secondly, they are so short, that you cannot leave off in the middle, and so hurt my pride in the idea that you found any work of mine too heavy to get through. I have a request to beg of you, and I not only beg of you, but conjure you, by all your wishes and by all your hopes that the Muse will spare the satiric wink in the moment of your foibles; that she will warble the song of rapture round your hymeneal couch; and that she will shed on your turf the honest tear of elegiac gratitude! Grant my request as speedily as possible: send me by the very first fly or coach for this place three copies of the last edition of my poems, which place to my account. Now may the good things of prose, and the good things of verse, come among thy hands, until they be filled with the good things of this life, prayeth R. B. No. CLXXXV. TO MR. MCAULEY, OF DUMBARTON. DEAR SIR, ELLISLAND, 4th June, 1789 Though I am not without my fears respecting my fate at that grand, universal inquest of right and wrong commonly called The Last Day, yet I trust there is one sin which that arch-vagabond Satan, who I understand is to be king's evidence, cannot throw in my teeth-I mean ingratitude. There is a certain pretty large quantum of kindness for which I remain, and from inability I fear must still remain, your debtor ; but though unable to repay the debt, I assure you, Sir, I shall ever warmly remember the obligation. It gives me the sincerest pleasure to hear by my old acquaintance, Mr. Kennedy, that you are, in immortal Allan's language, "Hale, and weel, and living;" and that your charming family are well, and promising to be an amiable and respectable addition to the company of performers whom the Great Manager of the Drama of Man is bringing into action for the succeeding age. With respect to my welfare, a subject in which you once warmly and effectively interested yourself, I am here in my old way, holding my plough, marking the growth of my corn, or the health of my dairy; and at times sauntering by the delightful windings of the Nith, on the margin of which I have built my humble domicile; praying for seasonable weather, or holding an intrigue with the Muses-the only gypsies with whom I have now any intercourse. As I am entered into the holy state of matrimony, Itrust my face is turned completely Zionward; and as it is a rule with all honest fellows to repeat no grievances, I hope that the little poetic licences of former days will of course fall under the oblivious influence of some good-natured statute of celestial prescription. In my family devotion, which, like a good presbyterian, I occasionally give to my household folks, I am extremely fond of the psalm, "Let not the errors of my youth," &c. and that other, "Lo, children are God's heritage," &c. in which last Mrs. Burns, who, by the by, has a glorious "wood-note wild" at either old song or psalmody, joins me with the pathos of Handel's "Messiah."—R. B. MY DEAR FRIEND, No. CLXXXVI. TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE. ELLISLAND, 8th June, 1789. I am perfectly ashamed of myself when I look at the date of your last. It is not that I forget the friend of my heart and the companion of my peregrinations; but I have been condemned to drudgery beyond sufferance, though not, thank God, beyond redemption. I have had a collection of poems by a lady put into my hands to prepare them for the press; which horrid task, with sowing corn with my own hand, a parcel of masons, wrights, plasterers, &c. to attend to, roaming on business through Ayrshire-all this was against me, and the very first dreadful article was of itself too much for me. 13th. I have not had a moment to spare from incessant toil since the 8th. Life, my dear Sir, is a serious matter. You know by experience that a man's individual self is a good deal, but, believe me, a wife and family of children, whenever you have the honour to be a husband and a | father, will show you that your present and most anxious hours of solitude are spent on trifles. The welfare of those who are very dear to us, whose only support, hope, and stay we are-this, to a generous mind, is another sort of more important object of care than any concerns whatever which centre merely in the individual. On the other hand, let no young, unmarried, rakehelly dog among you make a song of his pretended liberty and freedom from care. If the relations we stand in to king, country, kindred, and friends, be anything but the visionary fancies of dreaming metaphysicians; if religion, virtue, magnanimity, generosity, humanity, and justice, be aught but empty sounds; then the man who may be said to live only for others, for the beloved, honourable female, whose tender, faithful embrace endears life, and for the helpless little innocents who are to be the men and women, the worshippers of his God, the subjects of his king, and the support, nay, the very vital existence, of his country, in the ensuing age;-compare such a man with any fellow whatever, who, whether he bustle and push in business among labourers, clerks, statesmen; or whether he roar and rant, and drink and sing, in taverns-a fellow over whose grave no one will breathe a single heigh-ho, except from the cobwebtie of what is called good fellowship-who has no view nor aim but what terminates in himself: if there be any grovelling earthborn wretch of our species, a renegado to common sense, who would fain believe that the noble creature man is no better than a sort of fungus, generated out of nothing, nobody knows how, and soon dissipating in nothing, nobody knows where; such a stupid beast, such a crawling reptile, might balance the foregoing unexaggerated comparison, but no one else would have the patience. Forgive me, my dear Sir, for this long silence. To make you amends, I shall send you soon, and, more encouraging still, without any postage, one or two rhymes of my later manufacture.