Your Halloween, and Saturday Night, will remain to distant posterity as interesting pictures of rural innocence and happiness in your native country, and were happily written in the dialect of the people; but Harvest Home, being suited to descriptive poetry, except where colloquial, may escape the disguise of a dialect which admits of no elegance or dignity of expression. Without the assistance of any god or goddess, and without the invocation of any foreign Muse, you may convey in epistolary form the description of a scene so gladdening and picturesque, with all the concomitant local position, landscape, and costume, contrasting the peace, improvement, and happiness of the borders of the once hostile nations of Britain, with their former oppression and misery, and shewing, in lively and beautiful colours, the beauties and joys of a rural life. And as the unvitiated heart is naturally disposed to overflow with gratitude in the moment of prosperity, such a subject would furnish you with an amiable opportunity of perpetuating the names of Glencairn, Miller, and your other eminent benefactors; which from what I know of your spirit, and have seen of your poems and letters, will not deviate from the chastity of praise that is so uniformly united to true taste and genius. I am, Sir, &c.

No.

No. CXXII.

TO LADY E. CUNNINGHAM.

MY LADY,

I WOULD, as usual, have availed myself of the privilege your goodness has allowed me, of sending you any thing I compose in my poetical way; but as I had resolved, so soon as the shock of my irreparable loss would allow me, to pay a tribute to my late benefactor, I determined to make that the first piece I should do myself the honour of sending you. Had the wing of my fancy been equal to the ardour of my heart, the enclosed had been much more worthy your perusal as it is, I beg leave to lay it at your ladyship's feet. As all the world knows my obligations to the late Earl of Glencairn, I would wish to shew as openly that my heart glows, and shall ever glow, with the most grateful sense and remembrance of his lordship's goodness. The sables I did myself the honour

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to wear to his lordship's memory, were not the mockery of woe." Nor shall my gratitude perish with me!-If, among my children, I shall have a son that has a heart, he shall hand it down to his child as a family honour, and a family debt, that my dearest existence I owe to the noble house of Glencairn!

you

I was about to say, my lady, that if think the poem may venture to see the light, I would, in some way or other, give it to the world.*

No.

*The poem enclosed is published, vol. iii. p. 320. The Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn.

E.

No. CXXIII.

To MR. AINSLIE.

MY DEAR AINSLIE,

CAN you minister to a mind diseased? Can you, amid the horrors of penitence, regret, remorse, head-ache, nausea, and all the rest of the d-d hounds of hell, that beset a poor wretch who has been guilty of the sin of drunkenness can you speak peace to a troubled soul?

Miserable perdu that I am! I have tried every thing that used to amuse me, but in vain: here must I sit, a monument of the vengeance laid up in store for the wicked, slowly counting every chick of the clock as it slowly-slowly, numbers over these lazy scoundrels of hours, who, d―n them, are ranked up before me, every one at his neighbour's backside, and every one with a burden of anguish on his back, to pour

on

me.

on my devoted head-and there is none to pity My wife scolds me! my business torments me, and my sins come staring me in the face, every one telling a more bitter tale than his fellow. When I tell you even *** has lost its power to please, you will guess something of my hell within, and all around me.-I began Elibanks and Elibraes, but the stanzas fell unenjoyed and unfinished from my listless tongue; at last I luckily thought of reading over an old letter of yours that lay by me in my book-case, and I felt something, for the first time since I opened my eyes, of pleasurable existence. Well-I begin to breathe a little, since I began to write you. How are you? and what are you doing? How goes Law? Apropos, for connexion's sake, do not address to me supervisor, for that is an honour I cannot pretend to-I am on the list, as we call it, for a supervisor, and will be called out by and by to act as one; but at present I am a simple gauger, tho' t'other day I got an appointment to an excise division of 251, per ann. Better than the rest. My present income, down money, is 70l. per ann.

I have one or two good fellows here whom you would be glad to know.

No.