against you, that in the overtakings, turnings, pled it is; stil there are bright examples to the and jostlings of life, pop, at some unlucky cor- contrary: examples that even in the eyes of suner, eternally comes the wretet. upon you, and perior beings, must shed a lustre on the name of will not allow your indignation or contempt a man. moment's repose. As I am a sturdy believer Such an example have I now before me, in the powers of darkness, I take those to be when you, Sir, came forward to patronise and the doings of that old author of mischief, the befriend a distant obscure stranger, merely bedevil. It is well known that he has some cause poverty had made him helpless, and his kind of short-hand way of taking down our British hardihood of mind had provoked the arthoughts, and I make no doubt that he is per- bitrary wantonness of power. My much esfectly acquainted with my sentiments respect- teemed friend, Mr. Riddel of Glenriddel, has ing Miss B-; how much I admired her just read me a paragraph of a letter he had abilities and valued her worth, and how very from you. Accept, Sir, of the silent throb of fortunate I thought myself in her acquaintance. gratitude; for words would but mock the emoFor this last reason, my dear Madam, I must tions of my soul. entertain no hopes of the very great pleasure of meeting with you again. You have been misinformed as to my final dismission from the Excise; I am still in the Miss H tells me that she is sending a service.-Indeed, but for the exertions of a genpacket to you, and I beg leave to send you the tleman who must be known to you, Mr. Graham enclosed sonnet, though to tell you the real of Fintray, a gentleman who has ever been my truth, the sonnet is a mere pretence, that I may have the opportunity of declaring with how much respectful esteem I have the honour to be, &c. SIR, No. CLXXIV. TO PATRICK MILLER, Esq. April, 1793. warm and generous friend, I had, without so much as a hearing, or the slightest previous intimation, been turned adrift, with my helpless family, to all the horrors of want.-Had I had any other resource, probably I might have saved them the trouble of a dismission; but the little money I gained by my publication, is almost every guinea embarked, to save from ruin an only brother, who, though one of the worthiest, is by no means one of the most fortunate of men. In my defence to their accusations, I said, that whatever might be my sentiments of republics, ancient or modern, as to Britain, I abMy poems having just come out in another edi-jured the idea :-That a CONSTITUTION, which, tion, will you do me the honour to accept of a in its original principles, experience had proved copy? A mark of my gratitude to you, as a to be every way fitted for our happiness in sogentleman to whose goodness I have been much ciety, it would be insanity to sacrifice to an unindebted; of my respect for you, as a patriot tried visionary theory :-That, in consideration who, in a venal, sliding age, stands forth the of my being situated in a department, however champion of the liberties of my country; and humble, immediately in the hands of people in of my veneration for you, as a man, whose be- power, I had forborne taking any active part, nevolence of heart does honour to human nature. either personally, or as an author, in the present There was a time, Sir, when I was your de-business of REFORM. But that, where I must pendant: this language then would have been declare my sentiments, I would say there existlike the vile incense of flattery-I could not have ed a system of corruption between the executive used it. Now that connection is at an end, do me the honour to accept of this honest tribute of respect from, Sir, Your much indebted humble Servant. No. CLXXV. power and the representative part of the leg slature, which boded no good to our glorious CONmust wish to see amended.-Some such sentiSTITUTION; and which every patriotic Briton ments as these, I stated in a letter to my generous patron Mr. Graham, which he laid before the Board at large; where, it seems, my last remark gave great offence; and one of our su TO JOHN FRANCIS ERSKINE, Esq.t allowed him to lay it before the public.