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MY LORD,-Language sinks under the ardor of my feelings when I would thank your Lordship for the honor you have done me in inviting me to make one at the coronation of the bust of Thomson. In my first enthusiasm, in reading the card you did me the honor to write me, I overlooked every obstacle, and determined to go; but I fear it will not be in my power. A week or two's absence, in the very middle of my harvest, is what I much doubt I dare not venture on.

Your Lordship hints at an ode for the occasion: but who would write after Collins? I read over his verses to the memory of Thomson, and despaired. I got indeed to the length of three or four stanzas, in the way of address to the shade of the bard, on crowning his bust. I shall trouble your Lordship with the subjoined copy of them, which, I am afraid, will be but too convincing a proof how unequal I am to the task. However, it affords me an opportunity of approaching your Lordship, and declaring how sincerely and gratefully I have the honor to be, &c. R. B.

The above letter enclosed our poet's "Address to the shade of Thomson," given at page 68, supra. The Earl had invited Burns "to make one at the coronation of the bust of Thomson, on Ednam Hill, on the 22d of September, for which occasion perhaps his muse may inspire a suitable Ode."

In a reply, dated 16th September, the Earl informs Burns that his "Address" had been well received by the public, and suggests "Harvest Home" as a subject for his future musings; but recommends him to write in English, rather than in a "dialect which admits of no elegance or dignity of expression." Such a subject, he adds, "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 it is so uniformly united to true taste and genius.”

(1) TO JAMES GRACIE, ESQ., BANKER.

(CHAMBERS, 1852.)

GLOBE INN, 8 o'clock p.m. [1791.]

Your

SIR,-I have yours anent Crombie's bill. * forbearance has been very great. I did it to accommodate the thoughtless fellow. He asks till Wednesday week. If he fail, I pay it myself. In the meantime, if horning and caption be absolutely necessary, grip him by the neck, and welcome. Yours,

ROBT. BURNS.

A LETTER FOR MR. CLARKE TO SEND TO
MR. WILLIAMSON,†

FACTOTUM AND FAVORITE TO THE EARL of

HOPETOUN.

(DOUGLAS, 1877.)

[ELLISLAND, Sep. 1791.]

SIR,-Most sincerely do I regret that concurrence of accident, prejudice, and mistake, which, most unfortunately for me, has subjected me, as master of Moffat Grammar School, to the displeasure of the Earl of Hopetoun, and those in whom he places confidence. Protestations of my innocence will, from me, be thought words of course. But I hope, and I think I

*This defaulter was a mason at Dalswinton, who had been employed in building the poet's new house at Ellisland, and had been paid for his work.

Died at Edinburgh, 12th July 1805, Alexander Williamson of Balgray, Esq., many years factor to the Earl of Hopetoun.-Scots Mag.

!

ÆT. 33.] HOPETOUN AND HIS MYRMIDONS.

279

have some well-grounded reasons for that hope, that the gentlemen in whose hands I immediately am, the Right Hon. Patrons of the School, will find the charge against me groundless, and my claims just: and will not allow me to fall a sacrifice to the insidious designs of some, and the well-meant, though misinformed zeal of others. However, as disputes and litigations must be of great hurt, both to the School and me, I most ardently wish that it would suggest itself to Mr. Williamson's good sense and wish for the welfare of the country, the propriety of dropping all disputes, and allowing me peaceable admission to my school and the exercise of my function. This, Sir, I am persuaded, will be serving all parties; and will lay me under particular and lasting obligations to your goodness. I propose opening my School to-morrow; and the quiet possession of my school-house is what I have to request of you-a request which, if refused, I must be under the very disagreeable necessity of asking in the way pointed out by the laws of the country. Whatever you, Sir, may think of other parts of my conduct, you will at least grant the propriety of a man's straining every nerve in a contest, where not only Ruin but Infamy must attend his defeat. I am, &c. JAMES CLARKE. *

(Signed)

THE AFTON LODGE MANUSCRIPTS.

(MCKEE, 1869.)

In the latter portion of 1791 the beautiful set of manuscripts presented by Burns to Mrs. Stewart of Afton (enumerated at page 66, supra), seem to have been forwarded with the following note prefixed to them :

Many verses, on which an author would by no

*This subject is resumed under dates Jan. and Feb. 1792. Burns, under his transcript of the present letter in the Glenriddell collection, writes these words, "Bravo! Clarke. In spite of Hopetoun and his myrmidons, thou camest off victorious."

means rest his reputation in print, may yet amuse an idle moment in manuscript; and many Poems, from the locality of the subject, may be uninteresting, or unintelligible to those who are strangers to that locality. Most of, if not all, the following Poems are in one or other of those predicaments, and the author begs whoever into whose hands they may fall, that they will do him the justice not to publish what he himself thought proper to suppress. R. B.

[ELLISLAND, Oct. 1791.]

(1) TO MR. CORBET, SUPERVISOR-GENERAL

OF EXCISE.*

(DOUGLAS, 1877.)

[Oct. 1791.]

SIR, I have in my time taken up the pen on several ticklish subjects, but none that ever cost me half so much as the language of supplication. To lay open one's wants and woes to the mercy of another's benevolence, is a business so prostituted by the worthless and unfeeling, that a man of principle and delicacy shrinks from it as from contamination.

Mr. Findlater tells me that you wish to know from myself what are my views in desiring to exchange my excise division. With the wish natural to man of bettering his present situation, I have turned my thoughts towards the practicability of getting into a port division. As I know that the general superiors are omnipotent in these matters, my honored friend Mrs. Dunlop of Dunlop offered me to interest you in my behalf.

She told me that she was well acquainted with Mrs. Corbet's goodness, and that, on the score of former

* The name of this gentleman is first mentioned in the poet's letter to Mrs. Dunlop, of Nov. 1790. The present letter is taken from the Glenriddell MS. Book at Liverpool.

ET. 33.] A DISTINGUISHED COUNTRYMAN.

281

intimacy, she thought she could promise some influence with her, and added, with her usual sagacity and knowledge of human nature, that the surest road to the good offices of a man was through the mediation of the woman he loved. On this footing, Sir, I venture my application, else not even the known generosity of your character would have emboldened me to address you thus.-I have the honor to be, &c.

R. B.

(1) TO COL. FULLARTON OF FULLARTON. (HOGG AND MOTHERWELL'S ED., 1835.)

SIR, I have just this minute got the frank, and next minute must send it to post, else I purposed to have sent you two or three other bagatelles that might have amused a vacant hour about as well as "Six excellent new songs" or "The Aberdeen Prognostications for the year to come." I shall probably trouble you soon with another packet. About the "gloomy month of November, when the people of England hang and drown themselves," any thing generally is better than one's own thoughts.

Fond as I may be of my own productions, it is not for their sake that I am so anxious to send you them. I am ambitious, covetously ambitious of being known to a gentleman whom I am proud to call my Countryman; a gentleman who was a Foreign Ambassador as soon as he was a man, and a Leader of Armies as soon as he was a soldier, and that with an éclat unknown to the usual minions of a Court-men who, with all the adventitious advantages of Princely connexions and Princely Fortune, must yet, like the caterpillar, labor a whole lifetime before they reach the wished-for height, there to roost a stupid chrysalis, and doze out the remaining glimmering existence of old age.

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