No. CCXIII.

TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.

3d March, 1793.

Since I wrote to you the last lugubrious sheet, I have not had time to write you farther. When I say that I had not time, that, as usual, means, that the three demons, indolence, business, and ennui, have so completely shared my hours among them, as not to leave me a five minutes' fragment to take up a pen in.

Thank heaven, I feel my spirits buoying upwards with the renovating year. Now I shall in good earnest take up Thomson's songs. I dare say he thinks I have used him unkindly, and I must own with too much appearance of truth. Apropos, do you know the much admired old Highland air called "the Sutor's Dochter?" It is a first-rate favourite of mine, and I have written what I reckon one of my best songs to it. I will send it to you as it was sung with great applause in some fashionable circles by Major Robertson, of Lude, who was here with his corps.

* * * * * *

There is one commission that I must trouble

you with. I lately lost a valuable seal, a present from a departed friend, which vexes me much.

I have gotten one of your Highland pebbles, which I fancy would make a very decent one; and I want to cut my armorial bearing on it; will you be so obliging as inquire what will be the expense of such a business? I do not know that my name is matriculated, as the heralds call it, at all; but I have invented arms for myself, so you know I shall be chief of the name; and, by courtesy of Scotland, will likewise be entitled to supporters. These, however, I do not intend having on my seal. I am a bit of a herald, and shall give you, secundum artem, my arms. On a field, azure, a holly bush, seeded, proper, in base; a shepherd's pipe and crook, saltier-wise, also proper, in chief. On a wreath of the colours, a wood-lark perching on a sprig of bay-tree, proper, for crest. Two mottoes; round the top of the crest, Wood notes wild; at the bottom of the shield, in the usual place, Better a wee bush than nae bield. By the shepherd's pipe and crook I do not mean the nonsense of painters of Arcadia, but a Stock and Horn, and a Club, such as you see at the head of Allan Ramsay, in Allan's quarto edition of the Gentle Shepherd. By the by, do you know Allan? He must be a man of very great genius-Why is he not more known?-Has he no patrons? or do "Poverty's cold wind and crushing rain beat keen and heavy" on him? I once, and but once, got a glance of that noble

edition of the noblest pastoral in the world; and dear as it was, I mean, dear as to my pocket, I would have bought it; but I was told that it was printed and engraved for subscribers only. He is the only artist who has hit genuine pastoral costume. What, my dear Cunningham, is there in riches, that they narrow and harden the heart so › I think, that were I as rich as the sun, I should be as generous as the day; but as I have no reason to imagine my soul a nobler one than any other man's, I must conclude that wealth imparts a bird-lime quality to the possessor, at which the man, in his native poverty, would have revolted. What has led me to this, is the idea of such merit as Mr. Allan possesses, and such riches as a nabob or government contractor possesses, and why they do not form a mutual league. Let wealth shelter and cherish unprotected merit, and the gratitude and celebrity of that merit will richly repay it.

R. B.

[The seal with the arms which the ingenious poet invented for his house was carefully cut in Edinburgh and hung at his watch for several years. It is still in the family and regarded as a relique.

That Burns admired such a painter as Allan was to be expected: they both wrought on nature of Scottish growth, and both excelled in pictures of humour and glee. "As an artist, however, Allan's merits are of a limited nature; he neither excelled in fine drawing nor in harmonious colouring, and grace and grandeur were

beyond his reach. He painted portraits, which are chiefly remarkable for a strong homely resemblance: he painted landscapes, but these want light and air, and he attempted the historical, but save in one picture, The Corinthian Maid,' all his efforts in that way were failures. His genius lay in expression, especially in grave humour and open drollery. Yet it would be difficult perhaps to name one of his pictures where nature is not overcharged: he could not stop his hand till he had driven his subject into the debatable land that lies between truth and caricature. He is among painters, what Allan Ramsay is among poets, a fellow of infinite humour, and excelling in all manner of rustic drollery, but deficient in fine sensibility of conception, and little acquainted with lofty emotion or high imagination."

To the above brief character which I wrote for the Lives of the British Artists, in Murray's Family Library, may be added, from the same source, that Allan was born at Alloa, in Stirlingshire; studied in Glasgow and at Rome; returned to his native land, became Master of the Edinburgh Academy, and died there 6th August, 1796, in the fifty-third year of his age. In person he was under the middle size, his form slender, his face coarse and long, and his hair of the colour of sand. His looks were mean and unpromising, till he was in company to his liking, when his large gray eyes grew bright and penetrating, his manners pleasing, and his conversation sprightly and humourous, inclining to satire, and replete with observation and anecdote. ED.]

No. CCXIV.

TO MISS BENSON,

NOW MRS. BASIL MONTAGU.

MADAM,

Dumfries, 21st March, 1793.

AMONG many things for which I envy those hale, long-lived old fellows before the flood, is this in particular, that when they met with any body after their own heart, they had a charming long prospect of many, many happy meetings with them in after-life.

Now, in this short, stormy, winter day of our fleeting existence, when you now and then, in the Chapter of Accidents, meet an individual whose acquaintance is a real acquisition, there are all the probabilities against you, that you shall never meet with that valued character more. On the other hand, brief as this miserable being is, it is none of the least of the miseries belonging to it, that if there is any miscreant whom you hate, or creature whom you despise, the ill-run of the chances shall be so against you, that in the over