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 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. The patrons of Moffat school are, the ministers, magistrates, and town-council of Edinburgh, and as the business comes now before them, let me beg my dearest friend to do every thing in his power to serve the interests of a man of genius and worth, and a man whom particularly respect and esteem. You know some good fellows among the magistracy and council, I 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. LORD BUCHAN has the pleasure to invite Mr Burns to make one at the coronation of the bust of Thomson, on Ednam Hill, on the 22d of September; for which day perhaps his muse may inspire an ode suited to the occasion. Suppose Mr Burns should, leaving the Nith, go across the country, and meet the Tweed at the nearest point from his farm-and, wanderbut 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, mendator will give him a hearty welcome, and | try to light his lamp at the pure flame of native genius, upon the altar of Caledonian virtue. This poetical perambulation of the Tweed, is a thought of the late Sir Gilbert Elliot's and of Lord Minto's, followed out by his accomplished grandson, the present Sir Gilbert, who, having been with Lord Buchan lately, the project was renewed, and will, they hope, be executed in the manner proposed. No. CXX. TO THE EARL OF BUCHAN. MY LORD, LANGUAGE Sinks under the ardour of my feelings, when I would thank your lordship for the honour you have done me in inviting me to make one at the coronation of the bust of Thomson. In my first enthusiasm in reading the card you did me the honour to write me, I overlooked every obstacle, and determined to go; but I fear it will not be in my power. A week or two's absence, in the very middle of my harvest, is what I much doubt I dare not yenture on. Your lordship hints at an ode for the occasion: but who would write after Collins? I read over his verses to the memory of Thomson, and despaired.-I got indeed to the length of three or four stanzas, in the way of address to the shade of the bard, on crowning his bust. I shall trouble your lordship, with the subjoined copy of them, which, I am afraid, will be but too convincing a proof how unequal I am to the task. However, it affords me an opportunity of approaching your lordship, and declaring how sincerely and gratefully I have the honour to be, &c. SIR, No. CXXI. Dryburgh Abbey, 18th September, 1791. remain to distant posterity as interesting pic tures of rural innocence and happiness in your native country, and were happily written in the dialect of the people; but Harvest Home being suited to descriptive poetry, except where colloquial, may escape disguise of a dialect which admits of no elegance or dignity of expression. Without the assistance of any god or goddess, and without the invocation of any foreign muse, you may convey in epistolary form the description of a scene so gladdening and picturesque, with all the concomitant local position, landscape and costume; contrasting the peace, improvement, and happiness of the borders of the once hostile nations of Britain, with their former oppression and misery, and showing, in lively and beautiful colours, the beauties and joys of a rural life. And as the unvitiated heart is naturally dis. posed to overflow in gratitude in the moment of prosperity, such a subject would furnish you with an amiable opportunity of perpetuating the names of Glencairn, Miller, and your other eminent benefactors; which from what I know of your spirit, and have seen of your poems and letters, will not deviate from the chastity of praise, that is so uniformly united to true taste and genius. I am, Sir, &c. No. CXXII. TO LADY E. CUNNINGHAM. MY LADY, I WOULD, as usual, have availed myself of the privilege your goodness has allowed me, of sending you any thing I compose in my poetical way; but as I had resolved, so soon as the shock of my irreparable loss would allow me, to pay a tribute to my late benefactor, I determined to make that the first piece I should do myself the honour of sending you. Had the wing of my fancy been equal to the ardour of my heart, the inclosed had been much more worthy your perusal; as it is, I beg leave to lay it at your ladyship's feet. As all the world knows my obligations to the late Earl of GlenYOUR address to the shade of Thomson has been cairn, I would wish to show as openly that my well received by the public; and though I should heart glows, and shall ever glow, with the disapprove of your allowing Pegasus to ride with most grateful sense and remembrance of his you off the field of your honourable and use- lordship's goodness. The sables I did myself ful profession, yet I cannot resist an