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heigh-ho, except from the cobweb-tie of what is called good fellowship-who has no view nor aim but what terminates in himself-if there be any grovelling earthborn wretch of our species, a renegado to common sense, who would fain believe that the noble creature, man, is no better than a sort of fungus, generated out of nothing, nobody knows how, and soon dissipating in nothing, nobody knows where; such a stupid beast, such a crawling reptile might balance the foregoing unexaggerated comparison, but no one else would have the patience.

Forgive me, my dear Sir, for this long silence. To make you amends, I shall send you soon, and more encouraging still, without any postage, one or two rhymes of my later manufacture.

No.

No. XXXVII.

To. CAPT. RIDDEL, CARSE.

Ellisland, Oct. 16, 1789.

SIR,

BIG with the idea of this important day* at Friars Carse, I have watched the elements and skies in the full persuasion that they would announce it to the astonished world by some phenomena of terrific portent.-Yesternight until a very late hour did I wait with anxious horror, for the appearance of some Comet firing half the sky; or aerial armies of sanguinary Scandinavians, darting athwart the startled heavens, rapid as the ragged lightning, and horrid as those convulsions of nature that bury nations.

The elements, however, seem to take the matter very quietly: they did not even usher in this morning with triple suns and a shower of blood, symbolical

*The day on which "the Whistle" was contended for.

-

symbolical of the three potent heroes, and the mighty claret-shed of the day. For me, as Thomson in his Winter says of the storm-I shall "Hear astonished, and astonished sing"

The whistle and the man; I sing

The man that won the whistle, &c.

"Here are we met, three merry boys, "Three merry boys I trow are we; "And mony a night we've merry been, "And mony mae we hope to be.

"Wha first shall rise to gang awa,
"A cuckold coward loun is he:
"Wha last beside his chair shall fa'
"He is the king amang us three."

To leave the heights of Parnassus and come to the humble vale of prose.—I have some misgivings that I take too much upon me, when I request you to get your guest, Sir Robert Lowrie, to frank the two enclosed covers for me, the one of them, to Sir William Cunningham, of Robertland, Bart. at Auchenskeith, Kilmarnock,

-the

* In former Editions of these verses, the word first has been printed in this place instead of the word last.

E.

-the other, to Mr. Allan Masterton, WritingMaster, Edinburgh. The first has a kindred claim on Sir Robert, as being a brother Baronet, and likewise a keen Foxite; the other is one of the worthiest men in the world, and a man of real genius; so, allow me to say, he has a fraternal claim on you. I want them franked for tomorrow, as I cannot get them to the post tonight. I shall send a servant again for them in the evening. Wishing that your head may be crowned with laurels to-night, and free from aches to-morrow,

I have the honor to be,

Sir,

Your deeply indebted humble Servant.

H

No.

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WISH from my inmost soul it were in my power to give you a more substantial gratification and return for all your goodness to the poet, than transcribing a few of his idle rhymes. -However," an old song," though to a proverb an instance of insignificance, is generally the only coin a poet has to pay with.

If my poems which I have transcribed, and mean still to transcribe into your book, were equal to the grateful respect and high esteem I bear for the gentleman to whom I present them, they would be the finest poems in the language. -As they are, they will at least be a testimony with what sincerity I have the honor to be,

Sir,

Your devoted humble Servant.

No.

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