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from the paths of propriety and rectitude must be incident to human nature, do thou, Fortune, put it in my power, always from myself, and ot myself, to bear the consequences of those errors ! I do not want to be independent that I may sin, but I want to be independent in my sinning.

To return in this rambling letter to the subject I set out with, let me recommend my friend, Mr. Clarke, to your acquaintance and good offices; his worth entitles him to the one, and his gratitude will merit the other, I long much to hear from you. Adieu !-R. B.

No. CCXXXIII.

TO THE EARL OF BUCHAN.

[Lord Buchan had projected a fête in honour of the poet Thomson, including the opening of a temple to his memory on Ednam Hill.]

ELLISLAND, 1791.

MY LORD, Language sinks under the ardour of my feelings when I would thank your lordship for the honour you have done me in inviting me to make one at the coronation of the bust of Thomson. In my first enthusiasm in reading the card you did me the honour to write me, I overlooked every obstacle, and determined to go; but I fear it will not be in my power. A week or two's absence, in the very middle of my harvest, is what I much doubt I dare not venture on. I once already made a pilgrimage up the whole course of the Tweed, and fondly would I take the same delightful journey down the windings of that delightful stream.

Your lordship hints at an ode for the occasion: but who would write after Collins? I read over his verses to the memory of Thomson, and despaired. I got indeed to the length of three or four stanzas, in the way of address to the shade of the bard, on crowning his bust. I shall trouble your lordship with the subjoined copy of them, which, I am afraid, will be but too convincing a proof how unequal I am to the task. However, it affords me an opportunity of approaching your lordship, and declaring how sincerely and gratefully I have the honour to be, &c.—R. B.

[Here follows the poem, for which see page 97.]

MY DEAR SLOAN,

No. CCXXXIV.

TO MR. THOMAS SLOAN.

ELLISLAND, Sept. 1, 1791.

Suspense is worse than disappointment; for that reason I hurry to tell you that I just now learn that Mr. Ballantine does not choose to interfere more in the business. I am truly sorry for it, but cannot help it. You blame me for not writing you sooner, but you will please to recollect that you omitted one little necessary piece of information— your address.

However, you know equally well my hurried life, indolent temper, and strength of attachment. It must be a longer period than the longest

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life "in the world's hale and undegenerate days," that will make me forget so dear a friend as Mr. Sloan. I am prodigal enough at times, but I will not part with such a treasure as that.

I can easily enter into the embarras of your present situation. know my favourite quotation from Young

"On Reason build RESOLVE,

That column of true majesty in man.'

And that other favourite one from Thomson's Alfred

"What proves the hero truly GREAT

Is, never, never, to despair."

Or, shall I quote you an author of your acquaintance?

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I have nothing new to tell you. The few friends we have are going on in the old way. I sold my crop on this day se'ennight, and sold it very well a guinea an acre, on an average, above value. But such a scene of drunkenness was hardly ever seen in this country. After the roup was over, about thirty people engaged in a battle, every man for his own hand, and fought it out for three hours. Nor was the scene much better in the house. No fighting, indeed, but folks lying drunk on the floor, and decanting, until both my dogs got so drunk by attending them, that they could not stand. You will easily guess how I enjoyed the scene; as I was no farther over than you used to see me.

Mrs. B. and family have been in Ayrshire these many weeks.
Farewell! and God bless you, my dear friend !—R. B.

MY LADY,

No. CCXXXV.

TO LADY E. CUNNINGHAM.

I would, as usual, have availed myself of the privilege your goodness has allowed me, of sending you anything I compose in my poetical way; but as I had resolved, so soon as the shock of my irreparable loss would allow me, to pay a tribute to my late benefactor, I determined to make that the first piece I should do myself the honour of sending you. Had the wing of my fancy been equal to the ardour of my heart, the enclosed had been much more worthy your perusal as it is, I beg leave to lay it at your ladyship's feet. As all the world knows my obligations to the late Earl of Glencairn, I would wish to show as openly that my heart glows, and shall ever glow, with the most grateful sense and remembrance of his lordship's goodness. The sables I did myself the honour to wear to his lordship's memory were not the "mockery of woe." Nor shall my gratitude perish with me! If, among my children, I shall have a son that has a heart, he shall hand it down to his child as a family

honour, and a family debt, that my dearest existence I owe to the noble house of Glencairn!

I was about to say, my lady, that if you think the poem may venture to see the light, I would, in some way or other, give it to the world.—R. B.

MY DEAR AINSLIE,

No. CCXXXVI.

TO MR. AINSLIE.