impulse the honour to wear to his lordship's memory, which I feel at this moment to suggest to your were not the " mockery of woe.' Nor shall muse, Harvest Home, as an excellent subject my gratitude perish with me:-If, among my for her grateful song, in which the peculiar as- children, I shall have a son that has a heart, pect and manners of our country might furnish he shall hand it down to his child as a family an excellent portrait and landscape of Scotland, honour, and a family debt, that my dearest for the employment of happy moments of lei-existence I owe to the noble house of Glensure and recess, from your more important cairn! occupations. Your Halloween, and Saturday Night, will, 3 I was about to say, my lady, that if you think the poem may venture to see the light, I would, in some way or other, give it to the world. No. CXXIII. TO MR AINSLIE. MY DEAR AINSLIE, CAN you minister to a mind diseased? Can you, amid the horrors of penitence, regret, remorse, head-ache, nausea, and all the rest of the d-d hounds of hell, that beset a poor wretch, who has been guilty of the sin of drunkenness can you speak peace to a troubled soul? Miserable perdu that I am, I have tried every thing that used to amuse me, but in vain: here must I sit a monument of the vengeance laid up in store for the wicked, slowly counting every chick of the clock as it slowly-slowly numbers over these lazy scoundrels of hours, who, d-n them, are ranked up before me, every one at his neighbour's backside, and every one with a burthen of anguish on his back, to pour on my devoted head-and there is none to pity me. My wife scolds me! my business torments me, and my sins come staring me in the face, every one telling a more bitter tale than his fellow.-When I tell you even. No. CXXIV. FROM SIR JOHN WHITEFOORD. SIR, Near Maybole, 16th October, 1791. ACCEPT of my thanks for your favour with the Lament on the death of my much esteemed friend, and your worthy patron, the perusal of which pleased and affected me much. The lines addressed to me are very flattering. I have always thought it most natural to suppose, (and a strong argument in favour of a future existence) that when we see an honourable and virtuous man labouring under bodily infirmities, and oppressed by the frowns of fortune in this world, that there was a hap pier state beyond the grave; where that worth and honour which were neglected here, would meet with their just reward, and where temporal misfortunes would receive an eternal recompense. Let us cherish this hope for our departed friend; and moderate our grief for that loss we have sustained; knowing that he cannot return to us, but we may go to him. Remember me to your wife, and with every good wish for the prosperity of you and your family, believe me at all times, Your most sincere friend, JOHN WHITEFOORD. No. CXXV. FROM A. F. TYTLER, ESQ. Edinburgh, 27th Nov. 1791. has lost its power to please, you will guess something of my hell within, and all around me I began Elibanks and Elibraes, but the stanza fell unenjoyed, and unfinished from my listless tongue; at last I luckily thought of reading over an old letter of yours, You have much reason to blame me for nethat lay by me in my book-case, and I felt glecting till now to acknowledge the receipt of something for the first time since I opened my a most agreeable packet, containing The Whis eyes, of pleasurable existence.. Well-Itle, a ballad; and The Lument; which reached begin to breathe a little, since I began to write you. How are you, and what are you doing? How goes law? Apropos, for connection's sake do not address to me supervisor, for that is an honour I cannot pretend to—I am on the list, as we call it, for a supervisor, and will be called out bye and bye to act one; but at present, I am a simple gauger, tho' t'other day I got an appointment to an excise division of £25 per ann. better than the rest. My present income, down money, is £70 per ann. me about six weeks ago in London, from whence I am just returned. Your letter was forwarded to me there from Edinburgh, where, as I observed by the date, it had lain for some days. This was an additional reason for me to have answered it immediately on receiving it; but the truth was, the bustle of business, engagements and confusion of one kind or another, in which I found myself immersed all the time I was in London, absolutely put it out of my power. But to have done with apologies, let me now endeavour to prove myself in some degree deserving of the very flattering compliment you pay me, by giving you 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 Glencairn. the first place, the strokes of wit arise naturally from the subject, and are uncommonly happy. For example, -- "The bands grew the