The morning rises (in the poet's description) as she does in the Scottish horizon. We are not carried to Greece or Italy for a shade, a stream, or a breeze. The groves rise in our own valleys; the 10 rivers flow from our own fountains; and the winds blow upon our own hills. I find not fault with those things as they are in Greece or Italy; but with a Northern poet for fetching his materials from these places in a poem of which his own country is the scene, as our hymners to the spring and makers of pastorals frequently do.

15

This miscellany will likewise recommend itself by the diversity of subjects and 20 humor it contains. The grave description and the wanton story, the moral saying and the mirthful jest, will illustrate and alternately relieve each other.

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The reader whose temper is spleened with the vices and follies now in fashion, may gratify his humor with the satires he will here find upon the follies and vices that were uppermost two or three hundred years ago. The man whose inclinations 30 are turned to mirth will be pleased to know how the good fellow of a former age told his jovial tale; and the lover may divert himself with the old fashioned sonnet of an amorous poet in Queen Margaret and Queen Mary's days.1 In a word, the following collection will be such another prospect to the eye of the mind as to the outward eye is the various meadow, where flowers of different hue and smell 40 are mingled together in a beautiful irregularity.

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I hope also the reader, when he dips into these poems, will not be displeased with this reflection, that he is stepping back 45 into the times that are past and that exist no more. Thus, the manners and customs

1 The sixteenth century.

then in vogue, as he will find them here described, will have all the air and charm of novelty; and that seldom fails of exciting attention and pleasing the mind. Besides, the numbers in which these images are conveyed, as they are not now commonly practiced, will appear new and amusing.

The different stanza and varied cadence will likewise much soothe and engage the ear, which in poetry especially must be always flattered. However, I do not expect that these poems should please everybody; nay, the critical reader must needs find several faults, for I own that there will be found in these volumes two or three pieces whose antiquity is their greatest value. Yet still I am persuaded there are many more that shall merit approbation and applause than censure and blame. The best works are but a kind of miscellany, and the cleanest corn is not without some chaff; no, not after often winnowing. Besides, dispraise is the easiest part of learning, and but at best the offspring of uncharitable wit. Every clown can see that the furrow is crooked; but where is the man that will plow me one straight?

There is nothing can be heard more silly than one's expressing his ignorance of his native language; yet, such there are who can vaunt of acquiring a tolerable perfection in the French or Italian tongues if they have been a fortnight in Paris, or a month in Rome. But show them the most elegant thoughts in a Scots dress, they as disdainfully as stupidly condemn it as barbarous. But the true reason is obvious: every one that is born never so little superior to the vulgar would fain distinguish themselves from them by some manner or other, and such, it would appear, cannot arrive at a better method. But this affected class of fops give no uneasiness, not being numerous; for the most part of our gentlemen, who are generally masters of the most useful and politest languages, can take pleasure (for a change) to speak and read their own.