will gratify an idle penchant at the enormous, cruel expense of perhaps ruining the peace of

No. LXIII.

Edinburgh, Sunday Morning,
Nov. 23, 1787.

the very woman for whom he professes the ge- TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE, EDINBURGH, nerous passion of love! He is a gentleman in his mind and manners. tant pis! He is a volatile school-boy: the heir of a man's fortune who well knows the value of two times two!

I BEG, my dear Sir, you would not make any appointment to take us to Mr. Ainslie's tonight. On looking over my engagements, constitution, present state of my health, some little vexatious soul concerns, &c. I find I can't sup abroad to-night.

I shall be in to-day till one o'clock if you have a leisure hour.

You will think it romantic when I tell you, that I find the idea of your friendship almost necessary to my existence.-You assume a proper length of face in my bitter hours of bluedevilism, and you laugh fully up to my highest wishes at my good things.—I don't know, upon the whole, if you are one of the first fellows in God's world, but you are so to me. I tell you this just now in the conviction that some inequalities in my temper and manner may perhaps sometimes make you suspect that I am not so warmly as I ought to be

No. LXIV.

Your friend.

TO JOHN BALLANTINE, Esq.

WHILE here I sit, sad and solitary, by the

HERE have I sat, my dear Madam, in the stony attitude of perplexed study for fifteen vexatious minutes, my head askew, bending over the intended card; my fixed eye insensible to the very light of day poured around; my pen-side of a fire in a little country inn, and drying dulous goose-feather, loaded with ink, hanging over the future letter; all for the important purpose of writing a complimentary card to accompany your trinket.

and tells me he is going to Ayr. By heavens! my wet clothes, in pops a poor fellow of a sodger say I to myself, with a tide of good spirits which the magic of that sound, Auld Toon o' Ayr, conjured up, I will send my last song to Mr. Ballantine. Here it is

Compliments is such a miserable Greenland expression; lies at such a chilly polar distance from the torrid zone of my constitution, that I cannot, for the very soul of me, use it to any (The first sketch of " Ye Banks and Braes o' person for whom I have the twentieth part of the esteem, every one must have for you who

knows you.

As I leave town in three or four days, I can give myself the pleasure of calling for you only

Bonnie Doon.")

for a minute. Tuesday evening, sometime about BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.

try; you have done me the honour to interest | and boyish days, too, I owed much to an old 'yourself very warmly in my behalf; and I think woman who resided in the family, remarkable a faithful account of what character of a man I for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. am, and how I came by that character, may per- She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the haps amuse you in an idle moment. I will give country of tales and songs concerning devils, you an honest narrative; though I know it will ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, be often at my own expense ;-for I assure you, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, Sir, I have, like Solomon, whose character, ex-apparitions, cantrips, giants, enchanted towers, cept in the trifling affair of wisdom, I some- dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated times think I resemble,-I have, I say, like him, the latent seeds of poetry; but had so strong an turned my eyes to behold madness and folly, and, effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in like him too, frequently shaken hands with their my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp intoxicating friendship. After you look-out in suspicious places; and though nohave perused these pages, should you think them body can be more sceptical than I am in such trifling and impertinent, I only beg leave to tell matters, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy you, that the poor author wrote them under some to shake of these idle terrors. The earliest comtwitching qualms of conscience, arising from a position that I recollect taking pleasure in, was suspicion that he was doing what he ought not The Vision of Mirza, and a hymn of Addison's, to do; a predicament he has more than once beginning, How are thy Servants blest, O been in before. Lord! I particularly remember one half-stanza which was music to my boyish ears—

I have not the most distant pretensions to assume that character which the pye-coated guardians of escutcheons call a Gentleman. When at Edinburgh last winter, I got acquainted in the Herald's Office; and, looking through that granary of honours, I there found almost every name in the kingdom; but for me,

"My ancient but ignoble blood

"For though on dreadful whirls we hung High on the broken wave-"

I met with these pieces in Mason's English Collection, one of my school-books. The two first books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I

Has crept through scoundrels ever since the ever read since, were, The Life of Hannibal,

flood."

and The History of Sir William Wallace. Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn, that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bag-pipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest.

