men and women, who were busy pulling stems of the plant ragwort. He observed that as each person pulled a ragwort, he or she got astride of it, and called out, " up horsie!" on which the ragwort flew off, like Pegasus, through the air with its rider. The foolish boy likewise pulled his ragwort, and cried with the rest, up horsie!" and, strange to tell, away he flew with the company. The first stage at which the cavalcade stopt, was a merchant's wine cellar in Bourdeaux, where, without saying by your leave, they quaffed away at the best the cellar could afford, until the morning, foe to the imps and works of darkness, threatened to throw light on the matter, and frightened them from their carousals. The poor shepherd lad, being equally a stranger to the scene and the liquor, heedlessly got himself drunk; and when the rest took horse, he fell asleep, and was found so next day by some of the people belonging to the merchant. Somebody that understood Scotch, asking him what he was, he said he was such-a-one's herd in Alloway, and by some means or other getting home again, he lived long to tell the world the wondrous tale. I am, &c. &c. No. CLXV. TO MRS. DUNLOP. 5th January, 1792. You see my hurried life, Madam: I can only command starts of time; however, I am glad of one thing; since I finished the other sheet, the political blast that threatened my welfare is overblown. I have corresponded with Commissioner Graham, for the Board had made me the subject of their animadversions; and now I have the pleasure of informing you, that all is set to rights in that quarter. Now, as to these informers, may the devil be let loose to but hold! I was praying most fervently in my last sheet, and I must not so soon fall a swearing in this. Alas! how little do the wantonly or idly officious think what mischief they do by their malicious insinuations, indirect impertinence, or thoughtless blabbings. What a difference there is in intrinsic worth, candour, benevo lence, generosity, kindness-in all the charities and all the virtues, between one class of human beings and another. For instance, the amiable circle I so lately mixed with in the hospitable hall of D, their generous hearts their uncontaminated dignified minds-their informed and polished understandings-what a contrast, when compared-if such comparing were not downright sacrilege-with the soul of the miscreant who can deliberately plot the destruction of an honest man that never offended him, and with a grin of satisfaction see the unfortunate being, his faithful wife, and prattling innocents, turned over to beggary and ruin ! Your cup, my dear Madam, arrived safe. I had two worthy fellows dining with me the other day, when I, with great formality, produced my whigmeleerie cup, and told them that it had been a family-piece among the descendants of Sir William Wallace. This roused such an enthusiasm, that they insisted on bumpering the punch round in it; and by and bye, never did your great ancestor lay a Southron more completely to rest than for a time did your cup my two friends. Apropos, this is the season of wishing. May God bless you, my dear friend, and bless me the humblest and sincerest of your friends, by granting you yet many returns of the season! May all good things attend you and yours wherever they are scattered over the earth! No. CLXVI. TO MR. WILLIAM SMELLIE, Dumfries, 22d January, 1792. I srr down, my dear Sir, to introduce a young lady to you, and a lady in the first ranks of fashion too. What a task! to you-who care no more for the herd of animals called young ladies, than you do for the herd of animals called young gentlemen. To you-who despise aud detest the groupings and combinations of fashion, as an idiot painter that seems industrious to place staring fools and unprincipled knaves in the foreground of his picture, while men of sense and honesty are too often thrown in the dimmest shades. Mrs. Riddel, who This letter was copied from the Censura Literaria, 1786. It was communicated to the editor of that work will take this letter to town with her and send by Mr. Gilchrist of Stamford, with the following re- it to you, is a character that, even in your own "In a collection of miscellaneous papers of the An-way, as a naturalist and a philosopher, would tiquary Grose, which I purchased a few years since, be an acquisition to your acquaintance. The I found the following letter written to him by Burns, lady too is a votary of the muses; and as I when the former was collecting the Antiquities of Scot land: When I premise it was on the second tradition that he afterwards formed the inimitable tale of "Tam O'Shanter," I cannot doubt of its being read with great interest. It were burning day-light" to point out to a reader, (and who is not a reader of Burns?) the thoughts he afterwards transplanted into the rhythmi mark. cal narrative." O. G. think myself somewhat of a judge in my own trade, I assure you that her verses, always correct, and often elegant, are much beyond the common run of the lady-poetesses of the day. She is a great admirer of your book, and hearing me say that I was acquainted with you, she begged to be known to you, as she is just going [be the quotation of the wise, and my counteto pay her first visit to our Caledonian capital. nance be the delight of the godly, like the illus. I told her that her best way was to desire her trious lord of Laggan's many hills?