---
title: "To Mr. Thomson"
author: "Robert Burns"
recipient: "Mr. Thomson"
letter_number: 330
roman: "CCCXXX"
date: "February 1796"
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/330-to-thomson/"
---

# To Mr. Thomson

## Editor's note
Cromek informed me, on the authority of Mrs. Burns, that the "handsome, elegant present" mentioned in this letter, was a common worsted shawl.

— Allan Cunningham

## Letter
Many thanks, my dear Sir, for your handsome, elegant present to Mrs. Burns, and for my remaining volume of P. Pindar. Peter is a delightful fellow, and a first favourite of mine. I am much pleased with your idea of publishing a collection of our songs in octavo, with etchings. I am extremely willing to lend every assistance in my power. The Irish airs I shall cheerfully undertake the task of finding verses for.

I have already, you know, equipt three with words, and the other day I strung up a kind of rhapsody to another Hibernian melody, which I admire much.

Awa' wi' your witchcraft o' beauty's alarms.[288]

If this will do, you have now four of my Irish engagement. In my by-past songs I dislike one thing, the name Chloris—I meant it as the fictitious name of a certain lady: but, on second thoughts, it is a high incongruity to have a Greek appellation to a Scottish pastoral ballad. Of this, and some things else, in my next: I have more amendments to propose. What you once mentioned of "flaxen locks" is just: they cannot enter into an elegant description of beauty. Of this also again—God bless you![289]

R. B.

## Footnotes
288. Song CCLXVI.
289. Our poet never explained what name he would have substituted for Chloris.—Mr. Thomson.

---

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/330-to-thomson/