Gules, purpure, argent, &c. quite disowned me. My father was of the north of Scotland, the son of a farmer, and was thrown by early misfortunes on the world at large; where, after many years wanderings and sojournings, he picked up a pretty large quantity of observation and experience, to which I am indebted for most of my Polemical divinity about this time was putlittle pretensions to wisdom.-I have met with ting the country half-mad; and I, ambitious of few who understood men, their manners, and shining in conversation parties on Sundays, betheir ways, equal to him; but stubborn, ungain- tween sermons, at funerals, &c. used, a few years ly integrity, and headlong, ungovernable irasci- afterwards, to puzzle Calvinism with so much bility, are disqualifying circumstances; conse-heat and indiscretion, that I raised a hue and cry quently I was born a very poor man's son. For of heresy against me, which has not ceased to the first six or seven years of my life, my fa- this hour.

ther was a gardener to a worthy gentleman of My vicinity to Ayr was of some advantage small estate in the neighbourhood of Ayr. Had to me. My social disposition, when not checkhe continued in that station, I must have march-ed by some modifications of spirited pride, was, ed off to be one of the little underlings about a like our chatechism-definition of infinitude, farm-house; but it was his dearest wish and without bounds or limits. I formed several conprayer to have it in his power to keep his chil-nections with other younkers who possessed sudren under his own eye till they could discern perior advantages, the youngling actors, who between good and evil; so, with the assistance were busy in the rehearsal of parts in which they of his generous master, my father ventured on were shortly to appear on the stage of life, a small farm on his estate. At those years where, alas! was destined to drudge behind I was by no means a favourite with any body. the scenes. is not commonly at this green

I was a good deal noted for a retentive memory, age that our young gentry have a just sense of a stubborn sturdy something in my disposition, the immense distance between them and their and an enthusiastic idiot piety. I say idiot piety, ragged play-fellows. It takes a few dashes into because I was then but a child. Though it cost the world, to give the young great man that prothe schoolmaster some thrashings, I made an ex-per, decent, unnoticing disregard for the poor, cellent English scholar; and by the time I was insignificant, stupid devils, the mechanics and ten or eleven years of age, I was a critic in sub-peasantry around him, who were perhaps bora stantives, verbs, and participles. In my infant in the same village. My young superiors never

sons.

