so exquisitely expressive of the superstitious | you, but for the business part, that is, to instiimpressions of the country. And the twenty-gate you to a new publication; and to tell you

two lines from

"Coffins stood round like open presses,"

that when you think you have a sufficient number to make a volume, you should set your friends on getting subscriptions. I wish I could have a few hours conversation with

which, in my opinion, are equal to the ingre-you-I have many things to say which I candients of Shakspeare's cauldron in Macbeth.

As for the Elegy, the chief merit of it consists in the very graphical description of the objects belonging to the country in which the poet writes, and which none but a Scottish poet could have described, and none but a real poet, and a close observer of Nature could Fave so described.

not write. If I ever go to Scotland, I will let
you know, that you may meet me at your
own house, or my friend Mrs Hamilton's, or
both.
Adieu, my dear Sir, &c

There is something original, and to me wonderfully pleasing, in the Epitaph.

I remember you once hinted before, what you repeat in your last, that you had made some remarks on Zeluco, on the margin. I should be very glad to see them, and regret you did not send them before the last edition, which is just published. Pray transcribe them for me, I sincerely value your opinion very highly, and pray do not suppress one of those in which you censure the sentiment or expression. Trust me it will break no squares between us-I am not akin to the Bishop of Grenada.

No. CXV.

TO THE REV. ARCH. ALISON.

Ellisland, near Dumfries, 14th Feb. 1791.

SIR, You must, by this time, have set me down as one of the most ungrateful of men. You did me the honour to present me with a book which does honour to science and the intellectual powers of man, and I have not even so much as acknowledged the receipt of it. The fact is, you yourself are to blame for it. Flattered as I was by your telling me that you wished to have my opinion of the work, the old spiritual enemy of mankind, who knows well that vanity is one of the sins that most easily beset me, put it into my head to ponder over the performance with the look-out of a critic, and to draw up forsooth a deep learned digest of strictures on a composition, of which, in fact, until I read the book, I did not even know the first principles. I own, sir, that at first glance, several of your propositions startled me as paradoxical. That the martial clangor of a trumpet had something in it vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime, than the twingle twangle of a Jews' harp; that the delicate flexure of a rose-twig, when the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of the dawn, was infinitely more beautiful and elegant than the upright stub of a burdock; and that from something innate and independent of all asso

I must now mention what has been on my mind for some time: I cannot help thinking you imprudent in scattering abroad so many copies of your verses. It is most natural to give a few to confidential friends, particularly to those who are connected with the subject, or who are perhaps themselves the subject, but this ought to be done under promise not to give other copies. Of the poem you sent me on Queen Mary, I refused every solicitation for copies, but I lately saw it in a newspaper. My motive for cautioning you on this subject is, that I wish to engage you to collect all your fugitive pieces, not already printed, and after they have been re-considered, and polished to the utmost of your power, I would have you publish them by another subscription; in promoting of which I will exert myself with plea-ciation of ideas;-these I had set down as

sure.

In your future compositions, I wish you would use the modern English. You have shown your powers in Scottish sufficiently. Although in certain subjects it gives additional zest to the humour, yet it is lost to the English; and why should you write only for a part of the island, when you can command the admiration of the whole.

If you chance to write to my friend Mrs Dunlop of Dunlop, I beg to be affectionately remembered to her. She must not judge of the warmth of my sentiments respecting her, by the number of my letters; I hardly ever write a line but on business: and I do not know that I should have scribbled all this to

irrefragible, orthodox truths, until perusing
your book shook my faith.-In short, sir, ex-
cept Euclid's Elements of Geometry, which I
made a shift to unravel by my father's fire-side,
in the winter evening of the first season I held
the plough, I never read a book which gave
me such a quantum of information, and added
so much to my stock of ideas as your " Essays
on the Principles of Taste." One thing, sir,
you must forgive my mentioning as an uncom-
mon merit in the work, I mean the language.
To clothe abstract philosophy in elegance of
style, sounds something like a contradiction in
terms; but you have convinced me that they
are quite compatible.

