She adds: 'I subscribe to Lord B.'s sentiment to Swift; yet some faults I shall still sigh over, though you style it reproach even to hint them.'

TO CLARINDA.

Monday Even. 11 o'clock.

Why have I not heard from you, Clarinda? To-day I expected it; and before supper, when a letter to me was announced, my heart danced with rapture: but behold, 'twas some fool, who had taken it into his head to turn poet, and made me an offering of the first-fruits of his nonsense. 'It is not poetry, but prose run mad.' Did I ever repeat to you an epigram I made on a Mr Elphinstone, who has given a translation of Martial, a famous Latin poet? The poetry of Elphinstone can only equal his prose notes. I was sitting in a merchant's shop of my acquaintance, waiting somebody; he put Elphinstone into my hand, and asked my opinion of it; I begged leave to write it on a blank leaf, which I did.

TO MR ELPHINSTONE, &c.

Oh thou, whom poesy abhors!

Whom prose has turned out of doors!

Heard'st thou yon groan? Proceed no further;

'Twas laurel'd Martial calling murther!

I am determined to see you, if at all possible, on Saturday evening. Next week I must sing

The night is my departing night,

The morn's the day I maun awa';
There's neither friend nor foe o' mine
But wishes that I were awa'!

What I hae done for lack o' wit,
I never, never can reca';

I hope ye 're a' my friends as yet

Gude night, and joy be wi' you a'!

If I could see you sooner, I would be so much the happier; but I would not purchase the dearest gratification on earth, if it must be at your expense in worldly censure, far less inward peace!

I shall certainly be ashamed of thus scrawling whole sheets of incoherence. The only unity (a sad word with poets and critics!) in my ideas is CLARINDA. There my heart 'reigns and revels!'

'What art thou, Love? Whence are those charms,

That thus thou bear'st an universal rule?

For thee the soldier quits his arms,

The king turns slave, the wise man fool.

In vain we chase thee from the field,

And with cool thoughts resist thy yoke:

Next tide of blood, alas! we yield,

And all those high resolves are broke!'

I like to have quotations for every occasion. They give one's ideas so pat, and save one the trouble of finding expression adequate to one's feelings. I think it is one of the greatest pleasures attending a poetic genius, that we can give our woes, cares, joys, loves, &c., an embodied form in verse, which to me is ever immediate ease. Goldsmith says finely of his Muse:

Thou source of all my bliss and all my wo;

Thou found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so.'

My limb has been so well to-day, that I have gone up and down stairs often without my staff. To-morrow, I hope to walk once again on my own legs to dinner. It is only next street. Adieu.

SYLVANDER.

The last letter of Clarinda having been received soon after the above epistle had been despatched, he writes again—

TO CLARINDA.

Tuesday Evening [Jan. 15 ?]

That you have faults, my Clarinda, I never doubted; but I knew not where they existed, and Saturday night made me more in the dark than ever. Oh, Clarinda! why will you wound my soul by hinting that last night must have lessened my opinion of you? True I was behind the scenes' with you; but what did I see? A bosom glowing with honour and benevolence; a mind ennobled by genius, informed and refined by education and reflection, and exalted by native religion, genuine as in the climes of heaven; a heart formed for all the glorious meltings of friendship, love, and pity. These I saw: I saw the noblest immortal soul creation ever shewed me.

I looked long, my dear Clarinda, for your letter; and am vexed that you are complaining. I have not caught you so far wrong as in your idea, that the commerce you have with one friend hurts you if you cannot tell every tittle of it to another. Why have so injurious a suspicion of a good God, Clarinda, as to think that Friendship and Love, on the sacred inviolate principles of Truth, Honour, and Religion, can be anything else than an object of His divine approbation?

I have mentioned, in some of my former scrawls, Saturday evening next. Do allow me to wait on you that evening. Oh, my angel! how soon must we part!—and when can we meet again? I looked forward on the horrid interval with tearful eyes! What have I lost by not knowing you sooner! I fear, I fear my acquaintance with you is too short, to make that lasting impression on your heart I could wish. SYLVANDER.

In her next letter, written apparently on Wednesday morning, the 16th of January, Clarinda speaks warmly of his power over her, and invites him to another evening visit on Saturday. Shc

6

asks him to walk, because a chair, being an unusual thing in her neighbourhood, might raise speculation.' He might, however, have a chair to take him home, because by ten o'clock the neighbours are all asleep. The lady, doubtless, meant well, but it is impossible to applaud either her prudence or her delicacy in encouraging visits which she felt would tell upon her reputation if they were discovered. It need not be insisted on, that the pure are under an obligation to society to maintain all the appearances as well as the reality of purity.

TO CLARINDA.

Sunday Night [Jan. 20].

The impertinence of fools has joined with a return of an old indisposition to make me good for nothing to-day. The paper has lain before me all this evening to write to my dear Clarinda; but

'Fools rushed on fools, as waves succeed to waves.'

I cursed them in my soul: they sacrilegiously disturb my meditations on her who holds my heart! What a creature is man! A little alarm last night and to-day that I am mortal, has made such a revolution in my spirits! There is no philosophy, no divinity, comes half so home to the mind. I have no idea of courage that braves Heaven. 'Tis the wild ravings of an imaginary hero in

Bedlam. I can no more, Clarinda; I can scarce hold up my head; but I am happy you don't know it, you would be so uneasy. SYLVANDER.

Monday Morning.

