When I first thought of sending my poem to your Grace, I had some misgivings of heart about itsomething within me seemed to say:-"A nobleman of the first rank and the first taste, and who has lived in the first Court of Europe, what will he care for either you or your ballad? Depend upon it that he will look on this business as some one or other of the many modifications of that servility of soul with which authors, and particularly you poets, have ever approached the Great."

No! said I to myself, I am conscious of the purity of my motives; and as I never crouch to any man but the man I have wronged, nor even him unless he forgives me, I will approach his Grace with tolerable upright confidence, that were I and my ballad poorer stuff than we are, the Duke of Queensberry's polite affability would make me welcome, as my sole motive is to show how sincerely I have the honor to be, My Lord Duke,

Your Grace's most obedient, humble servant,
ROBT. BURNS.

This was written shortly after I had the honor of being introduced to the Duke, at which introduction I spent the evening with him, when he treated me with the most distinguished politeness and marked attention. Though I am afraid his Grace's character as a Man of Worth is very equivocal, yet he certainly is a Nobleman of the first taste, and a Gentleman of the first manners.

R. B.

legal guardian of young Mr. Fergusson of Craigdarroch, custodier of that interesting heir-loom. Mr. Maitland was then, and for several years thereafter, an office-bearer in the Club.

(33) TO MRS. DUNLOP, OF DUNLOP.

(CURRIE, 1800.)

Annan Water Foot, 22nd August 1792.

Do not blame me for it, Madam ;-my own conscience, hackneyed and weatherbeaten as it is, in watching and reproving my vagaries, follies, indolence, &c., has continued to blame and punish me sufficiently.

*

*

*

Do you think it possible, my dear and honored Friend, that I could be so lost to gratitude for many favors, to esteem for much worth, and to the honest, kind, pleasurable tie of, now, old acquaintance, and I hope and am sure, of progressive, increasing friendship-as, for a single day, not to think of you—to ask the Fates what they are doing and about to do with my much-beloved Friend and her wide-scattered connexions, and to beg of them to be as kind to you and yours as they possibly can?

Apropos (though how it is apropos, I have not leisure to explain), do you not know that I am almost in love with an acquaintance of yours?—Almost! said I-I am in love, souse! over head and ears, deep as the most unfathomable abyss of the boundless ocean; but the word Love, owing to the intermingledoms of the good and the bad, the pure and the impure, in this world, being rather an equivocal term for expressing one's sentiments and sensations, I must do justice to the sacred purity of my attachment. Know, then, that the heart-struck awe; the distant humble approach; the delight we should have in gazing upon and listening to a Messenger of Heaven, appearing in all the unspotted purity of his celestial home, among the coarse, polluted, far inferior sons of men, to deliver to

them tidings that make their hearts swim in joy, and their imaginations soar in transport-such, so delighting, and so pure, were the emotions of my soul on meeting the other day with Miss Lesley Bailie, your neighbor, at Mayfield. Mr. B. with his two daughters, accompanied by Mr. H. of G., passing through Dumfries a few days ago, on their way to England, did me the honor of calling on me; on which I took my horse* (though God knows I could ill spare the time), and accompanied them fourteen or fifteen miles, and dined and spent the day with them. 'Twas about nine, I think, when I left them; and, riding home, I composed the following ballad, of which you will probably think you have a dear bargain, as it will cost you another groat of postage. You must know that there is an old ballad beginning with

"My bonie Lizie Baillie,

I'll rowe thee in my plaidie," &c.

so I parodied it as follows, which is literally the first copy, "unanointed, unanneal'd," as Hamlet says:

O saw ye bonie Lesley,

As she gaed o'er the border?

She's gane, like Alexander,

To spread her conquests farther, &c.

See page 120, supra.

So much for ballads. I regret that you are gone to the east country, as I am to be in Ayrshire in about a fortnight. This world of ours, notwithstanding it has many good things in it, yet it has ever had this curse, that two or three people who would be the happier the oftener they met together, are, almost without exception, always so placed as never to meet

* We are not to conclude from this expression, " my horse," that Burns, with his slender income, was able to purchase and maintain a riding horse. In special journeys to distant places, on excise business, he was permitted to hire a horse and charge it as an item of expenditure.

ÆT. 34.]

RELIGION NECESSARY TO MAN.

305

but once or twice a-year; which, considering the few years of a man's life, is a very great "evil under the sun," which I do not recollect that Solomon has mentioned in his catalogue of the miseries of man. I hope and believe that there is a state of existence beyond the grave, where the worthy of this life will renew their former intimacies, with this endearing addition, that, "we meet to part no more."

Will none of you in pity disclose the secret,
What 'tis you are, and we must shortly be?"

A thousand times have I made this apostrophe to the departed sons of men, but not one of them has ever thought fit to answer the question. "O that some courteous ghost would blab it out?" but it cannot be: you and I, my friend, must make the experiment by ourselves and for ourselves. However, I am so convinced that an unshaken faith in the doctrines of religion is not only necessary by making us better men, but also by making us happier men, that I shall take every care that your little godson, and every little creature that shall call me father, shall be taught them.

So ends this heterogeneous letter, written at this wild place of the world, in the intervals of my labor of discharging a vessel of rum from Antigua.

IV.

T

R. B.

(10) TO MR. ALEX. CUNNINGHAM, WRITER,

46 SOUTH HANOVER STREET, EDINBURGH.

SOME LITTLE TIME AFTER HIS MARRIAGE, AND AFTER, THROUGH HIS RECOMMENDATION, I HAD BEEN PRESENTED WITH A DIPLOMA FROM THE EDINBURGH COMPANY OF ROYAL ARCHERS.

(CURRIE, 1800.) *

DUMFRIES, 10th September 1792. No! I will not attempt an apology. Amid all my hurry of business, grinding the faces of the publican and sinner on the merciless wheels of the Excise; making ballads, and then drinking and singing them to my drink; and, over and above all, the correcting the press-work of two different publications: † still, still I might have stolen five minutes to dedicate to one of the first of my friends and fellow-creatures. I might have done, as I do at present, when I am snatching an hour near "witching time of night," and scrawling a page or two-I might have congratulated my friend on his marriage; or I might have thanked the Caledonian Archers for the honor they have done me, (though to do myself justice, I intended to have done both in rhyme, else I had done both before now). Well then, here is your good health! for I have set a nipperkin of toddy by me by way of spell to keep away the meikle horned Deil, or any of his subaltern imps who may be on their nightly rounds.

* Currie's version is not so complete as the one in our text, which is taken from the poet's own transcript.

There can be little doubt that the poet refers here to (1) the forthcoming edition, in two volumes, of his own poems; and (2) to the preparing and correcting of the sheets of Volume V. of Johnson's Museum, which however remained unpublished till after his own death.