insulted the clouterly appearance of my plough-could make verses like printed ones, composed boy carcass, the two extremes of which were of- by men who had Greek and Latin; but my ten exposed to all the inclemencies of all the sea-girl sung a song, which was said to be comThey would give me stray volumes of posed by a small country laird's son, on one of his books: among them, even then, I could pick up father's maids, with whom he was in love; and I some observations; and one, whose heart I am saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as sure not even the Munny Begum scenes have he; for, excepting that he could smear sheep, and tainted, helped me to a little French. Parting cast peats, his father living in the moor-lands, with these my young friends and benefactors, as he had no more scholar-craft than myself. they occasionally went off for the East or West Thus with me began love and poetry; Indies, was often to me a sore affliction; but I which at times have been my only, and till was soon called to more serious evils. My fa- within the last twelve months, have been my ther's generous master died; the farm proved a highest enjoyment. My father struggled on ruinous bargain; and, to clench the misfortune, till he reached the freedom in his lease, when we fell into the hands of a factor, who sat for he entered on a larger farm, about ten miles the picture I have drawn of one in my Tale of farther in the country. The nature of the Twa Dogs. My father was advanced in life bargain he made was such as to throw a little when he married; I was the eldest of seven ready money into his hands at the commencechildren; and he, worn out by early hardships, ment of his lease; otherwise the affair would was unfit for labour. My father's spirit was have been impracticable. For four years we soon irritated, but not easily broken. There was lived comfortably here; but a difference coma freedom in his lease in two years more; and to mencing between him and his landlord, as to weather these two years, we retrenched our ex- terms, after three years tossing and whirling. penses. We lived very poorly: I was a dexter- in the vortex of litigation, my father was just ous ploughman, for my age; and the next eldest saved from the horrors of a jail by a consumpto me was a brother (Gilbert) who could drive tion, which, after two years' promises, kindly the plough very well, and help me to thrash the stepped in, and carried him away, to where the corn. A novel writer might perhaps have view-wicked cease from troubling, and where the ed these scenes with some satisfaction; but so weary are at rest. did not I; my indignation yet boils at the recol- It is during the time that we lived on this lection of the s- -l factor's insolent threa- farm that my little story is most eventful. I tening letters, which used to set us all in tears. was, at the beginning of this period, perhaps This kind of life-the cheerless gloom of a the most ungainly, awkward boy in the parish hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galley--no solitaire was less acquainted with the slave, brought me to my sixteenth year; a lit- ways of the world. What I knew of ancient tle before which period I first committed the sin story was gathered from Salmon's and Guthof Rhyme. You know our country custom of rie's geographical grammars; and the ideas I coupling a man and woman together as partners had formed of modern manners, of literature, in the labours of harvest. In my fifteenth au- and criticism, I got from the Spectator. These, tumn my partner was a bewitching creature a with Pope's Works, some plays of Shakspeare, year younger than myself. My scarcity of Tull and Dickson on Agriculture, the PanEnglish denies me the power of doing her jus-theon, Locke's Essay on the Human Untice in that language; but you know the Scot-derstanding, Stackhouse's History of the tish idiom-she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. Bible, Justice's British Gardener's Directory, In short, she altogether, unwittingly to herself, Bayle's Lectures, Allan Ramsay's Works, initiated me in that delicious passion, which, in Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, A Select Collection of English Songs, and and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the Hervey's Meditations, had formed the whole first of human joys, our dearest blessing here of my reading. The collection of songs was my below! How she caught the contagion, I can-vade mecum. I pored over them, driving my not tell you medical people talk much of in-cart, or walking to labour, song by song, verse fection from breathing the same air, the touch, by verse; carefully noting the true tender, or &c.; but I never expressly said I loved her. sublime, from affectation and fustian. I am Indeed, I did not know myself why I liked so convinced I owe to this practice much of my crimuch to loiter behind with her, when return- tic craft, such as it is. ing in the evening from our labours; why the In my seventeenth year, to give my manners tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill a brush, I went to a country dancing-school.like an Æolian barp; and particularly why my My father had an unaccountable antipathy pulse beat such a furious ratan when I looked against these meetings; and my going was, and fingered over her little hand to pick out the what to this moment I repent, in opposition to cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her his wishes. My father, as I said before, was other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; subject to strong passions; from that instance and it was her favourite reel, to which I at- of disobedience in me, he took a sort of dislike tempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. to me, which I believe was one cause of the disI was not so presumptuous as to imagine that I sipation which marked my succeeding years. I

"Like Proserpine, gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower."

It was in vain to think of doing any more good at school. The remaining week I staid, I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her; and the two last nights of my stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me guiltless.

