No. 169.

MR. BURNS TO MR. THOMSON.

MY DEAR SIR,

April, 1793.

I HAD scarcely put my last letter into the post office, when I took up the subject of The last time I came o'er the moor, and, ere I slept drew the outlines of the foregoing. How far I have succeeded, I leave on this, as on every other occasion, to you to decide. I own my vanity is flattered, when you give my songs a place in your elegant and superb work; but to be of service to the work is my first wish. As I have often told you, I do not in a single instance wish you, out of compliment to me, to insert any thing of mine. One hint let me give you-whatever Mr. Pleyel does, let him not alter one iota of the original Scottish airs: I mean in the song department; but let our national music preserve its native features. They are, I own, frequently wild and irreducible to the more modern rules; but on that very eccentricity, perhaps, depends a great part of their effect.

No. 170.

MR. THOMSON TO MR. BURNS.

Edinburgh, 26th April, 1793.

I HEARTILY thank you, my dear Sir, for your last two letters, and the songs which accompanied them. I am always both instructed and entertained by your observations; and the frankness with which you speak out your mind, is to me highly agreeable. It is very possible I may not have the true idea of simplicity in composition. I confess there are several songs, of Allan Ramsay's for example, that I think silly enough, which another person, more conversant than I have been with country people, would perhaps call simple and natural. But the lowest scenes of simple nature will not please generally, if copied precisely as they are. The poet, like the painter, must select what will form an agreeable as well as a natural picture. On this subject it were easy to enlarge; but at present suffice it to say, that I consider simplicity, rightly understood, as a most essential quality in composition, and the ground-work of beauty in all the arts. I will gladly appropriate your most interesting new ballad When wild war's deadly blast, &c. to the Mill, mill O, as well as the two other songs to their respective airs; but the third and fourth lines of the first verse must undergo some little alteration in order to suit the music. Pleyel does not alter a single note of the songs. That would

be absurd indeed! With the airs which he introduces into the sonatas, I allow him to take such liberties as he pleases; but that has nothing to do with the songs.

If the loose sentiI will find an air for

P. S. I wish you would do as you proposed with your Rigs of Barley. ments are threshed out of it, it; but as to this there is no hurry.

No. 171.

MR. BURNS TO MR. THOMSON.

June, 1793.

WHEN I tell you, my dear Sir, that a

friend of mine, in whom I am much interested, has fallen a sacrifice to these accursed times, you will easily allow that it might unhinge me for doing any good among ballads. My own loss, as to pecuniary matters, is trifling; but the total ruin of a much-loved friend, is a loss indeed. Pardon my seeming inattention to your last commands.

I cannot alter the disputed lines in the Mill, mill O.* What you think a defect I esteem as a

The lines were the third and fourth.-See Poems, p. 385. 'Wi' mony a sweet babe fatherless,

And mony a widow mourning.'

As our poet had maintained a long silence, and the first number of Mr. Thomson's Musical Work was in the press, this gen

positive beauty; so you see how doctors differ. I shall now with as much alacrity as I can muster, go on with your commands.

You know Frazer, the hautboy-player in Edinburgh he is here, instructing a band of music for a fencible corps quartered in this country. Among many of his airs that please me, there is one, well known as a reel, by the name of The Quaker's Wife; and which I remember a grand aunt of mine used to sing by the name of LigMr. Frazer geram Cosh, my bonnie wee lass. plays it slow, and with an expression that quite charms me. I became such an enthusiast about it, that I made a song for it, which I here subjoin; and inclose Frazer's set of the tune. If they hit your fancy, they are at your service; if not, return me the tune, and I will put it in Johnson's Museum. I think the song is not in my worst

manner.

'Blythe hae I been on yon hill.'-See Poems, p. 400.

I should wish to hear how this pleases you.

tleman ventured, by Mr. Erskine's advice, to substitute for them in that publication,

And eyes again with pleasure beam'd

That had been blear'd with mourning.'

Though better suited to the music, these lines are inferior to the original. This is the only alteration adopted by Mr. Thomson, which Burns did not approve, or at least assent to.

No. 172.

MR. BURNS TO MR. THOMSON.

25th June, 1793.

HAVE you ever, my dear Sir, felt your bosom ready to burst with indignation on reading of those mighty villains who divide kingdom against kingdom, desolate provinces, and lay nations waste, out of the wantonness of ambition, or often from still more ignoble passions? In a mood of this kind to-day, I recollected the air of Logan Water; and it occurred to me that its querulous melody probably had its origin from the plaintive indignation of some swelling, suffering heart, fired at the tyrannic strides of some public destroyer; and overwhelmed with private distress, the consequence of a country's ruin. If I have done any thing at all like justice to my feelings, the following song, composed in three-quarters of an hour's meditation in my elbow-chair, ought to have some merit.

'O Logan, sweetly didst thou glide.'-See Poems, p. 599,

Do you know the following beautiful little fragment in Witherspoon's Collection of Scots Songs?