tighter the more they were | under which I unhappily must rank as the wet "Cynthia hinted she'd find them next morn." "Though Fate said a hero should perish in light, So up rose bright Phœbus and down fell the knight." In the next place, you are singularly happy in the discrimination of your heroes, and in giving each the sentiments and language suitable to his character. And, lastly, you have much merit in the delicacy of the panegyric which you have contrived to throw on each of the dramatis persona, perfectly appropriate to his character. The compliment to Sir Robert, the blunt soldier, is peculiarly fine. In short, this composition, in my opinion, does you great honour, and I see not a line or a word in it which I could wish to be altered. As to The Lament, I suspect, from some expressions in your letter to me, that you are more doubtful with respect to the merits of this piece than of the other, and I own I think you have reason; for although it contains some beautiful stanzas, as the first, "The wind blew hollow," &c. the fifth, "Ye scatter'd birds;" the thirteenth, "Awake thy last sad voice," &c. Yet it appears to me faulty as a whole, and inferior to several of those you have already published in the same strain. My principal objection lies against the plan of the piece. I think it was unnecessary and improper to put the lamentation in the mouth of a fictitious character, an aged bard.—It had been much better to have lamented your patron in your own person, to have expressed your genuine feelings for his loss, and to have spoken the language of nature rather than that of fiction on the subject. Compare this with your poem of the same title in your printed volume, which begins, O thou pale Orb! and observe what it is that forms the charm of that composition. It is, that it speaks the language of truth and of nature. The change is, in my opinion, injudicious too in this respect, that an aged bard has much less need of a patron and protector than a young one. I have thus given you, with much freedom, my opinion of both the pieces. I should have made a very ill return to the compliment you paid me, if I had given you any other than my genuine senti ments. It will give me great pleasure to hear from you when you find leisure, and I beg you will believe me ever, dear Sir, yours, &c. No. CXXVI. TO MISS DAVIES. Ir is impossible, madam, that the generous warmth and angelic purity of your youthful mind, can have any idea of that moral disease chief of sinners; I mean a tor itude of the moral powers that may be called, a lethargy of conscience.-In vain remorse rears her horrent crest, and rouses all her snakes; beneath the deadly fixed eye and leaden hand of indolence, their wildest ire is charmed into the torpor of the bat, slumbering out the rigours of winter in the chink of a ruined wall. Nothing less, madam, could have made me so long neglect your obliging commands. Indeed I had one apology-the bagatelle was not worth presenting. Besides, so strongly am I interested in Miss D's fate and welfare in the serious business of life, amid its chances and changes; that to make her the subject of a silly ballad, is downright mockery of these ardent feelings; 'tis like an impertinent jest to a dying friend. Gracious Heaven! why this disparity be tween our wishes and our powers? Why is the most generous wish to make others blest, impotent and ineffectual-as the idle breeze that crosses the pathless desert? In my walks of life I have met with a few people to whom how gladly would I have said-" Go, be happy! I know that your hearts have been wounded by the scorn of the proud, whom accident has placed above you-or worse still, in whose band are, perhaps, placed many of the comforts of your life. But there! ascend that rock, Independence, and look justly down on their littleness of soul. Make the worthless trem. ble under your indignation, and the foolish sink before your contempt; and largely impart that happiness to others, which, I am certain, will give yourselves so much pleasure to bestow!" Why, dear madam, must I wake from this delightful reverie, and find it all a dream? Why, amid my generous enthusiasm, must I find myself poor and powerless, incapable of wiping one tear from the eye of pity, or of adding one comfort to the friend I love!-Out upon the world! say I, that its affairs are administered so ill? They talk of reform;→ good Heaven! what a reform would I make among the sons, and even the daughters of men!-Down, immediately, should go fools from the high places where misbegotten chance has perked them up, and through life should they skulk, ever haunted by their native insignificance, as the body marches accompanied by its shadow.