say dissipation, comparatively with the strict- Another circumstance in my life which ness, and sobriety, and regularity of Presbyte- made some alteration in my mind and manners, rian country life; for though the Will-o'-Wisp was, that I spent my nineteenth summer on a meteors of thoughtless whim were almost the smuggling coast, a good distance from home, at sole lights of my path, yet early ingrained piety a noted school, to learn mensuration, surveying, and virtue kept me for several years afterwards dialling, &c. in which I made a pretty good within the line of innocence. The great mis- progress. But I made a greater progress in the fortune of my life was to want an aim. I had knowledge of mankind. The contraband trade felt early some stirrings of ambition, but they was at that time very successful, and it somewere the blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops times happened to me to fall in with those who round the walls of his cave. I saw my father's carried it on. Scenes of swaggering riot and situation entailed on me perpetual labour. The roaring dissipation were till this time new to only two openings by which I could enter the me; but I was no enemy to social life. Here, temple of Fortune, was the gate of niggardly though I learnt to fill my glass, and to mix economy, or the path of little chicaning bargain-without fear in a drunken squabble, yet I went making. The first is so contracted an aperture, on with a high hand with my geometry, till the I never could squeeze myself into it ;-the last sun entered Virgo, a month which is always a I always hated-there was contamination in the carnival in my bosom, when a charming filette, very entrance! Thus abandoned of aim or view who lived next door to the school, overset my in life, with a strong appetite for sociability, as trigonometry, and set me off at a tangent from well from native hilarity, as from a pride of ob- the sphere of my studies. I, however, struggled servation and remark; a constitutional melan-on with my sines, and co-sines, for a few days choly or hypochondriasm that made me fly so-more; but stepping into the garden one charmlitude; add to these incentives to social life, my ing noon to take the sun's altitude, there I met reputation for bookish knowledge, a certain my angel, wild logical talent, and a strength of thought, something like the rudiments of good sense; and it will not seem surprising that I was generally a welcome guest where I visited, or any great wonder that, always where two or three met together, there was I among them. But, far beyond all other impulses of my heart, was un penchant a l'adorable moitée du genre humain. My heart was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other; and as in every other warfare, in this world my fortune was various, sometimes I was I returned home very considerably improvreceived with favour, and sometimes I was mor-ed. My reading was enlarged with the very tified with a repulse. At the plough, scythe, important addition of Thomson's and Shenor reap-hook, I feared no competitor, and thus stone's Works; I had seen human nature in a I set absolute want at defiance; and as I never new phasis; and I engaged several of my cared farther for my labours than while I was school-fellows to keep up a literary corresponin actual exercise, I spent the evenings in the dence with me. This improved me in compoway after my own heart. A country lad sel-sition. I had met with a collection of letters dom carries on a love adventure without an as- by the wits of Queen Anne's reign, and I pored sisting confidant. I possessed a curiosity, zeal, and intrepid dexterity, that recommended me as a proper second on these occasions; and I dare say, I felt as much pleasure in being in the secret of half the loves of the parish of Tarbolton, as ever did statesmen in knowing the intrigues of half the courts of Europe.-The very goosefeather in my hand seems to know instinctively the well-worn path of my imagination, the favourite theme of my song; and is with difficul- My life flowed on much in the same course ty restrained from giving you a couple of para-till my twenty-third year. Vive l'amour, et graphs on the love adventures of my compeers, vive la bagatelle, were my sole principles of acthe humble inmates of the farm-house and cot-tion. The addition of two more authors to my tage; but the grave sons of science, ambition, library gave me great pleasure; Sterne and or avarice, baptize these things by the name of M'Kenzie-Tristram Shandy and The Man follies. To the sons and daughters of labour of Feeling-were my bosom favourites. Poesy and poverty, they are matters of the most seri-was still a darling walk for my mind; but it ous nature; to them, the ardent hope, the sto- was only indulged in according to the humour en interview, the tender farewell, are the great- of the hour. I had usually half a dozen or more est and most delicious parts of their enjoyments. pieces on hand; I took up one or other, as it

over them most devoutly I kept copies of any of my own letters that pleased me; and a comparison between them and the composition of most of my correspondents flattered my vanity. I carried this whim so far, that though I had not three farthings worth of business in the world, yet almost every post brought me as many letters as if I had been a broad plodding son of day-book and ledger.

ing star; but he spoke of illicit love with the levity of a sailor, which hitherto I had regarded with horror. Here his friendship did me a mischief; and the consequence was, that soon after I resumed the plough, I wrote the Poet's Welcome. My reading only increased, while in this town, by two stray volumes of Pamela, and one of Ferdinand Count Fathom, which gave me some idea of novels. Rhyme, except some religious pieces that are in print, I had given

suited the momentary tone of the mind, and dismissed the work as it bordered on fatigue. My passions, when once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they got vent in rhyme; and then the conning over my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet! None of the rhymes of those days are in print, except Winter, a Dirge, the eldest of my printed pieces; The Death of Poor Mailie, John Barleycorn, and Songs, first, second, and third. Song second was the ebullition of that passion which ended the fore-up; but meeting with Fergusson's Scottish mentioned school business.