⚫ As for near relation, and your intimate friend, Craig-him, his works are perfect; never did the pen darroch, to have you at his house while she was of calumny blur the fair page of his reputation, there; and lest you might think of a lively West nor the bolt of hatred fly at his dwelling. Indian girl of eighteen, as girls of eighteen too often deserve to be thought of, I should take care to remove that prejudice. To be impartial, however, in appreciating the lady's merits, Thou mirror of purity, when shall the elfine she has one unlucky failing, a failing which lamp of my glimmerous understanding, purged you will easily discover, as she seems rather from sensual appetites and gross desires, shine pleased with indulging in it; and a failing that like the constellation of thy intellectual powers. you will as easily pardon, as it is a sin which-As for thee, thy thoughts are pure, and thy very much besets yourself;-where she dislikes lips are holy. Never did the unhallowed breath or despises, she is apt to make no more a se- of the powers of darkness, and the pleasures of cret of it, than where she esteems and respects. darkness, pollute the sacred flame of thy skyI will not present you with the unmeaning descended and heaven-bound desires; never did compliments of the season, but I will send you the vapours of impurity stain the unclouded my warmest wishes and most ardent prayers, serene of thy cerulean imagination. O that that FORTUNE may never throw your SUBSIST-like thine were the tenor of my life, like thine ENCE to the mercy of a KNAVE, or set your the tenor of my conversation! then should no CHARACTER on the judgment of a FOOL, but friend fear for my strength, no enemy rejoice in that, upright and erect, you may walk to an honest grave, where men of letters shall say, here lies a man who did honour to science; and men of worth shall say, here lies a man who did honour to human nature! my weakness! Then should I lie down and rise up, and none to make me afraid.-May thy pity and thy prayer be exercised for, O thou lamp of wisdom and mirror of morality! thy devoted slave.t No. CLXVII. TO MR. W. NICOLL. 20th February, 1792. No. CLXVIII. TO MR. CUNNINGHAM. 3d March, 1792. I O THOU, wisest among the wise, meridian SINCE I wrote to you the last lugubrious blaze of prudence, full moon of discretion, and sheet, I have not had time to write you farther. chief of many counsellors! How infinitely is When I say that I had not time, that, as usual, thy puddle-headed, rattle-headed, wrong-head-means, that the three demons, indolence, busied, round-headed slave indebted to thy super-ness, and ennui, have so completely shared my eminent goodness, that from the luminous path hours among them, as not to leave me a five of thy own right-lined rectitude, thou lookest minutes fragment to take up a pen in. benignly down on an erring wretch, of whom Thank heaven, I feel my spirits buoying upthe zig-zag wanderings defy all the powers of wards with the renovating year. Now I shall calculation, from the simple copulation of units, in good earnest take up Thomson's songs. up to the hidden mysteries of fluxions! May dare say he thinks I have used him unkindly, one feeble ray of that light of wisdom which and I must own with too much appearance of darts from thy sensorium, straight as the arrow truth. Apropos, do you know the much admirof heaven, and bright as the meteor of inspira- ed old Highland air called The Sutor's Dochtion, may it be my portion, so that I may be ter? It is a first-rate favourite of mine, and I less unworthy of the face and favour of that father of proverbs and master of maxims, that antipode of folly, and magnet among the sages, the wise and witty Willie Nicoll! Amen! Amen! Yea, so be it! For me! I am a beast, a reptile, and know nothing! From the cave of my ignorance, amid the fogs of my dulness, and pestilential fumes of my political heresies, I look up to have written what I reckon one of my best songs to it. I will send it to you as it was sung with great applause in some fashionable circles by Major Robertson, of Lude, who was here with his corps. There is one commission that I must trouble thee, as doth a toad through the iron-barred you with. I lately lost a valuable seal, a pre lucerne of a pestiferous dungeon, to the cloudless glory of a summer sun! Sorely sighing in bitterness of soul, I say, when shall my name Mr. Nicoll. This strain of irony was excited by a letter of Mr. Nicoll's containing good advice. sent from a departed friend, which vexes me try to give a little musical instruction in a high much. I have gotten one of your Highland ly respectable family, where