as Shenstone, particularly his Elegies; Thomson; Man of Feeling, a book I prize next to the Bible; Man of the World; Sterne, especially his Sentimental Journey; M'Pherson's Ossian, &c. These are the glorious models after which I endeavour to form my conduct; and 'tis incongruous, 'tis absurd, to suppose that the man whose mind glows with the sentiments lighted up at their sacred flame-the man whose heart distends with benevolence to all the human race-he "who can soar above this little scene of things," can he descend to mind the paltry concerns about which the terræ filial race fret, and fume, and vex themselves? O how the glorious triumph swells my heart! I forget that I am a poor insignificant devil, unnoticed and unknown, stalking up and down fairs and markets, when I happen to be in them, reading a page or two of mankind, and "catching the manners living as they rise," whilst the men of business jostle me on every side as an idle incumbrance in their way. But I dare say I have by this time tired your patience; so I shall conclude with begging you to give Mrs. Murdoch-not my compliments, for that is a mere common-place story, but my warmest, kindest wishes for her welfare; and accept of the same for yourself from, Dear Sir, Your's, &c. No. II. The following is taken from the MS. Prose presented by our Bard to Mr. Riddel. ON rummaging over some old papers, I lighted on a MS. of my early years, in which I had determined to write myself out, as I was placed by fortune among a class of men to whom my ideas would have been nonsense. I had meant that the book should have lain by me, in the fond hope that, some time or other, even after I was no more, my thoughts would fall into the hands of somebody capable of appreciating their value. It sets off thus: Observations, Hints, Songs, Scraps of Poetry, &c. by R. B.-a man who had little art in making money, and still less in keeping it; but was, however, a man of some sense, a great deal of honesty, and unbounded good will to every creature rational and irrational. As he was but little indebted to scholastic education, and bred at a plough-tail, his performan ces must be strongly tinctured with his unpolished rustic way of life; but as I believe they are really his own, it may be some entertainment to a curious observer of human nature, to see how a ploughman thinks and feels, under the pressure of love, ambition, anxiety, grief, with the like cares and passions, which, however diversified by the modes and manners of life, operate pretty much alike, I believe, on all the species. "There are numbers in the world who do not want sense to make a figure, so much as an opinion of their own abilities, to put them upon recording their observations, and allowing them the same importance, which they do to those which appear in print."-Shenstone. "Pleasing, when youth is long expir'd, to trace April, 1783. Notwithstanding all that has been said against love, respecting the folly and weakness it leads a young inexperienced mind into; still I think it in a great meathat have been passed upon it. If any sure deserves the highest encomiums thing on earth deserves the name of rapture or transport, it is the feelings of green eighteen, in the company of the mistress of his heart, when she repays him with an equal return of affection. pitch of fortitude may bear up tolerably | of that part of mankind commonly known well under those calamities, in the pro- by the ordinary phrase of blackguards, curement of which we ourselves have had sometimes farther than was consistent no hand; but when our own follies, or with the safety of my character; those crimes have made us miserable and who, by thoughtless prodigality or headwretched, to bear up with manly firm- strong passions have been driven to ruin. ness, and at the same time have a proper Though disgraced by follies, nay, somepenetential sense of our misconduct, is a times "stained with guilt, * glorious effort of self command. **" I have yet found among them, in not a few instances, some of the noblest virtues, magnanimity, generosity, disin "Of all the numerous ills that hurt our peace, * That press the soul, or wring the mind with anguish, terested friendship, and even modesty Beyond comparison the worst are those That to our folly or our guilt we owe. n every other circumstance the mind Lives there a man so firm, who, while his heart Can firmly force his jarring thoughts to peace? March, 1784. I have often observed, in the course of my experience of human life, that every man, even the worst, has something good about him; though very often nothing else than a happy temperament of constitution inclining him to this or that virtue. For this reason, no man can say in what degree any other person, besides himself, can be, with strict justice, called wicked. Let any of the strictest character for regularity of conduct among us, examine impartially how many vices he has never been guilty of, not from any care or vigilance, but for want of opportunity, or some accidental circumstance intervening; how many of the weaknesses of mankind he has escaped, because he was out of the line of such temptation; and, what often, if not always, weighs more than all the rest, how much he is indebted to the world's good opinion, because the world does not know all. I say any man who can thus think, will scan the failings, nay, the faults and crimes, of mankind around him, with a brother's eye. I have often courted the acquaintance April. As I am what the men of the world, if they knew such a man, would call a whimsical mortal, I have various sources of pleasure and enjoyment, which are, in a manner, peculiar to myself, or some here and there such other out-of-the-way perSuch is the peculiar pleasure I take in the season of winter, more than the rest of the year. This, I believe, may be partly owing to my misfortunes giving my mind a melancholy cast; but there is something even in the son. "Mighty tempest, and the hoary waste Abrupt and deep, stretch'd o'er the buried earth," which raises the mind to a serious sublimity, favourable to every thing great and noble. There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more-I do not know if I should call it pleasure-but something which exalts me, something which enraptures me-than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood, or high plantation, in a cloudy winter-day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees and raving over the plain. It is my best season for devotion; my mind is rapt up in a kind of enthusiasm to Him, who in the pompous language of the Hebrew bard, "walks on the wings of the wind." In one of these seasons, just after a train of misfortunes, I composed the following: The wintry west extends his blast, &c.