heal the wounds of his soul, is at least an opiate to blunt their poignancy.

With the profoundest respect for your abilities; the most sincere esteem, and ardent regard, for your gentle heart and amiable manners; and the most fervent wish and prayer for your welfare, peace, and bliss, I have the honour to be, Madam, your most devoted humble servant,

R. B.

[The offended lady, soothed by this submissive letter, readmitted the bard to her friendship. He found her, in the words of another minstrel,

"Forgiving all and good."

The language in which Burns commonly indulged, even in mixed companies, was racy and vigorous, scaring minds of small calibre, and giving occasion to the sensitive and the delicate to lament that he had not got his masculine intrepidity of speech tamed down by education and polished company. ED.]

No. CCXXXIII.

TO JOHN SYME, Esq.

You know that among other high dignities, you have the honour to be my supreme court of critical judicature, from which there is no appeal. I enclose you a song which I composed since I saw you, and I am going to give you the history of it. Do you know that among much that I admire in the characters and manners of those great folks whom I have now the honour to call my acquaintances, the Oswald family, there is nothing charms me more than Mr. Oswald's unconcealable attachment to that incomparable woman. Did you

ever, my dear Syme, meet with a man who owed more to the Divine Giver of all good things than Mr. O. A fine fortune; a pleasing exterior; selfevident amiable dispositions, and an ingenuous upright mind, and that informed too, much beyond the usual run of young fellows of his rank and fortune and to all this, such a woman!-but of her I shall say nothing at all, in despair of saying any thing adequate in my song, I have endeavoured to do justice to what would be his feelings, on seeing in the scene I have drawn, the habitation

of his Lucy. As I am a good deal pleased with my performance, I in my first fervour thought of sending it to Mrs. Oswald, but on second thoughts, perhaps what I offer as the honest incense of genuine respect, might, from the well-known character of poverty and poetry, be construed into some modification or other of that servility which my soul abhors.

R. B.

[The song inclosed was that fine one beginning, 'O wat ye wha's in yon town,'

The oral communications of the poet with his friend John Syme were numerous: not so his communications with the pen: they were for some years near neighbours, and intercourse by letter was unnecessary. In one of Cunningham's letters he says to Burns, "I lately received a letter from our friend Barncallie— what a charming fellow lost to society-born to great expectations-with superior abilities, a pure heart and untainted morals; his fate in life has been hard indeed." It was the fate of Syme to lose the estate of Barncallie in Galloway, which passed from the family at his father's death. Of his talents something has already been said: he was one of the most agreeable men in company that ever did honour to a toast-he was celebrated too for his wit, his wine, and his dinners; some of his epigrams were imputed to Burns. His wife, a very handsome woman, was a most affectionate mother-her chief pleasure lay in seeing her children healthy and her husband happy. ED.]

No. CCXXXIV.

TO MISS

Dumfries, 1794.

MADAM,

NOTHING short of a kind of absolute necessity could have made me trouble you with this letter. Except my ardent and just esteem for your sense, taste, and worth, every sentiment arising in my breast, as I put pen to paper to you, is painful. The scenes I have passed with the friend of my soul and his amiable connexions! the wrench at my heart to think that he is gone, for ever gone from me, never more to meet in the wanderings of a weary world! and the cutting reflection of all, that I had most unfortunately, though most undeservedly, lost the confidence of that soul of worth, ere it took its flight!

These, Madam, are sensations of no ordinary anguish. However, you also may be offended with some imputed improprieties of mine; sensibility you know I possess, and sincerity none will deny me.

To oppose those prejudices which have been raised against me, is not the business of this letter.

Indeed it is a warfare I know not how to wage. The powers of positive vice I can in some degree calculate, and against direct malevolence I can be on my guard; but who can estimate the fatuity of giddy caprice, or ward off the unthinking mischief of precipitate folly ?

I have a favour to request of you, Madam ; and of your sister Mrs. through your means. You know that, at the wish of my late friend, I made a collection of all my trifles in verse which I had ever written. They are many of them local, some of them puerile and silly, and all of them unfit for the public eye. As I have some little fame at stake, a fame that I trust may live when the hate of those who "watch for my halting," and the contumelious sneer of those whom accident has made my superiors, will, with themselves, be gone to the regions of oblivion; I am uneasy now for the fate of those manuscripts-Will Mrs.

have the goodness to destroy them, or return them to me? As a pledge of friendship they were bestowed; and that circumstance indeed was all their merit. Most unhappily for me, that merit they no longer possess; and I hope that Mrs.

-'s goodness, which I well know, and ever will revere, will not refuse this favour to a man whom she once held in some degree of estimation. With the sincerest esteem, I have the honour to be, Madam, &c.

R. B.