hould you succeed, I will undertake to get new | place the capital letters properly; as to the ausic worthy of the subject. What a fine field punctuation, the printers do that themselves. or your imagination, and who is there alive can I have a copy of Tam o' Shanter ready to raw so many beauties from Nature and pastoral send yon by the first opportunity: it is too magery as yourself? It is, by the way, sur- heavy to send by post. rising that there does not exist, so far as I I heard of Mr. Corbet lately. He, in connow, a proper song for each season. We Have sequence of your recommendation, is most zealongs on hunting, fishing, skaiting, and one au-ous to serve me. Please favour me soon with amnal song, Harvest Home. As your muse an account of your good folks; if Mrs. H. is neither spavied nor rusty, you may mount is recovering, and the young gentleman doing the hill of Parnassus, and return with a sonnet well. in your pocket for every season. For my suggestions, if I be rude, correct me; if impertinent, chastise me; if presuming, despise me. But if you blend all my weaknesses, and pound out one grain of insincerity, then am I not thy Faithful friend, &c. No. CLIV. TO MRS. DUNLOP. November, 1790. No. CLV. TO CRAUFORD TAIT, Esq. EDINBURGH. DEAR SIR, Ellisland, Oct. 15, 1790. ALLOW me to introduce to your acquaintance the bearer, Mr. Wm. Duncan, a friend of mine, whom I have long known and long loved. His father, whose only son he is, has a decent little property in Ayrshire, and has bred the young man to the law, in which department he comes up an adventurer to your good town. I shall give you my friend's character in two words: as to his head, he has talents enough, and more than enough for common life; as to his heart, when nature had kneaded the kindly clay that composts it, she said, "I can no more. "As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country." Fate has long owed me a letter of good news from you, in return for the many tidings of sorrow which I have received. In this instance I most cordially obey the apostle-" Rejoice You, my good Sir, were born under kinder with them that do rejoice"--for me to sing for stars; but your fraternal sympathy, I well know, joy is no new thing; but to preach for joy, as I can enter into the feelings of the young man, have done in the commencement of this epistle, who goes into life with the laudable ambition to is a pitch of extravagant rapture to which I ne-do something, and to be something among his ver rose before. fellow creatures; but whom the consciousness of friendless obscurity presses to the earth, and wounds to the soul! Even the fairest of his virtues are against I read your letter-I literally jumped for joy -How could such a mercurial creature as a poet, lumpishly keep his seat on the receipt of the best news from his best friend. I seized my him. That independent spirit, and that ingegilt-headed Wangee rod, an instrument indisnuous modesty, qualities inseparable from a nopensably necessary, in my left hand, in the moble mind, are, with the million, circumstances ment of inspiration and rapture; and stride, not a little disqualifying. What pleasure is in stride-quick and quicker-out skipt I among the power of the fortunate and the happy, by the broomy banks of Nith, to muse over my their notice and patronage, to brighten the joy by retail. To keep within the bounds of countenance and glad the heart of such depressprose was impossible. Mrs. Little's is a more ed youth! I am not so angry with mankind elegant, but not a more sincere compliment to the sweet little fellow than I, extempore almost, poured out to him in the following verses. (See the poem-On the Birth of a Posthumous Child.) for their deaf economy of the purse:--The goods of this world cannot be divided, without being lessened but why be a niggard of that which bestows bliss on a fellow-creature, yet takes nothing from our own means of enjoyment? We wrap ourselves up in the cloak of our own better-fortune, and turn away our eyes, lest the wants and woes of our brother I am much flattered by your approbation of mortals should disturb the selfish apathy of our my Tam o' Shanter, which you express in your souls! former letter, though, by the bye, you load me I am the worst hand in the world at asking a in that said letter with accusations heavy and favour. That indirect address, that insinuating many; to all which I plead not guilty! Your implication, which, without any positive rebook is, I hear, on the road to reach me. As quest, plainly expresses your wish, is a talent to printing of poetry, when you prepare it for not to be acquired at a plough-tail. Tell me the press, you have only to spell it right, and then, for you can, in what periphrasis of_lan, guage, in what circumvolution of phrase, I shall | of a sparrow, and satire the pop-gun of a schoolenvelope yet not conceal this plain story. boy. Creation-disgracing scelerats such as they, "My dear Mr. Tait, my friend Mr. Duncan, God only can mend, and the devil only can puwhom I have the pleasure of introducing to you, nish. In the comprehending way of Caligula, I is a young lad of your own profession, and a wish they had all but one neck. I feel impotent gentleman of much modesty and great worth. as a child to the ardour of my wishes! O for a Perhaps it may be in your power to assist him withering curse to blast the germins of their in the, to