of existence beyond the grave; must, I think, be allowed by every one who will give himself a moment's reflection. I will go farther, and affirm, that from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of his doctrine and precepts, unparalleled by all the aggregated wisdom and learning of many preceding ages, though, to appearance, he himself was the obscurest and most illiterate of our species; therefore, Jesus Christ was from God." which you once warmly and effectively inter- | moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene ested yourself, I am here in my old way, holding my plough, marking the growth of my corn, or the health of my dairy; and at times sauntering by the delightful windings of the Nith, on the margin of which I have built my humble domicile, praying for seasonable weather, or holding an intrigue with the Muses; the only gipseys with whom I have now any intercourse. As I am entered into the holy state of matrimony, I trust my face is turned completely Zion ward; and as it is a rule with all honest fellows, to repeat no grievances, I hope that the little poetic licences of former days, will of course fall under the oblivious influence of some good-natured statute of celestial proscription. In my family devotion, which, like a good presbyterian, I occasionally give to my household folks, I am extremely fond of the psalm, "Let not the errors of my youth," &c. and that other, "Lo, children are God's heritage," &c. in which last Mrs Burns, who, by the bye, has a glorious "wood-note wild" at either old song or psalmody, joins me with the pathos of Handel's Messiah. Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others, this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, this is my ineasure of iniquity. What think you, madam, of my creed? I trust that I have said nothing that will lessen me in the eye of one, whose good opinion I value almost next to the approbation of my own mind. No. LXXX. TO MRS DUNLOP. DEAR MADAM, Ellisland, 21st June, 1789. WILL you take the effusions, the miserable effusions of low spirits, just as they flow from their bitter spring. I know not of any particular cause for this worst of all my foes besetting me, but for some time my soul has been beclouded with a thickening atmosphere of evil imaginations and gloomy presages. Monday Evening. I have just heard give a sermon. He is a man famous for his benevolence, and I revere him; but from such ideas of my Creator, good Lord deliver me! Religion, my honoured friend, is surely a simple business, as it equally concerns the ignorant and the learned, the poor and the rich. That there is an incomprehensibly great Being, to whom I owe my existence, and that he must be intimately acquainted with the operations and progress of the internal machinery, and consequent outward deportment of this creature which he has made; these are, I think, selfevident propositions. That there is a real and eternal distinction between virtue and vice, and consequently that I am an accountable creature; that from the seeming nature of the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfection, nay, positive injustice, in the administration of affairs, both in the natural and No. LXXXI. DEAR SIR, Clifford Street, 10th June, 1789. I THANK you for the different communications you have made me of your occasional productions in manuscript, all of which have merit, and some of them merit of a different kind from what appears in the poems you have published. You ought carefully to preserve all your occasional productions, to correct and improve them at your leisure: and when you can select as many of these as will make a volume, publish it either at Edinburgh or London, by subscription: On such an occasion, it may be in my power, as it is very much in my inclination, to be of service to you. If I were to offer an opinion, it would be, that in your future productions you should abandon the Scottish stanza and dialect, and adopt the measure and language of modern English poetry. The stanza which you use in imitation of Christ Kirk on the Green, with the tiresome repetition of "that day," is fatiguing to English ears, and I should think not very agreeable to Scottish. All the fine satire and humour of your Holy Fair is lost on the English; yet, without more trouble to yourself, you could have conveyed the whole to them. The same is true of some of your other poems. In your Epistle to J. S, the stanzas from that beginning with this line, "This life, so far's I understand," to that which ends with, "Short while it grieves," are easy, flowing, gaily philosophical, and of Horatian elegance-the language is English, with a few Scottish words, and soine covered my frozen sinews, I sat down and wrote the enclosed ode. I was at Edinburgh lately, and settled finally with Mr Creech; and I must own, that, at last, he has been amicable and fair with me. merits! Pledge yourself for me, that, for the glorious cause of LUCRE, I will do any thing, be any thing-but the horse-leech of private oppression, or the vulture of public robbery ! But to descend from heroics, No. LXXV. TO MR HILL. Ellisland, 2d April, 1789. I WILL make no excuses, my dear Bibliopolus, (GOD forgive me for murdering language!) that I have sat down to write you on this vile paper. It is economy, sir; it is that cardinal virtue, prudence; so I beg you will sit down, and either compose or borrow a panegyric. If you are going to borrow, apply to to compose, or rather to compound, something very clever on my remarkable frugality; that I write to one of my most esteemed friends on this wretched paper, which was originally intended for the venal fist of some drunken exciseman, to take dirty notes in a miserable vault of an ale-cellar. O Frugality! thou mother of ten thousand blessings-thou cook of fat beef and dainty greens!