No. CXXXIX. TO MR. HILL. Ellisland, 2nd April, 1789. I WILL make no excuse, my dear Bibliopolus, (GOD forgive me for murdering language!) that I have sat down to write you on this vile paper. It is economy, Sir; it is that cardinal virtue, prudence; so I beg you will sit down, and either compose or borrow a panegyric. If you are going to borrow, apply to ***** to compose, or rather to compound, something very clever on my remarkable frugality; that I write to one of my most esteemed friends on this wretched paper, which was originally intended for the venal fist of some drunken exciseman, to take dirty notes in a miserable vault of an ale-cellar. O Frugality! thou mother of ten thousand blessings-thou cook of fat beef and dainty greens!thou manufacturer of warm Shetland hose, and comfortable surtouts!-thou old housewife, darning thy decayed stockings with thy ancient spectacles on thy aged nose!-lead me, hand me in thy clutching palsied fist, up those heights, and through those thickets, hitherto inaccessible, and impervious to my anxious, weary feet :-not those Parnassian crags, bleak and barren, where the hungry worshippers of fame are, breathless, clambering, hanging between heaven and hell; but those glittering cliffs of Potosi, where the all-sufficient, all-powerful deity, Wealth, holds his immediate court of joys and pleasures; where the sunny exposure of plenty, and the hot walls of profusion, produce those blissful fruits of luxury, exotics in this world, and natives of paradise !-Thou withered sybil, my sage conductress, usher me into thy refulgent, adored presence! The power, splendid and potent as he now is, was once the puling nursling of thy faithful care, and tender arms! Call me thy son, thy cousin, thy kinsman, or favourite, and adjure the god by the scenes of his infant years, no longer to repulse me as a stranger, or an alien, but to favour me with his peculiar countenance and protection !— He daily bestows his greatest kindness on the undeserving and the worthless-assure him, that I bring ample documents of meritorious demerits! Pledge yourself for me, that, for the glorious cause of LUCRE, I will do any thing, be any thing—but the horse-leech of private oppression, or the vulture of public robbery! But to descend from heroics. I want a Shakespeare; I want likewise an English dictionary-Johnson's, I suppose, is best. In these and all my prose commissions, the cheapest is always the best for me. There is a small debt of honour that I owe Mr. Robert Cleghorn, in Saughton Mills, my worthy friend, and your well-wisher. Please give him, and urge him to take it, the first time you see him, ten shillings worth of any thing have to sell, and place it to my account. you The library scheme that I mentioned to you, is already begun, under the direction of Captain Riddel. There is another in emulation of it going on at Closeburn, under the auspices of Mr. Monteith, of Closeburn, which will be on a greater scale than ours. Capt. Riddel gave his infant society a great many of his old books, else I had written you on that subject; but, one of these days, I shall trouble you with a commission for "The Monkland Friendly Society"-a copy of The Spectator, Mirror, and Lounger, Man of Feeling, Man of the World, Guthrie's Geographical Grammar, with some religious pieces, will likely be our first order. When I grow richer, I will write to you on gilt post, to make amends for this sheet. At present, every guinea has a five guinea errand with My dear Sir, Your faithful, poor, but honest friend, R. B. [The Monkland Society existed only while Captain Riddel lived, whose activity and taste aided in its establishment and continuance. Such clubs, when wisely conducted, are extremely beneficial: they diffuse useful and elegant knowledge among the rude and unlettered, and direct men's minds to the contemplation of what is worthy and noble. History, biography, voyages and travels, are chiefly required; the peasantry of the north are sufficiently well acquainted with divinity and verse. -ED.] No. CXL. TO MRS. DUNLOP. Ellisland, 4th April, 1789. I No sooner hit on any poetic plan or fancy, but I wish to send it to you and if knowing and reading these give half the pleasure to you, that communicating them to you gives to me, I am satisfied. I have a poetic whim in my head, which I at present dedicate, or rather inscribe, to the Right Hon. Charles James Fox; but how long that fancy may hold, I cannot say. A few of the first lines I have just rough-sketched as follows: SKETCH. How wisdom and folly meet, mix, and unite; How virtue and vice blend their black and their white; How genius, the illustrious father of fiction, Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction I sing: If these mortals, the critics, should bustle, I care not, not I, let the critics go whistle. But now for a patron, whose name and whose glory, At once may illustrate and honour my story. Thou first of our orators, first of our wits; Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits; With passions so potent, and fancies so bright, [See vol. iii. page 103.] On the 20th current I hope to have the honour of assuring you, in person, how sincerely I am R. B. No. CXLI. TO MRS. MCMURDO, DRUMLANRIG. MADAM, Ellisland, 2nd May, 1789. I HAVE finished the piece which had the happy fortune to be honoured with your approbation; and never did little miss with more sparkling pleasure shew her applauded sampler to partial mamma, than I now send my poem to you and Mr. McMurdo if he is returned to Drumlanrig. You cannot easily imagine what thin-skinned animals—what sensitive plants poor poets are. How do we shrink into the embittered corner of self-abasement, when neglected or condemned by those to whom we look up! and how do we, in erect importance, add another cubit to our stature on being noticed and applauded by those whom we honour and respect! My late visit to Drumlanrig has I can tell you, Madam, given me a balloon waft up Parnassus, where on my fancied elevation I regard my poetic self with no small degree of complacency. Surely with all their sins, the rhyming tribe are not ungrateful creatures.-I |