Let me hear from you as soon as convenient. Your work is a great one; and now that it is finished, I see, if we were to begin again, two or three things that might be mended; yet I will venture to prophesy, that to future ages your publication will be the text-book and standard of Scottish song and music.

I am ashamed to ask another favour of you, because you have been so very good already; but my wife has a very particular friend of hers, a young lady who sings well, to whom she wishes to present the Scots Musical Museum. If you have a spare copy, will you be so obliging as to send it by the very first fly, as I am anxious to have it soon? Yours ever, R. B.

CCXLIII.

TO MR GEORGE THOMSON.

BROW, 4th July.

MY DEAR SIR,-I received your songs; but my health is so precarious, nay, dangerously situated, that as a last effort I am here at sea-bathing quarters. Besides my inveterate rheumatism, my appetite is quite gone, and I am so emaciated as to be scarce able to support myself on my own legs. Alas! is this a time for me to woo the Muses? However, I am still anxiously willing to serve your work, and, if possible, shall try. I would not like to see another employed, unless you could lay your hand upon a poet whose productions would be equal to the rest. You will see my remarks and alterations on the margin of each song. My address is still Dumfries. Farewell, and God bless you!

R. BURNS.

CCCXLIV.

TO MR CUNNINGHAM.

BROW, Sea-bathing Quarters, 7th July 1796. MY DEAR CUNNINGHAM,-I received yours here this moment, and am indeed highly flattered with the approbation of the literary circle you mention-a literary circle inferior to none in the two kingdoms. Alas! my friend, I fear the voice of the bard will soon be heard among you no more. For these eight or ten months, I have been ailing, sometimes bedfast, and sometimes not; but these last three months I have been tortured with an excruciating rheumatism, which has reduced me to nearly the last stage. You actually would not know me if you saw me. Pale, emaciated, and so feeble as occasionally to need help from my chair-my spirits fled! fled!-but I can no more on the subject; only the medical folks tell me that my last and only chance is bathing, and country quarters, and riding. The worst of the

matter is this: when an exciseman is off duty, his salary is reduced to L.35 instead of L.50. What way, in the name of thrift, shall I maintain myself, and keep a horse in country quarters, with a wife and five children at home, on L.35? I mention this, because I had intended to beg your utmost interest, and that of all the friends you can muster, to move our commissioners of Excise to grant me the full salary; I daresay you know them all personally. If they do not grant it me, I must lay my account with an exit truly en poëte-if I die not of disease, I must perish with hunger.

I have sent you one of the songs; the other my memory does not serve me with, and I have no copy here; but I shall be at home soon, when I will send it you. Apropos to being at home: Mrs Burns threatens in a week or two to add one more to my paternal charge, which, if of the right gender, I intend shall be introduced to the world by the respectable designation of Alexander Cunningham Burns. My last was James Glencairn, so you can have no objection to the company of nobility. Farewell! R. B.

CCCXLV.

TO MR GILBERT BURNS.

Sunday, 10th July 1796.

DEAR BROTHER,—It will be no very pleasing news to you to be told that I am dangerously ill, and not likely to get better. An inveterate rheumatism has reduced me to such a state of debility, and my appetite is so totally gone, that I can scarcely stand on my legs. I have been a week at sea-bathing, and I will continue there, or in a friend's house in the country, all the summer. God keep my wife and children; if I am taken from their head, they will be poor indeed. I have contracted one or two serious debts, partly from my illness these many months, partly from too much thoughtlessness as to expense when I came to town, that will cut in too much on the little I leave them in your hands. Remember me to my mother. Yours, R. B.

CCCXLVI.

TO MRS DUNLOP.

BROW, 12th July 1796.

MADAM,-I have written you so often, without receiving any answer, that I would not trouble you again, but for the circumstances in which I am. An illness which has long hung about me, in all probability will speedily send me beyond that bourn whence no traveller returns. Your friendship, with which, for many years you honoured me, was a friendship dearest to my soul. Your conversation, and especially your correspondence, were at

once highly entertaining and instructive. With what pleasure did I use to break up the seal! The remembrance yet adds one pulse more to my poor palpitating heart. Farewell!!! R. B.

CCCXLVII.

TO MR JAMES BURNES,

WRITER, MONTROSE.

DUMFRIES, 12th July.

MY DEAR COUSIN,-When you offered me money assistance, little did I think I should want it so soon. A rascal of a haberdasher, to whom I owe a considerable bill, taking it into his head that I am dying, has commenced a process against me, and will infallibly put my emaciated body into jail. Will you be so good as to accommodate me, and that by return of post, with ten pounds? Oh, James! did you know the pride of my heart, you would feel doubly for me! Alas! I am not used to beg. The worst of it is, my health was coming about finely. You know, and my physician assured me, that melancholy and low spirits are half my disease-guess, then, my horrors since this business began. If I had it settled, I would be, I think, quite well in a manner. How shall I use the language to you-oh, do not disappoint me! but strong necessity's command.

