---
title: "To The Earl Of Glencairn"
author: "Robert Burns"
recipient: "The Earl Of Glencairn"
letter_number: 58
roman: "LVIII"
source: "Project Gutenberg #18500 — The Complete Works of Robert Burns (ed. Allan Cunningham)"
editor: "Allan Cunningham"
source_url: "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18500/pg18500.txt"
canonical_url: "https://robert-burns.com/letters/058-to-the-earl-of-glencairn/"
---

# To The Earl Of Glencairn

## Editor's note
The poet addressed the following letter to the Earl of Glencairn, when he commenced his journey to the Border. It was first printed in the third edition of Lockhart's Life of Burns; an eloquent and manly work.

— Allan Cunningham

## Letter
MY LORD,

I go away to-morrow morning early, and allow me to vent the fulness of my heart, in thanking your lordship for all that patronage, that benevolence and that friendship with which you have honoured me. With brimful eyes, I pray that you may find in that great Being, whose image you so nobly bear, that friend which I have found in you. My gratitude is not selfish design—that I disdain—it is not dodging after the heels of greatness—that is an offering you disdain. It is a feeling of the same kind with my devotion.

R. B.

---

Source: [Project Gutenberg #18500 — The Complete Works of Robert Burns (ed. Allan Cunningham)](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18500/pg18500.txt), edited by Allan Cunningham  
Canonical HTML: https://robert-burns.com/letters/058-to-the-earl-of-glencairn/