-It is partly OF MAR. printed in Dr. Currie's Edition. It will be necessary to state, that in consequence of the poet's freedom of remark on public measures, maliciously misrepresented to the Board of Excise, he Dumfries, 13th April, 1793. was represented as actually dismissed from his office. DEGENERATE as human nature is said to be;-This report induced Mr. Erskine to propose a suband in many instances, worthless and unprinci SIR, Alluding to the time when he held the farm of Ellisland, as tenant to Mr. M. This gentleman, most obligingly favoured the Editor with a perfect copy of the original letter, and to inquire on the spot, and to document me"that my business was to act, not to think, and that whatever might be men or measures, it was for me to be silent and obedient." pervisors general, a Mr. Corbet, was instructed | bulk; and the titled, tinsel, courtly throng, may be its feathered ornament; but the number of those who are elevated enough in life to reason and to reflect; yet low enough to keep clear of the venal contagion of a court;-these are a nation's strength. Mr. Corbet was likewise my steady friend; so between Mr. Graham and him, I have been partly forgiven; only I understand that all hopes of my getting officially forward, are blasted. My poems having just come out in another edition, I beg leave to present you with a copy, as a small mark of that high esteem and ardent gratitude, with which I have the honour to be, Sir, I know not how to apologize for the impertinent length of this epistle; but one small request I must ask of you farther-When you have honoured this letter with a perusal, please Now, Sir, to the business in which I would to commit it to the flames. BURNS, in whose more immediately interest you. The partiality behalf you have so generously interested yourof my COUNTRYMEN, has brought me forward self, I have here, in his native colours drawn as a man of genius, and has given me a charac-as he is; but should any of the people in whose ter to support. In the POET I have avowed hands is the very bread he eats, get the least manly and independent sentiments, which knowledge of the picture, it would ruin the poor trust will be found in the MAN. Reasons of no BARD for ever! less weight than the support of a wife and family, have pointed out as the eligible, and situated as I was, the only eligible line of life for me, my present occupation. Still my honest fame is my dearest concern; and a thousand times have I trembled at the idea of those degrading epithets that malice or misrepresentation may affix to my name. I have often, in blasting anticipation, listened to some future hackney scribbler, with the heavy malice of savage stupidity, exulting in his hireling paragraphs "BURNS, notwithstanding the fanfaronade of independence to be found in his works, and after having been held forth to public view, and to public estimation as a man of some genius, yet, quite destitute of resources within himself to support his borrowed dignity, he dwindled into a paltry exciseman, and slunk out the rest of his insignificant existence in the mcanest of pursuits, and among the vilest of mankind." Your deeply indebted, And ever devoted humble servant. No. CLXXVI. TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE. April 26, 1793. I AM d-mnably out of humour, my dear Ainslie, and that is the reason, why I take up the pen to you. 'tis the nearest way, (probatum est) to recover my spirits again. I received your last, and was much entertainIn your illustrious hands, Sir, permit me to ed with it; but I will not at this time, nor at lodge my disavowal and defiance of these slan- any other time, answer it.-Answer a letter? I derous falsehoods.-BURNS was a poor man never could answer a letter in my life!-I have from birth, and an exciseman by necessity: but written many a letter in return for letters I have -I will say it! the sterling of his honest worth, received; but then-they were original matter no poverty could debase, and his independent-spurt-away! zig, here; zag, there; as if the British mind, oppression might bend, but could Devil that, my grannie (an old woman indeed!) not subdue. Have not I, to me, a more pre-often told me, rode in will-o'-wisp, or, in her cious stake in my country's welfare, than the more classic phrase, SPUNKIE, were looking richest dukedom in it ?--I have a large family over my elbow.-Happy thought that idea has of children, and the prospect of many more. I engendered in my head! SPUNKIE-thou shalt have three sons, who, I see already, have brought henceforth be my symbol, signature, and tuteinto the world souls ill qualified to inhabit the lary genius! Like thee, hap-step-and-lowp, herebodies of SLAVES.--Can I look tamely on, and awa-there-awa, higglety-pigglety, pell-mell, hisee any machination to wrest from them the ther-and-yon, ram-stam, happy-go-lucky, up birthright of my boys, the little independent tails-a'-by-the-light-o'-the-moon; has been, is, BRITONS, in whose veins runs my own blood?