I know not how the word exciseman, or still more opprobrious, gauger, will sound in your ears. I too have seen the day when my auditory nerves would have felt very delicately on this subject; but a wife and children are things which have a wonderful power in blunting these kind of sensations. Fifty pounds a year for life, and a provision for widows and orphans, you will allow is no bad settlement for a poet. For the ignominy of the profession, I have the encouragement which I once heard a recruiting serjeant give to a numerous, if not a respectable audience, in the streets of Kilmarnock.-" Gen 66 tlemen, for your further and better encourage"ment, I can assure you that our regiment is "the most blackguard corps under the crown, "and consequently, with us an honest fellow has "the surest chance for preferment." You need not doubt that I find several very unpleasant and disagreeable circumstances in my business; but I am tired with and disgusted at the language of complaint against the evils of life. Human existence in the most favourable situations does not abound with pleasures, and has its inconveniences and ills; capricious foolish man mistakes these inconveniences and ills. as if they were the peculiar property of his particular situation; and hence that eternal fickleness, that love of change, which has ruined, and daily does ruin many a fine fellow, as well as many a blockhead; and is almost, without exception, a constant source of disappointment and misery. I long to hear from you how you go on-not so much in business as in life. Are you pretty well satisfied with your own exertions, and tolerably at ease in your internal reflections? "Tis much to be a great character as a lawyer, but beyond comparison more to be a great character as a man. That you may be both the one and the other is the earnest wish, and that you will be both is the firm persuasion of, No. 280. My dear Sir, &c. To MR. PETER HILL, BOOKSELLER, Ellisland, Feb. 2, 1790. No! I will not say one word about apologies or excuses for not writing-1 am a poor. rascally gauger, condemned to gallop at least 200 miles every week to inspect dirty ponds and yeasty barrels; and where can I find time to write to, or importance to interest any body? The upbraidings of my conscience, nay, the upbraidings of my wife, have persecuted me on your account these two or three months past.I wish to God I was a great man, that my correspondence might throw light upon you, to let the world see what you really are; and then I would make your fortune, without putting my hand in my pocket for you, which, like all other great men, I suppose I would avoid as much as possible. What are you doing, and how are you doing? of my few friends? BOROUGH REFORM, or how is the fate of my poor namesake Mademoiselle Burns decided? O man! but for thee and thy selfish appetites, and dishonest artifices, that beauteous form, and that once innocent and still ingenuous mind, might have shone conspicuous and lovely in the faithful wife, and the affectionate mother; and shall the unfortunate sacrifice to thy pleasures have no claim on thy humanity! Have you lately seen any What is become of the I saw lately in a Review, some extracts from a new poem, called the Village Curate; send it me. I want likewise a cheap copy of the World. Mr. Armstrong, the young poet, who does me the honour to mention me so kindly in his works, please give him my best thanks for the copy of his book—I shall write him my first leisure hour. I like his poetry much, but I think his style in prose quite astonishing. Your book came safe, and I am going to trouble you with farther commissions. I call it troubling you-because I want only BOOKS; 3 B 18. the cheapest way, the best; so you may have to hunt for them in the evening auctions. I want Smollett's works, for the sake of his incomparable humour. I have already Roderick Random, and Humphrey Clinker.-Peregrine Pickle, Launcelot Greaves, and Frederick, Count Fathom, I still want; but, as I said, the veriest ordinary copies will serve me. I am nice only in the appearance of my poets. I forget the price of Cowper's Poems, but I believe I must have them. I saw the other day, proposals for a publication, entitled, Banks' new and complete Christian's Family Bible," printed for C. Cooke, Paternoster-row, London.-He promises at least, to give in the work, I think it is three hundred and odd engravings, to which he has put the names of the first artists in London.You will know the character of the performance, as some numbers of it are published; and if it is really what it pretends to be, set me down as a subscriber, and send me the published numbers. Let me hear from you your first leisure minute, and trust me, you shall in future have no reason to complain of my silence. The dazzling perplexity of novelty will dissipate and leave me to pursue my course in the quiet path of methodical routine, No. 281. To MR. W. NICOL. Ellisland, Feb. 9, 1790. MY DEAR SIR, THAT d-mned mare of yours is dead. I would freely have given her price to have saved her she has vexed me beyond description. Indebted as I was to your goodness, beyond what I can ever repay, I eagerly grasped at your offer to have the mare with me. That I might at least shew my readiness in wishing to be grateful, I took every care of her in my power. She was never crossed for riding above half a score of times by me, or in my keeping. I drew her in the plough, one of three, for one poor week. I refused fifty-five shillings for her, which was the highest bode I could squeeze for her. I fed her up, and had her in fine order for Dumfries fair; when four or five days before the fair, she was seized with an unaccountable disorder in the sinews, or somewhere in the bones of the neck; with a weakness or total want of power in her fillets; and, in short, the whole vertebræ of her spine seemed to be diseased and unhinged, and in eight and forty hours, in spite of the two best farriers in the country, she died, and be d-mned to her! The farriers said that she had been |