* * * "The valiant, in himself, what can he suffer? Or what need he regard his single woes ?" &c. Your surmise, Madam, is just; I am in deed a husband. gay tables sparkled with silver and china. | ments, at that period of my existence Tis now about term-day, and there has when the soul is laying in her cargo of been a revolution among those creatures, ideas for the voyage of life, is, I believe, who, though in appearance partakers, and the principal cause of this unhappy frame equally noble partakers, of the same na- of mind. ture 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, * not only to the necessities, the conveniences, but the caprices of the important few.* We talked of the insignificant creatures; nay, notwithstanding their general stupidity and rascality, did some of the poor devils the honour to commend them. But light be the turf upon his breast who taught "Reverence thyself." We looked down on the unpolished wretches, their impertinent wives and clouterly brats, as the lordly bull does on the little dirty anthill, whose puny inhabitants he crushes in the carelessness of his rambles, or tosses in the air in the wantonness of his pride. I found a once much-loved and still much-loved female, literally and truly cast out to the mercy of the naked elements; but I enabled her to purchase a shelter; and there is no sporting with a fellow-creature's happiness or misery. The most placid good-nature and sweetness of disposition; a warm heart, gratefully devoted with all its powers to love fulness, set off to the best advantage by a me; vigorous health and sprightly cheermore than commonly handsome figure; these, I think in a woman, may make a good wife, though she should never have read a page but the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, nor have danced in a brighter assembly than a penny-pay wedding. No. LI. TO THE SAME. AT MR. DUNLOP'S, HADDINGTON. Ellisland, 13th June, 1788. "Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see, No. LII. TO MR. P. HILL. MY DEAR HILL, THIS is the second day, my honoured I SHALL say nothing at all to your friend, that I have been on my farm. A mad present-you have long and often solitary inmate of an old smoky Spence; been of important service to me, and I far from every object I love, or by whom suppose you mean to go on conferring obI am beloved; nor any acquaintance old-ligations until I shall not be able to lift up er than yesterday, except Jenny Geddes, the old mare I ride on; while uncouth cares and novel plans hourly insult my awkward ignorance and bashful inexperience. There is a foggy atmosphere native to my soul in the hour of care, consequently the dreary objects seem larger than the life. Extreme sensibility, irritated and prejudiced on the gloomy side by a series of misfortunes and disappoint *Servants, in Scotland, are hired from term to term; 1. e. from Whitsunday to Martinmas, &c. my face before you. In the mean time, as Sir Roger de Coverly, because it happened to be a cold day in which he made his will, ordered his servants great coats for mourning, so, because I have been this week plagued with an indigestion, I have sent you by the carrier a fine old ewe milk cheese. devil and all. It besets a man in every Indigestion is the devil: nay, 'tis the one of his senses. I lose my appetite at the sight of successful knavery, and sicken to loathing at the noise and nonsense of forget one of the dearest of them, Cunself-important folly. When the hollow-ningham. The brutality, insolence, and hearted wretch takes me by the hand, the feeling spoils my dinner; the proud man's wine so offends my palate that it chokes me in the gullet; and the pulvilised, feathered, pert coxcomb, is so disgustful in my nostril, that my stomach turns. If ever you have any of these disagreeable sensations, let me prescribe for you patience and a bit of my cheese. I know that you are no niggard of your good things among your friends, and some of them are in much need of a slice. There in my eye is our friend, Smellie; a man positively of the first abilities and greatest strength of mind, as well as one of the best hearts and keenest wits that I have ever met with; when you see him, as alas! he too is smarting at the pinch of distressful circumstances, aggravated by the sneer of contumelious greatness-a bit of my cheese alone will not cure him; but if you add a tankard of brown stout, and superadd a magnum of right Oporto, you will see his sorrows vanish like the morning mist before the summer sun. Ch, the earliest friend, except my only brother, that I have on earth, and one of the worthiest fellows that ever any man called by the name of friend, if a luncheon of my cheese would help to rid him of some of his superabundant modesty, you would do well to give it him. David, with his Courant, comes too, across my recollection, and I beg you will help him largely from the said ewe-milk cheese, to enable him to digest those bedaubing paragraphs with which he is eternally larding the lean characters of certain great men in a certain great town. I grant you the periods are very well turned; so, a fresh egg is a very good thing, but when thrown at a man in a pillory it does not at all improve his figure, not to mention the irreparable loss of the egg. My facetious friend, D-r, I would wish also to be a partaker: not to digest his spleen, for that he laughs off, but to digest his last night's wine at the last field day of the Crochallan corps.