---
title: "To Mrs. Dunlop"
author: "Robert Burns"
recipient: "Mrs. Dunlop"
letter_number: 156
roman: "CLVI"
date: "4 April 1789"
place: "Ellisland"
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/156-to-dunlop/"
---

# To Mrs. Dunlop

## Editor's note
Some lines which extend, but fail to finish the sketch contained in this letter, will be found elsewhere in this publication.

— Allan Cunningham

## Letter
I no sooner hit on any poetic plan or fancy, but I wish to send it to you: and if knowing and reading these give half the pleasure to you, that communicating them to you gives to me, I am satisfied.

I have a poetic whim in my head, which I at present dedicate, or rather inscribe to the Right Hon. Charles James Fox; but how long that fancy may hold, I cannot say. A few of the first lines, I have just rough-sketched as follows:

SKETCH.

How wisdom and folly meet, mix, and unite; How virtue and vice blend their black and their white; How genius, the illustrious father of fiction, Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction— I sing: If these mortals, the critics, should bustle, I care not, not I, let the critics go whistle.

But now for a patron, whose name and whose glory, At once may illustrate and honour my story.

Thou first of our orators, first of our wits; Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits; With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so strong, No man with the half of 'em e'er went far wrong; With passion so potent, and fancies so bright, No man with the half of 'em ere went quite right; A sorry, poor misbegot son of the muses, For using thy name offers many excuses.

On the 20th current I hope to have the honour of assuring you in person, how sincerely I am—

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/156-to-dunlop/