---
title: "To Captain Riddel"
author: "Robert Burns"
recipient: "Captain Riddel"
letter_number: 173
roman: "CLXXIII"
date: "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/173-to-captain-riddel/"
---

# To Captain Riddel

## Editor's note
Robert Riddel kept one of those present pests of society—an album—into which Burns copied the Lines on the Hermitage, and the Wounded Hare.

— Allan Cunningham

## Letter
SIR,

I wish from my inmost soul it were in my power to give you a more substantial gratification and return for all the goodness to the poet, than transcribing a few of his idle rhymes.—However, "an old song," though to a proverb an instance of insignificance, is generally the only coin a poet has to pay with.

If my poems which I have transcribed, and mean still to transcribe into your book, were equal to the grateful respect and high esteem I bear for the gentleman to whom I present them, they would be the finest poems in the language.—As they are, they will at least be a testimony with what sincerity I have the honour to be,

Sir,

Your devoted humble Servant,

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/173-to-captain-riddel/