† Among our common friends, I must not * Printer of the Edinburgh Evening Courant. † A club of choice spirits. selfishness of a world unworthy of having such a fellow as he is in it, I know sticks in his stomach; and if you can help him to any thing that will make him a little easier on that score, it will be very obliging. As to honest J-Se, he is such a contented happy man, that I know not what can annoy him, except perhaps he may not have got the better of a parcel of modest anecdotes which a certain poet gave him one night at supper, the last time the said poet was in town. Though I have mentioned so many men of law, I shall have nothing to do with them professedly.-The faculty are beyond my prescription. As to their clients, that is another thing: God knows they have much to digest! The clergy I pass by; their profundity of erudition, and their liberality of sentiment; their total want of pride, and their detestation of hypocrisy, are so proverbially notorious as to place them far, far above either my praise or censure. I was going to mention a man of worth, whom I have the honour to call friend, the Laird of Craigdarroch; but I have spoken to the landlord of the King's-arms inn here, to have, at the next countymeeting, a large ewe-milk cheese on the table, for the benefit of the Dumfriesshire whigs, to enable them to digest the Duke of Queensberry's late political conduct. I have just this moment an opportunity of a private hand to Edinburgh, as perhaps you would not digest double postage. No. LIII. TO MRS. DUNLOP. Mauchline, 2d August, 1788 HONOURED MADAM, YOUR kind letter welcomed me, yesternight, to Ayrshire. I am indeed seriously angry with you at the quantum of your luck-penny: but, vexed and hurt as I was, I could not help laughing very heartily at the noble Lord's apology for the missed napkin. Let prudence number o'er each sturdy son Ye wise ones, hence! ye hurt the social eye! I would write you from Nithsdale, and give you my direction there, but I have scarce an opportunity of calling at a postoffice once in a fortnight. I am six miles from Dumfries, am scarcely ever in it myself, and, as yet, have little acquaintance in the neighbourhood. Besides, I am now very busy on my farm, building a dwell-ed at what you tell me of Anthony's wriing-house; as at present I am almost an evangelical man in Nithsdale, for I have scarce "where to lay my head." There are some passages in your last that brought tears in my eyes. "The heart knoweth its own sorrows, and a stranger intermeddleth not therewith." The repository of these "sorrows of the heart," is a kind of sanctum sanctorum; and 'tis only a chosen friend, and that too at particular sacred times, who dares cnter into them. "Heaven oft tears the bosom chords You will excuse this quotation for the sake of the author. Instead of entering on this subject farther, I shall transcribe you a few lines I wrote in a hermitage belonging to a gentleman in my Nithsdale neighbourhood. They are almost the only favours the muses have conferred on me in that country.* Since I am in the way of transcribing, the following were the production of yesterday, as I jogged through the wild hills of New-Cumnock. I intend inserting them, or something like them, in an epistle I am going to write to the gentleman on whose friendship my excise-hopes depend, Mr. Graham of Fintry, one of the worthiest and most accomplished gentlemen, not only of this country, but I will dare to say it, of this age. The following are just the first crude thoughts "unhouseled, uranointed, unannealed." Here the muse left me. I am astonish ting me. I never received it. Poor fellow! you vex me much by telling me that he is unfortunate. I shall be in Ayrshire ten days from this date. I have just room for an old Roman farewell! No. LIV. TO THE SAME. Mauchline, 10th August, 1788. MY MUCH HONOURED FRIEND, YOURS of the 24th June is before me. I found it, as well as another valued friend my wife, waiting to welcome me to Ayrshire: I met both with the sincerest pleasure. When I write you, Madam, I do not sit down to answer every paragraph of yours, by echoing every sentiment, like the faithful Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, answering a speech from the best of kings! I express myself in the fulness of my heart, and may perhaps be guilty of neglecting some of your kind inquiries; but not, from your very odd reason, that I do not read your letters. All your epistles for several months have cost me nothing, except a swelling throb of gratitude, or a deep felt sentiment of veneration. Mrs. Burns, Madam, is the identical woman Pity the tuneful muses' helpless train: boon. The lines transcribed were those written in FriarsCarse Hermitage. See Poems p. 62. When she first found herself" as women wish to be who love their lords," as I loved her nearly to distraction, we took steps for a private marriage. Her parents got the hint: and not only forbade me her company and the house, but, on my rumoured West-Indian voyage, got a warrant to put me in jail till I should find security in my about-to-be paternal relation. You know my lucky reverse of fortune. On my eclatant return to Mauchline, I was made very welcome to visit my girl. The usual consequences began to betray her; and as I was at that time laid up a cripple in Edinburgh, she was turned, literally turned out of doors: and I wrote to a friend to shelter her till my return, when our marriage was declared. Her happiness or misery were in my hands; and who could trifle with such a deposite? I can easily fancy a more agreeable companion for my journey of life, but, upon my honour, 'I have never seen the individual instance Circumstanced as I am, I could never have got a female partner for life, who could have entered into my favourite studies, relished my favourite authors, &c. without probably entailing on me, at the same time, expensive living, fantastic caprice, perhaps apish affectation, with all the other blessed boarding-school acquirements, which (pardonnez moi, Madame,) are sometimes, to