Mr. C. may have pebbles, which I fancy would make a very de- his own terms, and may be as happy as indocent one; and I want to cut my armorial bear-lence, the Devil, and the gout will permit him. ing on it; will you be so obliging as inquire Mr. B. knows well how Mr. C. is engaged with what will be the expense of such a business? I another family; but cannot Mr. C. find two or do not know that my name is matriculated, as three weeks to spare to each of them? Mr. B. the heralds call it, at all; but I have invented is deeply impressed with, and awfully conscious arms for myself, so you know I shall be chief of of, the high importance of Mr. C's time, whethe name; and by courtesy of Scotland, will ther in the winged moments of symphonious likewise be entitled to supporters. These, how-exhibition, at the keys of harmony, while listever, I do not intend having on my seal. I am ening Seraphs cease their own less delightful a bit of a herald; and shall give you, secundum strains ;-or in the drowsy hours of slumberous artem, my arms. On a field, azure, a holly repose, in the arms of his dearly-beloved elbowbush, seeded, proper, in base; a shepherd's pipe chair, where the frowsy, but potent power of and crook, saltierwise, also proper, in chief. On indolence, circumfuses her vapours round, and a wreath of the colours, a wood-lark perching sheds her dews on, the head of her darling son. on a sprig of bay-tree, proper: for crest, two-But half a line conveying half a meaning mottoes, round the top of the crest, Wood-notes from Mr. C. would make Mr. B. the very hapwild. At the bottom of the shield, in the usual piest of mortals. No. CLXX. TO MRS. DUNLOP. Annan Water Foot, 22d August, 1792. Do not blame me for it, Madam-my own conscience, hackneyed and weather-beaten as it is, in watching and reproving my vagaries, follies, indolence, &c. has continued to blame and punish me sufficiently. place, Better a wee bush than nae bield. By the shepherd's pipe and crook I do not mean the nonsense of painters of Arcadia; but a Stock and Horn, and a Club, such as you see at the head of Allan Ramsay, in Allan's quarto edition of the Gentle Shepherd. By the bye, do you know Allan? He must be a man of very great genius.-Why is he not more known?-Has he no patrons? or do "Poverty's cold wind and crushing rain beat keen and heavy" on him? I once, and but once, got a glance of that noble edition of the noblest pastoral in the world, and dear as it was, I mean dear as to my pocket, I would have bought it; but I was told that it was printed and engraved for subscribers only. He is the only artist who has hit genuine pastoral costume. What, my dear Cunningham, Do you think it possible, my dear and honis there in riches, that they narrow and hardenoured friend, that I could be so lost to gratitude the heart so? I think that were I as rich as the for many favours; to esteem for much worth, sun, I should be as generous as the day; but and to the honest, kind, pleasurable tie of, now, as I have no reason to imagine my soul a nobler old acquaintance, and I hope and am sure of proone than any other man's, I must conclude that wealth imparts a bird-lime quality to the possessor, at which the man, in his native poverty, would have revolted. What has led me to this, is the idea of such merit as Mr. Allan possesses, and such riches as a nabob or governor-contrac-yours as they possibly can. tor possesses, and why they do not form a mu- Apropos (though how it is apropos, I have tual league. Let wealth shelter and cherish un-not leisure to explain), do you know that I am protected merit, and the gratitude and celebrity of that merit will richly repay it. No. CLXIX. gressive increasing friendship-as, for a single day, not to think of you to ask the Fates what they are doing and about to do with my much loved friend and her wide-scattered connexions, and to beg of them to be as kind to you and almost in love with an acquaintance of yours? -Almost! said I—I am in love, souse! over head and ears, deep as the most unfathomable abyss of the boundless ocean; but the word, Love, owing to the intermingledoms of the good and the bad, the pure and the impure, in this world, being rather an equivocal term for expressing one's sentiments and sensations, I must do justice to the sacred purity of my attachment. Know then, that the heart-struck awe; he distant humble approach; the delight we should have in gazing upon and listening to a MessenMR. BURNS begs leave to present his most ger of Heaven, appearing in all the unspotted respectful compliments to Mr. Clarke.-Mr. B. purity of his celestial home, among the coarse, some time ago did himself the honour of writ-polluted, far inferior sons of men, to deliver to ing Mr. C. respecting coming out to the coun-them tidings that make their hearts swim in joy TO MR. T. CLARKE, EDINBURGH. July 16, 1792. and their imaginations soar in transport-such, so delighting, and so pure, were the emotions of my soul on meeting the other day with Miss L-B-, your neighbour at M Mr. B. with his two daughters, accompanied by Mr. H. of G. passing through Dumfries a few days ago, on their way to England, did me the honour of calling on me; on which I took my horse (though God knows I could ill spare the time), and accompanied them fourteen or fifteen miles, and dined and spent the day with them. 