No. XLVI. To MRS. DUNLOP. Mauchline, 28th April, 1788. MADAM, YOUR powers of reprehension must be great indeed, as I assure you they made my heart ache with penitential pangs, even though I was really not guilty. As I commence farmer at Whitsunday, you will easily guess I must be pretty busy; but that is not all. As I got the offer of the excise-business without solicitation; and as it costs me only six months attendance for instructions to entitle me to a commission, which commission lies by me, and at any future period, on my simple petition, can be resumed; I thought five-and-thirty pounds a-year was no bad dernier resort for a poor poet, if fortune, in her jade tricks, should kick him down from the little eminence to which she has lately helped him up. For For this reason, I am at present attending these instructions, to have them completed before Whitsunday. Still, Madam, I prepared, with the sincerest pleasure to meet you at the Mount, and came to my brother's on Saturday night, to set out on Sunday; but, for some nights preceding, I had slept in an apartment where the force of the winds and rains was only mitigated by being sifted through numberless apertures in the windows, walls, &c. In consequence, I was on Sunday, Monday, and part of Tuesday, unable to stir out of bed, with all the miserable effects of a violent cold. You see, Madam, the truth of the French maxim Le vrai n'est pas toujours le vrai-semblable; your last was so full of expostulation, and was something so like the language of an offended friend, that I began to tremble for a correspondence which I had with grateful pleasure set down as one of the greatest enjoyments my future life. of Your books have delighted me: Virgil, Dryden, and Tasso were all equally strangers to me but of this more at large in my next. No. No. XLVII. FROM The Reverend JOHN SKINNER. Linshart, 28th April, 1788. DEAR SIR, I RECEIVED your last with the curious present you have favoured me with, and would have made proper acknowledgments before now, but that I have been necessarily engaged in matters of a different complexion. And now that I have got a little respite, I make use of it to thank for this valuable instance of your good-will, and to assure you that, with the sincere heart of a true Scotsman, I highly esteem both the gift and the giver: as a small testimony of which I have herewith sent you for your amusement, (and in a form which I hope you you you will excuse for saving postage) the two songs I wrote about to you already. Charming Nancy, is the real production of genius in a ploughman of twenty years of age at the time of its appearing, with no more education than what he picked up at an old farmer-grandfather's fireside, though now by the strength of natural parts, he is clerk to a thriving bleachfield in the neighbourhood. And I doubt not but you will find in it a simplicity and delicacy, with some turns of humour, that will please one of your taste; at least it pleased me when I first saw it, if that can be any recommendation to it. The other is entirely descripsentiments; and you may make use of one or both as you shall see tive of my own good,* You *CHARMING NANCY. A Song by a BUCHAN Ploughman. Tune- HUMOURS OF GLEN." SOME sing of sweet Mally, some sing of fair Nelly, Some love to be jolly, some love melancholy, And some love to sing of the Humours of Glen. But You will oblige me by presenting my respects to your host, Mr. Cruikshank, who has given such high approbation to my poor Latinity; you may let him know, that as I have likewise But my only fancy is my pretty Nancy, In venting my passion I'll strive to be plain, I'll ask no more treasure, I'll seek no more pleasure, But thee my dear Nancy, gin thou wert my ain. Her beauty delights me, her kindness invites me, Consent, my dear Nancy, and come be my ain: Her dress is quite decent when ta'en in the main; She's blooming in feature, she's handsome in stature, My charming dear Nancy, O wert thou my ain! Like Phœbus adorning the fair ruddy morning, |