curse of boarding-school affectation; and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the county. Mrs. Burns believes, as firmly as her creed, that I am le plus bel esprit et le plus honnéte homme in the universe, although she scarcely ever in her life, except the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament and the Psalms of David in metre, spent five minutes together on either prose or verse. I must except also from this last a certain late publication of Scots poems, which she has perused very devoutly, and all the ballads in the country, as she has (“Oh, the partial lover!" you will cry) the finest "wood-note wild" I ever heard. I am the more particular in this lady's character, as I know she will henceforth have the honour of a share in your best wishes. She is still at Mauchline, as I am building my house; for this hovel that I shelter in, while occasionally here, is pervious to every blast that blows and every shower that falls; and I am only preserved from being chilled to death by being suffocated with smoke. I do not find my farm that pennyworth I was taught to expect; but I believe in time it may be a saving bargain. You will be pleased to hear that I have laid aside idle éclat, and bind every day after my reapers.

To save me from that horrid situation of at any time going down, in a losing bargain of a farm, to misery, I have taken my Excise instructions, and have my commission in my pocket for any emergency of fortune. If I could set all before your view, whatever disrespect you, in common with the world, have for this business, I know you would approve of my idea. I will make no apology, dear Madam, for this egotistic detail; I know you and your sister will be interested in every circumstance of it. What signify the silly, idle gewgaws of wealth, or the ideal trumpery of greatness! When fellow-partakers of the same nature fear the same God, have the same benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul, the same detestation at everything dishonest, and the same scorn at everything unworthy-if they are not in the dependence of absolute beggary, in the name of common sense, are they not equals? And if the bias, the instinctive bias, of their soul run the same way, why may they not be friends?

When I may have an opportunity of sending this Heaven only knows. Shenstone says: "When one is confined idle within doors by bad weather, the best antidote against ennui is to read the letters of or write to one's friends:" in that case, then, if the weather continues thus, I may scrawl you half a quire.

I very lately-namely, since harvest began-wrote a poem, not in imitation, but in the manner, of Pope's "Moral Epistles." It is only a short essay, just to try the strength of my Muse's pinion in that way. I will send you a copy of it when once I have heard from you. I have likewise been laying the foundation of some pretty large poetic works: how the superstructure will come on I leave to that great maker and marrer of projects-time. Johnson's collection of Scots songs is going on in the third volume; and, of consequence, finds me a consumpt for a great deal of idle metre. One of the most tolerable things I have done in that way is two stanzas I made to an air a musical gentleman of

my acquaintance [Captain Riddell of Glenriddell] composed for the anniversary of his wedding-day, which happens on the 7th of November. Take it as follows:

[Here comes "The day returns, my bosom burns."]

I shall give over this letter for shame. If I should be seized with a scribbling fit before this goes away, I shall make it another letter; and then you may allow your patience a week's respite between the two. have not room for more than the old, kind, hearty Farewell!

I

To make some amends, mes chères mesdames, for dragging you on to this second sheet, and to relieve a little the tiresomeness of my unstudied and uncorrectible prose, I shall transcribe you some of my late poetic bagatelles; though I have, these eight or ten months, done very little that way. One day, in a hermitage on the banks of the Nith, belonging to a gentleman in my neighbourhood, who is so good as give me a key at pleasure, I wrote as follows, ["Friars' Carse Hermitage,"] supposing myself the sequestered, venerable inhabitant of the lonely mansion.

R. B.

No. CLVIII.

TO MRS. DUNLOP,

OF DUNLOP.

MAUCHLINE, 27th Sept. 1788.

I HAVE received twins, dear Madam, more than once, but scarcely ever with more pleasure than when I received yours of the 12th instant. Το make myself understood: I had wrote to Mr. Graham, enclosing my poem addressed to him, and the same post which favoured me with yours brought me an answer from him. It was dated the very day he had received mine; and I am quite at a loss to say whether it was most polite or kind.

