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the vapours of impurity stain the unclouded serene of thy cerulean imagination. O that like thine were the tenor of my life, like thine the tenor of my conversation! then should no friend fear for my strength, no enemy rejoice in my weakness! Then should I lie down and rise up, and none to make me afraid.-May thy pity and thy prayer be exercised for, O thou lamp of wisdom and mirror of morality! thy devoted slave.*

No. 118.

To MR. CUNNINGHAM.

3d. March. 1792.

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

This strain of irony was excited by a letter of Mr. Nicol, containing good advice.

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 enquire what will be the expence 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, sceded, 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 bye, 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 governor 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.

No. 119.

To MRS. DUNLOP.

Annan Water Foot, 22nd. August, 1792.

Do not blame me for it, Madam-my own conscience, hacknied and weatherbeaten as it is, in watching and reproving my vagaries, follies, indolence, &c. has continued to blame and punish me sufficiently.

Do you think it possible, my dear and honoured friend, that I could be so lost to gratitude for many favours; to esteem for much worth, and to the honest, kind, pleasurable tie of, now, old acquaintance, and I hope and am sure of progressive increasing friendship-as, for a single day, not to think of you-to ask the Fates what they are doing and about to do with my much loved friend and her wide-scattered connexions, and to beg of them to be as kind to yours as they possibly can.

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Apropos, (though how it is apropos, I have not leisure to explain) do you know that I am almost in love with an acquaintance of yours? -Almost! said I-I am in love, souse! over head and ears, deep as the most unfathomable abyss of the boundless ocean; but the word, Love, owing to the intermingledoms of the good and the bad, the pure and the impure, in this world, being rather an equivocal term for expressing one's sentiments and sensations, I must do justice to the sacred purity of my attachment. Know then, that the heart-struck awe; the distant humble approach; the delight we should have in gazing upon and listening to a Messenger of Heaven, appearing in all the unspotted purity of his celestial home, among the coarse, polluted, far inferior sons of men, to deliver to them tidings that make their hearts swim in joy, and their imaginations soar in transport-such, so delighting, and so pure, were the emotions of my soul on meeting the other day with Miss L- B. your neighbour, Mr. B. with his two daughters, accompanied by Mr. H. of G. passing through Dumfries a few days ago, on their way to England, did me the honour of calling on me; on which I took my horse, (though God knows I could ill spare the time) and accompanied them fourteen or fifteen miles, and dined and spent the day with them. 'Twas about nine, I think,

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