I am, my lovely friend, much better this morning, on the whole; but I have a horrid languor on my spirits

'Sick of the world and all its joy,
My soul in pining sadness mourns;
Dark scenes of wo my mind employ,
The past and present in their turns.'

Have you ever met with a saying of the great and likewise good Mr Locke, author of the famous Essay on the Human Understanding? He wrote a letter to a friend, directing it 'Not to be delivered till after my decease.' It ended thus: "I know you loved me when living, and will preserve my memory now I am dead. All the use to be made of it is-that this life affords no solid satisfaction, but in the consciousness of having done well, and the hopes of another life. Adieu! I leave my best wishes with you.-J. LOCKE.'

Clarinda, may I reckon on your friendship for life? I think I

may. Thou Almighty Preserver of men! Thy friendship, which hitherto I have too much neglected, to secure it shall all the future days and nights of my life be my steady care !-The idea of my Clarinda follows:

--

'Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise,
Where, mixed with God's, her loved idea lies.'

But I fear inconstancy, the consequent imperfection of human weakness. Shall I meet with a friendship that defies years of absence, and the chances and changes of fortune? Perhaps such things are.' One honest man I have great hopes from that way; but who, except a romance writer, would think on a love that could promise for life, in spite of distance, absence, chance, and change; and that, too, with slender hopes of fruition? For my own part, I can say to myself in both requisitions, "Thou art the man!' I dare, in cool resolve, I dare declare myself that friend and that lover. If womankind is capable of such things, Clarinda is. I trust that she is and feel I shall be miserable if she is not. There is not one virtue which gives worth, or one sentiment which does honour to the sex, that she does not possess superior to any woman I ever saw her exalted mind, aided a little perhaps by her situation, is, I think, capable of that nobly romantic love-enthusiasm.

The

May I see you on Wednesday evening, my dear angel? next Wednesday again will, I conjecture, be a hated day to us both. I tremble for censorious remarks for your sake; but in extraordinary cases, may not usual and useful precautions be a little dispensed with? Three evenings, three swift-winged evenings, with pinions of down, are all the past-I dare not calculate the future. I shall call at Miss Nimmo's to-morrow evening; 'twill be a farewell call.

For

I have written out my last sheet of paper, so I am reduced to my last half-sheet. What a strange, mysterious faculty is that thing called imagination! We have no ideas almost at all of another world; but I have often amused myself with visionary schemes of what happiness might be enjoyed by small alterations-alterations that we can fully enter to, in this present state of existence. instance, suppose you and I just as we are at present the same reasoning powers, sentiments, and even desires-the same fond curiosity for knowledge and remarking observation in our minds; and imagine our bodies free from pain, and the necessary supplies for the wants of nature at all times and easily within our reach; imagine further, that we were set free from the laws of gravitation which bind us to this globe, and could at pleasure fly, without inconvenience, through all the yet unconjectured bounds of creation -what a life of bliss should we lead in our mutual pursuit of virtue, and knowledge, and our mutual enjoyment of friendship and love!

I see you laughing at my fairy fancies, and calling me a voluptuous Mahometan; but I am certain I should be a happy creature, beyond anything we call bliss here below; nay, it would be a paradise

congenial to you too. Don't you see us hand in hand, or rather my arm about your lovely waist, making our remarks on Sirius, the nearest of the fixed stars; or surveying a comet flaming innoxious by us, as we just now would mark the passing pomp of a travelling monarch; or in a shady bower of Mercury or Venus, dedicating the hour to love in mutual converse, relying honour, and revelling endearment-while the most exalted strains of poesy and harmony would be the ready, spontaneous language of our souls! Devotion is the favourite employment of your heart, so is it of mine: what incentives then to, and powers for reverence, gratitude, faith, and hope, in all the fervours of adoration and praise to that Being whose unsearchable wisdom, power, and goodness, so pervaded, so inspired every sense and feeling! By this time, I daresay, you will be blessing the neglect of the maid that leaves me destitute of paper. SYLVANDER.

During this month, while penning these strange ravings to a female bosom as impressionable as his own, he was endeavouring to bring his publisher Creech to a settlement of accounts. His sufferings under the uncertainty as to his prospects, his painful accident, a return of his nervous ailment, and reflections on the consequences of his many errors, seem to have brought him at times very low.

TO MISS CHALMERS.

Now for that wayward, unfortunate thing, myself. I have broke measures with Creech, and last week I wrote him a frosty, keen letter. He replied in terms of chastisement, and promised me upon his honour that I should have the account on Monday; but this is Tuesday, and yet I have not heard a word from him. God have mercy on me! a poor, damned, incautious, duped, unfortunate fool! The sport, the miserable victim of rebellious pride, hypochondriac imagination, agonising sensibility, and bedlam passions!

'I wish that I were dead, but I'm no like to die!' I had lately a hairbreadth 'scape in th' imminent deadly breach' of love too. Thank my stars, I got off heart-whole, 'waur fleyed [worse frightened] than hurt.'-Interruption.

I have this moment got a hint. . . . I fear I am something like undone—but I hope for the best. Come stubborn Pride and unshrinking Resolution; accompany me through this, to me, miserable world! You must not desert me. Your friendship I think I can count on, though I should date my letters from a marchingregiment. Early in life, and all my life, I reckoned on a recruiting drum as my forlorn-hope. Seriously though, life presents me with but a melancholy path: but-my limb will soon be sound, and I shall struggle on.

R. B.