---
title: "Impromptu Lines to Captain Riddell"
subtitle: "On Returning a Newspaper"
author: "Robert Burns"
form: "Poem"
year: "1789"
location: "Ellisland"
source: "Project Gutenberg #1279 — Poems and Songs of Robert Burns"
source_url: "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1279/pg1279.txt"
canonical_url: "https://robert-burns.com/poems/impromptu-lines-to-captain-riddell/"
---

# Impromptu Lines to Captain Riddell

### On Returning a Newspaper

## Poem
Your News and Review, sir.  
I’ve read through and through, sir,  
With little admiring or blaming;  
The Papers are barren  
Of home-news or foreign,  
No murders or rapes worth the naming.

Our friends, the Reviewers,  
Those chippers and hewers,  
Are judges of mortar and stone, sir;  
But of meet or unmeet,  
In a fabric complete,  
I’ll boldly pronounce they are none, sir;

My goose-quill too rude is  
To tell all your goodness  
Bestow’d on your servant, the Poet;  
Would to God I had one  
Like a beam of the sun,  
And then all the world, sir, should know it!

---

Source: [Project Gutenberg #1279 — Poems and Songs of Robert Burns](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1279/pg1279.txt)  
Canonical HTML: https://robert-burns.com/poems/impromptu-lines-to-captain-riddell/