the language of complaint. Job, or some one of his friends, says well'Why should a living man complain ?”

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I have lately been much mortified with contemplating an unlucky imperfection in the very framing and construction of my soul; namely, a blundering inaccuracy of her olfactory organs in hitting the scent of craft or design in my fellow-creatures. I do not mean any compliment to my ingenuousness, or to hint that the defect is in consequence of the unsuspicious simplicity of conscious truth and honour: I take it to be, in some way or other, an imperfection in the mental sight; or, metaphor apart, some modification of dulness., In two or three instances lately I have been most shamefully out.

I have all along hitherto, in the warfare of life, been bred to arms among the light-horse-the picket-guards of fancy-a kind of hussars and Highlanders of the brain; but I am firmly resolved to sell out of these giddy battalions, who have no ideas of a battle but fighting the foe, or of a siege but storming the town. Cost what it will, I am determined to buy in among the grave squadrons of heavy-armed thought, or the artillery corps of plodding contrivance.

What books are you reading, or what is the subject of your thoughts, besides the great studies of your profession? You said something about religion in your last. I don't exactly remember what it was, as the letter is in Ayrshire but I thought it not only prettily said, but nobly thought. You will make a noble fellow if once you were married. I make no reservation of your being well married: you have so much sense and knowledge of human nature, that, though you may not realize perhaps the ideas of romance, yet you will never be ill married.

Were it not for the terrors of my ticklish situation respecting provision for a family of children, I am decidedly of opinion that the step I have taken is vastly for my happiness. As it is, I look to the Excise scheme as a certainty of maintenance. A maintenance !-luxury, to what either Mrs. Burns or I was born to. Adieu !-R. B.

No. CXLIX.

EXTRACT FROM COMMONPLACE BOOK.

ELLISLAND, Sunday, 14th [15th

June, 1788.*
"Lord!

THIS is now the third day that I have been in this country. what is man?" What a bustling little bundle of passions, appetites, ideas, and fancies! And what a capricious kind of existence he has here! There is indeed an elsewhere, where, as Thomson says, virtue sole survives.

*Mr. R. Chambers suggests that the 14th of June, 1788, having been a Saturday, it may be surmised that Burns wrote several dates at this time a day too early.

I am such a coward in life, so tired of the service, that I would almost at any time, with Milton's Adam, "gladly lay me in my mother's lap, and be at peace."

But a wife and children bind me to struggle with the stream, till some sudden squall shall overset the silly vessel; or, in the listless return of years, its own craziness reduce it to a wreck. Farewell now to those giddy follies, those varnished vices, which, though half sanctified by the bewitching levity of wit and humour, are at best but thriftless idling with the precious current of existence; nay, often poisoning the whole, that, like the plains of Jericho, the water is naught and the ground barren, and nothing short of a supernaturally-gifted Elisha can ever after heal the evils. Wedlock-the circumstance that buckles me hardest to care-if virtue and religion were to be anything with me but names, was what in a few seasons I must have resolved on: in my present situation it was absolutely necessary. Humanity, generosity, honest pride of character, justice to my own happiness for after life, so far as it could depend (which it surely will a great deal) on internal peace; all these joined their warmest suffrages, their most powerful solicitations, with a rooted attachment, to urge the step I have taken. Nor have I any reason on her part to repent it. I can fancy how, but have never seen where, I could have made a better choice. Come, then, let me act up to my favourite motto, that glorious passage in Young-

"On reason build resolve.

That column of true majesty in man!"

No CL.

TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.

MY DEAR SIR, I just now received your brief epistle; and, to take vengeance on ELLISLAND, 30th June, 1788. your laziness, I have, you see, taken a long sheet of writing-paper, and have begun at the top of the page, intending to scribble on to the very last corner.

I am vexed at that affair of the *** subject until you send me your direction, as I suppose that will be altered but dare not enlarge on the on your late master and friend's death [Mr. Samuel Mitchelson, W.S.] I am concerned for the old fellow's exit only as I fear it may be to your disadvantage in any respect; for an old man's dying, except he have been a very benevolent character, or in some particular situation of life that the welfare of the poor or the helpless depended on him, I think it an event of the most trifling moment to the world. Man is naturally a kind, benevolent animal, but he is dropped into such a needy situation here in this vexatious world, and has such a whoreson, hungry, growling, multiplying pack of necessities, appetites, passions, and desires about him, ready to devour him for want of other food, that in fact he must lay aside his cares for others that he may look properly to himself.

I desired the carrier to pay you; but as I mentioned only fifteen shillings to him, I will rather enclose you a guinea-note. I have it not, indeed, to spare here, as I am only a sojourner in a strange land in this place; but in a day or two I return to Mauchline, and there I have the bank-notes through the house like salt-permits.

There is a great degree of folly in talking unnecessarily of one's private affairs. I have just now been interrupted by one of my new neighbours, who has made himself absolutely contemptible in my eyes by his silly garrulous pruriency. I know it has been a fault of my own too; but from this moment I abjure it as I would the service of hell! Your poets, spendthrifts, and other fools of that kidney, pretend, forsooth, to crack their jokes on prudence; but 'tis a squalid vagabond glorying in his rags. Still, imprudence respecting money matters is much more pardonable than imprudence respecting character. I have no objection to prefer prodigality to avarice in some few instances; but I appeal to your observation if you have not met, and often met, with the same disingenuousness, the same hollow-hearted insincerity and disintegrative depravity of principle, in the hackneyed victims of profusion as in the unfeeling children of parsimony. I have every possible reverence for the much-talked-of world beyond the grave, and I wish that which piety believes and virtue deserves may be all matter of fact. But in things belonging to and terminating in this present scene of existence man has serious and interesting business on hand. Whether a man shall shake hands with welcome in the distinguished elevation of respect, or shrink from contempt in the abject corner of insignificance; whether he shall wanton under the tropic of plenty—at least enjoy himself in the comfortable latitudes of easy convenience -or starve in the arctic circle of dreary poverty; whether he shall rise in a manly consciousness of a self-approving mind, or sink beneath a galling load of regret and remorse-these are alternatives of the last moment.

