ROBERT BURNS's

COMMON PLACE, OR SCRAP BOOK,

BEGUN IN APRIL, 1783.

"OBSERVATIONS, HINTS, SONGS, SCRAPS of POETRY, &c. by ROBERT BURNESS; a man who had little art in making money, and still less in keeping it; but was, however, a man of some sense,

It has been the chief object in making this collection, not to omit any thing which might illustrate the character and feelings of the bard at different periods of his life.Hence these "Observations" are given entire from his manuscript.-A-small portion appears in Dr. Currie's edition, but the reader will pardon the repetition of it here when he considers how much so valuable a paper would lose by being given in fragments, and when he recollects that this volume may fall into the hands of those who have not the opportunity of referring to the large edition of the works.

This remark will apply equally to other pieces of which parts have before been published.

E.

sense, a great deal of honesty, and unbounded good-will to every creature, rational and irrational.-As he was but little indebted to scholastic education, and bred at a plough-tail, his performances must be strongly tinctured with his unpolished, rustic way of life; but as I believe they are really his own, it may be some entertainment to a curious observer of human nature to see how a ploughman thinks, and feels, under the pressure of love, ambition, anxiety, grief, with the like cares and passions, which, however diversified by the modes, and manners of life, operate pretty much alike, I believe, on all the species.

"There are numbers in the world who do not want sense to make a figure, so much as an opinion of their own abilities to put them upon recording their observations, and allowing them the same importance which they do to those which appear in print."

Shenstone.

"Pleasing, when youth is long expired, to trace
The forms our pencil, or our pen designed!
Such was our youthful air, and shape, and face,
Such the soft image of our youthful mind.”

Ibid.

Notwithstanding

April, 1788.

Notwithstanding all that has been said against love, respecting the folly and weakness it leads a young inexperienced mind into; still I think it in a great measure deserves the highest encomiums that have been passed upon it. If any thing on earth deserves the name of rapture or transport, it is the feelings of green eighteen in the company of the mistress of his heart, when she repays him with an equal return of affection.

August.

There is certainly some connexion between love, and music, and poetry; and, therefore, I have always thought it a fine touch of nature, that passage in a modern love-composition.

"As towards her cott he jogg'd along,
Her name was frequent in his song."

"

For my own part I never had the least thought or inclination of turning poet till I got once heartily in love, and then rhyme and song were,

in a manner the spontaneous language of my heart. The following composition was the first of my performances, and done at an early period of life, when my heart glowed with honest warm simplicity; unacquainted, and uncorrupted with the ways of a wicked world. The performance is, indeed, very puerile and silly; but I am always pleased with it, as it recals to my mind those happy days when my heart was yet honest, and my tongue was sincere. The subject of it was a young girl who really deserved all the praises I have bestowed on her. I not only had this opinion of her then-but I actually think so still, now that the spell is long since broken, and the enchantment at an end.

Tune- I AM A MAN UNMARRIED.'

O once I lov'd a bonnie lass,

Ay, and I love her still,

And whilst that honor warms my breast

I'll love my handsome Nell.

Fal lal de ral, &c.

As bonnie lasses I hae seen,
And mony full as braw,
But for a modest gracefu' mien

The like I never saw.

A bonnie