'Twas about nine, I think, when I left them; and riding home, I composed the following ballad, of which you will probably think you have a dear bargain, as it will coast you another groat of postage. You must know that there is an old ballad beginning with "My bonnie Lizzie Baillie I'll row thee in my plaidie," &c. No. CLXVII TO MR. CUNNINGHAM. Dumfries, 10th September, 1792. No! I will not attempt an apology.-Amid all my hurry of business, grinding the face of the publican and the sinner on the merciless wheels of the excise; making ballads, and then drinking, and singing them; and, over and above all, the correcting the press-work of two different publications; still, still I might have stolen five minutes to dedicate to one of the first of my friends and fellow-oreatures. I might have done, as I do at present, snatched an hour near "witching time of night"-and scrawled a page or two. I might have congratulated my friend on his marriage; or I might have thanked the Caledonian archers for the honour they have done me (though to do myself justice, I intended to have done both in rhyme, else I had So I parodied it as follows, which is literally the done both long ere now.) Well, then, here is first copy, "unanointed unannealed," as Ham-to your good health! for you must know, I let says. See p. 194. have set a nipperkin of toddy by me, just by So much for ballads. I regret that you are way of spell, to keep away the meikle horned gone to the east country, as I am to be in Ayr-Deil, or any of his subaltern imps who may be shire in about a fortnight. This world of ours, on their nightly rounds. notwithstanding it has many good things in it, But what shall I write to you?" The voice yet it has ever had this curse, that two or three said cry," and I said, "what shall I cry?"—O, people who would be the happier the oftener they thou spirit! whatever thou art, or wherever met together, are, almost without exception, al- thou makest thyself visible! be thou a bogle by ways so placed as never to meet but once or the eerie side of an auld thorn, in the dreary twice a-year, which, considering the few years glen through which the herd callan maun bicker of a man's life, is a very great evil under the in his gloamin route frae the faulde! Be thou a sun," which I do not recollect that Solomon has mentioned in his catalogue of the miseries of man. I hope and believe that there is a state of existence beyond the grave, where the worthy of this life will renew their former intimacies, with this endearing addition, that "we meet to part no more." "Tell us, ye dead, Will none of you in pity disclose the secret brownie, set, at dead of night, to thy task by the blazing ingle, or in the solitary barn where the repercussions of thy iron flail affright thyself, as thou performest the work of twenty of the sons of men, ere the cock-crowing summon thee to thy ample cog of substantial brose.-Be thou a kelpie, haunting the ford or ferry, in the starless night, mixing thy laughing yell with the howling of the storm, and the roaring of the flood, as thou viewest the perils and miseries of man on the foundering horse, or in the tumb ling boat!-Or, lastly, be thou a ghost, paying thy nocturnal visits to the hoary ruins of decayA thousand times have I made this apostrophe ed grandeur; or performing thy mystic rites in to the departed sons of men, but not one of them the shadow of thy time-worn church, while the has ever thought fit to answer the question. moon looks, without a cloud, on the silent, "O that some courteous ghost would blab it ghastly dwellings of the dead around thee; or out!"—but it cannot be; you and I, my friend, taking thy stand by the bedside of the villain, must make the experiment by ourselves and for or the murderer, pourtraying on his dreaming ourselves. However, I am so convinced that an fancy, pictures, dreadful as the horrors of ununshaken faith in the doctrines of religion is not veiled hell, and terrible as the wrath of incensed only necessary, by making us better men, but al-Deity !-Come, thou spirit, but not in these so by making us happier men, that I shall take every care that your little god-son, and every little creature that shall call me father, shall be taught them. So ends this heterogeneous letter, written at this wild place of the world, in the intervals of my labour of discharging a vessel of rum from Antigua. horrid forms; come with the milder, gentle, easy inspirations, which thou breathest round the wig of a prating advocate, or the tete of a tea-sipping gossip, while their tongues run at the light-horse gallop of clishmaclaver for ever and ever-come and assist a poor devil who is quite jaded in the attempt to share half an idea among half a hundred words; to fill up four quarto pages, while he has not got one single sentence of recollection, information, or remark | conjugal derived from jugum, a yoke?) Well, worth putting pen to paper for. then, the scale of good-wifeship I divide into I feel, I feel the presence of supernatural as- ten parts.