-thou manufacturer of warm Shetland hose, and comfortable surtouts !-thou old housewife, darning thy decayed stockings with thy ancient spectacles on thy aged nose ;lead me, hand me in thy clutching palsied fist, up those heights, and through those thickets, hitherto inaccessible, and impervious to my anxious weary feet:-not those Parnassian craggs, bleak and barren, where the hungry worshippers of fame are, breathless, clambering, hanging between heaven and hell; but those glittering cliffs of Potosi, where the allsufficient, all-powerful deity, Wealth, holds his immediate court of joys and pleasures; where the sunny exposure of plenty, and the hot walls of profusion, produce those blissful fruits of luxury, exotics in this world, and natives of paradise!-Thou withered sybil, my sage conductress, usher me into the refulgent, adored presence!-The power, splendid and potent as he now is, was once the puling nursling of thy faithful care, and tender arms! Call me thy son, thy cousin, thy kinsman, or favourite, and adjure the god, by the scenes of his infant years, no longer to repulse me as a stranger, or an alien, but to favour me with his peculiar countenance and protection! He daily bestows his greatest kindness on the undeserving and the worthless-assure him, that I bring ample documents of meritorious de I want a Shakspeare; I want likewise an Eng lish dictionary-Johnson's, I suppose, is best. In these and all my prose commissions, the cheapest is always the best for me. There is a small debt of honour that I owe Mr Robert Cleghorn, in Saughton Mills, my worthy friend, and your well-wisher. Please give him, and urge him to take it, the first time you see him, ten shillings worth of any thing you have to sell, and place it to my account. The library scheme that I mentioned to you is already begun, under the direction of Captain Riddel. There is another in emulation of it going on at Closeburn, under the auspices of Mr Monteith, of Closeburn, which will be on a greater scale than ours. Capt. R. gave his infant society a great many of his old books, else I had written you on that subject; but, one of these days, I shall trouble you with a commission for "The Monkland Friendly Society"-a copy of The Spectator, Mirror, and Lounger; Man of Feeling, Man of the World, Guthrie's Geographical Grammar, with some religious pieces, will likely be our first order. When I grow richer, I will write to you on gilt post, to make amends for this sheet. At present, every guinea has a five guinea errand with first lines I have just rough-sketched, as follows: SKETCH. How wisdom and folly meet, mix, and unite; How virtue and vice blend their black and their white; No. LXXVII. TO MR CUNNINGHAM. MY DEAR SIR, Ellisland, 4th May, 1789. YOUR duty free favour of the 26th April 1 How genius, th' illustrious father of fiction, received two days ago: I will not say I peruConfounds rule and law, reconciles contradic-sed it with pleasure; that is the cold com tion I sing: If these mortals, the critics, should bustle, I care not, not I, let the critics go whistle. But now for a patron, whose name and whose glory, At once may illustrate and honour my story. Thou first of our orators, first of our wits; Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits; With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so strong, No man with the half of 'em e'er went far wrong; With passions so potent, and fancies so bright, No man with the half of 'em e'er went quite right; A sorry, poor misbegot son of the muses, Good L―d, what is man! for as simple he Do but try to develope his hooks and his crooks; With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil, All in all he's a problem must puzzle the devil. On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labours, That like the old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours : Mankind are his show-box-a friend, would you know him? Pull the string, ruling passion, the picture will show him. What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system, One trifling particular, truth, should have miss'd him; For, spite of his fine theoretic positions, Some sort all our qualities each to its tribe, And think human nature they truly describe; Have you found this, or t'other? there's more in the wind, As by one drunken fellow his comrades you'll find. But such is the flaw, or the depth of the plan, No two virtues, whatever relation they claim, On the 20th current I hope to have the honour of assuring you, in person, how sincerely I am, pliment of ceremony; I perused it, sir, with delicious satisfaction-In short, it is such a letter, that not you, nor your friend, but the legislature, by express proviso in their postage