—Poems, p. 39. Shenstone finely observes, that loveverses writ without any real passion, are the most nauseous of all conceits; and I have often thought that no man can be a proper critic of love composition, except he himself, in one or more instances, have been a warm votary of this passion. As I have been all along a miserable dupe to love, and have been led into a thousand weaknesses and follies by it, for that rea son I put the more confidence in my critical skill, in distinguishing foppery and conceit from real passion and nature. Whether the following song will stand the test, I will not pretend to say, because it is my own; only I can say it was, at the time genuine from the heart. Behind yon hills, &c.-See Poems, p. 59. gain Heaven as well (which, by the by, is no mean consideration,) who steals through the vale of life, amusing himself with every little flower, that fortune throws in his way; as he who, straining straight forward, and perhaps bespattering all about him, gains some of life's little eminences; where, after all, he can only see, and be seen, a little more conspicuously than what, in the pride of his heart, he is apt to term the poor indolent devil he has left behind him. There is a noble sublimity, a heart cient ballads, which show them to be the work of a masterly hand; and it has often given me many a heart-ache to reflect, that such glorious old bards-bards who very probably owed all their talents to native genius, yet have described the exploits of heroes, the pangs of disappointment, and the meltings of love, with such fine strokes of nature-that their very names (O how mortifying to a bard's vanity!) are now "buried among the wreck of things which were." I think the whole species of young men may be naturally enough divided into two grand classes, which I shall call the grave and the merry; though, by the by, these terms do not with propriety enough ex-melting tenderness, in some of our anpress my ideas. The grave I shall cast into the usual division of those who are goaded on by the love of money, and those whose darling wish is to make a figure in the world. The merry are, the men of pleasure of all denominations; the jovial lads, who have too much fire and spirit to have any settled rule of action; but, without much deliberation follow the strong impulses of nature: the thoughtless, the careless, the indolent-in particular he, who, with a happy sweetness of natural temper, and a cheerful vacancy of thought, steals through life-generally, indeed, in poverty and obscurity; but poverty and obscurity are only evils to him who can sit gravely down and make a repining comparison between his own situation and that of others; and lastly, to grace the quorum, such as are, generally, those whose heads are capable of all the tower-you-a poor rustic bard unknown, pays ings of genius, and whose hearts are warmed with all the delicacy of feeling. As the grand end of human life is to cultivate an intercourse with that Being to whom we owe our life, with every en joyment that can render life delightful; and to maintain an integritive conduct towards our fellow-creatures; that so, by forming piety and virtue into habit, we may be fit members for that society of the pious and the good, which reason and revelation teach us to expect beyond the grave; I do not see that the turn of mind and pursuits of any son of poverty and obscurity, are in the least more inimical to the sacred interests of piety and virtue, than the, even lawful, bustling and straining after the world's riches and honours and I do not see but that he may O ye illustrious names unknown! who could feel so strongly and describe so well; the last, the meanest of the muses' train flights, yet eyes your path, and with trem-one who, though far inferior to your bling wing would sometimes soar after this sympathetic pang to your memory! Some of you tell us with all the charms of verse, that you have been unfortunate in the world-unfortunate in love; he too has felt the loss of his little fortune, the loss of the woman he adored. Like you, loss of friends, and, worse than all, the all his consolation was his muse; she taught him in rustic measures to complain. Happy could he have done it with your May the turf lie lightly on your bones! strength of imagination and flow of verse! and may you now enjoy that solace and rest which this world rarely gives to the heart tuned to all the feelings of poesy No. III TO MR. AIKIN. of the executioner. All these reasons urge me to go abroad; and to all these reasons I have only one answer-the feelings of a father. This, in the present The Gentleman to whom the Cotter's Saturday Night mood I am in, overbalances every thing SIR, is addressed. Ayrshire, 1786. I was with Wilson, my printer, t'other day, and settled all our by-gone matters between us. After I had paid him all demands, I made him the offer of the second edition, on the hazard of being paid out of the first and readiest, which he declines. By his account, the paper of a thousand copies would cost about twenty seven pounds, and the printing about fifteen or sixteen; he offers to agree to this for the printing, if I will advance for the paper; but this you know, is out of my power, so farewell hopes of a second edition till I grow richer an epocha, which, I think, will arrive at the payment of the British national debt. There is scarcely any thing hurts me so much in being disappointed of my second edition, as not having it in my power to show my gratitude to Mr. Ballantyne, by publishing my poem of The Brigs of Ayr. I would detest myself as a wretch, if I thought I were capable, in a very long life, of forgetting the honest, warm, and tender delicacy with which he enters into my interests. I am sometimes pleased with myself in my grateful sensations; but I believe, on the whole, I have very little merit