occasional productions in manuscript, all of which have merit, and some of them merit of a different kind from what appears in the poems you have published. You ought carefully to preserve all your occasional productions, to correct and improve them at your leisure; and when you can select as many of these as will make a volume, publish it either at Edinburgh or London, by subscription: on such an occasion, it may be in my power, as it is very much in my inclination, to be of service to you. If I were to offer an opinion, it would be, that, in your future productions, you should abandon the Scottish stanza and dialect, and adopt the measure and language of modern English poetry. The stanza which you use in imitation of Christ kirk on the Green, with the tiresome repetition of "that day," is fatiguing to English ears, and I should think not very agreeable to Scottish. All the fine satire and humour of your Holy Fair is lost on the English; yet, without more trouble to yourself, you could have conveyed the whole to them. The same is true of some of your other poems. In your Epistle to J. S. the stanzas, from that beginning with this line, "This life, so far's I understand,' to that which ends with-" Short while it grieves," are easy, flowing, gayly philosophical, and of Horatian elegance the language is English, with a few Scottish words, and some of those so harmonious as to add to the beauty; for what poet would not prefer gloaming to tuilight? I imagine, that by carefully keeping, and occasionally polishing and correcting those verses, which the Muse dictates, you will, within a year or two, have anoher volume as large as the first, ready or the press and this without diverting you from every proper attention to the study and practice of husbandry, in which I understand you are very learned, and which I fancy you will choose to adhere to as a wife, while poetry amuses you from time to time as a mistress. The former, like a prudent wife, must not show ill-humour, although you retain a sneaking kindness to this agreeable gipsy, and pay her occasional visits, which in no manner alienates your heart from your lawful spouse, but tends on the contrary, to promote her interest. I desired Mr. Cadell to write to Mr Creech to send you a copy of Zeluco This performance has had great success here; but I shall be glad to have your opinion of it, because I value your opinion, and because I know you are above saying what you do not think. I beg you will offer my best wishes to my very good friend, Mrs. Hamilton, who I understand is your neighbour. If she is as happy as I wish her, she is happy enough. Make my compliments also to Mrs. Burns: and believe me to be, with sincere esteem, 6IR, Dear Sir, yours, &c. No. LXXVIII, FROM MISS J. LITTLE. Loudon House, 12th July, 1789 THOUGH I have not the happiness of being personally acquainted with you, yet, amongst the number of those who have read and admired your publications, may I be permitted to trouble you with this. You must know, Sir, I am somewhat in love with the Muses, though I cannot boast of any favours they have deigned to confer upon me as yet; my situation in life has been very much against me as to that. I have spent some years in and about Eccelefechan (where my parents reside,) in the station of a servant, and am now come to Loudon House, at present possessed by Mrs. H: she is daughter to Mrs. Dunlop of Dunlop, whom I un derstand you are particularly acquainted with. As I had the pleasure of perusing your poems, I felt a partiality for the author, which I should not have experienced had you been in a more dignified station. I wrote a few verses of address to you which I did not then think of ever presenting; but as fortune seems to have favoured me in this, by bringing me into a family, by whom you are well known and much esteemed, and where perhaps I may have an opportunity of seeing you, I shall, in hopes of your future friendship, take the liberty to transcribe them. Fair fa' the honest rustic swain ted; but notwithstanding many favoura- | shall send them to There was such a richness of conversation, such a plenitude of fancy and attraction in him, that when I call the happy period of our intercourse to my memory, I feel myself in a state of delirium. I was then younger than him by eight or ten years, but his manner was so felicitous, that he enraptured every person around him, and infused into the hearts of the young and the old the spirit and animation which operated on his own mind. I am, Dear Sir, yours, &c. No. LXXX. TO MR. *****. In answer to the foregoing, MY DEAR SIR, THE hurry of a farmer in this particular season, and the indolence of a poet at all times and seasons, will, I hope, plead my excuse for neglecting so long to answer your obliging letter of the 5th of August. Poor Fergusson! If there be a life beyond the grave, which I trust there is; and if there be a good God presiding over all nature, which I am sure there is, thou art now enjoying existence in a glorious world, where worth of the heart alone is distinction in the man; where riches, deprived of all their pleasure-purchasing powers, return to their native sordid matter: where titles and honour are the disregarded reveries of an idle dream; and where that heavy virtue, which is the negative consequence of steady dulness, and those thoughtless, though often destructive follies, which are the unavoidable aberations of frail human nature, will be thrown into equal oblivion as if they had never been. MADAM, 1789. That you have done well in quitting your laborious concern in **** I do not Or the many problems in the nature doubt: the weighty reasons you mention of that wonderful creature, Man, this is were, I hope, very, deservedly, indeed, one of the most extraordinary, that he weighty ones, and your health is a mat- shall go on from day to day, from week to ter of the last importance: but whether week, from month to month, or perhaps the remaining proprietors of the paper from year