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Description: | Three page letter that Robert Burns wrote to his school friend William Niven now a merchant in Maybole. Concerned at lack of response to earlier letters, Burns worries about losing his friendship but imparts little news or information. (letter no 2)
This is the earliest, bar one, of the surviving letters written by Robert Burns in his 21st year. His hand at this time lacks the assurance and vigour seen in his later manuscripts and he is clearly making his first tentative steps as a letter writer, some 700 of which he wrote in his short life.
In the last two pages Burns admits to having a sweetheart or two but with little thought of marriage. He then conjectures that as he is unlikely to be financially successful, he is cultivating a philosophy which prevents acquisitive aspirations which can be easily lost. | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 | Publisher: | Burns Monument Trust | Temporal: | 1780-01-01 - 1780-12-31 | Source: | Burns Scotland | Identifier: | Letter of Robert Burns to William Niven | Go to resource |
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