accomplished of all womankind, the first of all God's works, and yet I, even I, have the good fortune to appear amiable in her sight. By the by, this is the sixth letter that I have written since I left you; and if you were an ordinary being, as you are a creature very extraordinary-an instance of what God Almighty, in the plenitude of His power and the fulness of His goodness can make !-I would never forgive you for not answering my letters. I have sent your hair, a part of the parcel you gave me, with a measure, to Mr. Brice, the jeweller, to get a ring done for me. I have likewise sent in the verses On Sensibility," "altered to "Sensibility, how charming, Dearest Nancy, thou can tell," &c. to the editor of "Scots Songs," of which you have three volumes, to set to a most beautiful air-out of compliment to the first of women, my ever-beloved, my ever-sacred Clarinda. I shall probably write you tomorrow. In the meantime, from a man who is literally drunk accept and forgive!-R. B. No. CCXLI. 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 everything 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 : "Scene-A Field of Battle. Time of the Day-Evening. The wounded and dying of the victorious army are supposed to join in the following SONG OF DEATH. Farewell, thou fair day, thou green earth, and ye skies Farewell, loves and friendships, ye dear, tender ties- The circumstance that gave rise to the foregoing verses was, looking over with a musical friend Mc Donald's collection of Highland airs, I was struck with one, an Isle of Skye tune, entitled “Oran an Aoig; or, the Song of Death," to the measure of which I have adapted my stanzas. have of late composed two or three other little pieces, which, ere yon fullorbed 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, I shall find an hour to transcribe for you. A Dieu je vous commende.-R. B. No. CCXLII. TO MR. WILLIAM SMELLIE, PRINTER. [This letter introduces Mrs. Riddel to Smellie, the self-taught scholar and naturalist.] DUMFRIES, 22d January, 1792. I SIT down, my dear Sir, to introduce a young lady to you, and a lady in the first ranks of fashion, too. What a task to you-who care no more for the herd of animals called young ladies, than you do for the herd of animals called young gentlemen. To you-who despise and detest the groupings and combinations of Fashion, as an idiot painter that seems industrious to place staring fools and unprincipled knaves in the foreground of his picture, while men of sense and honesty are too often thrown in the dimmest shades. Mrs. Riddel, who will take this letter to town with her, and send it to you, is a character that, even in your own way, as a naturalist and a philosopher, would be an acquisition to your acquaintance. The lady, too, is a votary to the Muses; and as I think myself somewhat of a judge in my own trade, I assure you that her verses, always correct and often elegant, are much beyond the common run of the lady poetesses of the day. She is a great admirer of your book; and, hearing me say that I was acquainted with you, she begged to be known to you, as she is just going to pay her first visit to our Caledonian capital. I told her that her best way was, to desire her near relation, and your intimate friend, Craigdarroch, to have you at his house while she was there; and lest you might think of a lively West Indian girl of eighteen, as girls of eighteen too often deserve to be thought of, I should take care to remove that prejudice. To be impartial, however, in appreciating the lady's merits, she has one unlucky failing; a failing which you will easily discover, as she seems rather pleased with indulging in it, and a failing that you will pardon, as it is a sin which very much besets yourself:-where she dislikes, or despises, she is apt to make no more a secret of it than where she esteems and respects. I will not present you with the unmeaning compliments of the season, but I will send you my warmest wishes and most ardent prayers, that Fortune may never throw your subsistence to the mercy of a knave, or set your character on the judgment of a fool; but that, upright and erect, you may walk to an honest grave, where men of letters shall say, Here lies a man who did honour to science, and men of worth shall say, Here lies a man who did honour to human nature.-R. B. No. CCXLIII. MY DEAR FRIEND, TO MR. PETER HILL. DUMFRIES, 5th Feb. 1792. I send you by the bearer, Mr. Clarke, a particular friend of mine, six pounds and a shilling, which you will dispose of as follows;-five 504 pounds ten shillings, per account, I owe Mr. R. Burn, architect, for erecting the stone over the grave of poor Fergusson. He was two years in erecting it after I had commissioned him for it, and I have been two years in paying him after he sent me his account; so he and I are quits. He had the hardiesse to ask the interest on the sum; but considering that the money was due by one poet for putting a tombstone over another, he may, with grateful surprise, thank Heaven that he ever saw a farthing of it. With the remainder of the money pay yourself for the "Office of a Messenger" that I bought of you; and send me by Mr. Clarke a note of its price. Send me likewise the fifth vol. of the "Observer" by Mr. Clarke; and if any money remains, let it stand to account. I sent you a maukin [hare] by last week's fly, which I hope you received. R. B. No. CCXLIV. TO MR. W. NICOL. [This is an ironical reply to a letter containing (according to Dr. Currie) good advice.] 