Scotland/Scots > Life of Robert Burns

ROBERT BURNS. 179
thole’s in the autumn, and who immediately had
the poet’s name put on the roll.
“ I have chosen this, my dear friend, (thus
wrote Burns to Mrs Dunlop), after mature de¬
liberation. The question is not at what door of
Fortune’s palace shall we enter in ; but what doors
does she open to us ? I was not likely to get any¬
thing to do. I wanted un but, which is a dan¬
gerous, an unhappy situation. I got this without
any hanging on, or mortifying solicitation. It is
immediate bread, and, though poor in comparison
of the last eighteen months of my existence, ’tis
luxury in comparison of all my preceding life.
Besides, the Commissioners are some of them my
acquaintances, and all of them my firm friends. ”*
Our poet seems to have kept up an angry cor¬
respondence, during his confinement, with his
bookseller, Mr Creech, whom he also abuses very
heartily in his letters to his friends in Ayrshire.
The publisher's accounts, however, when they were
at last made up, must have given the impatient
author a very agreeable surprise ; for in his letter
above quoted, to Lord Glencairn, we find him ex¬
pressing his hopes that the gross profits of his
book might amount to “ better than L.200, ”
whereas, on the day of settling with Mr Creech,
he found himself in possession of L.500, if not
of L.600. f
* Reliques, p. 50.
f Mr Nicoll, the most intimate friend Burns had at this
time, writes to Mr John Lewars, excise-officer at Dum¬
fries, immediately on hearing of the poet’s death,—« He
certainly told me that he received L.600 for the first Edin¬
burgh edition, and L. 100 afterwards for the copyright,”
(MS. in my possession.) Dr Currie states the gross pro¬
duct of Creech’s edition at L.500, and Burns himself, in
one of his printed letters, at L.400 only. Nicoll hints,