him, important consideration of get-wicked machinations. O for a poisonous tornating a place; but at all events, your notice and do, winged from the torrid zone of Tartarus, to acquaintance will be a very great acquisition to sweep the spreading crop of their villainous conhim; and I dare pledge myself that he will ne- trivances to the lowest hell! ver disgrace your favour.' You may possibly be surprised, Sir, at such a letter from me; 'tis, I own, in the usual way of calculating these matters, more than our acquaintance entitles me to; but my answer is short: Of all the men at your time of life, whom I knew in Edinburgh, you are the most accessible on the side on which I have assailed you. You are very much altered indeed from what you were when I knew you, if generosity point the path you will not tread, or humanity call to you in vain. As to myself, a being to whose interest I believe you are still a well-wisher; I am here, breathing at all times, thinking sometimes, and rhyming now and then. Every situation has its share of the cares and pains of life, and iny situation I am persuaded has a full ordinary allowance of its pleasures and enjoyments. I have, these several months, been hammering at an elegy on the amiable and accomplished Miss Burnet. I have got, and can get, no My best compliments to your father and Miss farther than the following fragment, on which, Tait. If you have an opportunity, please remember me in the solemn league and covenant please give me your strictures. In all kinds of poetic composition, I set great store by your of friendship to Mrs. Lewis Hay. I am a wretch for not writing her; but I am so hack-opinion; but in sentimental verses, in the poeneyed with self-accusation in that way, that try of the heart, no Roman Catholic ever set my conscience lies in my bosom with scarce the more value on the infallibility of the Holy Father than I do on yours. sensibility of an oyster in its shell. Where is Lady M'Kenzie? wherever she is, God bless her! I likewise beg leave to trouble you with compliments to Mr. Wm. Hamilton; Mrs. Hamilton and family; and Mrs. Chalmers, when you are in that country. Should you meet with Miss Nimmo, please remember me kindly to her. No. CLVI. I mean the introductory couplets as text ver ELEGY ON THE LATE MISS BURNET OF MONBODDO LIFE ne'er exulted in so rich a prize, Thy form and mind, sweet maid, can I forget; DEAR SIR, WHETHER in the way of my trade, I can be of any service to the Rev. Doctor, is I fear very doubtful. Ajax's shield consisted, I think, of seven bull-hides and a plate of brass, which al-In vain ye flaunt in summer's pride, ye groves; together set Hector's utmost force at defiance. Alas! I am not a Hector, and the worthy Doctor's foes are as securely armed as Ajax was. Ignorance, superstition, bigotry, stupidity, malevolence, self-conceit, envy-all strongly bound in a massy frame of brazen impudence. Good Ged, Sir! to such a shield, humour is the peck • Dr. M'Gill of Ayr. Thou crystal streamlet with thy flowery shore; Ye heathy wastes inmix'd with reedy fens, Ye rugged cliffs o'erhanging dreary glens, Princes whose cumb'rous pride was all their country. But far otherwise is the lot of the man worth, Shall venal lays their pompous exit hail; And thou, sweet excellence! forsake our earth, And not a muse in honest grief bewail. We saw thee shine in youth and beauty's pride, And virtue's light that beams beyond the spheres ; But like the sun eclips'd at morning tide, Thou left'st us darkling in a world of tears. Let me hear from you soon. Adieu ! No. CLVIII. TO MR. PETER HILL. of family and fortune. His early follies and ex- Well! divines may say of it what they please, but execration is to the mind, what phlebotomy is to the body; the vital sluices of both are wonderfully relieved by their respective evacuations. No. CLIX. FROM A. F. TYTLER, Esq. 17th January, 1791. TAXE these two guineas, and place the.. over against that account of yours! which has gagged my mouth these five or six months! I can as little write good things as apologies to the man I owe money to. O the supreme curse of making three guineas do the business of five! Not all the labours of Hercules; not all the He- DEAR SIR, Edinburgh, 12th March, 1791 brews' three centuries of Egyptian bondage were MR. HILL yesterday put into my hands such an insuperable business, such an sheet of Grose's Antiquities, containing a poem task!! Poverty! thou half-sister of death, thou of yours, entitled Tam o' Shanter, a tale. The cousin-german of hell! where shall I find force very high pleasure I have received from the of execration equal to the amplitude of thy de- perusal of this admirable piece, I feel, demands merits? Oppressed by thee, the venerable an- the warmest acknowledgments. Hill tells me cient, grown hoary in the practice of every vir- he is to send off a packet for you this day; I tue, laden with years and wretchedness, im- cannot resist therefore putting on paper what I plores a little-little aid to support his exist- must have told you in person, had I met with ence, from a stony-hearted son of Mammon, you after the recent perusal of your tale, which whose sun of prosperity never knew a cloud; is, that I feel I owe you a debt, which, if unand is by him denied and insulted. Oppressed discharged, would reproach me with ingratiby thee, the man of sentiment, whose heart tude. I have seldom in my life tasted of