ELLISLAND, 1791.

Can you minister to a mind diseased? Can you, amid the horrors of penitence, regret, remorse, headache, nausea, and all the rest of the d-d hounds of hell that beset a poor wretch who has been guilty of the sin of drunkenness-can you speak peace to a troubled soul?

Miserable perdu that I am, I have tried everything that used to amuse me, but in vain here must I sit, a monument of the vengeance laid up in store for the wicked, slowly counting every chick of the clock as it slowly, slowly, numbers over these lazy scoundrels of hours, who, d-n them! are ranked up before me, every one at his neighbour's backside, and every one with a burthen of anguish on his back, to pour on my devoted headand there is none to pity me. My wife scolds me, my business torments me, and my sins come staring me in the face, every one telling a more bitter tale than his fellow. When I tell you even *** has lost its power to please, you will guess something of my hell within, and all around me. I began "Elibanks and Elibraes," but the stanzas fell unenjoyed and unfinished from my listless tongue at last I luckily thought of reading over an old letter of yours, that lay by me, in my bookcase, and I felt something, for the first time since I opened my eyes, of pleasurable existence.- -Well-I begin to breathe a little, since I began to write to you. How are you, and what are you doing? How goes Law? Apropos, for connexion's sake do not address to me supervisor, for that is an honour I cannot pretend to: I am on the list, as we call it, for a supervisor, and will be called out by and by to act as one; but at present I am a simple gauger, tho' t'other day I got an appointment to an Excise division of 25. per annum better than the rest. My present income, down money, is 70l. per annum.

I have one or two good fellows here whom you would be glad to know. R. B.

No. CCXXXVII.

TO MISS DAVIES.

IT is impossible, Madam, that the generous warmth and angelic purity of your youthful mind can have any idea of that moral disease under which I unhappily must rank as the chief of sinners: I mean a torpitude of the moral powers, that may be called a lethargy of conscience. In

vain Remorse rears her horrent crest, and rouses all her snakes: beneath the deadly-fixed eye and leaden hand of Indolence their wildest ire is charmed into the torpor of the bat, slumbering out the rigours of winter in the 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 Davies'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 hands are, perhaps, placed many of the comforts of your life. But there! ascend that rock, Independence, and look justly down on their littleness of soul. Make the worthless tremble under your indignation, and the foolish sink before your contempt; and largely impart that happiness to others, which I am certain will give yourselves 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 misbegotten chance has perked 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.

Still, the inequalities of life are among men comparatively tolerable; but there is a delicacy, a tenderness, accompanying every view in which we can place lovely woman, that are grated and shocked at the rude, capricious distinctions of Fortune. Woman is the blood-royal of life : let there be slight degrees of precedency among them-but let them be all sacred. Whether this last sentiment be right or wrong, I am not accountable; it is an original component feature of my mind.

R. B.

No. CCXXXVIII.

SYLVANDER TO CLARINDA.

[Burns had been to Edinburgh at the end of November and beginning of December, and had there seen Mrs. M'Lehose. She had resolved to go to her worthless but repentant husband in Jamaica, and sailed in February, 1792.]

I HAVE received both your last letters, Madam, and ought and would have answered the first long ago. But on what subject shall I write you? How can you expect a correspondent should write you when you declare that you mean to preserve his letters, with a view, sooner or later, to expose them in the pillory of derision and the rock of criticism? This is gagging me completely as to speaking the sentiments of my bosom ; else, Madam, I could perhaps too truly

"Join grief with grief, and echo sighs to thine!"

I have perused your most beautiful but most pathetic poem; do not ask me how often, or with what emotions. You know that "I dare to sin, but not to lie." Your verses wring the confession from my inmost soul, that --I will say it, expose it if you please-that I have more than once in my life been the victim of a damning conjuncture of circumstances; and that to see you must be ever

"Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes."

I have just, since I had yours, composed the following stanzas. Let me know your opinion of them.

[Here are transcribed the lines beginning, "Sweet Sensibility, how charming," &c.]

No. CCXXXIX.

TO CLARINDA.

[Enclosing the "Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots," Burns wrote as follows:-] LEADHILLS, Thursday Noon [Dec. 11, 1791].

SUCH, my dearest Clarinda, were the words of the amiable but unfortunate Mary. Misfortune seems to take a peculiar pleasure in darting her arrows against "honest men and bonny lasses." Of this you are too, too just a proof; but may your future be a bright exception to the remark. In the words of Hamlet

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I HAVE some merit, my ever dearest of women, in attracting and

securing the honest heart of Clarinda.

In her I meet with the inost

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