My twenty-third year was to me an important era. Partly through whim, and partly that I wished to set about doing something in life, I joined a flax-dresser in a neighbouring town (Irvine) to learn his trade. This was an unlucky affair. My -; and, to finish the whole, as we were giving a welcome carousal to the new year, the shop took fire, and burnt to ashes; and I was left, like a true poet, not worth a sixpence.

Poems, I strung anew my wildly-sounding lyre with emulating vigour. When my father died, his all went among the hell-hounds that prow! in the kennel of justice; but we made a shift to collect a little money in the family amongst us, with which, to keep us together, my brother and I took a neighbouring farm. My brother wanted my hair-brained imagination, as well as my social and amorous madness; but, in good sense, and every sober qualification, he was far my superior.

I entered on this farm with a full resolution, Come, go to, I will be wise! I read farming books; I calculated crops; I attended markets; and, in short, in spite of the devil, and the world, and the flesh, I believe I should have been a wise man; but the first year, from unfortunately buying bad seed, the second, from a late harvest, we lost half our crops. This overset all my wisdom, and I returned, like the dog to his vomit, and the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.

I was obliged to give up this scheme: the clouds of misfortune were gathering thick round my father's head; and, what was worst of all, he was visibly far gone in a consumption; and, to crown my distresses, a belle fille, whom I > adored, and who had pledged her soul to meet me in the field of matrimony, jilted me, with peculiar circumstances of mortification. The finishing evil that brought up the rear of this infernal file, was, my constitutional melancholy being increased to such a degree, that for three months I was in a state of mind scarcely to be I now began to be known in the neighenvied by the hopeless wretches who have got bourhood as a maker of rhymes. The first of their mittimus-Depart from me, ye cursed! my poetic offspring that saw the light, was a From this adventure, I learned something burlesque lamentation on a quarrel between two of a town life; but the principal thing which reverend Calvinists, both of them dramatis pergave my mind a turn, was a friendship I form-sone in my Holy Fair. I had a notion myed with a young fellow, a very noble character, but a hapless son of misfortune. He was the son of a simple mechanic; but a great man in the neighbourhood taking him under his patronage, gave him a genteel education, with a view of bettering his situation in life. The patron dying just as he was ready to launch out into the world, the poor fellow in despair went to sea; where, after a variety of good and ill fortune, a little before I was acquainted with him, he had been set ashore by an American privateer, on the wild coast of Connaught, stripped of every thing. I cannot quit this poor fellow's story, without adding, that he is at this time master of a large West Indiaman belonging to the Thames.

self, that the piece had some merit; but to prevent the worst, I gave a copy of it to a friend who was very fond of such things, and told him that I could not guess who was the author of it, but that I thought it pretty clever. With a certain description of the clergy, as well as laity, it met with a roar of applause. Holy Willie's Prayer next made its appearance, and alarmed the kirk-session so much, that they held several meetings to look over their spiritual artillery, if haply any of it might be pointed against profane rhymers. Unluckily for me, my wanderings led me on another side, within point blank shot of their heaviest metal. This is the unfortunate story that gave rise to my printed poem, The Lament. This was a most melancholy affair, which I cannot yet bear to reflect on, and had very nearly given me one or two of the principal qualifications for a place among those who have lost the chart, and mistaken the reckoning of Rationality. I gave up my part of the farm to my brother; in truth it was only nominally mine; and made what little

His mind was fraught with independence, magnanimity, and every manly virtue. I loved and admired him to a degree of enthusiasm, and of course strove to imitate him. In some measure, I succeeded; I had pride before, but he taught it to flow in proper channels. His knowledge of the world was vastly superior to mine, and I was all attention to learn. He was the only man I ever saw who was a greater fool than myself, where woman was the presid-Child,

• Rob the Rhymer's Welcome to his Bastard