---
title: "To Mrs. Dunlop"
author: "Robert Burns"
recipient: "Mrs. Dunlop"
letter_number: 99
roman: "XCIX"
date: "12 February 1788"
place: "Edinburgh"
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/099-to-dunlop/"
---

# To Mrs. Dunlop

## Editor's note
The levity with which Burns sometimes spoke of things sacred, had been obliquely touched upon by his good and anxious friend Mrs. Dunlop: he pleads guilty of folly, but not of irreligion.

— Allan Cunningham

## Letter
Some things in your late letters hurt me: not that _you say them_, but that _you mistake me._ Religion, my honoured Madam, has not only been all my life my chief dependence, but my dearest enjoyment. I have, indeed, been the luckless victim of wayward follies; but, alas! I have ever been "more fool than knave." A mathematician without religion is a probable character; an irreligious poet is a monster.

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/099-to-dunlop/