be found among females of the upper ranks, but almost universally pervade the misses of the would-begentry. I like your way in your church-yard lucubrations. Thoughts that are the spontaneous result of accidental situations, either respecting health, place, or company, have often a strength and always an originality, that would in vain be looked for in fancied circumstances and studied paragraphs. For me, I have often thought of keeping a letter, in progression, by me, to send you when the sheet was written out. Now I talk of sheets, I must tell you, my reason for writing to you on paper of this kind, is my pruriency of writing to you at large. A page of post is on such a dissocial narrow-minded scale that I cannot abide it; and double letters, at least in my miscellaneous reveri manner, are a monstrous tax in a close correspondence. To counterwork these baneful feelings, I have sat down to write to you; as I declare upon my soul, I always find that the most sovereign balm for my wounded spirit. I was yesterday at Mr.'s to dinner for the first time. My reception was quite to my mind: from the lady of the house, quite flattering. She sometimes hits on a couplet or two, impromptu. She repeated one or two to the admiration of all present. My suffrage as a professional man, was expected: I for once went agonizing over the belly of my conscience. Pardon me, ye, my adored household gods of Soul! In the course of conversation, -Independence of Spirit, and integrity Johnson's Musical Museum, a collection of Scottish songs with the music, was talked of. We got a song on the harpsichord, beginning, "Raving winds around her blowing."* The air was much admired; the lady of the house asked me whose were the words; "Mine, Madam-they are indeed my very best verses:" she took not the smallest notice of them! The old Scottish proverb says well, "king's caff is better than ither folk's corn." I was going to make a New Testament quotation about "cast ing pearls;" but that would be too viru See Poems, p. 107. lent, for the lady is actually a woman of letters. I return to Ayrshire middle of sense and taste. After all that has been said on the other side of the question, man is by no means a happy creature. I do not speak of the selected few favoured by partial heaven; whose souls are turned to gladness, amid next week; and it quickens my pace to think that there will be a letter from you waiting me there. I must be here again very soon for my harvest No. LVI. riches and honours, and prudence and wis- TO R. GRAHAM, ESQ. OF FINTRY. dom. I speak of the neglected many, whose nerves, whose sinews, whose days, are sold to the minions of fortune. If I thought you had never seen it, I would transcribe for you a stanza of an old Scottish ballad, called The Life and Age of Man; beginning thus: ""Twas in the sixteenth hunder year Of God and fifty-three, Frae Christ was born, that bought us dear, As writings testifie." I had an old grand-uncle, with whom my mother lived a while in her girlish years; the good old man, for such he was, was long blind ere he died, during which time, his highest enjoyment was to sit down and cry, while my mother would sing the simple old song of The Life and Age of Man. It is this way of thinking, it is these melancholy truths, that make religion so precious to the poor, miserable children of men-if it is a mere phantom, existing only in the heated imagination of enthusiasm, "What truth on earth so precious as the lie?" My idle reasonings sometimes make me a little sceptical, but the necessities of my heart always give the cold philosophizings the lie. Who looks for the heart weaned from earth; the soul affianced to her God; the correspondence fixed with heaven; the pious supplication and devout thanksgiving, constant as the vicissitudes of even and morn; who thinks to meet with these in the court, the palace, in the glare of public life? No: to find them in their precious importance and divine efficacy, we must search among the obscure recesses of disappointinent, affliction, poverty, and distress. I am sure, dear Madam, you are now more than pleased with the length of my SIR, WHEN I had the honour of being introduced to you at Athole-house, I did not think so soon of asking a favour of you. When Lear, in Shakspeare, asks old Kent why he wishes to be in his service, he answers, "Because you have that in your face which I could like to call master." For some such reason, Sir, do I now solicit your patronage. You know, I dare say, of an application I lately made to your Board to be admitted an officer of excise. I have, according to form, been examined by a supervisor, and to-day I gave in his certificate, with a request for an order for instructions. In this affair, if I succeed, I am afraid I shall but too much need a patronising friend. Propriety of conduct as a man, and fidelity and attention as an officer, I dare engage for but with any thing like business, except manual labour, I am totally unac quainted. I had intended to have closed my late appearance on the stage of life in the character of a country farmer; but, after discharging some filial and fraternal claims, I find I could only fight for existence in that miserable manner, which I have lived to see throw a venerable parent into the jaws of a jail: whence death, the poor man's last and often best friend, rescued him. I know, Sir, that to need your goodness is to have a claim on it; may I therefore beg your patronage to forward me in this affair, till I be appointed to a division, where, by the help of rigid economy, I will try to support that independence so dear to my soul, but which has been too often so distant from my situation.* *Here followed the poetical part of the Epistle, given in the Poems, p. 79. |