in it, as my gratitude is not a virtue, the consequence of reflection, but sheerly the instinctive emotion of a heart too inattentive to allow worldly maxims and views to settle into selfish habits. I have been feeling all the various rotations and movements within, respecting the excise. There are many things plead strongly against it, the uncertainty of getting soon into business, the consequences of my follies, which may perhaps make it impracticable for me to stay at home; and besides, I have for some time been pining under secret wretchedness, from causes which you pretty well know-the pang of disappointment, the sting of pride, with some wandering stabs of remorse, which never fail to settle on my vitals like vultures, when attention is not called away by the calls of society, or the vagaries of the muse. Even in the hour of social mirth, my gayety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands that can be laid in the scale against it. You may perhaps think it an extravagant fancy, but it is a sentiment which strikes home to my very soul; though sceptical in some points of our current belief, yet, I think, I have every evidence for the reality of a life beyond the stintthen how should I, in the presence of ed bourn of our present existence; if so, that tremendous Being, the Author of existence, how should I meet the reproaches of those who stand to me in the dear relation of children, whom I deserted in the smiling innocency of helpless infancy? O thou great, unknown Power! thou Almighty God! who has lighted up reason in my breast, and blessed me with immortality! I have frequently wandered from that order and regularity necessary hast never left me nor forsaken me for the perfection of thy works, yet thou Since I wrote the foregoing sheet, I have seen something of the storm of mischief thickening over my folly-devoted head. Should you, my friends, my benefactors, be successful in your applications for me, perhaps it may not be in my power in that way to reap the fruit of your friendly efforts. What I have written in the preceding pages is the settled tenor of my present resolution; but should inimical circumstances forbid me closing with your kind offer, or, enjoying it, only threaten to entail farther misery To tell the truth, I have little reason for complaint, as the world, in general, has been kind to me, fully up to my deserts. I was, for some time past, fast getting into the pining, distrustful snarl of the misanthrope. I saw myself alone, unfit for the struggle of life, shrinking at every rising cloud in the chance-directed atmosphere of fortune, while, all defenceless, I looked about in vain for a cover. It never occurred to me, at least never with the force it deserved, that this world is a busy scene, and man a creature des tined for a progressive struggle; and that however I might possess a warm heart, and inoffensive manners, (which last, by the by, was rather more than I could well boast) still, more than these passive qualities, there was something to be done. When all my school-fellows and youthful compeers (those misguided few excepted who joined, to use a Gentoo phrase, the hulachores of the human race,) were striking off with eager hope and earnest intention some one or other of the many paths of busy life, I was standing idle in the market-place,' or only left the chase of the butterfly from flower to flower, to hunt fancy from whim to whim. You see, Sir, that if to know one's errors were a probability of mending them, I stand a fair chance, but, according to the reverend Westminster divines, though conviction must precede conversion, it is very far from always implying it.* The first book I met with in my early years, which I perused with pleasure, was The Life of Hannibal; the next was The History of Sir William Wallace; for se veral of my earlier years I had few other authors; and many a solitary hour have I stole out, after the laborious vocations of the day, to shed a tear over their glorious but unfortunate stories. In those boyish days I remember in particular being struck with that part of Wallace's story where these lines occur― "Sync to the Leglen wood, when it was late, I chose a fine summer Sunday, the only day my line of life allowed, and walked half a dozen of miles to pay my respects to the Leglen wood, with as much devout enthusiasm as ever pilgrim did to Loret to; and, as I explored, every den and dell where I could suppose my heroic countrythen I was a rhymer) that my heart glowman to have lodged, I recollect (for even ed with a wish to be able to make a song on him in some measure equal to his merits NO. IV TO MRS. DUNLOP OF DUNLOP. Ayrshire, 1786. MADAM, I AM truly sorry I was not at home yesterday when I was so much honoured with your order for my copies, and incomparably more by the handsome compliments you are pleased to pay my poetic abilities. I am fully persuaded that there is not any class of mankind so feelingly alive to the titillations of applause, as the sons of Parnassus; nor is it easy to conceive how the heart of the poor bard dances with rapture, when those whose character in life gives them a right to be polite judges, honour him with their approbation. Had you been thoroughly acquainted with me, Madam, you could not have touched my darling heart-chord more sweetly than by noticing my attempts to celebrate your illustrious ancestor, the Saviour of his Country. "Great patriot-hero! ill-requited chief!" THE hurry of my preparations for going abroad has hindered me from performing my promise so soon as I intended, I have here sent you a parcel of songs, &c. which never made their appearance, except to a friend or two at most. Perhaps some of them may be no great entertainment to you; but of that I am far from being an adequate judge. The song to the tune of Ettrick Banks, you will easily see the impropriety of exposing much, even in manuscript. I think, myself, it has some merit, both as a tolerable description of one of Nature's sweetest scenes, a July evening, and one of the finest pieces of Nature's workmanship. the finest, indeed, we know any thing of, an amiable, beautiful young woman;* but I have no common friend to procure me that permission, without which I would not dare to spread the copy. *The song enclosed is the one beginning, |