Highness fairly,
Down Pleasure’s stream, wi’ swelling sails,
85I’m tauld ye’re driving rarely; told, unusually well
But some day ye may gnaw your nails,
An’ curse your folly sairly, sorely
That e’er ye brak Diana’s pales, break
Or rattl’d dice wi’ Charlie
90 By night or day.
Yet aft a ragged Cowte’s been known, colt
To mak a noble Aiver; make, old horse
So, ye may doucely fill a Throne, soberly
For a’ their clish-ma-claver: gossip
95 There, Him at Agincourt wha shone, who
Few better were or braver;
And yet, wi’ funny, queer Sir John,1
He was an unco shaver a great madcap
For monie a day. many
100 For you, right rev’rend Osnaburg,
Nane sets the lawn-sleeve sweeter, none, becomes
Altho’ a ribban at your lug ribbon, ear
Wad been a dress compleater: would
As ye disown yon paughty dog, proud
105 That bears the Keys of Peter,
Then swith! an’ get a wife to hug,
Or trowth, ye’ll stain the Mitre in truth
Some luckless day.
Young, royal TARRY-BREEKS, I learn,
110 Ye’ve lately come athwart her;
A glorious Galley, stem an’ stern
Weel rigg’d for Venus barter;2 well
But first hang out that she’ll discern
Your hymeneal Charter;
115 Then heave aboard your grapple-airn, grappling iron
An’, large upon her quarter,
Come full that day.
Ye, lastly, bonie blossoms a’,
Ye royal Lasses dainty,
120 Heav’n mak you guid as weel as braw, good, well, fair
An’ gie you lads a-plenty: give
But sneer na British-boys awa! not, away
For Kings are unco scant ay, greatly scarce
An’ German-gentles are but sma’, small
125 They’re better just than want ay
On onie day. any
God bless you a’! consider now,
Ye’re unco muckle dautet; greatly fussed over
But ere the course o’ life be through,
130 It may be bitter sautet: salted
An’ I hae seen their coggie fou, have, plate full
That yet hae tarrow’t at it; shown reluctance
But or the day was done, I trow, believe
The laggen they hae clautet bottom, have scraped
135 Fu’ clean that day.
Byron must have read this with admiration; he himself never wrote anything funnier or, amidst the laughter, landed on the Hanoverians, he also so loathed, so many palpable hits. Describing it as a ‘dream’ allows Burns, as in the headquote, to claim its non-serious nature and intent. It also, of course, allows him direct, deadly access as ‘humble poet’ into the royal birthday levee.
George’s birthday on 4th June 1786 had been celebrated by the laureate, Thomas Warton with a Pindaric ode. Burns’s almost immediate response to this sycophantic work enabled him to insert the poem into the Kilmarnock edition. These were not the sentiments of a complicit ‘heaven taught ploughman’ and Mrs Dunlop was quick to warn him as to the commercial consequences of such satire. On 26th February 1787 she wrote to him urging that A Dream should be excluded from the second edition:
I ought to have told you that numbers at London are learning Scots to read your book, but they don’t like your address to the King, and say it will hurt the sale of the rest. Of this I am no judge. I can only say there is no piece … I would vote to leave out, tho’ several where I would draw my pen over the lines, or spill the ink glass over a verse. (Robert Burns and Mrs Dunlop, ed. William Wallace (London: 1898), p. 11)
Burns’s response was peremptory and unyielding:
Your criticisms, Madam I understand very well, and could have wished to have pleased you better. You are right in your guesses that I am not very amenable. Poets, much my superiors, have so flattered those who possessed the adventitious qualities of wealth and power that I am determined to flatter no created being, either in prose or verse, so help me God. I set as little by kings, lords, clergy, critics, &c as all these respectable Gentry do by my Bardship. I know what I may expect from the world, by and by, illiberal abuse and contemptuous neglect: but I am resolved to study the sentiments of a very respectable Personage, Milton’s Satan – Hail horrors! Hail infernal world!
I am happy, Madam, that some of my favourite pieces are distinguished by you’re particular approbation. For my DREAM which has unfortunately incurred your loyal dis-pleasure, I hope in four weeks time or less to have the honour of appearing, at Dunlop, in it’s defence in person (Letter 98).
It is hard to see what sort of convincing defence Burns could have mounted concerning the danger to his incipient poetic career with regard to the flagrantly disloyal, anti-Hanoverian elements of this poem. Beginning with the general weakened fiscal state of the nation resulting from the disastrously lost American war and Pitt’s subsequent punitive taxation policies and naval cuts (ll. 60–2) with an inverted political order where the lowest types are at the top of the government, Burns launches into a highly specific assault on the varied cupidities and promiscuities of what he consistently perceived as an irretrievably dysfunctional family of German upstarts. L. 26 contrasts the virtues of Charles Edward Stuart.
The treatment of the King and Queen is mild compared to that doled out to their children. Driven by infantile, Oedipal rage, the Prince of Wales, had flung himself into the grossly licentious world of whoring and gambling of ‘Charlie’
