The Letters of Robert Burns | Page 3

Lochlie such a constant and
copious stream of replies? The circumstances of his position will
explain why they perished: he was then "a youth and all unknown to
fame." It is even doubtful if the five hundred and forty published letters
include all the letters of Burns that now exist. Scarcely a year passes
but some epistolary scrap in the well-known handwriting is unearthed
and ceremoniously added to the previous sum total, And yet,
notwithstanding losses past or within recall, it is probable that we have
long had the whole of Burns's most characteristic letters. It was
inevitable that these should be preserved and published. His fame was
so rooted in the popular regard in his lifetime, that a characteristic letter
from his hand was sure to be received as something singularly precious.
It must not be forgotten, however, that Burns's personality was so
intense as to colour the smallest fragment of his correspondence, and it
is on this account desirable that every note he penned that yet remains
unpublished should be produced. It might give no new feature to our
conception of his character; but it would help the shading--which, in
the portraiture of any person, must chiefly be furnished by the minor
and more commonplace actions of his everyday life.
The correspondence of Burns, as we have it, commences, presumably,
near the close of his twenty-second year, and extends to all but exactly

the middle of his thirty-eighth. The dates are a day somewhere at the
end of 1780, and Monday, 18th July 1796. Between these limits lies the
printed correspondence of sixteen years. The sum total of this
correspondence allows about thirty-four letters to each year, but the
actual distribution is very unequal, ranging from the minimum, in 1782,
of one, a masonic letter addressed to Sir John Whitefoord of
Ballochmyle, to the maximum number of ninety-two, in 1788, the great
year of the Clarinda episode. It is in 1786, the year of the publication of
his first volume at Kilmarnock, the year of his literary birth, that his
correspondence first becomes heavy. It rises at a leap from two letters
in the preceding year to as many as forty-four. The phenomenal
increase is partly explained by the success of his poems. He became a
man that was worth the knowing, whose correspondence was worth
preserving. The six years of his published correspondence previous to
the discovery of his genius in 1786 are represented by only fourteen
letters in all. But in those years his letters, though both numerous and
prized above the common, were not considered as likely to be of future
interest, and were therefore suffered to live or die as chance might
determine. They mostly perished, the recipients thinking it hardly
worth their while to be sae nice wi' Robin as to preserve them.
After the recognition of his power in 1786, the record of his preserved
letters shews, for the ten years of his literary life, several fluctuations
which admit of easy explanation. Commencing with 1787, the numbers
are:--78, 92, 54, 33, 44, 31, 66, 30, 27, 24. The first of these years was
totally severed from rural occupations, or business of any kind, if we
except the publication of the first Edinburgh edition of his poems. It
was a complete holiday year to him. He was either resident in
Edinburgh, studying men and manners, or touring about the country,
visiting those places which history, song, or scenery had made famous.
Wherever he was, his fame brought him the acquaintance of a great
many new people. His leisure and the novelty of his situation afforded
him both opportunity and subject for an extensive correspondence. For
a large part of the next year, 1788, he was similarly circumstanced, and
the number of his letters was exceptionally increased by his
entanglement with Mrs. M'Lehose. To her alone, in less than three
months of this year, he wrote at least thirty-six letters,--considerably

over one-third of the entire epistolary produce of the year. In 1789 we
find the number of his letters fall to fifty-four. This was, perhaps, the
happiest year of his life. He was now comfortably established as a
farmer in a home of his own, busied with healthy rural work, and
finding in the happy fireside clime which he was making for wife and
weans "the true pathos and sublime" of human duty. He has still,
however, time and inclination to write on the average one letter a week.
For each of the next three years the average number is thirty-six. In
1793 the number suddenly goes up to sixty-six: the increase is due to
the heartiness with which he took up the scheme of George Thomson to
popularise and perpetuate the best old Scottish airs by fitting them with
words worthy of their merits. He