anxious hours of solicitude are spent on trifles. The welfare of those who are very dear to us, whose only support, hope and stay we are-this, to a generous mind, is another sort of more important object of care than any concerns whatever which centre merely in the individual. On the other hand, let no young, unmarried, rakehelly dog among you, make a song of his pretended liberty and freedom from care. If the relations we stand in to king, country, kindred, and friends, be any thing but the visionary fancies of dreaming metaphysicians; if religion, virtue, magnanimity, generosity, humanity and justice, be aught but empty sounds; then the man who may be said to live only for others, for the beloved, honourable female, whose tender, faithful embrace endears life, and for the helpless little innocents, who are to be the men and women, the worshippers of his God, the subjects of his king, and the support, nay, the very vital existence of his COUNTRY, in the ensuing age;-compare such a man with any fellow whatever, who, whether he bustle and push in business among labourers, clerks, statesmen; or whether he roar and rant, and drink and sing in taverns-a fellow over whose grave no one will breathe a single heigh-ho, except from the cobweb-tie of what is called good fellowshipwho has no view nor aim but what terminates in himself—if there be any grovelling earthborn wretch of our species, a renegado to common sense, who would fain believe that the noble creature, man, is no better than a sort of fungus, generated out of nothing, nobody knows how, and soon dissipating in nothing, nobody knows where; such a stupid beast, such a crawling reptile, might balance the foregoing unexaggerated comparison, but no one else would have the patience. Forgive me, my dear Sir, for this long silence. To make you amends, I shall send you soon, and more encouraging still, without any postage, one or two rhymes of my later manufacture. SIR, No. 277. TO CAPT. RIDDEL, CARSE, Ellisland, Oct. 16, 1799. BIG with the idea of this important day* at Friars Carse, I have watched the elements and skies in the full persuasion that they would announce it to the astonished world by some phenomena of terrific portent.-Yesternight, until a very late hour, did I wait with anxious horror, for the appearance of some Comet firing The day on which "the Whistle" was contended for. half the sky; or ærial armies of sanguinary Scandinavians, darting athwart the startled heavens, rapid as the ragged lightning, and horrid as those convulsions of nature that bury nations. The elements, however, seem to take the matter very quietly: they did not even usher in this morning with triple suns and a shower of blood, symbolical of the three potent heroes, and the mighty claret-shed of the day.-For me, as Thomson in his Winter says of the storm-I shall "Hear astonished, and astonished sing," The whistle and the man; I sing The man that won the whistle, &c. "Here are we met, three merry boys, "Wha first shall rise to gang awa, "A cuckold coward loun is he: " Wha last* beside his chair shall fa', "He is the king amang us three.” To leave the heights of Parnassus and come to the humble vale of prose.-I have some misgivings that I take too much upon me, when I request you to get your guest, Sir Robert Lowrie, to frank the two inclosed covers for me; the one of them, to Sir William Cunningham, of * In former editions of these verses, the word first has been printed in this place instead of the word last. Robertland, Bart. at Auchenskeith, Kilmarnock, -the other, to Mr. Allan Masterton, WritingMaster, Edinburgh. The first has a kindred claim on Sir Robert, as being a brother Baronet, and likewise a keen Foxite; the other is one of the worthiest men in the world, and a man of real genius; so, allow me to say, he has a fraternal claim on you. I want them franked for to-morrow, as I cannot get them to the post tonight.-I shall send a servant again for them in the evening, Wishing that your head may be crowned with laurels to-night, and free from aches to-morrow, I have the honour to be, Sir, SIR, Your deeply indebted humble Servant. No. 278. TO THE SAME. I WISH from my inmost soul it were in my power to give you a more substantial gra tification and return for all your goodness to the poet, than transcribing a few of his idle rhymes. -However, "an old song," though to a proverb an instance of insignificance, is generally the only coin a poet has to pay with. If my poems which I have transcribed, and mean still to transcribe into your book, were equal to the grateful respect and high esteem I bear for the gentleman to whom I present them, they would be the finest poems in the language. -As they are, they will at least be a testimony with what sincerity I have the honour to be, Sir, Your devoted humble Servant No. 279. To Mr. ROBERT AINSLIE. MY DEAR FRIEND, Ellisland, Nov. 1, 1789. I HAD written you long ere now, could I have guessed where to find you, for I am sure you have more good sense than to waste the precious days of vacation time in the dirt of business and Edinburgh-Wherever you are, God bless you, and lead you not into temptation, but deliver you from evil! I do not know if I have informed you that I am now appointed to an excise division, in the middle of which my house and farm lie. In this I was extremely lucky. Without ever having been an expectant, as they call their journeymen excisemen, I was directly planted down to all intents and purposes an officer of excise; there to flourish and bring forth fruits-worthy of repentance. |