-As for a much more formidable class, the knaves, I am at a loss what to do with them: Had I a world, there should not be a knave in it. But the hand that could give, I would liberally fill; and I would pour delight on the heart that could kindly forgive, and generously love. Still the inequalities of his life are, among men, comparatively tolerable-but there is a delicacy, a tenderness, accompanying every view in which we can place lovely Woman, that are grated and shocked at the rude, capri cious distinctions of fortune. Women is the blood-royal of life: let there be slight degrees of precedency among them-but let them be ALL sacred. Whether this last sentiment be right or wrong, I am not accountable; it is an original component feature of my mind. Skye tune, entitled Oran an Aoig, or, The Song of Death, to the measure of which I have adapted my stanzas. I have of late composed two or three other little pieces, which ere yon full orbed moon, whose broad impudent face now stares at old mother earth all night, shall have shrunk into a modest crescent, just peeping forth at dewy dawn, I shall find an hour to transcribe for you. A Dieu je vous commende! No. CXXVII. TO MRS Dunlop. Ellisland, 17th December, 1791. MANY thanks to you, madam, for your good news respecting the little floweret and the mother plant. I hope my poetic prayers have been heard, and will be answered up to the warmest sincerity of their fullest extent; and then Mrs Henri will find her little darling the representative of his late parent, in every thing but his abridged existence. I have just finished the following song, which, to a lady the descendant of Wallace, and many heroes of his truly illustrious line, and herself the mother of several soldiers, needs either preface nor apology. SCENE,--A field of battle-time of the day, evening-the wounded and dying of the victorious army are supposed to join in the following SONG OF DEATH. No. CXXVIII. TO MRS DUNLOP. 5th January, 1792. You see my hurried life, madam: I can only command starts of time; however, I am glad of one thing; since I finished the other sheet, the political blast that threatened my welfare is overblown. I have corresponded with Commissioner Graham, for the Board had made me the subject of their animadversions; and now I have the pleasure of informing you, that all is set to rights in that quarter. Now, as to these informers, may the devil be let loose to but hold! I was praying most fervently in my last sheet, and I must not so soon fall a swearing in this. Alas! how little do the wantonly or idly officious think what mischief they do by their malicious insinuations, indirect impertinence, or thoughtless blabbings. What a difference there is in intrinsic worth, candour, benevolence, generosity, kindness-in all the charities and all the virtues, between one class of human FAREWELL, thou fair day, thou green earth, and beings and another. For instance, the amiable ye skies, Now gay with the broad setting sun; Farewell, loves and friendships, ye dear, tender ties, Our race of existence is run! Thou grim king of terrors, thou life's gloomy foe, No terrors hast thou to the brave! circle I so lately mixed with in the hospitable hall of D- their generous bearts-their uncontaminated dignified minds-their informed and polished understandings-what a contrast, when compared-if such comparing were not downright sacrilege-with the soul of the miscreant who can deliberately plot the destruction of an honest man that never offended him, and with a grin of satisfaction see the unfortunate being, his faithful wife, and prat Thou strik'st the poor peasant-he sinks in the tling innocents, turned over to beggary and dark, Nor saves e'en the wreck of a name : Thou strik'st the young hero-a glorious mark! He falls in the blaze of his fame! In the field of proud honour-our swords in our hands, Our king and our country to saveWhile victory shines on life's last ebbing sands O, who would not die with the brave! The circumstance that gave rise to the foregoing verses was, looking over, with a musical friend, M'Donald's collection of Highland airs; I was struck with one, an Isle of ruin! Your cup, my dear madam, arrived safe. I had two worthy fellows dining with me the other day, when I, with great formality, pro duced my whigmeleerie cup, and told them that it had been a family-piece among the descendants of Sir William Wallace. This roused such an enthusiasm, that they insisted on bumpering the punch round in it; and by and bye, never did your great ancestor lay a Southron more completely to rest than for a time did your cup my two friends. A propos, this is the season of wishing. May God bless you, my dear friend, and bless me the humblest and sincerest of your friends, by granting you yet many returns of the season! May all good |