---
title: "To The Hon. Provost"
author: "Robert Burns"
recipient: "The Hon. Provost"
letter_number: 327
roman: "CCCXXVII"
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/327-to-the-hon-provost/"
---

# To The Hon. Provost

## Editor's note
The Provost and Bailies complied at once with the modest request of the poet: both Jackson and Staig, who were heads of the town by turns, were men of taste and feeling.

— Allan Cunningham

## Letter
GENTLEMEN,

The literary taste and liberal spirit of your good town has so ably filled the various departments of your schools, as to make it a very great object for a parent to have his children educated in them. Still, to me, a stranger, with my large family, and very stinted income, to give my young ones that education I wish, at the high fees which a stranger pays, will bear hard upon me.

Some years ago your good town did me the honour of making me an honorary burgess.—Will you allow me to request that this mark of distinction may extend so far, as to put me on a footing of a real freeman of the town, in the schools?

If you are so very kind as to grant my request, it will certainly be a constant incentive to me to strain every nerve where I can officially serve you; and will, if possible, increase that grateful respect with which I have the honour to be,

Gentlemen,

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/327-to-the-hon-provost/