The one fault you found, is just; but I cannot please myself in an emendation. What a life of solicitude is the life of a parent! You interested me much in your young couple. I would not take my folio paper for this epistle, and now I repent it. I am so jaded with my dirty long journey that I was afraid to drawl into the essence of dulness with any thing longer than a quarto, and so I must leave out another rhyme of this morning's manufacture. I will pay the sapientipotent George most cheerfully, to hear from you ere I leave Ayrshire. No. XXXI. To Mr. JAMES JOHNSON, Engraver, Edinburgh. Mauchline, Nov. 15, 1788. MY DEAR SIR, I HAVE sent you two more songs.-If you have got any tunes, or any thing to correct, please send them by return of the carrier. I can easily see, my dear friend, that you will very probably have four volumes. Perhaps you may not find your account lucratively, in this business; but you are a patriot for the music of your country; and I am certain, posterity will look on themselves as highly indebted to your public spirit. Be not in a hurry; let us go on correctly; and your name shall be immortal. I am preparing a flaming preface for your third volume. I see every day, new musical publications advertised; but what are they? Gaudy, hunted butterflies of a day, and then vanish for ever: but your work will outlive the momentary neglects of idle fashion, and defy the teeth of time. Have you never a fair goddess that leads you a wildgoose chase of amorous devotion? Let me know a few of her qualities, such as, whether she be rather black, or fair; plump, or thin; short, or tall; &c. and chuse your air, and I shall task my Muse to celebrate her. No. XXXII. To Dr. BLACKLOCK. REV. AND DEAR SIR, Mauchline, Nov. 15, 1788. AS I hear nothing of your motions but that you are, or were, out of town, I do not know where this may find you, or whether it will find you at all. I wrote you a long letter, dated from the land of matrimony, in June; but either it had not found you, or, what I dread more, it found you or Mrs. Blacklock in too precarious a state of health and spirits, to take notice of an idle packet. I have done many little things for Johnson, since I had the pleasure of seeing you; and I have finished one piece, in the way of Pope's Moral Epistles; but from your silence, I have every thing to fear, so I have only sent you two melancholy things, which I tremble lest they should too well suit the tone of your present feelings. In a fortnight I move, bag and baggage, to Nithsdale till then, my direction is at this place; after that period, it will be at Ellisland, near Dumfries. It would extremely oblige me, were it but half a line, to let me know how you are, and where you are.-Can I be indifferent to the fate of a man, to whom I owe so much? A man whom I not only esteem but venerate.* My warmest good wishes and most respectful com pliments to Mrs. Blacklock, and Miss Johnson, if she is with you. I cannot conclude without telling you that I am more and more pleased with the step I took respecting "my Jean."-Two things, from my happy experience, I set down as apothegms in life. A wife's head is immaterial, compared with her heart-and"Virtue's (for wisdom what poet pretends to it) ways are ways of pleasantness, and her paths are peace. * Adieu ! Here follow " The mother's lament for the loss of her son," and the song beginning, "The lazy mist hangs from the brow of the hill." 66 Dr. Currie's Ed. Vol. 4, p. 290. * Gratefully alluding to the Doctor's introduction of him to the literary circles of Edinburgh." There was perhaps, ne"ver one among mankind,” says Heron, in a spirited memoir of our Bard, inserted in the Edinburgh Magazine, "whom "you might more truly have called an Angel upon Earth, than "Dr. Blacklock: he was guileless and innocent as a child, yet "endowed with manly sagacity and penetration; his heart was a perpetual spring of overflowing benignity; his feel"ings were all tremblingly alive to the sense of the sublime, "the beautiful, the tender, the pious, the virtuous:-Poetry "was to him the dear solace of perpetual blindness; cheer"fulness, even to gaiety, was, notwithstanding that irremedi"able misfortune, long the predominant colour of his mind : "In his latter years, when the gloom might otherwise have "thickened around him, hope, faith, devotion the most fer"vent and sublime, exalted his mind to Heaven, and made "him maintain his wonted cheerfulness in the expectation of a speedy dissolution." In the beginning of the winter of 1786-87, Burns came to Edinburgh By Dr. B. he was received with the most flattering kindness, and was earnestly introduced to every person of taste and generosity among the good old man's friends. It was little Blacklock had in his power to do for a brother poet-but that little he did with a fond alacrity, and with a modest grace. E. No. XXXIII. To Mr. ROBERT AINSLIE. Ellisland, Jan. 6, 1789. MANY happy returns of the season to you, my dear Sir! May you be comparatively happy up to your comparative worth among the sons of men; which wish would, I am sure, make you one of the most blest of the human race. I do not know if passing a "Writer to the signet" be a trial of scientific merit, or a mere business of friends and interest. However it be, let me quote you my two favourite passages, which though I have repeated them ten thousand times, still they rouse my manhood and steel my resolution like inspiration. On Reason build resolve, That column of true majesty in man. Hear, Alfred, hero of the state, YOUNG. Thy genius heaven's high will declare; Is never, never to despair! Is never to despair! MASQUE OF ALFRED. I grant you enter the lists of life, to struggle for bread, business, notice, and distinction, in common with hundreds.-But who are they? Men, like yourself, and of that aggregate body, your compeers, seven tenths of them come short of your advantages natural and accidental; while two of those that remain either neglect their parts, as flowers blooming in a desart, or mis-spend their strength, like a bull goring a bramble bush. But to change the theme: I am still catering for Johnson's publication; and among others, I have brushed up the following old favorite song a little, with a view to your worship. I have only altered a word here and there; but if you like the humor of it, we shall think of a stanza or two to add to it. No. XXXIV. To Mr. JAMES HAMILTON, Grocer, Glasgow. Ellisland, May 26, 1789. DEAR SIR, I SEND you by John Glover, Carrier, the above account for Mr. Turnbull, as I suppose you know his address. I would fain offer, my dear Sir, a word of sympathy with your misfortunes; but it is a tender string, and I know not how to touch it. It is easy to flourish a set of high-flown sentiments on the subject that would give great satisfaction to a breast quite at ease; but as ONE observes, who was very seldom mistaken in the theory of life, "The heart knoweth its "own sorrows, and a stranger intermeddleth not there"with." Among some distressful emergencies that I have experienced in life, I ever laid this down as my foundation of comfort-That he who has lived the life of an honest man, has by no means lived in vain! With every wish for your welfare and future suc cess, I am, my dear Sir, Sincerely yours. |