66 following are just the first crude thoughts unhousel'd, unanointed, unaneal'd: "— Pity the tuneful Muses' helpless train ; Unlike sage, proverb'd wisdom's hard-wrung boon. Who make poor will do wait upon I should; We own they're prudent, but who owns they're good? Ye wise ones, hence! ye hurt the social eye; God's image rudely etched on base alloy ! But come Here the Muse left me. I am astonished at what you tell me of Anthony's writing me. I never received it. Poor fellow! you vex me much by telling me that he is unfortunate. I shall be in Ayrshire ten days from this date. I have just room for an old Roman "Farewell." R. B. No. CLIV. TO MRS. DUNLOP. MY MUCH HONOURED FRIEND, MAUCHLINE, August [July ?] 10, 1788. Yours of the 24th June is before me. I found it, as well as another valued friend-my wife-waiting to welcome me to Ayrshire: I met both with the sincerest pleasure. When I write you, Madam, I do not set down to answer every paragraph of yours, by echoing every sentiment, like the faithful Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled answering a speech from the best of kings. I express myself in the fulness of my heart, and may perhaps be guilty of neglecting some of your kind inquiries; but not from your very odd reason, that I do not read your letters. All your epistles for several months have cost me nothing except a swelling throb of gratitude or a deep-felt sentiment of veneration. Mrs. Burns, Madam, is the identical woman * * * When she fust found herself " as women wish to be who love their lords," as I loved her nearly to distraction, we took steps for a private marriage. Her parents got the hint; and not only forbade me her company and their house, but, on my rumoured West Indian voyage, got a warrant to put me in jail till I should find security in my about-to-be paternal relation. You know my lucky reverse of fortune. On my éclatant return to Mauchline I was made very welcome to visit my girl. The usual consequences began to betray her; and as I was at that time laid up a cripple in Edinburgh, she was turned, literally turned, out of doors, and I wrote to a friend to shelter her till my return, when our marriage was declared. Her happiness or misery was in my hands, and who could trifle with such a deposit? Ì can easily fancy a more agreeable companion for my journey of life; but, upon my honour, I have never seen the individual instance. Circumstanced as I am, I could never have got a female partner for life who could have entered into my favourite studies, relished my favourite authors, &c. without probably entailing on me, at the same time, expensive living, fantastic caprice, perhaps apish affectation, with all the other blessed boarding-school acquirements, which (pardonnez moi, madame) are sometimes to be found among females of the upper ranks, but almost universally pervade the misses of the would-be gentry. I like your way in your churchyard lucubrations. Thoughts that are the spontaneous result of accidental situations, either respecting health, place, or company, have often a strength, and always an originality, that would in vain be looked for in fancied circumstances and studied paragraphs. For me, I have often thought of keeping a letter in progression by me, to send you when the sheet was written out. Now I talk of sheets, I must tell you my reason for writing to you on paper of this kind is my pruriency of writing to you at large. A page of post is on such a dissocial, narrow-minded scale, that I cannot abide it; and double letters, at least in my miscellaneous reverie manner, are a monstrous tax in a close correspondence.—R. B. No. CLV. TO MRS. DUNLOP. ELLISLAND, 16th August, 1788. I AM in a fine disposition, my honoured friend, to send you an elegiac epistle, and want only genius to make it quite Shenstonian :— Why droops my heart, with fancied woes forlorn? Why sinks my soul beneath each wintry sky?" My increasing cares in this as yet strange country-gloomy conjectures in the dark vista of futurity-consciousness of my own inability for the struggle of the world-my broadened mark to misfortune in a wife and children-I could indulge these reflections till my humour should ferment into the most acid chagrin, that would corrode the very thread of life. To counterwork these baneful feelings I have sat down to write to you; as I declare upon my soul I always find that the most sovereign balm for my wounded spirit. I was yesterday at Mr. Miller's [of Dalswinton] to dinner, for the first time. My reception was quite to my mind; from the lady of the house quite flattering. She sometimes hits on a couplet or two impromptu. She repeated one or two, to the admiration of all present. My suffrage as a professional man was expected: I for once went agonizing over the belly of my conscience. Pardon me, ye, my adored household gods, independence of spirit and integrity of soul! In the course of conversation "Johnson's Musical Museum," a collection of Scottish songs with the music, was talked of. We got a song on the harpsichord, beginning 'Raving winds around her blowing." The air was much admired: the lady of the house asked me whose were the words. "Mine, Madam; they are indeed my very best verses :" she took not the smallest notice of them! The old Scottish proverb says well, King's caff is better than ither folks' corn." I was going to make a New Testament quotation about “casting pearls," but that would be too virulent, for the lady is actually a woman of sense and taste. After all that has been said on the other side of the question, man is by no means a happy creature. I do not speak of the selected few, favoured by partial Heaven, whose souls are tuned to gladness amid riches, and honours, and prudence, and wisdom. I speak of the neglected many, whose nerves, whose sinews, whose days, are sold to the minions of fortune. If I thought you had never seen it, I would transcribe for you a stanza of an old Scottish ballad, called “The Life and Age of Man," beginning thus: ""Twas in the sixteen hundredth year Of God and fifty-three Frae Christ was born, that bought us dear, I had an old grand-uncle, with whom my mother lived a while in her girlish years the good old man, for such he