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Let prudence number o'er each sturdy son,
Who life and wisdom at one race begun,
Who feel by reason, and who give by rule,
(Instinct's a brute, and sentiment a fool!)
Who make poor will do wait upon I should-
We own they're prudent, but who feels they're
good?

Ye wise ones, hence! ye hurt the social eye!
God's image rudely etch'd on base alloy !
But come ye who the godlike pleasure know,
Heaven's attribute distinguish'd-to bestow!
Whose arms of love would grasp the human race:
Come thou who giv'st with all a courtier's grace;
Friend of my life, true patron of my rhymes!
Prop of my dearest hopes for future times.
Why shrinks my soul half blushing, half afraid,
Backward, abash'd to ask thy friendly aid?
I know my need, I know thy giving hand,
I crave thy friendship at thy kind command;
But there are such who court the tuneful nine-
Heavens! should the branded character be mine!
Whose verse in manhood's pride sublimely flows,
Yet vilest reptiles in their begging prose.
Mark, how their lofty independent spirit
Soars on the spurning wing of injur❜d merit!
Seek not the proofs in private life to find;
Pity the best of words should be but wind!
So, to heaven's gates the lark's shrill song ascends,
But grovelling on the earth the carol ends.
In all the clam'rous cry of starving want,
They dun benevolence with shameless front;
Oblige them, patronise their tinsel lays,
They persecute you all your future days!

Ere my poor soul such deep damnation stain,
My horny fist assume the plough again;

The pie-ball'd jacket let me patch once more;
On eighteen-pence a week I've liv'd before.
Though, thanks to Heaven, I dare even that last shift
I trust meantime my boon is in thy gift:
That plac'd by thee upon the wish'd-for height,
Where, man and nature fairer in her sight,
My muse may imp her wing for some sublimer
flight.*

FRAGMENT,

INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HON, C. J. FOX.

How wisdom and folly meet, mix, and unite;

How virtue and vice blend their black and their

white;

How genius, the' illustrious father of fiction, Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradictionI sing: If these mortals, the critics, should bustle, I care not, not I, let the critics go whistle.

But now for a Patron, whose name and whose glory

At once may illustrate and honour my story.

This is our Poet's first epistle to Graham of Fintry. It is not equal to the second; but it contains too much of the characteristic vigour of its author to be suppressed. A little more knowledge of natural history, or of chemistry, was wanted to enable him to execute the original conception correctly.

Thou first of our orators, first of our wits;

Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits;

With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so

strong,

No man with the half of 'em e'er went far wrong;
With passions so potent, and fancies so bright,
No man with the half of 'em e'er went quite right;
A sorry, poor misbegot son of the Muses,

For using thy name offers fifty excuses.

Good L-d, what is man! for as simple he looks, Do but try to develop his hooks and his crooks; With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil,

All in all he's a problem must puzzle the devil.

On his one ruling passion sir Pope hugely labours, That, like the' old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours:

Mankind are his show-box-a friend, would you know him?

Pull the string, ruling passion the picture will show him.

What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system,

One trifling particular, truth, should have miss'd

him;

For, spite of his fine theoretic positions,
Mankind is a science defies definitions.

Some sort all our qualities each to its tribe, And think human nature they truly describe;

Have

you
found this, or t' other? there's more in
the wind,

As by one drunken fellow his comrades you'll find.
But such is the flaw, or the depth of the plan,
In the make of that wonderful creature, call'd Man,
No two virtues, whatever relation they claim,
Nor even two different shades of the same,
Though like as was ever twin brother to brother,
Possessing the one shall imply you've the other.

TO DR. BLACKLOCK.

Ellisland, 21st Oct. 1789.

Wow, but your letter made me vauntie!
And are ye hale, and weel, and cantie?
- I kenn'd it still your wee bit jauntie
Wad bring ye to:

Lord send you ay as weel's I want ye,
And then ye'll do.

The ill-thief blaw the Heron south!
And never drink be near his drouth!
He tald mysel by word o' mouth,

He'd tak my letter;

I lippen'd to the chiel in trouth,

And bade nae better.

But aiblins honest Master Heron

Had at the time some dainty fair one,

To ware his theologic care on,

And holy study;

And tir'd o' sauls to waste his lear on,
E'en tried the body.*

But what d'ye think, my trusty fier,
I'm turn'd a gauger-Peace be here!
Parnassian queens, I fear, I fear

Ye'll now disdain me,

And then my fifty pounds a year

Will little gain me.

Ye glaiket, gleesome, daintie damies,
Wha by Castalia's wimplin streamies,
Lowp, sing, and lave your pretty limbies,
Ye ken, ye ken,

That strange necessity supreme is

’Mang sons o men.

I hae a wife and twa wee laddies,

They maun hae brose and brats o' duddies;
Ye ken yoursels my heart right proud is,

I need na vaunt,

But I'll sned besoms-thraw saugh woodies,
Before they want.

Lord help me thro' this warld o' care!

I'm weary sick o't late and air!

Not but I hae a richer share

Than mony ithers;

And a' men brithers?

But why should ae man better fare,

*Mr. Heron, author of the History of Scotland, and of various

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