I inclose you some poetic bagatelles of my
E

late composition. The one in print is my
first essay in the way of telling a tale.
I am, Sir, &c.

No. CXVI.

EXTRACT OF A LETTER

TO MR CUNNINGHAM.

give my honest effusion to "the memory of joys that are past," to the few friends whom you indulge in that pleasure. But I have scribbled on 'till I hear the clock has intimated the near approach of

"That hour o' night's black arch the key-stane."—

So good-night to you! Sound be your sleep, and delectable your dreams! Apropos, how do you like this thought in a ballad, I have just now on the tapis?

I look to the west, when I gae to rest,

That happy my dreams and my slumbers may
be:
For far in the west is he I lo'e best-
The lad that is dear to my baby and me!

12th March, 1791. IF the foregoing piece be worth your strictures, let me have them. For my own part, a thing that I have just composed, always appears through a double portion of that partial medium in which an author will ever view his own works. I believe, in general, novelty has something in it that inebriates the fancy, and not unfrequently dissipates and fumes away Good night, once more, and God bless you! like other intoxication, and leaves the poor patient, as usual, with an aching heart. striking instance of this might be adduced, in the revolution of many a hymeneal honeymoon. But lest I sink into stupid prose, and so sacrilegiously intrude on the office of my parish priest, I shall fill up the page in my own way, and give you another song of my late composition, which will appear, perhaps, in Johnson's work, as well as the former.

A

You must know a beautiful Jacobite air, There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame. When political combustion ceases to be the object of princes and patriots, it then, you know, becomes the lawful prey of historians and poets.

No. CXVII.

TO MRS DUNLOP.

Ellisland, 11th April, 1791. I AM once more able, my honoured friend, to return you, with my own hand, thanks for the many instances of your friendship, and particularly for your kind anxiety in this last disaster that my evil genius had in store for me. However, life is chequered-joy and sorrowfor on Saturday morning last, Mrs Burns made me a present of a fine boy; rather stouter but not so handsome as your god-son was at his time of life. Indeed I look on your little namesake to be my chef d'œuvre in that species By yon castle wa', at the close of the day, of manufacture, as I look on Tam o' Shanter I heard a man sing, though his head it was grey; to be my standard performance in the poetical And as he was singing, the tears fast down came-line. 'Tis true, both the one and the other There'll never be peace 'till Jamie comes hame.

discover a spice of roguish waggery, that might, perhaps, be as well spared; but then they also show, in my opinion, a force of genius, and a finishing polish, that I despair of ever excelling. Mrs Burns is getting stout again, and laid as lustily about her to-day at breakfast, as a reaper from the corn-ridge. That is the peculiar privilege and blessing of our hale, sprightly damsels, that are bred among the hay and heather. We cannot hope for that highly polished mind, that charming delicacy of soul, which is found among the female world in the more elevated stations of life, and which is certainly by far the most bewitching charm in the famous cestus of Venus. It is indeed such an inestimable treasure, that where it can be had in its native heavenly purity, unstained by some one or other of the many shades of affectation, and unalloyed by some one or other of the many species of caprice, I declare to Heaven, I should think it cheaply purchased at the expense of every other earthly good! But as this angelic crea

ture is, I am afraid, extremely rare in any station | and rank of life, and totally denied to such an humble one as mine; we meaner mortals must put up with the next rank of female excellence as fine a figure and face we can produce as any rank of life whatever; rustic, native grace; unaffected modesty, and unsullied purity; nature's mother wit, and the rudiments of taste; a simplicity of soul, unsuspicious of, because unacquainted with, the crooked ways of a selfish, interested, disingenuous world; -and the dearest charm of all the rest, a yielding sweetness of disposition, and a generous warmth of heart, grateful for love on our part, and ardently glowing with a more than equal return; these, with a healthy frame, a sound vigorous constitution, which your high ranks can scarcely ever hope to enjoy, are the charms of lovely woman in my humble walk of life.