You see how I preach. You used occasionally to sermonize too; I wish you would in charity favour me with a sheet full in your own way. I admire the close of a letter Lord Bolingbroke writes to Dean Swift :“Adieu, dear Swift! with all thy faults I love thee entirely ; make an effort to love me with all mine!" Humble servant, and all that trumpery, is now such a prostituted business, that honest friendship, in her sincere way, must have recourse to her primitive, simple, Farewell!— R. B.

No. CLI.

TO MR. PETER HILL.

[Mr. Peter Hill, Creech's chief assistant, who had now set up in business for himself.]

MAUCHLINE, 18th July, 1788. You injured me, my dear Sir, in your construction of the cause of my silence. From Ellisland in Nithsdale to Mauchline in Kyle is forty and

five miles. There a house a-building, and farm enclosures and improvements to tend; here a new-not indeed so much a new as a young wife : good God, Sir, could my dearest brother expect a regular correspondence from me! I am certain that my liberal-minded and much-respected friend would have acquitted me, though I had obeyed to the very letter that famous statute among the irrevocable decrees of the Medes and Persians, not to ask petition, for forty days, of either God or man, save thee, O Queen, only !

I am highly obliged to you, my dearest Sir, for your kind, your elegant, compliments on my becoming one of that most respectable, that truly venerable, corps, they who are, without a metaphor, the fathers of posterity...

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Your book came safe, and I am going to trouble you with further commissions. I call it troubling you--because I want only books: the cheapest way the best; so you may have to hunt for them in the evening auctions. I want Smollett's works, for the sake of his incomparable humour. I have already "Roderick Random" and " Humphrey Clinker;" "Peregrine Pickle," Launcelot Greaves," and "Ferdinand Count Fathom," I still want; but, as I said, the veriest ordinary copies will serve me. I am nice only in the appearance of my poets. I forget the price of "Cowper's Poems," but I believe I must have them. I saw the other day proposals for a publication entitled "Banks's New and Complete Christian's Family Bible," printed for C. Cooke, Paternoster Row, London. He promises at least to give in the work, I think it is, three hundred and odd engravings, to which he has put the names of the first artists in London. You will know the character of the performance, as some numbers of it are published; and if it is really what it pretends to be, set me down as a subscriber, and send me the published numbers.

Let me hear from you your first leisure minute, and trust me you shall in future have no reason to complain of my silence. The dazzling perplexity of novelty will dissipate, and leave me to pursue my course in the quiet path of methodical routine.-R. B.

MY DEAR SIR,

No. CLII.

TO MR. GEORGE LOCKHART,

MERCHANT, GLASGOW.

MAUCHLINE, 18th July, 1788.

I am just going for Nithsdale, else I would certainly have transcribed some of my rhyming things for you. The Miss Baillies I have seen in Edinburgh. "Fair and lovely are thy works, Lord God Almighty! Who would not praise Thee for these Thy gifts in Thy goodness to the sons of men?" It needed not your fine taste to admire them. I declare, one day I had the honour of dining at Mr. Baillie's, I was almost in the

predicament of the children of Israel, when they could not look on Moses' face for the glory that shone in it when he descended from Mount Sinai.

I did once write a poetic address from the Falls of Bruar to his Grace of Athole when I was in the Highlands. When you return to Scotland let me know, and I will send such of my pieces as please myself best. I return to Mauchline in about ten days.

My compliments to Mr. Purden.

I am in truth, but at present in haste, yours,

No. CLIII.

TO MRS. DUNLOP.

R. B.

HONOURED MADAM,

MAUCHLINE, August 2, 1788.

Your kind letter welcomed me yesternight to Ayrshire. I am indeed seriously angry with you at the quantum of your luckpenny; but vexed and hurt as I was, I could not help laughing very heartily at the noble lord's apology for the missed napkin.

I would write to you from Nithsdale, and give you my direction there, but I have scarce an opportunity of calling at a post-office once in a fortnight. I am six miles from Dumfries, am scarcely ever in it myself, and as yet have little acquaintance in the neighbourhood. Besides, I am now very busy on my farm, building a dwelling-house; as at present I am almost an evangelical man in Nithsdale, for I have scarce "where to lay my head."

There are some passages in your last that brought tears in my eyes. "The heart knoweth its own sorrows, and a stranger intermeddleth not therewith." The repository of these " sorrows of the heart" is a kind of sanctum sanctorum; and 'tis only a chosen friend, and taat, too, at particular sacred times, who dares enter into them:

"Heaven oft tears the bosom-chords
That nature finest strung.

You will excuse this quotation for the sake of the author. Instead of entering on this subject farther, I shall transcribe you a few lines I wrote in a hermitage belonging to a gentleman in my Nithsdale neighbourhood. They are almost the only favours the Muses have conferred on me in that country. . . .

[Here follow the verses composed in the Friars' Carse Hermitage, given in page 82.]

Since I am in the way of transcribing, the following were the production of yesterday, as I jogged through the wild hills of New Cumnock. I intend inserting them, or something like them, in an epistle I am going to write to the gentleman on whose friendship my Excise hopes depend-Mr. Graham of Fintry, one of the worthiest and most accomplished gentlemen not only of this country, but, I will dare to say it, of this age.

The