—and shall be, my progress through the mosses No! I will not! should my heart's blood stream and moors of this vile, bleak, barren wilderness around my attempt to defend it! of a life of ours. Does any inan tell me, that my full efforts can be of no service; and that it does not belong to my humble station to meddle with the concern of a nation? Come then my guardian spirit! like thee, may I skip away, amusing myself by and at my own light and if any opaque-souled lubber of mankind complain that my elfine, lambent, I can tell him, that it is on such individuals glimmerous wanderings have misled his stupid as I, that a nation has to rest, both for the steps over precipices, or into bogs; let the hand of support, and the eye of intelligence. thick-headed Blunderbuss recollect, that he is The uninform'd мOв, may swell a nation's not SPUNKIE :—that SPUNKIE'S wanderings could not copied be; the finest part of God's works below), have sensations for the poetic heart that the HERD of man are strangers to.-On this last account, Madam, I am, as in many other thing, indebted to Mr. Hamilton's kindness in introducing me to you. Your lovers may view you with a wish, I look on you with pleasure; their hearts, in your presence, may glow with desire, nine rises with admiration. I have no doubt but scholarcraft may be caught as a Scotsman catches the itch,-by friction. How else can you account for it, that born blockheads, by mere dint of handling books, grow so wise that even they themselves are That the arrows of misfortune, however they equally convinced of and surprised at their own should, as incident to humanity, glance a slight parts? I once carried this philosophy to that wound, may never reach your heart-that the degree that in a knot of country folks who had snares of villany may never beset you in the a library amongst them, and who, to the honour road of life-that INNOCENCE may hand you by of their good sense, made me factotum in the the path of HONOUR to the dwelling of PEACE, business; one of our members, a little, wise- is the sincere wish of him who has the honour looking, squat, upright, jabbering body of a to be, &c. tailor, I advised him, instead of turning over the leaves, to bind the book on his back.-Johnie took the hint; and as our meetings were every fourth Saturday, and Pricklouse having a good Scots mile to walk in coming, and, of course, another in returning, Bodkin was sure to lay his hands on some heavy quarto, or ponderous folio, with, and under which, wrapt up in his grey plaid, he grew wise, as he grew weary, all the way home. He carried this so far, that an old musty Hebrew concordance which we had in a present from a neighbouring priest, by mere dint of applying it, as doctors do a blistering plaister, between his shoulders, Stitch, in a dozen pilgrimages, acquired as much rational theology as the said priest had done by forty years perusal of the pages. Tell me, and tell me truly, what you think of this theory. PERMIT me to present you with the enclosed song as a small though grateful tribute for the honour of your acquaintance. I have, in these verses, attempted some faint sketches of your portrait in the unembellished simple manner of descriptive TRUTH.-Flattery, I leave to your LOVERS, whose exaggerating fancies may make them imagine you still nearer perfection than you really are. Poets, Madam, of all mankind, feel most for cibly the powers of BEAUTY; as, if they are really POETS of nature's making, their feelings must be finer, and their taste more delicate than most of the world. In the cheerful bloom of SPRING, or the pensive mildness of AUTUMN; the grandeur of SUMMER, or the hoary majesty of WINTER; the poet feels a charm unknown to the rest of his species. Even the sight of a fine flower, or the company of a fine woman (by far] If thee Jerusalem I forget, Skill part from my right hand.— My tongue to my mouth's roof let cleave, Jerusalem, and thee above My chief joy do not set.— When I am tempted to do any thing improper, I dare not, because I look on myself as accountable to your ladyship and family. Now and then when I have the honour to be called to the tables of the great, if I happen to meet with any mortification from the stately stupidity of self-sufficient squires, or the luxuriant insolence of upstart nabobs, I get above the creatures by calling to remembrance that I am patronized by the Noble House of Glencairn; and at gala-times, such as New-year's day, a christening, or the Kirn-night, when my punch-bowl is brought from its dusty corner and filled up in honour of the occasion, I begin with,-The Countess of Glencairn! My good woman with the enthusiasm of a grateful heart, next cries, My Lord! and so the toast goes on until I end with Lady Harriet's little angel! whose epithalamium I have pledged myself to write. When I received your ladyship's letter, I was People may talk as they please, of the ignominy of the excise; £50 a year will support my wife and children and keep me independent of the world; and I would much rather have it said that my profession borrowed