The past was bad, and the future hid; its good or ill untryed, O; But the present hour was in my pow'r, and so I would enjoy it, O. No help, nor hope, nor view had I; nor person to be. makes me yet shudder, I hung my harp on the willow trees, except in some lucid intervals, in one of which I composed the following. (Here follows the prayer in distress. p. 78.)—March 1784. Religious Sentiment.—What a creature is man! A little alarm last night, and to-day, that I am mortal, has made such a revolution on my So must toil, and sweat and broil, and labour to sus-spirits! There is no philosophy, no divinity, friend me, O; tain me, O, To plough and sow, to reap and mow, my father bred me early, O; For one, he said, to labour bred, was a match for fortune fairly, O. Thus all obscure, unknown, and poor, thro' life I'm doomed to wander, O, Till down my weary bones I lay in everlasting slum ber, 0: No view nor care, but shun whate'er might breed me pain or sorrow. 0; I live to day, as well's I may, regardless of to-mor row, O. But cheerful still, I am as well, as a monarch in a paace, O, Tho' fortune's frown still hunts me down, with all her wonted malice, O; I make indeed, my daily bread, but ne'er can make farther, O; it But as daily bread is all I need, I do not much regard When sometimes by my labour I earn a little money,O, But come what will, I've sworn it still, I'll ne'er be All you who follow wealth and power with unremit- Had you the wealth Potosi boasts, or nations to adore you, O, you, O. ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF Now Robin lies in his last lair, Nae mair shall fear him; To tell the truth, they seldom fash't him, Then wi' a rhyme or song he lasht 'em, Tho' he was bred to kintra wark, And counted was baith wight and stark, To mak a man; But tell him, he was a learn'd clark, Ye roos'd him then. † I hate the very idea of a controversial divinity; as I firmly believe that every honest upright man, of whatever sect, will be accepted of the deity. I despise the superstition of a fanatic, but I love the religion of a man. Nothing astonishes me more, when a little sickness clogs the wheel of life, than the thoughtless career we run in the hour of health. None saith, where is God, my maker, that giveth songs in the night: who teacheth us more knowledge than the beasts of the field, and more understanding than the fowls of the My creed is pretty nearly expressed in the last clause of Jumie Dean's grace, an honest weaver in Ayrshire; "Lord grant that we may lead a gude life! for a gude life maks a gude end, at least it helps weel!" A decent means of livelihood in the world, an approving God, a peaceful conscience, and one firm trusty friend; can any body that has these, be said to be unhappy? The dignified and dignifying consciousness of an honest man, and the well grounded trust in approving heaven, are two most substantial sources of happiness. Give me, my Maker, to remember thee! Give me to feel "another's woe;" and continue with me that dear-lov'd friend that feels with mine! In proportion as we are wrung with grief, or distracted with anxiety, the ideas of a compassionate Deity, an Almighty Protector, are doubly dear. I have been, this morning, taking a peep through, as Young finely says, "the dark postern of time long elapsed;" 'twas a rueful prosMelancholy. There was a certain period of pect! What a tissue of thoughtlessness, weakmy life that my spirit was broke by repeated losses ness, and folly! My life reminded me of a ruinand disasters, which threatened, and indeed effect-ed temple. What strength, what proportion in ed, the utter ruin of my fortune. My body too some parts! What unsightly gaps, what proswas attacked by that most dreadful distemper, trate ruins in others! I kneeled down before a hypochondria, or confirmed melancholy: In the Father of Mercies, and said, "Father I this wretched state, the recollection of which have sinned against Heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." I rose, eased, and strengthened. Ruisseaux-streams-a play on his own name. ↑ Ye roos'd-ye prais'd. TTERS, 1788. No. LXXII. TO MRS. DUNLOP. Edinburgh, 21st Jan. 1788. AFTER Six weeks' confinement, I am beginning to walk across the room. They have been. six horrible weeks; anguish and low spirits made me unfit to read, write, or think. but you are sure of being respectable—you can afford to pass by an occasion to display your wit, because you may depend for fame on your sense; or if you choose to be silent, you know you can rely on the gratitude of many and the esteem of all; but God help us who are wits or witlings by profession, if we stand not for fame there, we sink unsupported! I am highly flattered by the news you tell I may say to the fair painter me of Coila.