-Good-nature, four; Good Sense, sistance! circled in the embrace of my elbow-two; Wit, one; Personal Charms, viz. a sweet chair, my breast labours, like the bloated Sybil face, eloquent eyes, fine limbs, graceful carriage, on her three-footed stool, and like her too, la-(I would add a fine waist too, but that is so bours with Nonsense. Nonsense, auspicious soon spoilt, you know), all these, one; as for name! Tutor, friend, and finger-post in the the other qualities belonging to, or attending on, mystic mazes of law; the cadaverous paths of a wife, such as Fortune, Connections, Educaphysic; and particularly in the sightless soar- tion, (I mean education extraordinary), Family ings of SCHOOL DIVINITY, who, leaving Com- Blood, &c. divide the two remaining degrees mon Sense confounded at his strength of pinion, among them as you please; only, remember Reason delirious with eyeing his giddy flight, that all these minor properties must be expressand Truth creeping back into the bottom of her ed by fractions, for there is not any one of well, cursing the hour that ever she offered her them, in the aforesaid scale, entitled to the digscorned alliance to the wizard power of Theolo-nity of an integer. gic Vision-raves abroad on all the winds. "On As for the rest of my fancies and reveriesearth Discord! a gloomy Heaven above, open-how I lately met with Miss Lesly Baillie, the ing her jealous gates to the nineteen thousandth most beautiful, elegant woman in the world part of the tithe of mankind! and below, an in--how I accompanied her and her father's faescapable and inexorable hell, expanding its le- mily fifteen miles on their journey, out of pure viathan jaws for the vast residue of mortals!!!" devotion, to admire the loveliness of the works -O doctrine! comfortable and healing to the of God, in such an unequalled display of them weary, wounded soul of a man! Ye sons and -how, in galloping home at night, I made a daughters of affliction, ye pauvres miserables, to ballad on her, of which these two stanzas make whom day brings no pleasure, and night yields a partno rest, be comforted! "'Tis but one to nineteen hundred thousand that your situation will mend in this world ;" so, alas! the experience of the poor and the needy too often affirms; and 'tis nineteen hundred thousand to one, by the dogmas of that you will be damned eternally in the world to come! Thou, bonnie Lesly, art a queen, Thy subjects we before thee; The very Deil he could na scaith But of all Nonsense, Religious Nonsense is the most nonsensical; so enough, and more than enough of it. Only, by the bye, will you, or can you tell me, my dear Cunningham, why a sectarian turn of mind has always a tendency-behold all these things are written in the to narrow and illiberalize the heart? They are chronicles of my imagination, and shall be read orderly; they may be just; nay, I have known by thee, my dear friend, and by thy beloved them merciful but still your children of sanc-spouse, my other dear friend, at a more convetity move among their fellow-creatures with a nient season. nostril snuffing putrescence, and a foot spurning Now, to thee, and to thy before-designed bofilth, in short, with a conceited dignity that som-companion, be given the precious things your titled . brought forth by the sun, and the precious things brought forth by the moon, and the benignest influence of the stars, and the living streams which flow from the fountains of life, and by the tree of life, for ever and ever!Amen! or any other of your Scottish lordlings of seven centuries standing, display when they accidentally mix among the many-aproned sons of mechanical life. I remember, in my ploughboy days, I could not conceive it possible that a noble lord could be a fool, or a godly man could be a knave. How ignorant are plough-boys!Nay, I have since discovered that a godly woman may be a!-But hold-Here's t'ye again-this rum is generous Antigua, so a very unfit menstruum for scandal. No. CLXVIII. TO MRS. DUNLOP. Dumfries, 24th September, 1792. Apropos, how do you like, I mean really like the married life! Ah, my friend! matrimony is quite a different thing from what your love-sick youths and sighing girls take it to be! But I HAVE this moment, my dear Madam, yours marriage, we are told, is appointed by God, and of the twenty-third. All your other kind reI shall never quarrel with any of his institutions. proaches, your news, &c. are out of my head I am a husband of older standing than you, and when I read and think on Mrs. H's situashall give you my ideas of the conjugal state-tion. Good God! a heart-wounded helpless (en passant, you know I am no Latinist, is not young woman-in a strange, foreign land, and |