corps. "Then," I said, "I have a woman's longing to take him by the hand, and say to him, 'Sir, I honor you as a man to whom the interests of humanity are dear, and as a patriot to whom the rights of your country are sacred.'"

In times like these, Sir, when our commoners are barely able by the glimmering of their own twilight understandings to scrawl a frank, and when lords are what gentlemen would be ashamed to be, to whom shall a sinking country call for help? To the independent country gentleman. To him who has too deep a stake in his country not to be in earnest for her welfare; and who, in the honest pride of man, can view with equal contempt the insolence of office and the allurements of corruption.

I mentioned to you a Scots ode or song I had lately composed, and which, I think, has some merit. Allow me to enclose it. When I fall in with you at the theatre, I shall be glad to have your opinion of it. Accept of it, Sir, as a very humble but most sincere tribute of respect from a man who, dear as he prizes poetic fame, yet holds dearer an independent mind. I have the honor to be, &c., R. B.

Mrs. Riddell returned to Woodley Park in October, after an absence of several months in London, where her husband left her while he proceeded to the West Indies to look after his affairs there. In a letter which she wrote to Mr. Smellie the printer, in November 1793, she said:-"Here am I, as chaste and domestic, but perhaps not quite so industrious, as Penelope in the absence of her hero. I resemble rather 'the lilies of the field, which toil not, neither do they spin'; but I read, I write, I sing, and contrive to wile away the time, as pleasantly as any sociable being like myself can do in a state of solitude, and in some measure, of mortification. . . . I shall write you more fully in my next, as to the nature of my present pursuits, and how I found Burns and the other friends here you left behind, for they were not few I assure you.' Mrs.

• Memoirs of William Smellie, by Robt. Kerr.

ET. 35.]

A WINDOW IN MAN'S BREAST.

373

Riddell, however, had the Dumfries Theatre and other attractions in her neighborhood, every way calculated to yield her some consolation until the Christmas season arrived and brought home Mr. Riddell; and again at Woodley Park

""Twas merry in the hall, when the beards wagg'd all," &c.

Mr. Creech's printer was about this time ready to throw off the sheets of the last edition of our author's poems, which he lived to see published, viz, that of 1794, in two volumes. letter to Mr. Fraser Tytler, refers to that matter.

A

(*) TO ALEXANDER FRASER TYTLER, ESQ., EDINBURGH.

(Dr. Waddell's Ed., 1869.)

SIR, a poor caitiff, driving as I am at this moment with an excise quill, at the rate of "Devil take the hindmost," is ill qualified to round the period of gratitude, or swell the pathos of sensibility. Gratitude, like some other amiable qualities of the mind, is nowa-days so abused by impostors, that I have sometimes wished that the project of that sly dog Momus, I think it is, had gone into effect-planting a window in the breast of man. In that case, when a poor fellow comes, as I do at this moment, before his benefactor, tongue-tied with the sense of these very obligations, he would have nothing to do but place himself in front of his friend, and lay bare the workings of his bosom.

I again trouble you with another, and my last, parcel of manuscript. I am not interested in any of these; blot them at your pleasure. I am much indebted to you for taking the trouble of correcting the press work. One instance, indeed, may be rather unlucky; if the lines to Sir John Whitefoord are printed they ought to end

"And tread the shadowy path to that dark world unknown.”

"shadowy," instead of "dreary," as I believe it stands at present.* I wish this could be noticed in the Errata. This comes of writing, as I generally do, from the memory.

I have the honor to be, Sir, your deeply indebted humble servant, ROBT. BURNS.

6th Decr., 1793.

() TO JOHN M'MURDO, ESQ., DUMFRIES.

SIR, It is said that we take the greatest liberties with our greatest friends, and I pay myself a very high compliment in the manner in which I am going to apply the remark. I have owed you money longer than ever I owed it to any man. Here is Ker's account, and here are six guineas; and now I don't owe a shilling to man-or woman either. But for these damned dirty dog's ear'd little pages, I had done myself the honor to have waited on you long ago. Independent of the obligations your hospitality has laid me under; the consciousness of your superiority in the rank of man and gentleman, of itself was fully as much as I could ever make head against; but to owe you money too, was more than I could face.