credit from me, than that I borrowed credit from my profession. Another advantage I have in this business, is the knowledge it gives me of the various shades of human character, consequently assisting me vastly in my poetic pursuits. I had the most ardent enthusiasm for the muses when nobody knew me, but myself, and that ardour is by no means cooled now that my Lord Glencairn's goodness has introduced me to all the world. Not that I am in haste for the press. I have no idea of publishing, else I certainly had consulted my noble generous patron; but after acting the part of an honest man, and supporting my family, my whole wishes and views are directed to poetic pursuits. I am aware that though I were to give performances to the world superior to my former works, still if they were of the same kind with those, the comparative reception they would meet with would mortify me. I have turned my thoughts on the drama. I do not mean the stately buskin of the tragic muse. Just in the act of transcribing for you some verses | a talent for poetry; none ever despised it who I have lately composed; and meant to have sent had pretensions to it. The fates and characters them my first leisure hour, and acquainted you of the rhyming tribe often employ my thoughts with my late change of life. I mentioned to my when I am disposed to be melancholy. There lord, my fears concerning my farm. Those is not, among all the martyrologies that ever fears were indeed too true; it is a bargain would were penned, so rueful a narrative as the lives of have ruined me but for the lucky circumstance the poets. In the comparative view of wretches, of my having an excise commission. the criterion is not what they are doomed to suffer, but how they are formed to bear. Take a being of our kind, give him a stronger imagination and a more delicate sensibility, which between them will ever engender a more ungovernable set of passions than are the usual lot of man ; implant in him an irresistible impulse to some idle vagary, such as, arranging wild flowers in fantastical nosegays, tracing the grasshopper to his haunt by his chirping song, watching the frisks of the little minnows in the sunny pool, or hunting after the intrigues of butterflies-in short, send him adrift after some pursuit which shall eternally mislead him from the path of lucre, and yet curse him with a keener relish than any man living, for the plasures that lucre can purchase; lastly, fill up the measure of his woes by bestowing on him a spurning sense of his own dignity, and you have created a wight nearly as miserable as a poet. To you, Madam, I need not recount the fairy pleasures the muse bestows to counterbalance this catalogue of evils. Bewitching poetry is like bewitching woman; she has in all ages been accused of misleading mankind from the counsels of wisdom and the paths of prudence, involving them in difficulties, baiting them with poverty, branding them with infamy, and plunging them in the whirling vortex of ruin; yet where is the man but must own that all happiness on earth is not worthy the name-that even the holy hermit's solitary prospect of paradisaical bliss is but the glitter of a northern sun, rising over a frozen region, compared with the many pleasures, the nameless raptures that we owe to the lovely Queen of the heart of Man! Does not your ladyship think that an Edinburgh theatre would be more amused with affectation, fully and whim of true Scottish growth, than manners which by far the greatest part of the audience can only know at second hand? I have the honour to be Your ladyship's ever devoted MADAM, No. CLXXIX. TO MISS CHALMERS. August, 1793. SOME rather unlooked-for accidents have prevented my doing myself the honour of a second visit to Arbiegland, as I was so hospitably invited, and so positively meant to have done.However, I still hope to have that pleasure before the busy months of harvest begin. I enclose you two of my late pieces, as some kind return for the pleasure I have received in perusing a certain MS. volume of poems in the possession of Captain Riddel. To repay one with an old song, is a proverb, whose force you, Madam, I know will not allow. What is said of illustrious descent is, I believe, equally true of] SIR, No. CLXXX. TO JOHN M'MURDO, Esq. December, 1793. IT is said that we take the greatest liberties with our greatest friends, and I pay myself a very high compliment in the manner in which I am going to apply the remark. I have owed you money longer than ever I owed it to any man.