought that ere long, perhaps very soon, I shall bid an eternal adieu to all the pains and uneasiness and disquietudes of this weary life, for I assure you I am heartily tired of it; and, if I do not very much deceive myself, could contentedly and gladly resign it

In what was probably one of the last letters he wrote, he says to his cousin: "You know, and my physician assures me, that melancholy and low spirits are half my disease."

Those who saw Burns in the flesh agree that although he brightened up in congenial company, the habitual expression of his face was one of "gloomy attentiveness,"

"

and moody thoughtfulness; and Allan Cunningham affirms rather severely, perhaps--that it was "intensely melancholy." Goudie Miller, of Alloway, in retailing his recollections of the Poet, informed enquirers that Burns often sat for hours with his head in his hand, even among his cronies, without speaking to them.

Further evidence is plentiful, but need not be quoted. What has rather to be noted is that this dye of melancholy, far from being in any way derogatory to Burns, is a necessary complement of his genius. It is the incubator of poetry. What says Shelley ?

"We look before and after,

And pine for what is not;

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught.

The sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought."

It is in the marshy, muddy side-wash of life's stream that the celestial bird of poetry builds her downy cradle and flutes her notes of inspiration; the diver must search the bottom for his pearls; and cunning Nature's crucible for her diamonds is the black earth. Burns was a windmill to every human mood, and chiefly to that of despondency; and, just because of this, he flung his magical hand over the full gamut of mortal experience, and awakened chords more deep, more passionate, more pathetic, than any other minstrel. Out of the depths he cried to the world, and the world listened.

This, too, has to be chronicled-that the Poet's keen sense of life's despair heightens his credit in struggling, struggling with bleeding heart and feet, towards his ideal. That he failed to attain the calm heights is scarcely a marvel (what saint was ever as holy as he wished to be ?), for the very temperament which fostered the Poet was something of a handicap to the man of affairs. Great men may be classified, roughly, into those whose judgment. submerges their imagination and those whose fancy endangers their resolution. Bacon was a type of the first -clear, bloodless, calculating; Burns was a type of the