• who does me so much honour, as Dr. Beattie I have a hundred times wished that one says to Ross the poet, of his Muse Scotia, from could resign life as an officer resigns a commis- which, by the bye, I took the idea of Coila: sion: for I would not take in any poor, igno-('Tis a poem of Beattie's in the Scots dialect, which perhaps you have never seen.) rant wretch, by selling out. Lately I was a sixpenny private; and, God knows, a miserable soldier enough; now I march to the campaign, a starving cadet: a little more conspicuously wretched. I am ashamed of all this; for though I do want bravery for the warfare of life, I could wish, like some other soldiers, to have as much fortitude or cunning as to dissemble or conceal my cowardice. As soon as I can bear the journey, which will be, I suppose, about the middle of next week, I leave Edinburgh, and soon after I shall pay my grateful duty at Dunlop-house. No. LXXIII. EXTRACT OF A LETTER TO THE SAME. "Ye shak your head, but o' my fegs, No. LXXV. TO MR. ROBERT CLEGHORN, Mauchline, 31st March, 1788. YESTERDAY, my dear Sir, as I was riding through a track of melancholy joyless muis between Galloway and Ayrshire, it being Sunday, I turned my thoughts to psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs; and your favourite air, Captain O'Kean, coming at length in my head, I tried these words to it. You will see that the first part of the tune must be repeated.+ I am tolerably pleased with these verses, but as I have only a sketch of the tune, I leave it with you to try if they suit the measure of the music. Edinburgh, 12th Feb. 1788. SOME things, in your late letters, hurt me: not that you say them, but that you mistake me. Religion, my honoured Madam, has not only been all my life my chief dependence, but my dearest enjoyment. I have indeed been the I am so harassed with care and anxiety, about luckless victim of wayward follies; but, alas! this farming project of mine, that my muse has I have ever been "more fool than knave." degenerated into the veriest prose-wench that A mathematician without religion, is a proba-ever picked cinders, or followed a tinker. When ble character; an irreligious poet, is a monster. MADAM, No. LXXIV. TO A LADY. Mossgiel, 7th March, 1788. THE last paragraph in yours of the 30th February affected me most, so I shall begin my answer where you ended your letter. That I am often a sinner with any little wit I have, I do confess but I have taxed my recollection to no purpose, to find out when it was employed against you. I hate an ungenerous sarcasm, a great deal worse than I do the devil; at least as Muton describes him; and though I may be rascany enough to be sometimes guilty of it my self, I cannot endure it in others. You, my honoured friend, who cannot appear in any light, I am fairly got into the routine of business, I shall trouble you with a longer epistle; perhaps with some queries respecting farming; at present, the world sits such a load on my mind, that it has effaced almost every trace of the 46 the 31st ult. and consider myself greatly obliged them twenty-four dutiful children to their pato you, for your attention in sending me the rents, twenty-four useful members of society, song to my favourite air, Captain O'Kean. and twenty-four approven servants of their God! The words delight me much; they fit the tune. Light's heartsome," quo' the to a hair. I wish you would send me a verse wife when she was stealing sheep. You see or two more; and if you have no objection, I what a lamp I have hung up to lighten your would have it in the Jacobite style. Suppose paths, when you are idle enough to explore tae it should be sung after the fatal field of Cullo- combinations and relations of my ideas. den by the unfortunate Charles: Tenducci per- now as plain as a pike-staff, why a twenty-four sonates the lovely Mary Stuart in the song gun battery was a metaphor. I could readily Queen Mary's Lamentation.-Why may not employ. I sing in the person of her great-great-great grandson? 'Tis Now for business.-I intend to present Mrs. Burns with a printed shawl, an article of wnich Any skill I have in country business you may I dare say you have variety: 'tis my first pretruly command. Situation, soil, customs of sent to her since I have irrevocably called ner countries may vary from each other, but Fur-inine, and I have a kind of whimsical wish to mer Attention is a good farmer in every place. get her the said first present from an old and I beg to hear from you soon. Mrs. Cleghorn much valued friend of hers and mine, a trusty joins me in best compliments. Trojan, on whose friendship I count myself I am, in the most comprehensive sense of the possessed of a life-rent lease. word, your very sincere friend, ROBERT CLEGHORN. No. LXXVII. TO MR. JAMES SMITH, Look on this letter as a "beginning of sorrows;" I'll write you till your eyes ache with reading nonsense. Mrs. Burns ('tis only her private designation), begs her best compliments to you. AVON PRINTfield, LinlitHGOW. Mauchline, April 28, 1788. BEWARE of your Strasburgh, my good Sir! Look on this as the opening of a correspondence like the opening of a