-Here is Ker's account, and here are six guineas; and now, I don't owe a shilling to man-or woman either. But for these damned dirty, dog's ear'd little pages, I had done myself the honour to have waited on you long ago. Independent of the obligations your hospitality Scottish bank-notes. chink of a ruined wall. Nothing less, Madam, | could have made me so long neglect your obliging commands. Indeed I had one apology-the bagatelle was not worth presenting. Besides, so strongly am I interested in Miss D's fate and welfare in the serious business of life, amid its chances and changes; that to make her the subject of a silly ballad, is downright mockery of these ardent feelings; 'tis like an impertinent jest to a dying friend. Gracious Heaven! why this disparity between our wishes and our powers? Why is the most generous wish to make others blest, impotent and ineffectual-as the idle breeze that crosses the pathless desert? In my walks of life I have met with a few people to whom how gladly would I have said-" Go, be happy! I know that your hearts have been wounded by the scorn of the proud, whom accident has placed above you--or worse still, in whose hand are, perhaps, placed many of the comforts of your life. But there! ascend that rock, Independence, and look justly down on their littleness No. CLXII. TO MRS. DUNLOP Ellisland, 17th December, 1791. MANY thanks to you, Madam, for your good news respecting the little floweret and the mother plant. I hope my poetic prayers have been heard, and will be answered up to the warmest sincerity of their fullest extent; and then Mrs. Henri will find her little darling the representative of his late parent, in every thing but his abridged existence. I have just finished the following song, which, to a lady the descendant of Wallace, and many heroes of his truly illustrious line, and herself the mother of several soldiers, needs neither preface nor apology. (Death Song. See p. 230) of soul. Make the worthless tremble under your The circumstance that gave rise to the foreindignation, and the foolish sink before your con-going verses was, looking over, with a musical tempt; and largely impart that happiness to friend, M'Donald's collection of Highland airs; others, which, I am certain, will give yourselves I was struck with one, an Isle of Skye tune, so much pleasure to bestow!" Why, dear Madam, must I wake from this delightful reverie, and find it all a dream? Why, amid my generous enthusiasm, must I find myself poor and powerless, incapable of wiping one tear from the eye of pity, or of adding one comfort to the friend I love!-Out upon the world! say I, that its affairs are administered so ill? They talk of reform;-good Heaven! what a reform would I make among the sons, and even the daughters of men!--Down, immediately, should go fools from the high places where mis. begotten chance has per ked them up, and through life should they skulk, ever haunted by their native insignificance, as the body marches accompanied by its shadow.-As for a much more formidable class, the knaves, I am at a loss what to do with them: Had I a world, there should not be a knave in it. But the hand that could give, I would liberally fill; and I would pour delight on the heart that could kindly forgive, and generously love. entitled Oran an Aoig, or, The Song of Death, to the measure of which I have adapted my stanzas. I have of late composed two or three other little pieces, which ere yon full orbed moon, whose broad impudent face now stares at old mother earth all night, shall have shrunk into a modest crescent, just peeping forth at dewy dawn, 1 shall find an hour to transcribe for you. A Dieu je vous commende ! I BELIEVE among all our Scots literati you have not met with Professor Dugald Stewart, who fills the moral philosophy chair in the University of Edinburgh. To say that he is a man of the first parts, and what is more, a man of Still the inequalities of his life are, among the first worth, to a gentleman of your general men, comparatively tolerable-but there is a de-acquaintance, and who so much enjoys the lux licacy, a tenderness, accompanying every view ury of unencumbered freedom and undisturbed in which we can place lovely Woman, that are privacy, is not perhaps recommendation enough: grated and shocked at the rude, capricious dis--but when I inform you that Mr. Stewart's tinctions of fortune. Woman is the blood-royal principal characteristic is your favourite fea. of life: let there be slight degrees of precedency ture; that sterling independence of mind, which, among them-but let them be ALL sacred. though every man's right, so few men have the Whether this last sentiment be right or wrong, courage to claim, and fewer still the magnaniI am not accountable; it is an original compo-mity to support :-When I tell you, that unse tent feature of my mind. duced by splendour, and undisgusted by wretchedness, he appreciates the merits of the various actors in the great drama of life, merely as they |