I think I once mentioned something of a collection of Scots songs I have for some years been making: I send you a perusal of what I have got together. I could not conveniently spare them above five or six

* By some overlook or fatality this nice little correction was not attended to; and the line remained as it was until of very recent date, when Dr. Carruthers of Inverness published the present letter, which Colonel Fraser Tytler of Aldourie, had exhibited to him. The date in the MS. is "1795," and upon our representing to Dr. Carruthers the unlikelihood of that date, he examined the manuscript again and satisfied himself that the date is not in the poet's handwriting; but a conjectural one by some other hand.

days, and five or six glances of them will probably more than suffice you. A very few of them are my own. When you are tired of them, please leave them with Mr. Clint, of the King's Arms. There is not another copy of the collection in the world; and I should be sorry that any unfortunate negligence should deprive me of what has cost me a good deal of pains. R. B.

Mr. M'Murdo seems to have been the patron to whom Burns applied during the past summer for a small loan; and it now appears that having paid an account of Mr. Ker's against that gentleman, he was here clearing off his own debt by enclosing Mr. Ker's discharge, along with six guineas of balance required to make up the whole personal obligation. The poet here congratulates himself on being now free of pecuniary debt; but the reader will hereafter find that he had involved himself in a like obligation to his landlord, Captain John Hamilton, in shape of arrears of house-rent, which was not entirely liquidated when he died.*

The "Collection of Scots Songs," referred to in the after part of the letter, was one which our bard had been at the pains to gather and transcribe into a book "for the use of the Crochallan Fencibles." "Unluckily (says Chambers) Burns's collection of these facetiæ, including his own essays in the same walk, fell after his death into the hands of one of those publishers who would sacrifice the highest interests of humanity to put an additional penny into their own purses; and to the lasting grief of all friends of our poet, they were allowed the honors of the press. The mean-looking volume which resulted (under the title of 'The Merry Muses of Caledonia '), should be a warning to all honorable men of letters against the slightest connexion with clandestine literature, much more the degradation of contributing to it."

That considerate editor at same time admits that Burns was induced to collect and imitate those indecorous songs and ballads "apparently for no other object than that of amusing his merry companions in their moments of conviviality;" and he pleads that he must have been led into this taste "by his enthusiastic reverence for all forms of his country's elder Muse; for, with a strange contradiction to the grave and religious

* See letter to Hamilton, July, 1794.

character of the Scottish people, they possess a wonderful quantity of that kind of literature. Not (still pleads Chambers) that it is of an inflammatory character, but simply expressive of a profound sense of the ludicrous in connection with the sexual affections."

We have seen many of our poet's holograph copies of his own performances in that way, and they seem to have been transmitted to his Edinburgh fellows of the social club referred to, by the hands of Robert Cleghorn, farmer, Saughton Mills, to whom they are generally found to be addressed. These effusions were sometimes accompanied by prose communications of which the following may be given as a sample.

() TO MR. ROBERT CLEGHORN, SAUGHTON

MILLS.

(DOUGLAS, 1877.)

I HAVE just bought a quire of post, and I am determined, my dear Cleghorn, to give you the maidenhead of it. Indeed that is all my reason for, and all that I can propose to give you by, this present scrawl. From my late hours last night, and the dripping fogs and damn'd east-wind of this stupid day, I have left me as little soul as an oyster-" Sir John, you are so fretful, you cannot live long"-"Why, there is it! Come, sing me a b-dy song to make me merry!!”

ACT SEDERUNT O' THE SESSION.
Tune.-"O'er the muir among the heather."

Well, the Law is good for something, since we can make a b-dy song out of it. (N. B.-I never made anything of it any other way.) There is-there must be some truth in original sin. My violent propensity to b-dy convinces me of it. Lack a day! if that species of composition be the special sin, never-to-beforgiven in this world nor in that which is to come, "I am the most offending soul alive." Mair for token, a fine chiel-a hand-waled friend and crony o'