twenty-four gun battery! There is no understanding a man properly, without knowing something of his previous ideas (that is to say, if the man has any ideas; for I know many who in the animal-muster, pass for men, that are the scanty masters of only one idea on any given subject, and by far the greatest part of your acquaintances and mine can barely boast of ideas, 1.25-1.5-1.75, or some such fractional matter), so to let you a little into the secrets of my pericranium, there is, you must know, a certain clean-limbed, handsome, bewitching young hussy of your acquaintance, to whom I have lately and privately given a matrimonial title to my corpus. "Bode a robe and wear it," MADAM, No. LXXVIII. TO MRS. DUNLOP. Mauchline, 28th April, 185 YOUR powers of reprehension must be great indeed, as I assure you they made my heart ache with penitential pangs, even though I was really not guilty. As I commence farmer at Whitsunday, you will easily guess I must be pretty busy; but that is not all. As I got the offer of the excise business without solicitation; and as it costs me only six months' attendance for instructions, to entitle me to a commission which commission lies by me, and at any future period, on my simple petition, can be resumed; I thought five and thirty pounds a-year was no bad dernier resort for a poor poet, if fortune in her jade tricks should kick him down from the little eminence to which she has lately helped him up. ; Says the wise old Scots adage! I hate to preFor this reason, I am at present attending sage ill-luck; and as my girl has been doubly these instructions, to have them completed bekinder to me than even the best of women fore Whitsunday. Still, Madam, I prepared usually are to their partners of our sex, in simi- with the sincerest pleasure to meet you at the lar circumstances, I reckon on twelve times a Mount, and came to my brother's on Saturday brace of children against I celebrate my twelfth night, to set out on Sunday; but for some wedding day these twenty-four will give me twenty-four gossippings, twenty-four christenings, (I mean one equal to two), and I hope by the blessing of the God of my fathers, to make Our Poet took this advice. See poetry for the whole of that beautiful song-the Chevalier's Lament. nights preceding I had slept in an apartment, where the force of the winds and rain was only mitigated by being sifted through numberless apertures in the windows, walls, &c. In consequence I was on Sunday, Monday, and part of Tuesday unable to stir out of bed, with all the miserable effects of a violent cold. You see, Madam, the trutn of the French You will oblige me ty presenting my respects maxim, Le vrai n'est pas toujours le vrai-sem- to your host, Mr. Cruikshank, who has given Slable; your last was so full of expostulation, such high approbation to my poor Latinity ; and was something so like the language of an offended friend, that I began to tremble for a correspondence, which I had with grateful pleasure set down as one of the greatest enjoyments of my future life. you may let him know, that as I have likewise been a dabbler in Latin poetry, I have two things that I would, if he desires it, submit not to his judgment, but to his amusement: the one, a translation of Christ's Kirk o' the Green, printed at Aberdeen some years ago; the other, | Batrachomyomachia Homeri Latinis versibus cum additamentis, given in lately to Chalmers, Your books have delighted me; Virgil, Dry- to print if he pleases. Mr. C. will know Seden, and Tasso, were all equal strangers to me;ria non semper delectant, non joca semper. Semper delectant seria mixtu jocis. I have just room to repeat compliments and good wishes from, but of this more at large in my next Sir, your humble servant, JOHN SKINNER. No. LXXIX. FROM THE REV. JOHN SKINNER. pre No. LXXX. DEAR SIR, Linshart, 28th April, 1788. I RECEIVED your last, with the curious sent you have favoured me with, and would TO PROFESSOR DUGALD Stewar1. have made proper acknowledgments before now, out that I have been necessarily engaged in SIR, Mauchline, 3d May, 1787. matters of a different complexion. And now I ENCLOSE you one or two more of my baga that I have got a little respite, I make use of it telles. If the fervent wishes of honest gratito thank you for this valuable instance of your tude bave any influence with that great, ungood will, and to assure you that, with the sin-known Being, who frames the chain of causes cere heart of a true Scotsman, I highly esteem and events; prosperity and happiness will atboth the gift and the giver: as a small testi- tend your visit to the Continent, and return you mony of which I have herewith sent you for safe to your native shore. Wherever I am, allow me, Sir, to claim it as your amusement (and in a form which I hope you will excuse for saving postage) the two my privilege, to acquaint you with my progress songs I wrote about to you already. Charming in my trade of rhymes; as I am sure I