was, was long blind ere he died, during which time his highest enjoyment was to sit down and cry, while my mother would sing the simple old song of "The Life and Age of Man." It is this way of thinking, it is these melancholy truths, that make religion so precious to the poor miserable children of men. If it is a mere phantom, existing only in the heated imagination of enthusiasm, "What truth on earth so precious as the lie?" My idle reasonings sometimes make me a little sceptical, but the necessities of my heart always give the cold philosophizings the lie. Who looks for the heart weaned from earth; the soul affianced to her God; the correspondence fixed with heaven; the pious supplication and devout thanksgiving, constant as the vicissitudes of even and morn; who thinks to meet with these in the court, the palace, in the glare of public life? No: to find them in their precious importance and divine efficacy, we must search among the obscure recesses of disappointment, affliction, poverty, and distress. I am sure, dear Madam, you are now more than pleased with the length of my letters. I return to Ayrshire middle of next week and it quickens my pace to think that there will be a letter from you waiting me there. I must be here again very soon for my harvest.-R. B. MY DEAR SIR, No. CLVI. TO MR. BEUGO, ENGRAVER, EDINBURGH. ELLISLAND, 9th Sept. 1788. There is not in Edinburgh above the number of the Graces whose letters would have given me so much pleasure as yours of the 3d instant, which only reached me yesternight. I am here on my farm, busy with my harvest; but for all that most pleasurable part of life called social communication, I am here at the very elbow of existence. The only things that are to be found in this country, in any degree of perfection, are stupidity and canting. Prose they only know in graces, prayers, &c. and the value of these they estimate, as they do their plaiding webs, by the ell. As for the Muses, they have as much an idea of a rhinoceros as of a poet. For my old capricious but good-natured hussy of a Muse By banks of Nith I sat and wept I am generally about half my time in Ayrshire with my "darling Jean;" and then I, at lucid intervals, throw my horny fist across my becobwebbed lyre, much in the same manner as an old wife throws her hand across the spokes of her spinning-wheel. I will send you the "Fortunate Shepherdess" as soon as I return to Ayrshire, for there I keep it with other precious treasure. I shall send it by a careful hand, as I would not for anything it should be mislaid or lost. I do not wish to serve you from any benevolence, or other grave Christian virtue; 'tis purely a selfish gratification of my own feelings whenever I think of you. You do not tell me if you are going to be married. Depend upon it, if you do not make some foolish choice, it will be a very great improvement on the dish of life. I can speak from experience, though, God knows, my choice was as random as blind-man's buff.. If your better functions would give you leisure to write me, I should be extremely happy; that is to say, if you neither keep nor look for a regular correspondence. I hate the idea of being obliged to write a letter. I sometimes write a friend twice a week, at other times once a quarter. I am exceedingly pleased with your fancy in making the author you mention place a map of Iceland instead of his portrait before his works; 'twas a glorious idea.* Could you conveniently do one thing?-whenever you finish any head, I should like to have a proof-copy of it. I might tell you a long story about *It has been suggested that the work in question was a collection of articles in a very frigid style by Creech. your fine genius; but as what everybody knows cannot have escaped you, I shall not say one syllable about it. If you see Mr. Nasmyth, remember me to him most respectfully, as he both loves and deserves respect; though, if he would pay less respect to the mere carcass of greatness, I should think him much nearer perfection. R. B. No. CLVII. TO MISS CHALMERS, EDINBURGH. ELLISLAND, NEAR DUMFRIES, Sept. 16, 1788. WHERE are you? and how are you? and is Lady Mackenzie recovering her health?-for I have had but one solitary letter from you. I will not think you have forgot me, Madam; and for my part— "When thee, Jerusalem, I forget, "My heart is not of that rock, nor my soul careless as that sea." I do not make my progress among mankind as a bowl does among its fellowsrolling through the crowd without bearing away any mark or impression, except where they hit in hostile collision. I am here, driven in with my harvest-folks by bad weather; and as you and your sister once did me the honour of interesting yourselves much à l'égard de moi, I sit down to beg the continuation of your goodness. I can truly say that, all the exterior of life apart, I never saw two whose esteem flattered the nobler feelings of my soul-I will not say more, but so much, as Lady Mackenzie and Miss Chalmers. When I think of you-hearts the best, minds the noblest, of human kind-unfortunate even in the shades of life-when I think I have met with you, and have lived more of real life with you in eight days than I can do with almost anybody I meet with in eight years when I think on the improbability of meeting you in this world again-I could sit down and cry like a child! If ever you honoured me with a place in your esteem, I trust I can now plead more desert. I am secure against that crushing grip of iron poverty, which, alas! is less or more fatal to the native worth and purity of, I fear, the noblest souls; and a late important step in my life has kindly taken me out of the way of those ungrateful iniquities, which, however overlooked in fashionable licence or varnished in fashionable phrase, are indeed but lighter and deeper shades of villany. Shortly after my last return to Ayrshire I married "my Jean." This was not in consequence of the attachment of romance, perhaps; but I had a long and much-loved fellow-creature's happiness or misery in my determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a deposit. Nor have I any cause to repent it. If I have not got polite tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform |