I am much to blame: the honour Mr. Mylne has done me, greatly enhanced in its value by the endearing though melancholy circumstance of its being the last production of his muse, deserved a better return. THE gentleman who will deliver you this is a Mr. Nielson, a worthy clergyman in my neighbourhood, and a very particular acquaintance of mine. As I have troubled him with this packet, I must turn him over to your goodness, to recompense him for it in a way in which he much needs your assistance, and where yot can effectually serve him :-Mr. Nielson is on his way for France, to wait on his Grace of Queensberry, on some little business of a good deal of importance to him, and he wishes for your instructions respecting the most eligible mode of travelling, &c. for him, when he has crossed the channel. I should not have dared to take this liberty with you, but that I am told, by those who have the honour of your personal acquaintance, that to be a poor honest Scotchman, is a letter of re-. commendation to you, and that to have it in your power to serve such a character gives you much pleasure. I have, as you hint, thought of sending a copy of the poem to some periodical publication; but, on second thoughts, I am afraid that, in the present case, it would be an improper step. My success, perhaps as much accidental as merited, has brought an inundation of nonsense under the name of Scottish poetry. Subscription bills for Scottish poems have so dunned, and daily do dun, the public, that the very name is in danger of contempt. For these reasons, if publishing any of Mr. Mylne's poems in a magazine, &c. be at all prudent, in my opinion, it certainly should not be a Scottish poem. The profits of the labours of a man of genius are, I hope, as honourable as any profits whatever; and Mr. Mylne's relations are most justly entitled to that honest harvest which fate has denied himself to reap. But let the friends of Mr. Mylne's fame (among whom I crave the honour of ranking myself) always keep in eye his respectability as a man and as a poet, and take no measure that, before the world knows any thing about him, would risk his name and charac-I ter being classed with the fools of the times. The enclosed ode is a compliment to the memory of the late Mrs. *****, of ****** ** You, probably, knew her personally, an honour of which I cannot boast; but spent my early years in her neighbourhood, and among her servants and tenants, I know that she was detested with the most heartfelt cordiality. However, in the particular part of her conduct which I have, Sir, some experience of pub-roused my poetic wrath, she was much lishing, and the way in which I would less blameable. In January last, on my proceed with Mr. Mylne's poems is this: road to Ayrshire, I had put up at Bailie I would publish in two or three English Whigham's in Sanquhar, the only tolerand Scottish public papers, any one of his able inn in the place. The frost was English poems which should, by private keen, and the grim evening and howling judges, be thought the most excellent, wind were ushering in a night of snow and and mention it, at the same time, as one drift. My horse and I were both much faof the productions of a Lothian farmer, tigued with the labours of the day; and of respectable character, lately deceased, just as my friend the Bailie and I were whose poems his friends had it in idea to bidding defiance to the storm, over a publish soon, by subscription, for the sake smoking bowl, in wheels the funeral paof his numerous family:-not in pity to that family, but in justice to what his geantry of the late great Mrs. ******, and poor I am forced to brave all the horrors friends think the poetic merits of the de- of the tempestuous night, and jade my ceased; and to secure, in the most effec- horse, my young favourite horse, whom I tual manner, to those tender connexions, had just christened Pegasus, twelve miles whose right it is, the pecuniary reward farther on, through the wiidest moors and of those merita hills of Ayrshire, to New Cumnock, the next inn. The powers of poesy and prose sink under me, when I would describe what I felt. Suffice it to say, that when a good fire at New Cumnock, had so far recovered my frozen sinews, I sat down and wrote the enclosed ode.* I was at Edinburgh lately, and settled finally with Mr. Creech; and I must own, that, at last, he has been amicable and fair with me. No. LXXI. TO MR. HILL. Ellisland, 2d April, 1789. I WILL make no excuses, my dear Bibliopolus (God forgive me for murdering language,) that I have sat down to write you on this vile paper. It is economy, Sir; it is that cardinal virtue, prudence; so I beg you will sit down, and either compose or borrow a panegyric. If you are going to borrow, apply to to compose, or rather to compound something very clever on my remarkable frugality; that I write to one of my most esteemed friends on this wretched paper, which was originally intended for the venal fist of some drunken exciseman, to take dirty notes in a miserable vault of an ale-cellar. O Frugality! thou mother of ten thousand blessings-thou cook of fat beef and dainty greens-thou manufacturer of warm Shetland hose, and comfortable surtouts!-thou old housewife, darning thy decayed stockings with thy ancient spectacles on thy aged nose!-lead me, hand me, in thy clutching, palsied fist, up those heights, and through those thickets, hitherto inaccessible, and impervious to my anxious, weary feet;-not those Parnassian crags, bleak and barren, where the hungry worshippers of fame are breathless, clambering, hanging between heaven and hell; but those glittering cliffs of Potosi, where the all-sufficient, all-powerful deity, Wealth, holds his immediate court The Ode enclosed is that printed in Poems, p. 63. E. of joys and pleasures; where the sunny exposure of plenty, and the hot walls of profusion, produce those blissful fruits of luxury, exotics in this world, and natives of Paradise!-Thou withered sybil, my sage conductress, usher me into the refulgent, adored presence!-The power, splendid and potent as he now is, was once the puling nursling of thy faithful care and tender arms! Call me thy son, thy cousin, thy kinsman or favourite, and abjure the god, by the scenes of his infant years, no longer to repulse me as a stranger, or an alien, but to favour me with his peculiar countenance and protection! He daily bestows his greatest kindnesses on the undeserving and the worthlessassure him that I bring ample documents of meritorious demerits! Pledge yourself for me, that for the glorious cause of Lubut the horse-leech of private oppression, CRE I will do any thing-be any thingor the vulture of public robbery! But to descend from heroics, I want a Shakspeare; I want likewise an English Dictionary-Johnson's I suppose is best. In these and all my prose commissions, the cheapest is always the best for me. that I owe Mr. Robert Cleghorn, in Saughton Mills, my worthy friend, and your well-wisher. Please give him, and urge him to take it, the first time you see him, ten shillings worth of any thing you have to sell, and place it to my account. There is a small debt of honour The library scheme that I mentioned to you is already begun, under the direction of Captain Riddel. There is another in emulation of it going on at Closeburn, under the auspices of Mr. Monteith of Closeburn, which will be on a greater scale than ours. Capt. R. gave his infant society a great many of his old books, else I had written you on that subject; but one of these days, I shall trouble you with a communication for "The Monkland Friendly Society;"- -a copy of The Spectator, Mirror, and Lounger; Man of Feeling, Man of the World, Guthrie's Geographical Grammar, with some religious pieces, will likewise be our first order. When I grow richer I will write to you on gilt post, to make amends for this sheet. Your faithful, poor, but honest friend. No. LXXII. TO MRS. DUNLOP. Ellisland, 4th April, 1789. I No sooner hit on any poetic plan or ancy, but I wish to send it to you: and if knowing and reading these give half the pleasure to you, that communicating them to you gives to me, I am satisfied. pags and mails, as an encouragement and mark of distinction to supereminent virtue I have just put the last hand to a little poem which I think will be something to your taste. One morning lately as I was out pretty early in the fields sowing some grass seeds, I heard the burst of a shot from a neighbouring plantation, and pre sently a poor little wounded hare came crippling by me. You will guess my indignation at the inhuman fellow who could shoot a hare at this season, when they all of them have young ones. Indeed there is something in that business of destroy ing, for our sport, individuals in the ani mal creation that do not injure us mate rially, which I could never reconcile to my ideas of virtue. Oft as by winding Nith, I, musing, wait Let me know how you like my poem YOUR duty-free favour of the 26th April I received two days ago; I will not say I perused it with pleasure; that is the cold compliment of ceremony; II am doubtful whether it would not be an perused it, Sir, with delicious satisfaction improvement to keep out the last stanza -in short, it is such a letter, that not you but one altogether. nor your friend, but the legislature, by express proviso in their postage-laws, should frank. A letter informed with the soul of friendship is such an honour to human nature, that they should order it free ingress and egress to and from their Here was copied the Fragment inscribed to C. J. Fox See Poems, p. 81. is a glorious production of the Author of man. You, he, and the noble Colonel of the C- F- are to me "Dear as the ruddy drops which warm my breast." I have a good mind to make verses on you all, to the tune of "Three guid fellows ayont the glen." Mangled" is a coarse word. "Innocent," in this sense, is a nursery word, but both may pass. Stanza 4. "Who will now provide that life a mother only can bestow?" will not do at all: it is not grammar-it is not intelligible. Do you mean, "provide for that life which the mother had bestowed and used to provide for?" There was a ridiculous slip of the pen, "Feeling" (I suppose) for "Fellow," in the title of your copy of verses; but even fellow would be wrong; it is but a colloquial and vulgar word, unsuitable to your seeing a person (or a sportsman) wound a hare; it is needless to add with wha weapon; but if you think otherwise, you shoule say, with a fowling piece. I TAKE the first leisure hour I could command, to thank you for your letter, and the copy of verses enclosed in it. As there is real poetic merit, I mean both fancy and tenderness, and some happy expressions in them, I think they well deserve that you should revise them care-sentiments. "Shot" is improper too.-On fully and polish them to the utmost. This I am sure you can do if you please, for you have great command both of expression and of rhymes: and you may judge from the two last pieces of Mrs. Hunter's poetry, that I gave you, how much correctness and high polish enhance the value of such compositions. As you desire it, I shall, with great freedom, give you my most rigorous criticisms on your verses. I wish you would give me another edition of them, much amended, and I will send it to Mrs. Hunter, who I am sure will have Let me see you when you come to town, and I will show you some more of Mrs Hunter's poems.