could Nancy is the real production of genius in a say it with truth, that, next to my little fame, ploughman of twenty years of age at the time and the having it in my power to make life of its appearing, with no more education than what he picked up at an old farmer-grandfather's fireside, though now, by the strength of natural parts, he is clerk to a thriving bleachfield in the neighbourhood. And I doubt not but you will find in it a simplicity and delicacy, with some turns of humour, that will please one of your taste; at least it pleased me when I first saw it, if that can be any recommendation to it. The other is entirely descriptive of my own sentiments, and you may make use of one or both as you shall see good. • CHARMING NANCY. ▲ SONG, BY A BUCHAN PLOUGHMAN. SOME sing of sweet Mally, some sing of fair Nelly, And some love to sing of the Humours of Glen. In venting my passion, I'll strive to be plain, Therefore, my sweet jewel, O do not prove cruel, Her dress is quite decent when ta'en in the main: My charming, sweet Nancy, wilt thou be my ain? I'll make true affection the constant direction I will not compel her, but plainly I'll tell her, more comfortable to those whom nature has made dear to me, I shall ever regard your countenance, your patronage, your friendly good of fices, as the most valued consequence of my late success in life. tunate in all my buyings and bargainings hither- Farewell! my dear Sir. MADAM, No. LXXXI. EXTRACT OF A LETTER TO MRS. DUNLOP. No. LXXXIII. TO MRS. DUNLOP. Mauchline, 4th May, 1788. DRYDEN'S Virgil has delighted me. I do not know whether the critics will agree with me, but the Georgics are to me by far the best of Virgil. It is indeed a species of writing entirely new to me; and has filled my head with MADAM, 27th May, 1788. a thousand fancies of emulation; but, alas! I HAVE been torturing my philosophy to no when I read the Georgics, and then survey my purpose, to account for that kind partiality of own powers, 'tis like the idea of a Shetland yours, which, unlike poney, drawn up by the side of a thorough-bred has followed me in my hunter, to start for the plate. I own I am dis- return to the shade of life, with assiduous beappointed in the Eneid. Faultless correct- nevolence. Often did I regret in the fleeting ness may please, and does highly please the let- hours of my late will-o'-wisp appearance, that tered critic; but to that awful character I have" here I had no continuing city;" and but for not the most distant pretensions. I do not the consolation of a few solid guineas, could know whether I do not hazard my pretensions almost lament the time that a momentary acto be a critic of any kind, when I say that I quaintance with wealth and splendour put me think Virgil, in many instances, a servile copier so much out of conceit with the sworn comof Homer. If I had the Odyssey by me, I panions of my road through life, insignificance, could parallel many passages where Virgil has and poverty. evidently copied, but by no means improved Homer. Nor can I think there is any thing of this owing to the translators; for, from every thing I have seen of Dryden, I think him, in genius and fluency of language, Pope's master. I have not perused Tasso enough to form an opinion in some future letter, you shall have my ideas of him; though I am conscious my criticisms must be very inaccurate and imperfect, as there I have ever felt and lamented my want of learning most. No. LXXXII. TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE. Mauchline, May 26, 1788. MY DEAR FRIEND, I AM two kind letters in your debt, but I have been from home, and horridly busy buying and preparing for my farming business; over and above the plague of my Excise instructions, which this week will finish. As I flatter ny wishes that I foresee many future years' correspondence between us, 'tis foolish to talk of excusing dull epks: a dull letter may be a very kind one. I have the plea There are few circumstances relating to the unequal distribution of the good things of this life, that give me more vexation (I mean in what I see around me) than the importance the opulent bestow on their trifling family affairs, compared with the very same things on the contracted scale of a cottage. Last afternoon I had the honour to spend an hour or two at a good woman's fireside, where the planks that composed the floor were decorated with a splendid carpet, and the gay table sparkled with silver and china. 'Tis now about term-day, and there has been a revolution among those creatures, who, though in appearance partakers, and equally noble partakers of the same nature with madame; are from time to time, their nerves, their sinews, their health, strength, wisdom, experience, genius, time, nay, a good part of their very thoughts, sold for months and years, • Servants in Scotland are hired from term to erm, sure to tell you that I have been extremely for- i. e. from Whitsunday to Martinmas, &c. |