Miss H tells me that she is sending a packet to you, and I beg leave to send you the inclosed sonnet, though, to tell you the real truth, the sonnet is a mere pretence, that I may have the opportunity of declaring with how much respectful esteem I have the honour to be, &c. No. 125. To MISS C****. MADAM, August, 1793. SOME rather unlooked for accidents have prevented my doing myself the honour of a second visit to Arbiegland, as I was so hospitably invited, and so positively meant to have done. However, I still hope to have that pleasure before the busy months of harvest begin. in I inclose you two of my late pieces, as some kind of return for the pleasure I have received in perusing a certain MS. volume of poems the possession of Captain Riddel. To repay one with an old song, is a proverb, whose force you, Madam, I know will not allow. What is said of illustrious descent is, I believe, equally true of a talent for poetry; none ever despised it who had pretensions to it. The fates and characters of the rhyming tribe often employ my thoughts when I am disposed to be melan choly. There is not among all the martyrologies that ever were penned, so rueful a narrative as the lives of the poets. In the comparative view of wretches, the criterion is not what they are doomed to suffer, but how they are formed to bear. Take a being of our kind, give him a stronger imagination and a more delicate sensibility, which between them will ever engender a more ungovernable set of passions than are the usual lot of man; implant in him an irresistible impulse to some idle vagary, such as, arranging wild flowers in fantastical nosegays, tracing the grasshopper to his haunt by his chirping song, watching the frisks of the little minnows in the sunny pool, or hunting after the intrigues of butterflies-in short, send him adrift after some pursuit which shall eternally mislead him from the paths of lucre, and yet curse him with a keener relish than any man living for the plea sures that lucre can purchase; lastly, fill up thee measure of his woes by bestowing on him a spurning sense of his own dignity, and you have created a wight nearly as miserable as a Poet. To you, Madam, I need not recount the fairy pleasures the muse bestows to counterbalance this catalogue of evils. Bewitching poetry is like bewitching woman; she has in all ages been accused of misleading mankind from the counsels of wisdom and the paths of prudence involving them in difficulties, baiting them with poverty, branding them with infamy, and plunging them in the whirling vortex of ruin; yet, where is the man but must own that all our happiness on earth is not worthy the name that even the holy hermit's solitary prospect of paradisaical bliss is but the glitter of a northern sun, rising over a frozen region, compared with the many pleasures, the nameless raptures that we owe to the lovely Queen of the heart of Man! SIR, No. 126. TO JOHN M.MURDO, Esq. December, 1793. IT is said that we take the greatest liber ties with our greatest friends, and 1 pay myself a very high compliment in the manner in which I am going to apply the remark. I have owed you money longer than ever I owed it to any man. Here is Ker's account, and here are six guineas; and now, I don't owe a shilling to man-or woman either. But for these damned dirty, dog's-ear'd little pages,* I had done myself the honour to have waited on you long ago. Independent of the obligations your hospitality * Scottish Banks Notes has laid me under; the consciousness of your superiority in the rank of man and gentleman, of itself was fully as much as I could ever make head against; but to owe you money too, was more than I could face. I think I once mentioned something of a collection of Scots songs I have for some years been making: I send you a perusal of what I have got together. I could not conveniently spare them above five or six days, and five or six glances of them will probably more than suffice you. A very few of them are my own. When you are tired of them, please leave them with Mr. Clint, of the King's Arms. There is not another copy of the collection in the world; and I should be sorry that any unfortunate negligence should deprive me of what has cost me a good deal of pains. No. 127. To MRS. R*****. Who was to bespeak a play one evening at the Dumfries Theatre. I AM thinking to send my Address to some periodical publication, but it has not got your sanction, so pray look over it. As to the Tuesday's play, let me beg of you, my dear Madam, let me beg of you to give us, The Wonder a Woman keeps a Secret; to whicha please add, The Spoilt Child-you will highly oblige me by so doing. Ah, what an enviable creature you are! There now this cursed gloomy blue-devil day, you are going to a party of choice spirits— "To play the shapes "Of frolick fancy, and incessant form "Of fleet ideas, never join'd before, "Where lively wit excites to gay surprise; "Or folly-painting humour, grave himself, "Calls laughter forth, deep-shaking every nerve."] But as you rejoice with them that do rejoice, do also remember to weep with them that weep, and pity your melancholy friend, No. 128. To a Lady, in favour of a Player's Benefit. MADAM, YOU were so very good as to promise me to honour my friend with your presence on his benefit-night. That night is fixed for Friday first the play a most interesting one! The way to keep him I have the pleasure to know Mr. G. well. His merit as an actor is generally |