laws, should frank. A letter informed with the soul of friendship is such an honour to human nature, that they should order it free ingress and egress to and from their bags, and mails, as an encouragement and mark of distinction to super-eminent virtue. which I think will be something to your taste. I have just put the last hand to a little poem One morning lately as I was out pretty early in the fields sowing some grass seeds, I heard the burst of a shot from a neighbouring plantation, and presently a poor little wounded hare came crippling by me. You will guess my indignation at the inhuman fellow who could them have young ones. Indeed there is someshoot a hare at this season, when they all of thing in that business of destroying, for our sport, individuals in the animal creation that do not injure us materially, which I could never reconcile to my ideas of virtue. On Seeing a Fellow Wound a Hare with a INHUMAN man! curse on thy barb'rous art, Go live, poor wanderer of the wood and field, No more the thickening brakes or verdant plains, To thee a home, or food, or pastime yield. Seek, mangled innocent, some wonted form; warm. Perhaps a mother's anguish adds its woe; The playful pair crowd fondly by thy side; Ah! helpless nurslings, who will now provide That life a mother only can bestow? Oft as by winding Nith, I, musing, wait The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn, I'll miss thee sporting o'er the dewy lawn, And curse the ruthless wretch, and mourn thy hapless fate. DEAR SIR, bosom gored," how would you have liked it? Form is neither a poetic, nor a dignified, not a plain, common word: it is a mere sportsman's word; unsuitable to pathetic or serious poetry. "Mangled" is a coarse word. "Innocent," in this sense, is a nursery word; but both may pass. Stanza 4-"Who will now provide that life a mother only can bestow," will not do at all it is not grammar-it is not intelligible. Do you mean "provide for that life which the mother had bestowed and used to provide for?" There was a ridiculous slip of the pen, "Feeling" (I suppose) for "Fellow," in the title of your copy of verses; but even fellow would be wrong: it is but a colloquial and vulgar word, unsuitable to your sentiments. "Shot" is improper too.-On seeing a person (or a sportsman) wound a hare; it is needless to add with what weapon; but if you think otherwise, you should say, with a fowling-piece. Let me see you when you come to town, and I will show you some more of Mrs Hunter's poems.* No. LXXIX. TO MR MAULEY, DEAR SIR, Edinburgh, 2d June, 1789. I TAKE the first leisure hour I could command, to thank you for your letter, and the copy of verses inclosed in it. As there is real poetic merit, I mean both fancy, and tenderness, and some happy expressions, in them, I think they well deserve that you should revise them carefully and polish them to the utmost. This I 4th June, 1789. am sure you can do if you please, for you have THOUGH I am not without my fears respectgreat command both of expression and of ing my fate at that grand, universal inquest of rhymes and you may judge from the two last right and wrong, commonly called The Last pieces of Mrs Hunter's poetry, that I gave you, Day, yet I trust there is one sin, which that how much correctness and high polish enhance arch-vagabond, Satan, who, I understand, is to the value of such compositions. As you de- be king's evidence, cannot throw in my teeth sire it, I shall, with great freedom, give you I mean ingratitude. There is a certain my most rigorous criticisms on your verses. pretty large quantum of kindness for which I wish you would give me another edition of remain, and from inability, I fear, must remain them, much amended, and I will send it to your debtor; but though unable to repay the Mrs Hunter, who, I am sure, will have much debt, I assure you, sir, I shall ever warmly pleasure in reading it. Pray, give me like- remember the obligation. It gives me the wise for myself, and her too, a copy (as much sincerest pleasure to hear by my old acquaintamended as you please) of the Water Fowl on ance, Mr Kennedy, that you are, in immortal Loch Turit. Allan's language," Hale and weel, and living ;" and that your charming family are well, and promising to be an amiable and respectable addition to the company of performers, whom the Great Manager of the Drama of Man is bringing into action for the succeeding age. With respect to my welfare, a subject in I The Wounded Hare is a pretty good subject; but the measure, or stanza, you have chosen for it, is not a good one; it does not flow well; and the rhyme of the fourth line is almost lost by its distance from the first; and the two interposed, close rhymes. If I were you, I would put it into a different stanza yet. Stanza I.