to year, suffering a hundred have also done well, is what I much doubt. times more in an hour from the impotent The ****, so far as I was a reader, exhi-consciousness of neglecting what we bited such a brilliancy of point, such an elegance of paragraph, and such a variety of intelligence, that I can hardly conceive it possible to continue a daily paper in the same degree of excellence; but, if there was a man who had abilities equal to the task, that man's assistance the proprietors have lost. When I received your letter, I was transcribing for ****, my letter to the magistrates of the Canongate, Edinburgh, begging their permission to place a tombstone over poor Fergusson, and their edict, in consequence of my petition, but now I ought to do, than the very doing of it would cost him. I am deeply indebted to you, first for a most elegant poetic compliment;* then for a polite obliging letter; and lastly, for your excellent poem on the Slave-trade; and yet, wretch that I am! though the debts were debts of honour, and the creditor a lady, I have put off, and put off, even the very acknowledgment of the obligation, until you must indeed be the very angel I take you for, if you can forgive me. Your poem I have read with the highest pleasure. I have a way, whenever I *See Miss Smith's Sonnet, page 101.-note read a book, I mean a book in our own trade, Madam, a poetic one, and when it is my own property, that I take a pencil and mark at the ends of verses, or note on margins and odd paper, little criticisms of approbation or disapprobation as I peruse along. I will make no apology for presenting you with a few unconnected thoughts that occurred to me in my repeated perusals of your peem. I want to show you that I have honesty enough to tell you what I take to be truths, even when they are not quite on the side of approbation; and I do it in the firm faith, that you have equal greatness of mind to hear them with pleasure. of poetry, which are precious, even independent of the rewards of fame. Perhaps the most valuable property of poetry is its power of disengaging the mind from worldly cares, and leading the imagination to the richest springs of intellectual enjoyment; since, however frequently life may be chequered with gloomy scenes, those who truly love the Muse can always find one little path adorned with flowers and cheered by sunshine. No. LXXXIII. TO MRS. DUNLOP. Ellisland, 6th Sept. 1789. DEAR MADAM, I HAVE mentioned, in my last, my appointment to the Excise, and the birth of little Frank, who, by the by, I trust I will be no discredit to the honourable name of Wallace, as he has a fine manly countenance, and a figure that might do credit to a little fellow two months older; and likewise an excellent good temper, though, when he pleases, he has a pipe, only not quite so loud as the horn that his immortal namesake blew as a signal to take out the pin of Stirling bridge. I had some time ago an epistle, part poetic, and part prosaic, from your poetess, Mrs. J. Little, a very ingenious but modest composition. I should have written her, as she requested, but for the hurry of this new business. I have heard of her and her compositions in this country; and I am happy to add, always to the honour of her character. The fact is, I know not well how to write to her: I should sit down to a sheet of paper that I knew not how to stain. I am no dab at fine-drawn letter-writing; and except when prompted by friendship or gratitude, or, which happens extremely rarely, inspired by the Muse (I know not her name) that presides over epistolary writing, I sit down, when necessitated to write, as I would sit down to beat hemp. Some parts of your letter of the 20th August struck me with the most melancholy concern for the state of your mind I hope you still cultivate the pleasures at present. Would I could write you a letter of comfort! I would sit down to it with as much pleasure as I would to write an Epic poem of my own composition that should equal the Iliad. Religion, my dear friend, is the true comfort. A strong persuasion in a future state of existence; a proposition so obviously probable, that, setting revelation aside, every nation and people, so far as investigation has reached, for at least near four thousand years, have n some mode or other firmly believed it. In vain would we reason and pretend to doubt. I have myself done so to a very daring pitch: but when I reflected that I❘ was opposing the most ardent wishes, and the most darling hopes of good men, and flying in the face of all human belief, in all ages, I was shocked at my own conduct. I know not whether I have ever sent you the following lines, or if you have ever seen them; but it is one of my favourite quotations, which I keep constantly by me in my progress through life, in the language of the book of Job, "Against the day of battle and of war" spoken of religion. If art it may be call'd in thee, Most anxiously I wish to know, What promises thy farm of wealth? For me, with grief and sickness spent, Spirits depress'd no more I mourn, Since I my journey homeward bent, But vigour, life, and health return, No more to gloomy thoughts a prey, I sleep all night, and live all day; By turns my book and friend enjoy, And thus my circling hours employ! Happy while yet these hours remain If Burns could join the cheerful train, With wonted zeal, sincere and fervent, "'Tis this, my friend, that streaks our morning bright, Salute once more his humble servant, "Tis this that gilds the horror of our night. When wealth forsakes us, and when friends are few; I have been very busy with Zeluco. The Doctor is so obliging as to request my opinion of it; and I have been revolving in my mind some kind of criticisms on novel-writing, but it is a depth beyond my research. I shall, however, digest THO. BLACKLOCK. No. LXXXV. TO DR. BLACKLOCK.-See Poems, p. 81. No. LXXXVI. my thoughts on the subject as well as I TO R. GRAHAM, ESQ. OF FINTRY. can. Zeluco is a most sterling perform |