Your criticisms, my honoured benefactress, are truly the work of a friend. They are not the blasting depredations of a canker-toothed, caterpillar critic; nor are they the fair statement of cold impartiality, balancing with unfeeling exactitude the pro and con of an author's merits: they are the judicious observations of animated friendship, selecting the beauties of the piece. I am just arrived from Nithsdale, and will be here a fortnight. I was on horseback this morning by three o'clock; for between my wife and my farm is just forty-six miles. As I jogged on in the dark, I was taken with a poetic fit as follows:

[Here is transcribed Mrs. Fergusson of Craigdarroch's lamentation for the death of her son—an uncommonly promising youth of eighteen or nineteen years of age.*]

"The Mother's Lament" served a double purpose, having been first written in reference to young Fergusson, and then applied to the death of Alexander Gordon Stewart, only son of Mrs Stewart of Afton, Burns's early patroness.

No. CLIX.

TO MR. PETER HILL.

MAUCHLINE, 1st October, 1788. I HAVE been here in this country about three days, and all that time my chief reading has been the "Address to Lochlomond" [by the Rev. Dr. Cririe] you were so obliging as to send to me. Were I empannelled one of the author's jury, to determinate his criminality respecting the sin of poesy, my verdict should be "Guilty! A poet of Nature's making!" It is an excellent method for improvement, and what I believe every poet does, to place some favourite classic author, in his own walks of study and composition, before him as a model. Though your author had not mentioned the name, I could have, at half a glance, guessed his model to be Thomson. Will my brother poet forgive me if I venture to hint that his imitation of that immortal bard is in two or three places rather more servile than such a genius as his required?-e. g.

"To soothe the maddening passions all to peace."

Address.

I think the "Address" is in simplicity, harmony, and elegance of versification, fully equal to the "Seasons." Like Thomson, too, he has looked into nature for himself: you meet with no copied description. One particular criticism I made at first reading: in no one instance has he said too much. He never flags in his progress, but, like a true poet of Nature's making, kindles in his course. His beginning is simple and modest, as if distrustful of the strength of his pinion; only I do not altogether like

"Truth,

The soul of every song that's nobly great."

Fiction is the soul of many a song that is nobly great. Perhaps I am wrong: this may be but a prose criticism. Is not the phrase in line 7, page 6, "Great lake," too much vulgarized by every-day language for so sublime a poem ?

"Great mass of waters, theme for nobler song,"

is perhaps no emendation. His enumeration of a comparison with other lakes is at once harmonious and poetic. Every reader's ideas must sweep the

"Winding margin of a hundred miles."

The perspective that follows, mountains blue-the imprisoned billows beating in vain-the wooded isles-the digression on the yew-tree"Ben Lomond's lofty, cloud-enveloped head," &c. are beautiful. A thunderstorm is a subject which has been often tried, yet our poet in his grand picture has interjected a circumstance, so far as I know, entirely original:

"The gloom

Deep seam'd with frequent streaks of moving fire."

In his preface to the storm, "the glens how dark between," is noble Highland landscape! The "rain ploughing the red mould," too, is beautifully fancied. "Ben Lomond's lofty, pathless top," is a good expression; and the surrounding view from it is truly great: the

66

is well described; and here he has contrived to enliven his poem with a little of that passion which bids fair, I think, to usurp the modern Muses altogether. I know not how far this episode is a beauty upon the whole, but the swain's wish to carry some faint idea of the vision bright," to entertain her "partial listening ear," is a pretty thought. But in my opinion the most beautiful passages in the whole poem are the fowls crowding, in wintry frosts, to Loch Lomond's "hospitable flood,” their wheeling round, their lighting, mixing, diving, &c. and the glorious description of the sportsman. This last is equal to anything in the "Seasons." The idea of "the floating tribes distant seen, far glistering to the moon." provoking his eye as he is obliged to leave them, is a noble ray of poetic genius. "The howling winds," the "hideous roar” of “the white cascades," are all in the same style.