-The execrations in the first two lines are strong or coarse; but they may pass. "Murder-aiming" is a bad compound epithet, and not very intelligible. "Bloodstained," in stanza iii. line 4, has the same fault: Bleeding bosom is infinitely better. You have accustomed yourself to such epithets, and have no notion how stiff and quaint they appear to others, and how incongruous with poetic fancy, and tender sentiments. Suppose Pepe had written, Why that blood-stained 66 * It must be admitted, that this criticism is not more distinguished by its good sense, than by its freethe manner in which the poet may be supposed to have dom from ceremony. It is impossible not to smile at received it. In fact it appears, as the sailors say, to have thrown him quite a-back. In a letter which he but he crucifies me."And again, "I believe in the wrote soon after, he says, " Dr G is a good man, iron justice of Dr G. -; but like the devils, I be lieve and tremble." However, he profited by these criticisms, as the reader will find, by comparing this first edition of the poem, with that published afterwards. which you once warmly and effectively interested yourself, I am here in my old way, holding my plough, marking the growth of my corn, or the health of my dairy; and at times sauntering by the delightful windings of the Nith, on the margin of which I have built my humble domicile, praying for seasonable weather, or holding an intrigue with the Muses; the only gipseys with whom I have now any intercourse. As I am entered into the holy state of matrimony, I trust my face is turned completely Zion ward; and as it is a rule with all honest fellows, to repeat no grievances, I hope that the little poetic licences of former days, will of course fall under the oblivious influence of some good-natured statute of celestial proscription. In my family devotion, which, like a good presbyterian, I occasionally give to my household folks, I am extremely fond of the psalm, "Let not the errors of my youth," &c. and that other, "Lo, children are God's heritage," &c. in which last Mrs Burns, who, by the bye, has a glorious "wood-note wild" at either old song or psalmody, joins me with the pathos of Handel's Messiah. moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene of existence beyond the grave; must, I think, be allowed by every one who will give himself a moment's reflection. I will go further, and affirm, that from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of his doctrine and precepts, unparalleled by all the aggregated wisdom and learning of many preceding ages, though, to appearance, he himself was the obscurest and most illiterate of our species; therefore, Jesus Christ was from God. Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others, this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, this is my ineasure of iniquity. What think you, madam, of my creed? I trust that I have said nothing that will lessen me in the eye of one, whose good opinion I value almost next to the approbation of my own mind. No. LXXX. TO MRS DUNLOP. DEAR MADAM, Ellisland, 21st June, 1789. WILL you take the effusions, the miserable effusions of low spirits, just as they flow from their bitter spring. I know not of any particular cause for this worst of all my foes besetting me, but for some time my soul has been beclouded with a thickening atmosphere of evil imaginations and gloomy presages. Monday Evening. I have just heard give a sermon. He is a man famous for his benevolence, and I revere him; but from such ideas of my Creator, good Lord deliver me! Religion, my honoured friend, is surely a simple business, as it equally concerns the ignorant and the learned, the poor and the rich. That there is an incomprehensibly great Being, to whom I owe my existence, and that he must be intimately acquainted with the operations and progress of the internal machinery, and consequent outward deportment of this creature which he has made; these are, I think, selfevident propositions. That there is a real and eternal distinction between virtue and vice, and consequently that I am an accountable creature; that from the seeming nature of the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfection, nay, positive injustice, in the administration of affairs, both in the natural and No. LXXXI. DEAR SIR, Clifford Street, 10th June, 1789. I THANK you for the different communications you have made me of your occasional productions in manuscript, all of which have merit, and some of them merit of a different kind from what appears in the poems you have published. You ought carefully to preserve all your occasional productions, to correct and improve them at your leisure: and when you can select as many of these as will make a volume, publish it either at Edinburgh or London, by subscription: On such an occasion, it may be in my power, as it is very much in my inclination, to be of service to you. If I were to offer an opinion, it would be, that in your future productions you should abandon the Scottish stanza and dialect, and adopt the measure and language of modern English poetry. The stanza which you use in imitation of Christ Kirk on the Green, with the tiresome repetition of "that day," is fatiguing to English ears, and I should think not very agreeable to Scottish. All the fine satire and humour of your Holy Fair is lost on the English; yet, without more trouble to yourself, you could have conveyed the whole to them. The same is true of some of your other poems. In your Epistle to J. S, the stanzas from that beginning with this line, "This life, so far's I understand," to that which ends with, "Short while it grieves," are easy, flowing, gaily philosophical, and of Horatian elegance-the language is English, with a few Scottish words, and some |