Charles V. I tell him, through the medium of his nephew's influence, that Mr Clarke is a gentleman who will not disgrace even his patronage. I know the merits of the cause thoroughly, and say it, that my friend is falling a sacrifice to prejudiced ignorance, and

God help the children of dependence! Hated and persecuted by their enemies, and too often, alas! almost unexceptionably, received by their friends with disrespect and reproach, under the thin disguise of cold civility and humiliating advice. O to be a sturdy savage, stalking in the pride of his independence, amid the solitary wilds of his deserts, rather than in civilized life, helplessly to tremble for a subsistence, precarious as the caprice of a fellow-creature! Every man has his virtues, and no man is without his failings; and curse on that privileged plain-dealing of friendship, which in the hour of my calamity, cannot reach forth the helping hand without at the same time pointing out those failings, and

This is the greatest effort my broken arm has yet made. Do, let me hear by first post, how cher petit Monsieur comes on with his small-pox. May Almighty Goodness pre-apportioning them their share in procuring my

serve and restore him!

No. CXVIII.

TO MR CUNNINGHAM.

11th June, 1791.

LET me interest you, my dear Cunningham, in behalf of the gentleman, who waits on you with this. He is a Mr Clarke, of Moffat, principal schoolmaster there, and is at present suffering severely under the of

one or two powerful individuals of his employers. He is accused of harshness to

that were placed under his care. God help the teacher, if a man of sensibility and genius, and such is my friend Clarke, when a booby father presents him with his booby son, and insists on lighting up the rays of science, in a fellow's head whose skull is impervious and inaccessible by any other way than a positive fracture with a cudgel; a fellow whom, in fact, it savours of impiety to attempt making a scholar of, as he has been marked a blockhead in the book of fate, at the almighty fiat of his Creator.

present distress. My friends, for such the world calls ye, and such ye think yourselves to be, pass by virtues if you please, but do, also, spare my follies: the first will witness in my breast for themselves, and the last will give pain enough to the ingenuous mind without you. And since deviating more or less from the paths of propriety and rectitude, must be incident to human nature, do thou, fortune, put it in my power, always from myself, and of myself, to bear the consequences of those errors. I do not want to be independent that I may sin, but I want to be independent in my sinning.

To return in this rambling letter to the subject I set out with, let me recommend my friend, Mr Clarke, to your acquaintance and good offices; his worth entitles him to the one, and his gratitude will merit the other. I long much to hear from you. Adieu.

No. CXIX.

FROM THE EARL OF BUCHAN.

Dryburgh Abbey, 17th June, 1791. The patrons of Moffat school are, the mi- LORD BUCHAN has the pleasure to invite Mr nisters, magistrates, and town-council of Edin- Burns to make one at the coronation of the bust burgh, and as the business comes now before of Thomson, on Ednam Hill, on the 22d of Septhem, let me beg my dearest friend to do every tember; for which day perhaps his muse may thing in his power to serve the interests of a inspire an ode suited to the occasion. Supman of genius and worth, and a man whom I pose Mr Burns should, leaving the Nith, go particularly respect and esteem. You know across the country, and meet the Tweed at some good fellows among the magistracy and the nearest point from his farm-and, wandercouncil, but ing along the pastoral banks of Thomson's particularly, you have much to say with a re- pure parent stream, catch inspiration on the verend gentleman to whom you have the hon- devious walk, till he finds Lord Buchan sitting our of being very nearly related, and whom on the ruins of Dryburgh. There the comthis country and age have had the honour to produce. I need not name the historian of

* Dr Robertson was uncle to Mr Cunningham.

I have one or two good fellows here whom at least a frank and candid, if it should not be you would be glad to know.

a judicious criticism on the poems you sent me. The ballad of The Whistle is, in my opinion, truly excellent. The old tradition which you have taken up is the best adapted for a Bacchanalian composition of any I have ever met

The poem inclosed, is The Lament for James, Earl with, and you have done it full justice. In