higher glows with independence, and melts with sensi-enjoyment from any work of genius, than I have bility, inly pines under the neglect, or writhes received from this composition; and I am much in bitterness of soul, under the contumely of ar-mistaken, if this poem alone, had you never rogant, unfeeling wealth. Oppressed by thee, written another syllable, would not have been the son of genius, whose ill-starred ambition sufficient to have transmitted your name down plants him at the tables of the fashionable and to posterity with high reputation. In the inpolite, must see, in suffering silence, his remark troductory part, where you paint the character neglected, and his person despised, while shal- of your hero, and exhibit him at the ale-house low greatness, in his idiot attempts at wit, shall ingle, with his tippling cronies, you have delimeet with countenance and applause. Nor is it neated nature with a humour and naiveté, that only the family of worth that have reason to would do honour to Matthew Prior; but when complain of thee; the children of folly and vice, you describe the unfortunate orgies of the though in common with thee, the offspring of witches' sabbath, and the hellish scenery in evil, smart equally under thy rod. Owing to which they are exhibited, you display a power thee, the man of unfortunate disposition and ne- of imagination, that Shakspeare himself could glected education, is condemned as a fool for his not have exceeded. I know not that I have dissipation, despised and shunned as a needy ever met with a picture of more horrible fancy wretch, when his follies, as usual, bring him to than the following: want and when his unprincipled necessities drive him to dishonest practices, he is abhorred" Coffins stood round like open presses, as a miscreant, and perishes by the justice of his That showed the dead in their last dresses ↑ " And by some devilish cantrip slight, But when I came to the succeeding lines, "A knife a father's throat had mangled, arm. strings of a poor poet. However, providence. to keep up the proper proportion of evil with the good, which, it seems is necessary in this my sublunary state, thought proper to check my exultation by a very serious misfortune. A day or two after I received your letter, my horse came down with me and broke my right As this is the first service my arm has done me since its disaster, I find myself unable to do more than just in general terms to thank And here, after the two following lines, "Wi' you for this additional instance of your patronmair o' horrible and awfu'," &c. the descriptive age and friendship. As to the faults you depart might perhaps have been better closed, than tected in the piece, they are truly there: one the four lines which succeed, which, though of them, the hit at the lawyer and priest, I shall good in themselves, yet as they derive all their cut out; as to the falling off in the catastrophe, merit from the satire they contain, are here for the reason you justly adduce, it cannot easily rather misplaced among the circumstances of be remedied. Your approbation, Sir, has given pure horror. The initiation of the young me such additional spirits to persevere in this witch is most happily described-the effect of species of poetic composition, that I am already her charms, exhibited in the dance, on Satan revolving two or three stories in my fancy. If himself-the apostrophe Ah, little thought I can bring these floating ideas to bear any kind thy reverend grannie!"-the transport of Tam, of embodied form, it will give me an additional who forgets his situation, and enters completely opportunity of assuring you how much I have into the spirit of the scene, are all features of the honour to be, &c. high merit, in this excellent composition. The only fault it possesses, is, that the winding up, or conclusion of the story, is not commensurate to the interest which is excited by the descriptive and characteristic painting of the preceding parts. The preparation is fine, but the result is not adequate. But for this, perhaps, you have a good apology-you stick to the popular tale. No. CLXI. TO MRS. DUNLOP. Ellisland, 7th February, 1791. WHEN I tell you, Madam, that by a fall, not from my horse, but with my horse, I have been a cripple some time, and that this is the first day my arm and hand have been able to serve me in writing; you will allow that it is too And now that I have got out my mind, and feel a little relieved of the weight of that debt I owed you, let me end this desultory scroll by an advice: You have proved your talent for a species of composition, in which but a very good an apology for my seemingly ungrateful few of our own poets have succeeded-Go on -write more tales in the same style; you will eclipse Prior and La Fontaine; for, with equal wit, equal power of numbers, and equal naiveté of expression, you have a bolder, and more vigorous imagination. I am, dear Sir, with much esteem, No. CLX. silence. I am now getting better, and am able to rhyme a little, which implies some tolerable ease; as I cannot think that the most poetic genius is able to compose on the rack. I do not remember if ever I mentioned to you my having an idea of composing an elegy on the late Miss Burnet of Monboddo. I had the honour of being pretty well acquainted with her, and have seldom felt so much at the loss of an acquaintance, as when I heard that so amiable and