"THE IMMORTAL MEMORY." Down the far years there steals a deathless song Beauty he gave, and joy, and he, clear-eyed, No stately halls he reared, but read and told As petals, bruised and broken, yet distil From bursting heart, and tender, did he sing, DOROTHY M. MCBURNIE, THREE LETTERS OF ROBERT BURNS. I. TO BRUCE CAMPBELL OF MAYFIELD. A valuable collection of papers relating to James Boswell of Auchinleck, biographer of Johnson, has lately come to light at Malahide Castle, the residence of Lord Talbot de Malahide, Boswell's great-great-grandson, and has been purchased by Lieut.-Col. Ralph H. Isham, C.B.E. Included in the collection is a letter-hitherto unknown to students-addressed by Burns to his friend Bruce Campbell of Mayfield and Millriggs, in the parish of Galston. The letter "solicits in eloquent and noble terms an introduction to Boswell, as being born his near neighbour and of a very different kidney from the ordinary Ayrshire lairds of whom he thought so little." It is endorsed by Boswell as from "Robt. Burns, the poet, expressing very high sentiments of me." Students of Burns will look forward with interest to the publication of Colonel Isham's proposed book on his acquisition. II. TO ALEXANDER CUNNINGHAM, EDINBURGH. An unpublished letter (on four quarto pages) from Burns was sold in their rooms by Messrs. Sotheby, of London, on 15th December, 1927. It belonged to Dr. Maurice Davidson, of London. The letter does not bear place or date or name of addressee, but its contents prove that it was sent to the poet's friend, Alexander Cunningham, of Edinburgh, in the summer of 1794. It is one of a series addressed to Cunningham; seven of the series are now preserved in the Museum of the Cottage at Alloway. The letter reads I made no Urbani has told a damned falsehood. engagements or connections with him whatever. After he and I had met at Lord Selkirk's we lived together three or four days in this town, and had a great deal of converse about our Scots songs. I translated a verse of an Italian song for him, or rather made an English verse to suit his rhythm, and added two verses which had been already published in Johnson's Museum. I likewise gave him a simple old Scots song which I had pickt up in this country, which he promised to set in a suitable manner. I would not even have given him this, had there been any of Mr. Thomson's airs suitable to it unoccupied. I shall give you the song on the other page. Urbani requested me to lend him a hand now and then in his work, and I told him, and told him truly, that such was my enthusiasm for the subject, had I met with him previous to my acquaintance with Mr. Thomson, I would most gladly have lent him any assistance in my power, but that now untill Mr. T.'s publication was finished, I could not promise anything; however, that at a future period, when the humour was on me, I would cheerfully write a song for him. He hinted, I remember, something about mentioning my name in an advertisement, which I expressly forbade. One thing he may mean: Johnson, I know, has given him full permission to any thing I have written in the Museum. Beyond that he had no right to expect and, for his impudence, shall never receive, any assistance from me. So much, my dear Cunningham, as you say, as to business; now for the song. I would, to tell the fact, most gladly have seen it in our Friend's publication, but, though I am charmed with it, it is a kind of Song on which I know we would think very differently. It is the only species of Song about which our ideas disagree. What to me appears the simple and the wild, to him, and I suspect to you likewise, will be looked on as the ludicrous and the absurd. SONG. O, my Love's like the red, red rose That's sweetly play'd in tune. As fair art thou, my bonie lass, And I can love thee still, my Dear, Till a' the seas gang dry, my Dear, And fare thee weel, my only Love, Yours most sincerely, R. B. N.B.-As to retorting on the Signior, I scorn it. Let him, his lies and his works, go to hell their own way. R. B. The letter was purchased by Mr. Walter T. Spencer, acting-it is said-on behalf of an American firm, for the amazing sum of £2000. III. TO JAMES HAMILTON, GLASGOW. Before he "struck" Glasgow for the first time, in June of 1787, Burns had had a certain interest in that city, because of the fact that to it had come two of his Ayrshire friends-one to study at the College in High Street, the other to work as a shoemaker. Letters to James M'Candlish-" My ever dear old acquaintance 66 -and to David Brice-addressed as Dear Brice are in print, to prove that interest. On his several visits to Glasgow between June, 1787, and March, 1788-the last occasion, so far as known, on which he was in the city-Burns doubtless made numerous new friends and acquaintances. His printed correspondence includes a number of letters to people whose acquaintance he almost certainly made here: John Smith, bookseller-who acted as local agent for the second edition of his Poems; James Hamilton, grocer; George Lockhart, merchant; and Robert M'Indoe, merchant in Argyle Street. The one printed letter to Hamilton was written from Ellisland on 26th May, 1789, and from its contents we learn that Hamilton had been unfortunate. The fact that the name of his firm-" James Hamilton & Co., grocers, 86 Trongate "-appears in Jones's Directory of Glasgow for 1787, but not in the next issue of that book in 1789, may warrant the conjecture that his misfortune was a business affair. The letter, as printed-for the first time-by R. H. Cromek in his Reliques of Burns (1808), reads Dear Sir, Ellisland, May 26, 1789. I send you by John Glover, Carrier, the above account for Mr. Turnbull, as I suppose you know his address. I would fain offer, my dear Sir, a word of sympathy with your misfortunes: but it is a tender string, and I know not how to touch it. It is easy to flourish a set of high-flown sentiments on the subject that would give great satisfaction to a breast quite at ease; but, as One observes who was very seldom mistaken in the theory of life, "The heart knoweth its own sorrows, and a stranger intermeddleth not therewith." Among some distressful emergencies that I have experienced in life, I ever laid this down as my foundation |