---
title: "To Robert Ainslie"
author: "Robert Burns"
recipient: "Robert Ainslie"
letter_number: 67
roman: "LXVII"
date: "28 June 1787"
place: "Arracher"
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/067-to-robert-ainslie/"
---

# To Robert Ainslie

## Editor's note
"Burns had a memory stored with the finest poetical passages, which he was in the habit of quoting most aptly in his correspondence with his friends: and he delighted also in repeating them in the company of those friends who enjoyed them." These are the words of Ainslie, of Berrywell, to whom this letter in addressed.

— Allan Cunningham

## Letter
MY DEAR SIR,

I write on my tour through a country where savage streams tumble over savage mountains, thinly overspread with savage flocks, which sparingly support as savage inhabitants. My last stage was Inverary—to-morrow night's stage Dumbarton. I ought sooner to have answered your kind letter, but you know I am a man of many sins.

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/067-to-robert-ainslie/