accomplished a piece of God's works was no more. I have as yet gone no farther than the following fragment, of which please let me have your opinion. You know that elegy is a subject so much exhausted, that any new NOTHING less than the unfortunate accident idea on the business is not to be expected; 'tis I have met with, could have prevented my grateful acknowledgments for your letter. His own favourite poem, and that an essay in a walk of the muses entirely new to him, where consequently his hopes and fears were in the BIR, TO THE SAME. most anxious alarm for his success in the attempt; to have that poem so much applauded by one of the first judges, was the most delicious vibration that ever trilled along the heart • Our bard profited by Mr. Tytler's criticism, and expunged the four lines accordingly well if we can place an old idea in a new light. The parent's heart that nestled fond in thee, care! So deckt the woodbine sweet yon aged tree, Your kind letter, with your kind remem-importance, Mr. G. can do me service of the brance of your god-son, came safe. This last, utmost importance in time to come. I was Madam, is scarcely what my pride can bear. born a poor dog; and however I may occasionAs to the little fellow, he is, partiality apart, ally pick a better bone than I used to do, I `the finest boy I have of a long time seen. He know I must live and die poor; but I will inis now seventeen months old, has the small-pox dulge the flattering faith that my poetry will and measles over, has cut several teeth, and yet considerably outlive my poverty; and without never had a grain of doctor's drugs in his any fustain affectation of spirit, I can promise and bowels. affirm, that it must be no ordinary craving of the latter shall ever make me do any thing injurious to the honest fame of the former. Whatever may be my failings, for failings are a part of human nature, may they ever be those of a generous heart, and an independent mind. It is no fault of mine that I was born to dependence; nor is it Mr. G's chiefest praise that he can command influence; but it his merit to bestow, not only with the kindness of a brother, but with the politeness of a gentleman; and I trust it shall be mine, to receive with thankfulness and remember with undiminished gratitude. I am truly happy to hear that the "little floweret" is blooming so fresh and fair, and that the "mother plant" is rather recovering her drooping head. Soon and well may her "cruel wounds" be healed! I have written thus far with a good deal of difficulty. When I get a little abler you shall hear farther from, Madam, yours, &c. No. CLXII. TO LADY W. M. CONSTABLE, ACKNOWLEDGING A PRESENT OF A VALUABLE MY LADY, No. CLXIV. FROM THE REV. (NOW PRINCIPAL), SIR, NOTHING less than the unlucky accident of having lately broken my right arm, could have prevented me, the moment I received your ladyship's elegant present by Mrs. Miller, from re-to turning you my warmest and most grateful acknowledgments. I assure your ladyship, I shall set it apart; the symbols of religion shall only London, 8th February, 1791. I TROUBLE you with this letter, to inform you that I am in hopes of being able very soon bring to the press a new edition (long since talked of) of Michael Bruce's Poems. The profits of the edition are to go to his motherbe more sacred. In the moment of poetic com-less. The poems are to be published by suba woman of eighty years of age-poor and helpposition, the box shall be my inspiring genius. scription; and it may be possible, I think, to When I would breathe the comprehensive wish make out a 2s. 6d. or 3s. volume, with the asof benevolence for the happiness of others, Isistance of a few hitherto unpublished verses, shall recollect your ladyship; when I would in-which I have got from the mother of the poet. terest my fancy in the distresses incident to humanity, I shall remember the unfortunate Mary. No. CLXIII. TO MRS. GRAHAM, OF FINTRY. MADAM, But the design I have in view in writing to you, is not merely to inform you of these facts, it is to solicit the aid of your name and pen in support of the scheme. The reputation of Bruce is already high with every reader of classical taste, and I shall be anxious to guard against tarnishing his character, by allowing any new poems to appear that may lower it. For this purpose, the MSS. I am in possession of, have been submitted to the revision of some whose critical talents I can trust to, and I mean still to submit them to others. WHETHER it is that the story of our Mary, Queen of Scots, has a peculiar effect on the May I beg to know, therefore, if you will feelings of a poet, or whether I have, in the en- take the trouble of pe using the MSS.—of givclosed ballad, succeeded beyond my usual poetic ing your opinion, and suggesting what curtailsuccess, I know not: but it has pleased me be- ments, alterations, or amendments, occur to you yond any effort of my muse for a good while as advisable? And will you allow us to let it be past; on that account I enclose it particularly known, that a few lines by you will be added It is true, the purity of my motives to the volume ? to you. may be suspected. I am already deeply indebt- I know the extent of this request.-It is ed to Mr. G'd to make it, But I have this consolation,. the usual ways of men, is of infinitely greater that though you see it proper to refuse it, you -'s goodness; and, what in |