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to complete our overthrow, contrived to make their guilt appear the villainy of a nation.-Your downfal only drags with you your private friends and partisans: In our misery are more or less involved the most numerous, and most valuable part of the community-all those who immediately depend on the cultivation of the soil, from the landlord of a province, down to his lowest hind.

Allow us, Sir, yet farther, just to hint at another rich vein of comfort in the dreary regions of adversity;—the gratulations of an approving conscience. In a certain great assembly, of which you are a distinguished member, panegyrics on your private virtues have so often wounded your delicacy, that we shall not distress you with any thing on the subject. There is, however, one part of your public conduct which our feelings will not permit us to pass in silence; our gratitude must trespass on your modesty; we mean, worthy Sir, your whole behaviour to the Scots Distillers.-In evil hours, when obtrusive recollection presses bitterly on the sense, let that, Sir, come like a healing angel, and speak the peace to your soul which the world can neither give nor take away.

We have the honour to be, Sir,

Your sympathizing fellow sufferers,

And grateful humble Servants,

JOHN BARLEYCORN-Præses.

No. 311.

TO THE HON. THE PROVOST, BAILIES, AND

TOWN COUNCIL, OF DUMFRIES.

GENTLEMEN,

THE literary taste and liberal spirit of your good town has so ably filled the various departments of your schools, as to make it a very great object for a parent to have his children educated in them. Still, to me, a stranger, with my large family, and very stinted income, to give my young ones that education I wish, at the high school-fees which a stranger pays, will bear hard upon me.

Some years ago your good town did me the honour of making me an honorary Burgess.- Will you allow me to request that this mark of distinction may extend so far, as to put me on the footing of a real freeman of the town, in the schools?

If you are so very kind as to grant my request,* it will certainly be a constant incentive to me to strain every nerve where I can officially serve

*This request was immediately complied with.

you; and will, if possible, increase that grateful respect with which I have the honour to be, Gentlemen,

Your devoted humble Servant.

No. 312.

To MR. JAMES JOHNSON, EDINBURGH.

Dumfries, July 4, 1796.

neg

How are you, my dear friend, and how comes on your fifth volume? You may probably think that for some time past I have lected you and your work; but, alas! the hand of pain, and sorrow, and care, has these many months lain heavy on me! Personal and domestic affliction have almost entirely banished that alacrity and life with which I used to woo the rural muse of Scotia.

You are a good, worthy, honest fellow, and have a good right to live in this world-because you deserve it. Many a merry meeting this publication has given us, and possibly it may give us more, though, alas! I fear it. This protracting, slow, consuming illness which hangs over me, will, I doubt much, my ever dear friend, arrest my sun before he has well reached his middle career, and will turn over the Poet

to far other and more important concerns than studying the brilliancy of wit, or the pathos of sentiment! However, hope is the cordial of the human heart, and I endeavour to cherish it as well as I can.

Let me hear from you as soon as convenient.— Your work is a great one; and now that it is near finished, I see, if we were to begin again, two or three things that might be mended; yet I will venture to prophecy, that to future ages your publication will be the text book and standard of Scottish song and music.

I am ashamed to ask another favour of you, because you have been so very good already; but my wife has a very particular friend of hers, a young lady who sings well, to whom she wishes to present the Scots Musical Museum. If you have a spare copy, will you be so obliging as to send it by the very first Fly, as I am anxious to have it soon. Yours ever,

ROBERT BURNS.

ROBERT BURNS'S

COMMON PLACE, OR SCRAP BOOK, BEGUN IN APRIL, 1783.

OBSERVATIONS, HINTS, SONGS, SCRAPS of POETRY, &c. by ROBERT BURNS; a man who had little art in making money, and still less in keeping it; but was, however, a man of some sense, a great deal of honesty, and unbounded good-will to every creature, rational and irrational. As he was but little indebted to scholastic

education, and bred at a plough-tail, his performances must be strongly tinctured with his unpolished, rustic way of life; but as I believe they are really his own, it may be some entertainment to a curious observer of human nature to see how a plough-man thinks, and feels, under the pressure of love, ambition, anxiety, grief, with the like cares and passions, which, however diversified by the modes, and manners of life, operate pretty much alike, I believe, on all the species.

"There are numbers in the world who do not want sense to make a figure, so much as an opinion of their own abilities to put them upon re

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