---
title: "To Mr. Gilbert Burns"
author: "Robert Burns"
recipient: "Mr. Gilbert Burns"
letter_number: 338
roman: "CCCXXXVIII"
date: "10 July 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/338-to-gilbert-burns/"
---

# To Mr. Gilbert Burns

## Editor's note
This letter contained heavy news for Gilbert Burns: the loss of a brother whom he dearly loved and admired, was not all, though the worst.

— Allan Cunningham

## Letter
DEAR BROTHER,

It will be no very pleasing news to you to be told that I am dangerously ill, and not likely to get better. An inveterate rheumatism has reduced me to such a state of debility, and my appetite is so totally gone, that I can scarcely stand on my legs. I have been a week at sea-bathing, and I will continue there, or in a friend's house in the country, all the summer. God keep my wife and children: if I am taken from their head, they will be poor indeed. I have contracted one or two serious debts, partly from my illness these many months, partly from too much thoughtlessness as to expense, when I came to town, that will cut in too much on the little I leave them in your hands. Remember me to my mother.

Yours,

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/338-to-gilbert-burns/