20th February, 1792. O THOU, wisest among the wise, meridian blaze of prudence, full moon of discretion, and chief of many counsellors! How infinitely is thy puddle-headed, rattle-headed, wrong-headed, round-headed slave indebted to thy supereminent goodness, that from the luminous path of thy own right-lined rectitude thou lookest benignly down on an erring wretch, of whom the zigzag wanderings defy all the powers of calculation, from the simple copulation of units up to the hidden mysteries of fluxions! May one feeble ray of that light of wisdom which darts from thy sensorium, straight as the arrow of heaven, and bright as the meteor of inspiration, may it be my portion, so that I may be less unworthy of the face and favour of that father of proverbs and master of maxims, that antipode of folly, and magnet among sages, the wise and witty Willie Nicol! Amen! Amen! Yea, so be it! For me, I am a beast, a reptile, and know nothing! From the cave of my ignorance, amid the fogs of my dulness, and pestilential fumes of my political heresies, I look up to thee, as doth a toad through the iron-barred lucerne of a pestiferous dungeon to the cloudless glory of a summer sun! Sorely sighing in bitterness of soul, I say, when shall my name be the quotation of the wise, and my countenance be the delight of the godly, like the illustrious lord of Laggan's many hills? As for him, his works are perfect never did the pen of calumny blur the fair page of his reputation, nor the bolt of hatred fly at his dwelling. Thou mirror of purity, when shall the elfine lamp of my glimmerous understanding, purged from sensual appetites and gross desires, shine like the constellation of thy intellectual powers? As for thee, thy thoughts are pure, and thy lips are holy. Never did the unhallowed breath of the powers of darkness, and the pleasures of darkness, pollute the sacred flame of thy sky-descended and heaven-bound desires : never did the vapours of impurity stain the unclouded serene of thy cerulean imagination. O that like thine were the tenor of my life, like thine the tenor of my conversation! Then should no friend fear for my strength, no enemy rejoice in my weakThen should I lie down and rise up, and none to make me afraid. May thy pity and thy prayer be exercised for, O thou lamp of wisdom and mirror of morality! thy devoted slave.--R. B. ness. No. CCXLV. TO FRANCIS GROSE, ESQ. F.S.A. DUMFRIES, 1792. SIR, 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 the first worth, to a gentleman of your general acquaintance, and who so much enjoys the luxury of unencumbered freedoin and undisturbed privacy, is not perhaps recommendation enough: but when I inform you that Mr. Stewart's principal characteristic is your favourite feature that sterling independence of mind which, though every man's right, so few men have the courage to claim, and fewer still the magnanimity to support; when I tell you, that unseduced by splendour, and undisgusted by wretchedness, he appreciates the merits of the various actors in the great drama of life merely as they perform their parts ;—in short, he is a man after your own heart, and I comply with his earnest request in letting you know that he wishes above all things to meet with you. His house, Catrine, is within less than a mile of Sorn Castle, which you proposed visiting; or if you could transmit him the enclosed, he would, with the greatest pleasure, meet you anywhere in the neighbourhood. I write to Ayrshire to inform Mr. Stewart that I have acquitted myself of my promise. Should your time and spirits permit your meeting with Mr. Stewart, 'tis well; if not, I hope you will forgive this liberty: and I have at least an opportunity of assuring you with what truth and respect, I am, Sir, Your great Admirer Another letter to Capt. Grose, giving the legends of Alloway Kirk, will be found in the notes to the poem. No. CCXLVI. TO MRS. DUNLOP. ANNAN WATER FOOT, 22d August, 1792. Do not blame me for it, Madam; my own conscience, hackneyed and weather-beaten as it is in watching and reproving my vagaries, follies, indolence, &c. has continued to punish me sufficiently. Do you think it possible, my dear and honoured friend, that I could be so lost to gratitude for many favours, to esteem for much worth, and to the honest, kind, pleasurable tie of, now, old acquaintance, and I hope and I am sure of progressive, increasing friendship, as for a single day not to think of you, to ask the Fates what they are doing and about to do with my much-loved friend and her wide-scattered connexions, and to beg of them to be as kind to you and yours as they possibly can? Apropos (though how it is apropos I have not leisure to explain), do you know that I am almost in love with an acquaintance of yours?Almost! said I?--I am in love; souse! over head and ears, deep as the most unfathomable abyss of the boundless ocean: but the word Love, owing to the intermingledoms of the good and the bad, the pure and the impure, in this world, being rather an equivocal term for expressing one's sentiments and sensations, I must do justice to the sacred purity of my attachment. Know, then, that the heart-struck awe; the distant, humble approach; the delight we should have in gazing upon and listening to a Messenger of Heaven, appearing in all the unspotted purity of his celestial home among the coarse, polluted, far inferior sons of men, to deliver to them tidings that make their hearts swim in joy and their imaginations soar in transport-such, so delighting and so pure, were the emotions of my soul on meeting the other day with Miss Lesley Baillie, your neighbour, at M. Mr. B. with his two daughters, accompanied by Mr. H. of G., passing through Dumfries a few days ago, on their way to England, did me the honour of calling on me; on which I took my horse (though God knows I could ill spare the time), and accompanied them fourteen or fifteen miles, and dined and spent the day with them. 'Twas about nine, I think, when I left them, and, riding home, I composed the following ballad, of which you will probably think you have a dear bargain, as it will cost you another groat of postage. You must know that there is an old ballad beginning with "My bonnie Lizie Baillie, I'll rowe thee in my plaidie," &c. So I parodied it as follows, which is literally the first copy, "unanointed, unanneal'd," as Hamlet says: "O saw ye bonnie Lesley, As she gaed o'er the border? To spread her conquests farther." So much for ballads. I regret that you are gone to the east country, as I am to be in Ayrshire in about a fortnight. This world of ours, notwithstanding it has many good things in it, yet it has ever had this curse, that two or three people, who would be the happier the oftener they met together, are, almost without exception, always so placed as never to meet but once or twice a year; which, considering the few years of a man's life, is a very great evil under the sun," which I do not recollect that Solomon has mentioned in his catalogue of the miseries of man. I hope and believe that there is a state of existence beyond the grave, where the worthy of 66 |