-R. B. No. CLXXXVII. TO MR. [PETER STUART]. [Mr. Robert Chambers has discovered that this letter was addressed to Mr. Peter Stuart, editor of the Star, and afterwards connected with the Morning Post and Chronicle.] MY DEAR SIR, 1789 The hurry of a farmer in this particular season and the indolence of a poet at all times and seasons will, I hope, plead my excuse for neglecting so long to answer your obliging letter of the 5th of August. When I received your letter I was transcribing for **** my letter to the magistrates of the Canongate, Edinburgh, begging their permission to place a tombstone over poor Fergusson, and their edict in consequence of my petition; but now I shall send them to ****. Poor Fergusson! If there be a life beyond the grave, which I trust there is; and if there be a good God presiding over all nature, which I am sure there is; thou art now enjoying existence in a glorious world, where worth of the heart alone is distinction in the man; where riches, deprived of all their pleasure-purchasing powers, return to their native sordid matter; where titles and honours are the disregarded reveries of an idle dream; and where that heavy virtue, which is the negative consequence of steady dulness, and those thoughtless, though often destructive, follies which are the unavoidable aberrations of frail human nature, will be thrown into equal oblivion, as if they had never been! Adieu, my dear Sir! So soon as your present views and schemes are concentred in an aim, I shall be glad to hear from you, as your welfare and happiness is by no means a subject indifferent to Yours, R. B. No. CLXXXVIII. TO MISS WILLIAMS. [Miss Helen Maria Williams, author of "Some Verses on the Slave Trade, and other Poems," was introduced to Burns by Dr. Moore.] MADAM, ELLISLAND, 1789. Of the many problems in the nature of that wonderful creature man, this is one of the most extraordinary, that he shall go on from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, or perhaps from year to year, suffering a hundred times more in an hour from the impotent consciousness of neglecting what he ought to do, than the very doing of it would cost him. I am deeply indebted to you, first for a most elegant poetic compliment, then for a polite, obliging letter, and lastly, for your excellent poem on the Slave Trade; and yet, wretch that I am! though the debts were debts of honour, and the creditor a lady, I have put off and put off even the acknowledgment of the obligation, until you must indeed be the very angel I take you for, if you can forgive me. Your poem I have read with the highest pleasure. I have a way whenever I read a book-I mean a book in our own trade, Madam, a poetic one-and when it is my own property, that I take a pencil and mark at the ends of verses, or note on margins and odd paper, little criticisms of approbation or disapprobation as I peruse along. I will make no apology for presenting you with a few unconnected thoughts that occurred to me in my repeated perusals of your poem. I want to show you that I have honesty enough to tell you what I take to be truths, even when they are not quite on the side of approbation; and I do it in the firm faith that you have equal greatness of mind to hear them with pleasure. I know very little of scientific criticism; so all I can pretend to do in that intricate art is merely to note, as I read along, what passages strike me as being uncommonly beautiful, and where the expression seems to be perplexed or faulty. The poem opens finely. There are none of these idle prefatory lines which one may skip over before one comes to the subject. Verses 9th and 10th in particular, "Where ocean's unseen bound Leaves a drear world of waters round," are truly beautiful. The simile of the hurricane is likewise fine; and indeed, beautiful as the poem is, almost all the similes rise decidedly above it. From verse 31st to verse 50th is a pretty eulogy on Britain. Verse 36th, "That foul drama deep with wrong," is nobly expressive. Verse 46th, I am afraid, is rather unworthy of the rest: "to dare to feel " is an idea that I do not altogether like. The contrast of valour and mercy, from the 46th verse to the 50th, is admirable. Either my apprehension is dull, or there is something a little confused in the apostrophe to Mr. Pitt. Verse 55th is the antecedent to verses 57th and 58th, but in verse 58th the connexion seems ungrammatical. "Ris'n" should be the word instead of “rose." Try it in prose. Powers,their flight marked by no gradations, but [the same powers] risen at once to the height of glory. Likewise, verse 53d, "For this" is evidently meant to lead on the sense of the verses 59th, 60th, 61st, and 62d; but let us try how the thread of connexion runs : "For this * The deeds of mercy. that embrace I beg pardon if I misapprehend the matter, but this appears to me the only imperfect passage in the poem. The comparison of the sunbeam is fine. The compliment to the Duke of Richmond is, I hope, as just as it is certainly elegant. The thought, "Virtue * Sends from her unsullied source The gems of thought their purest force," is exceeding beautiful. The idea, from verse 81st to the 85th, that the "blest decree" is like the beams of morning ushering in the glorious day of liberty, ought not to pass unnoticed or unapplauded. From verse 85th to verse 108th is an animated contrast between the unfeeling selfishness of the oppressor, on the one hand, and the misery of the captive, on the other. Verse 88th might perhaps be amended thus: "Nor ever quit her narrow maze." We are said to pass a bound, but we quit a maze. Verse 100th is exquisitely beautiful : "They, whom wasted blessings tire." Verse 110th is, I doubt, a clashing of metaphors; "to load a span" is, I am afraid, an unwarrantable expression. In verse 114th, "Cast the universe in shade" is a fine idea. From the 115th verse to the 142d is a striking description of the wrongs of the poor African. Verse 120th, "The load of unremitted pain," is a remarkable, strong expression. The address to the advocates for abolishing the slave-trade, from verse 143d to verse 208th, is animated with the true life of genius. The picture of Oppression,— is nobly executed. "While she links her impious chain, And calculates the price of pain; And marks if death or life prevails," What a tender idea is in verse 180th! Indeed, that whole description of home may vie with Thomson's description of home, somewhere in the beginning of his "Autumn." I do not remember to have seen a stronger expression of misery than is contained in these verses : "Condemned, severe extreme, to live The comparison of our distant joys to distant objects is equally original and striking. The character and manners of the dealer in the infernal traffic is a well done, though a horrid, picture. I am not sure how far introducing the sailor was right; for though the sailor's common characteristic is generosity, yet in this case he is certainly not only an unconcerned witness, but, in some degree, an efficient agent in the business. Verse 224th is a nervous expressive " The heart convulsive anguish breaks." The description of the captive wretch when he arrives in the West Indies is carried on with equal spirit. The thought that the i |