I forget that while I am thus holding forth with the heedless warmth of an enthusiast, I am perhaps tiring you with nonsense. I must, however, mention that the last verse of the sixteenth page is one of the most elegant compliments I have ever seen. I must likewise notice that beautiful paragraph beginning "The gleaming lake," &c. I dare not go into the particular beauties of the last two paragraphs, but they are admirably fine, and truly Ossianic.

I must beg your pardon for this lengthened scrawl, I had no idea of it when I began. I should like to know who the author is but whoever he be, please present him with my grateful thanks for the entertainment he has afforded me.

A friend of mine desired me to commission for him two books-"Letters on the Religion Essential to Man," a book you sent me before; and "The World Unmasked, or the Philosopher the Greatest Cheat." Send me them by the first opportunity. The Bible you sent me is truly elegant; I only wish it had been in two volumes.-R. B.

No. CLX.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE "STAR."

[The following protest was called forth as much by the "dour" Calvinism as by the violent Whiggism of a thanksgiving sermon preached by the Rev. Mr. Kirkpatrick of Dunscore, in accordance with an order of the General Assembly, in memory "of that glorious event, the Revolution."]

SIR,

November 8, 1788.

Notwithstanding the opprobrious epithets with which some of our philosophers and gloomy sectarians have branded our nature-the

principle of universal selfishness, the proneness to all evil, they have given us-still, the detestation in which inhumanity to the distressed or insolence to the fallen are held by all mankind shows that they are not natives of the human heart. Even the unhappy partner of our kind who is undone the bitter consequence of his follies or his crimes-who but sympathises with the miseries of this ruined profligate brother? We forget the injuries, and feel for the man.

I went, last Wednesday, to my parish church, most cordially to join in grateful acknowledgment to the Author of all good for the consequent blessings of the glorious Revolution. To that auspicious event we owe no less than our liberties, civil and religious; to it we are likewise indebted for the present royal family, the ruling features of whose administration have ever been mildness to the subject and tenderness of his rights.

Bred and educated in Revolution principles, the principles of reason and common sense, it could not be any silly political prejudice which made my heart revolt at the harsh, abusive manner in which the reverend gentleman mentioned the House of Stuart, and which, I am afraid, was too much the language of the day. We may rejoice sufficiently in our deliverance from past evils without cruelly raking up the ashes of those whose misfortune it was, perhaps as much as their crime, to be the authors of those evils; and we may bless God for all His goodness to us as a nation, without at the same time cursing a few ruined, powerless exiles, who only harboured ideas and made attempts that most of us would have done had we been in their situation.

"The bloody and tyrannical House of Stuart" may be said with propriety and justice, when compared with the present royal family and the sentiments of our days; but is there no allowance to be made for the manners of the times? Were the royal contemporaries of the Stuarts more attentive to their subjects' rights? Might not the epithets of bloody and tyrannical" be, with at least equal justice, applied to the House of Tudor, of York, or any other of their predecessors.

The simple state of the case, Sir, seems to be this :-At that period the science of government, the knowledge of the true relation between king and subject, was, like other sciences and other knowledge, just in its infancy, emerging from dark ages of ignorance and barbarity.

The Stuarts only contended for prerogatives which they knew their predecessors enjoyed, and which they saw their contemporaries enjoying: but these prerogatives were inimical to the happiness of a nation and the rights of subjects.

In this contest between prince and people-the consequence of that light of science which had lately dawned over Europe-the monarch of France, for example, was victorious over the struggling liberties of his people with us, luckily, the monarch failed, and his unwarrantable pretensions fell a sacrifice to our rights and happiness. Whether it was owing to the wisdom of leading individuals, or to the justling of parties, I cannot pretend to determine; but, likewise, happily for us, the kingly power was shifted into another branch of the family, who, as they owed