the loss of her Son," and the song beginning, "The lazy mist hangs from the brow of the hill."

No. 273.

To Mr. ROBERT AINSLIE.

Ellisland, Jan. 6, 1789.

MANY happy returns of the season to you, my dear Sir! May you be comparatively happy up to your comparative worth among the sons of men; which wish would, I am sure, make you one of the most blest of the human

race.

I do not know if passing a "Writer to the signet" be a trial of scientific merit, or a mere business of friends and interest. However it be, let me quote you my two favorite passages, which though I have repeated them ten thousand times, still they rouse my manhood and steel my resolution like inspiration.

-On Reason build resolve,

That column of true majesty in man.

Hear, Alfred, hero of the state,

YOUNG.

Thy genius heaven's high will declare;

The triumph of the truly great

Is never, never to despair!

Is never to despair!

MASQUE OF ALFRED.

I grant you enter the lists of life, to struggle for bread, business, notice, and distinction, in common with hundreds.-But who are they? Men, like yourself, and of that aggregate body, your compeers, seven tenths of them come short of your advantages natural and accidental; while two of those that remain either neglect their parts, as flowers blooming in a desart, or misspend their strength, like a bull goring a bramble bush.

But to change the theme: I am still catering for Johnson's publication; and among others, I have brushed up the following old favourite song a little, with a view to your worship. I have only altered a word here and there; but if you like the humour of it, we shall think of a stanza or two to add to it.

*

No. 274.

TO MR. JAMES HAMILTON,

GROCER, GLASGOW.

Ellisland, May 26, 1799.

DEAR SIR,

I

SEND you, by John Glover, carrier,

the above account for Mr. Turnbull, as I suppose you know his address.

I would fain offer, my dear Sir, a word of sympathy with your misfortune; but it is a tender string, and I know not how to touch it. It is easy to flourish a set of high-flown sentiments on the subject that would give great satisfaction to a breast quite at ease; but as ONE observes, who was very seldom mistaken in the theory of life, "The heart knoweth its own sorrows, and a stranger intermeddleth not "therewith."

66

Among some distressful emergencies that I have experienced in life, I ever laid this down as my foundation of comfort-That he who has lived the life of an honest man, has by no means lived in vain!

With every wish for your welfare and future

success,

I am, my dear Sir,

Sincerely yours.

SIR,

No. 275.

To WM. CREECH, Esq.

Ellisland, May 30, 1789.

I HAD intended to have troubled you with a long letter, but at present the delightful sensations of an omnipotent Toothach so engross all my inner man, as to put it out of my pow

er even to write nonsense. However, as in duty bound, I approach my Bookseller with an offering in my hand-a few poetic clinches and a song:-To expect any other kind of offering from the RHYMING TRIBE, would be to know them much less than you do. I do not pretend that there is much merit in these morceaux, but I have two reasons for sending them; primo, they are mostly ill-natured, so are in unison with my present feelings, while fifty troops of infernal spirits are driving post from ear to ear along my jaw-bones; and secondly, they are so short, that you cannot leave off in the middle, and so hurt my pride in the idea that you found any work of mine too heavy to get through.

I have a request to beg of you, and I not only beg of you, but conjure you-by all your wishes and by all your hopes, that the muse will spare the satiric wink in the moment of your foibles; that she will warble the song of rapture round your hymeneal couch; and that she will shed on your turf the honest tear of elegiac gratitude! grant my request as speedily as possible.-Send me by the very first fly or coach for this place, three copies of the last edition of my poems; which place to my account.

Now, may the good things of prose, and the good things of verse, come among thy hands until they be filled with the good things of this life! prayeth ROBT. BURNS

No. 276.

To MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Ellisland, June 8, 1789.

I AM perfectly ashamed of myself when

I look at the date of your last. It is not that I forget the friend of my heart and the companion of my peregrinations; but I have been condemned to drudgery beyond sufferance, though not, thank God, beyond redemption. I have bad a collection of poems by a lady put into my hands, to prepare them for the press; which horrid task, with sowing my corn with my own hand, a parcel of masons, wrights, plaisterers, &c. to attend to, roaming on business through Ayrshire-all this was against me, and the very first dreadful article was of itself too much for me.

13th. I have not had a moment to spare from incessant toil since the 8th. Life, my dear Sir, is a serious matter. You know, by experience, that a man's individual self is a good deal; but believe me, a wife and family of children, whenever you have the honor to be a husband and a father, will shew you that your présent most

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