No. LXXII.

TO MR. JAMES JOHNSON, EDINBURGH.

Dumfries, July 4, 1796.

How are you, my dear friend, and how comes on your fifth volume? You may probably think that for some time past I have neglected you and your work; but, alas! the hand of pain, and sorrow, and care, has these many months lain heavy or 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

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 prophesy, that to future ages your publication will be the text-book and standard of Scottish song and music.

I am ashamed to ask another favor 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

* In this humble and delicate manner did poor Burns ask for a copy of a work of which he was principally the founder, and to which he had contributed, gratuitously, not less than 184 original, altered, and collected songs! The Editor has seen 180 transcribed by his own hand, for the Museum.

This Letter was written on the 4th of July,-the Poet died on the 21st. No other letters of this interesting

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.

period have been discovered, except one addressed to Mrs. Dunlop, of the 12th of July, which Dr. Currie very properly supposes to be the last production of the dying

Bard.

E.

STRICTURES

ON

SCOTTISH SONGS AND BALLADS,

ANCIENT AND MODERN;

WITH

ANECDOTES OF THEIR AUTHORS.

"There needs na' be so great a phrase
Wi' dringing dull Italian lays,
I wad na gi'e our ain Strathspeys
For half a hundred score o' em:
They're douff and dowie at the best,
Douff and dowie, douff and dowie;
They're douff and dowie at the best,
Wi' a' their variorum:

They're douff and dowie at the best,
Their Allegros, and a' the rest,
They cannot please a Scottish taste,
Compar'd wi' Tullochgorum."

Rev. John Skinner.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The chief part of the following Remarks on Scottish Songs and Ballads exist in the hand-writing of ROBERT BURNS, in an interleaved Copy, in 4 Volumes, Octavo, of "JOHNSON'S SCOTS MUSICAL MUSEUM." They were written by the Poet for CAPTAIN RIDDel, of GLENRIDDEL, whose Autograph the Volumes bear. These valuable Volumes were left by MRS. RIDDEL, to her Niece, MISS ELIZA BAYLEY, of MANCHESTER, by whose kindness the Editor is enabled to give to the Public transcripts of this amusing and miscellaneous Collection.