* No. LXXV. much pleasure in reading it. Pray give TO MR MAULEY, OF DUMBARTON. me likewise for myself, and her too, a copy (as much amended as you please) of the Water Fowl on Loch Turit The Wounded Hare is a pretty good subject; but the measure or stanza you have chosen for it, is not a good one; it does not flow well; and the rhyme of the fourth line is almost lost by its distance from the first, and the two interposed, close rhymes. If I were you, I would put it into a different stanza yet. DEAR SIR, 4th June, 1789. respecting my fate, at that grand, universal inquest of right and wrong, commonly called The Last Day, yet I trust there is one sin, which that arch vagabond, Satan, who I understand is to be king's evidence, titude. There is a certain pretty large cannot throw in my teeth, I mean ingraquantum of kindness, for which I remain, and from inability, I fear must still remain, your debtor; but, though unable to repay the debt, I assure you, Sir, I shall ever warmly remember the obligation. It gives me the sincerest pleasure to hear, by my old acquaintance, Mr. Kennedy, that you THOUGH I am not without my fears * It must be admitted, that this criticism is not more Stanza 1. The execrations in the first two lines are too strong or coarse; but they may pass. Murder-aiming" is a bad compound epithet, and not very intelligible. "Blood-stained," in stanza iii. line 4. has the same fault: Bleeding bosom is infinitely better. You have accustomed yourself to such epithets and distinguished by its good sense, than by its freedom have no notion how stiff and quaint they from ceremony. It is impossible not to smile at the appear to others, and how incongruous manner in which the poet may be supposed to have rewith poetic fancy and tender sentiments.ceived it. In fact, it appears, as the sailors say, to have Suppose Pope had written, " Why that blood-stained bosom gored," how would you have liked it? Form is neither a poetic, nor a dignified, nor a plain common word: it is a mere sportsman's word; unsuitable to pathetic or serious poetry. thrown him quite aback. In a letter which he wrote soon after, he says, "Dr. G— is a good man, but he tice of Dr. G-;" but, ilke the devils, " I believe and crucifies me."-And again, "I believe in the iron justremble." However, he profited by these criticisms, as the reader will find by comparing the first edition of this piece with that published in p. 69 of the Poems. are, in immortal Allan's language, "Hale and weel, and living;" and that your charming family are well, and promising to be an amiable and respectable addition to the company of performers, whom the great Manager of the drama of Man is Bringing into action for the succeeding age. Monday Evening. * have just heard * sermon. He is a man famous for his be nevolence, and I revere him; but from such ideas of my Creator, good Lord, de liver me? Religion, my honoured friend is surely a simple business, as it equally concerns the ignorant and the learned the poor and the rich. That there is an With respect to my welfare, a subject incomprehensibly Great Being, to whom in which you once warmly and effectively I owe my existence, and that he must be interested yourself, I am here in my old intimately acquainted with the operations way, holding my plough, marking the and progress of the internal machinery, growth of my corn, or the health of my and consequent outward deportment of dairy; and at times sauntering by the de- this creature which he has made: these 'ightful windings of the Nith, on the marare, I think, self-evident propositions. gin of which I have built my humble do- That there is a real and eternal distincmicile, praying for seasonable weather, tion between virtue and vice, and conseor holding an intrigue with the muses, the quently, that I am an accountable creaonly gipsies with whom I have now any ture; that from the seeming nature of the ntercourse. As I am entered into the human mind, as well as from the evident holy state of matrimony, I trust my face imperfection, nay, positive injustice, in is turned completely Zion-ward; and as the administration of affairs, both in the it is a rule with all honest fellows to re-natural and moral worlds, there must be peat no grievances, I hope that the little a retributive scene of existence beyond poetic licenses of former days will of the grave-must, I think, be allowed by of some good-natured statute of celestial every one who will give himself a moment's reflection. I will go farther, and proscription. In my family devotion, affirm, that from the sublimity, excellence, which, like a good presbyterian, I occa- and purity, of his doctrine and precepts. sionally give to my household folks, I am unparalleled by all the aggregated wis extremely fond of the psalm, "Let not the dom and learning of many preceding ages, errors of my youth," &c. and that other, though, to appearance, he himself was the "Lo, children are God's heritage," &c.; obscurest, and most illiterate of our spe in which last, Mrs. Burns, who, by the cies; therefore Jesus Christ was from by, has a glorious "wood-note wild" at God. either old song or psalmody, joins me with the pathos of Handel's Messiah. course fall under the oblivious influence * No. LXXVI. TO MRS. DUNLOP. Ellisland, 21st June, 1789. DEAR MADAM, WILL you take the effusions, the miserable effusions, of low spirits, just as they flow from their bitter spring? I know not of any particular cause for this worst of all my foes besetting me, but for some time my soul has been beclouded with a thickening atmosphere of evil imaginations and gloomy presages. Whatever mitigates the woes, or ir creases the happiness of others, this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever in jures society at large, or any individua in it, this is my measure of iniquity. What think you, Madam, of my creed? I trust that I have said nothing that will lessen me in the eye of one whose good opinion I value almost next to the appro bation of my own mind. No. LXXVII. FROM DR. MOORE. Clifford Street, 10th June, 1789. DEAR SIR, I THANK you for the different com munications you have made me of your |