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 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 * Gratefully alluding to the Doctor's introduction of him to the literary circles of Edinburgh." There was perhaps, never one among all 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 endow"ed with manly sagacity and penetration; his heart "was a perpetual spring of overflowing benignity; his "feelings were all tremblingly alive to the sense of the sub"lime, the beautiful, the tender, the pious, the virtuous: "Poetry was to him the dear solace of perpetual blind66 ness; cheerfulness, even to gaiety, was, notwithstanding "that irremediable misfortune, long the predominant co"lour of his mind: In his latter years, when the gloom "might otherwise have thickened around him, hope, faith, "devotion the most fervent and sublime, exalted his mind "to Heaven, and made him maintain his wonted cheerfulness in the expectation of a speedy dissolution." હે In the beginning of the Winter of 1786-87, Burns came to Edinburgh: By Dr. B. he was received with the most My warmest good wishes and most respectful compliments to Mrs. Blacklock, and Miss Johnston, 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 apophthegms 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 all her paths are peace.” Adieu! Here follow the "The mother's lament for the loss of her son," and the song beginning, "The lazy mist hangs from the brow of the hill." Dr. Currie's Ed. vol. iv. p. 290. 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. Howeyer it be, let me quote you my two favorite 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. YOUNG. Hear, Hear, Alfred, hero of the state, Thy genius heaven's high will declare; Is never, never to despair! Is never to despair! 121 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 desert, 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 humour of it, we shall think of a stanza or two to add to it. No. |