I have been thinking over and over my brother's affairs, and I fear I must cut him up; but on this I will correspond at another time, particularly as I shall [require] your advice.

Forgive me for once more mentioning by return of post-save me from the horrors of a jail!

My compliments to my friend James, and to all the rest. I do not know what I have written. The subject is so horrible, I dare not look it over again. Farewell!

R. B.

CCCXLVIII.

TO MR THOMSON.

BROW, on the Solway Frith, 12th July 1796. AFTER all my boasted independence, necessity compels me to implore you for five pounds. A cruel scoundrel of a haberdasher, to whom I owe an account, taking into his head that I am dying, has commenced a process, and will infallibly put me into jail. Do, for God's sake, send me that sum, and that by return of post. Forgive me this earnestness; but the horrors of a jail have made me half distracted. I do not ask all this gratuitously; for, upon

There is no reason to suppose Burns was threatened with being put in jail; ne was only written to by a lawyer for payment of an old debt, and, in his excitable state, he took this view of the application.

returning health, I hereby promise and engage to furnish you with five pounds' worth of the neatest song-genius you have seen. I tried my hand on Rothemurchie this morning. The measure is so difficult, that it is impossible to infuse much genius into the lines; they are on the other side (p. 308). Forgive, forgive me! R. B.

CCCXLIX.

TO JAMES GRACIE, ESQ.

BROW, Wednesday morning, [13th July.] MY DEAR SIR-It would [be] doing high injustice to this place not to acknowledge that my rheumatismns have derived great benefits from it already; but alas! my loss of appetite still continues. I shall not need your kind offer this week, and I return to town the beginning of next week, it not being a tide-week. I am detaining a man in a burning hurry. So, God bless you! R. B.

CCCL.

TO MRS BURNS.

BROW, Thursday.

MY DEAREST LOVE,-I delayed writing until I could tell you what effect sea-bathing was likely to produce. It would be injustice to deny that it has eased my pains, and I think has strengthened me; but my appetite is still extremely bad. No flesh nor fish can I swallow; porridge and milk are the only thing I can taste. am very happy to hear, by Miss Jess Lewars, that you are all well. My very best and kindest compliments to her, and to all the children. I will see you on Sunday. Your affectionate husband, R. B.

CCCLI.

TO MR JAMES ARMOUR, MAUCHLINE.*

DUMFRIES, 18th July 1796. MY DEAR SIR,-Do, for Heaven's sake, send Mrs Armour here immediately. My wife is hourly expecting to be put to bed. What a situation for her to be in, poor girl, without a friend! I returned from sea-bathing quarters to-day, and my medical friends would almost persuade me that I am better; but I think and feel that my strength is so gone, that the disorder will prove fatal to Your son-in-law, R. B.

me.

* Supposed to be the last letter or composition written by Burns: he died on the

21st.

BURNS AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

TO DR MOORE.

MAUCHLINE, 2d August 1787. SIR, For some months past I have been rambling over the country, but I am now confined with some lingering complaints, riginating, as I take it, in the stomach. To divert my spirits a ittle in this miserable fog of ennui, I have taken a whim to give you a history of myself. My name has made some little noise in his country-you have done me the honour to interest yourself very warmly in my behalf; and I think a faithful account of what character of a man am, and how I came by that character, may perhaps amuse you in an idle moment. I will give you an honest narrative, though I know it will be often at my own expense; for I assure you, sir, I have, like Solomon, whose character, excepting in the trifling affair of wisdom, I sometimes think I resemble-I have, I say, like him, turned my eyes to behold madness and folly, and, like him, too frequently shaken hands with their intoxicating friendship. After you have perused these pages, should you think them trifling and impertinent, I only beg leave to tell you that the poor author wrote them under some twitching qualms of conscience, arising from suspicion that he was doing what he ought not to do-a predicament he has more than once been in before.

*

***

*

I have not the most distant pretensions to assume that character which the pye-coated guardians of escutcheons call a gentleman. When at Edinburgh last winter, I got acquainted in the Herald's Office; and looking through that granary of honours, I there found almost every name in the kingdom; but for me, "My ancient but ignoble blood

Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood."

Gules, Purpure, Argent, &c., quite disowned me.

My father was of the north of Scotland, the son of a farmer, and was thrown by early misfortunes on the world at large, where, after many years' wanderings and sojournings, he picked up