me on a footing of a real
freeman of the town, in the schools?

If you are so very kind as to grant my request, it will certainly be a
constant incentive to me to strain every nerve where I can officially
serve you; and will, if possible, increase that grateful respect with
which I have the honour to be,

Gentlemen,

Your devoted humble servant,

R. B.

* * * * *

CCCXXVIII.

TO MRS. RIDDEL.

[Mrs. Riddel was, like Burns, a well-wisher to the great cause of
human liberty, and lamented with him the excesses of the French
Revolution.]

_Dumfries, 20th January, 1796._

I cannot express my gratitude to you, for allowing me a longer perusal
of "Anacharsis." In fact, I never met with a book that bewitched me so
much; and I, as a member of the library, must warmly feel the
obligation you have laid us under. Indeed to me the obligation is
stronger than to any other individual of our society; as "Anacharsis"
is an indispensable desideratum to a son of the muses.

The health you wished me in your morning's card, is, I think, flown
from me for ever. I have not been able to leave my bed to-day till
about an hour ago. These wickedly unlucky advertisements I lent (I did
wrong) to a friend, and I am ill able to go in quest of him.

The muses have not quite forsaken me. The following detached stanza I
intend to interweave in some disastrous tale of a shepherd.

R. B.

* * * * *

CCCXXIX.

TO MRS. DUNLOP.

[It seems that Mrs. Dunlop regarded the conduct of Burns, for some
months, with displeasure, and withheld or delayed her usual kind and
charming communications.]

_Dumfries, 31st January, 1796._

These many months you have been two packets in my debt--what sin of
ignorance I have committed against so highly-valued a friend I am
utterly at a loss to guess. Alas! Madam, ill can I afford, at this
time, to be deprived of any of the small remnant of my pleasures. I
have lately drunk deep in the cup of affliction. The autumn robbed me
of my only daughter and darling child, and that at a distance too, and
so rapidly, as to put it out of my power to pay the last duties to
her. I had scarcely begun to recover from that shock, when I became
myself the victim of a most severe rheumatic fever, and long the die
spun doubtful; until, after many weeks of a sick bed, it seems to have
turned up life, and I am beginning to crawl across my room, an