a parent, cast a veil over the fatal mistakes of the kings of his forefathers.*

No. 60.

TO MRS. DUNLOP.

Ellisland, 17th December, 1788.

MY DEAR HONOURED FRIEND,

YOURS, dated Edinburgh, which I have

just read, makes me very unhappy. Almost blind and wholly deaf,' are melancholy news of human nature; but when told of a much loved and honoured friend, they earry misery in the sound. Goodness on your part, and gratitude on mine, began a tie, which has gradually and strongly entwisted itself among the dearest chords of my bosom; and I tremble at the omens of your late and present ailing habit and shattered health. You miscalculate matters widely, when you forbid my waiting on you, lest it should hurt my worldly concerns.-My small scale of farming is exceedingly more simple and easy than what you have lately seen at Moreham Mains. But be that as it may, the heart of the man, and the fancy of the poet, are the two grand considerations for which I live: if miry ridges, and dirty dunghills are to engross the best part of the functions of my

This letter was sent to the publisher of some newspaper, probably the publisher of the Edinburgh Evening Courant.

soul immortal, I had better been a rook or a magpie all at once, and then I should not have been plagued with any ideas superior to breaking of clods, and picking up grubs: not to mention barn-door cocks or mallards, creatures with which I could almost exchange lives at any time.-If you continue so deaf, I am afraid a visit will be no great pleasure to either of us; but if I hear you are got so well again as to be able to relish conversation, look you to it, madam, for I will make my threatenings good. I am to be at the new year-day fair of Ayr, and by all that is sacred in the world, friend! I will come and see you.

Your meeting, which you so well describe, with your old schoolfellow and friend, was truly interesting. Out upon the ways of the world!They spoil these 'social offsprings of the heart.' Two veterans of the men of the world' would have met, with little more heart-workings than two old hacks worn out on the road. Apropos, is not the Scotch phrase, Auld lang syne,' exceedingly expressive. There is an old song and tune which has often thrilled through my soul. You know I am an enthusiast in old Scotch songs. shall give you the verses on the other sheet, as I suppose Mr. Ker will save you the postage.*

I

Light be the turf on the breast of the heaveninspired poet who composed this glorious fragment! There is more of the fire of native genius in it, than in half a dozen of modern English Bac

Here follows the song of Auld lang syne, as printed,See poems, p. 413.

chanalians.

Now I am on my hobby-horse, I

cannot help inserting two other old stanzas, which please me mightily.

Go fetch me a pint o' wine, &c.*

No. 61.

TO MISS DAVIES,

A young lady who had heard he had been making a ballad on her,

enclosing that ballad.

December, 1788.

MADAM,

I UNDERSTAND my very worthy neighbour, Mr. Riddel, has informed you that I have made you the subject of some verses. There is something so provoking in the idea of being the burden of a ballad, that I do not think Job or Moses, though such patterns of patience and meekness, could have resisted the curiosity to know what that ballad was: so my worthy friend has done me a mischief, which I dare say he never intended; and reduced me to the unfortunate alternative of leaving your curiosity ungratified or else disgusting you with foolish verses, the unfinished production of a random moment, and never meant to have met your ear. I have heard or read somewhere of a gentleman, who had some genius, much eccentricity, and very considerable

* See poems, p. 509.

dexterity with his pencil. In the accidental group of life into which one is thrown, wherever this gentleman met with a character in a more than ordinary degree congenial to his heart, he used to steal a sketch of the face, merely, he said, as a nota bene to point out the agreeable recollection to his memory.-What this gentleman's pencil was to him, is my muse to me; and the verses I do myself the honour to send you are a memento exactly of the same kind that he indulged in.

6

It may be more owing to the fastidiousness of my caprice, than the delicacy of my taste, but I am so often tired, disgusted, and hurt with the insipidity, affectation, and pride of mankind, that when I meet with a person after my own heart,' I positively feel what an orthodox protestant would call a species of idolatry, which acts on my fancy like inspiration; and I can no more desist rhyming on the impulse, than an Eolian harp can refuse its tones to the streaming air. A distich or two would be the consequence, though the object which hit my fancy were grey-bearded age; but where my theme is youth and beauty, a young lady whose personal charms, wit, and sentiment, are equally striking and unaffected, by heavens! though I had lived three score years a marrieï man, and three score years before I was a married man, my imagination would hallow the very idea; and I am truly sorry that the enclosed stanzas have done such poor justice to such a subject.

No. 62.

TO SIR JOHN WHITEFORD.

SIR,

December, 1787.

MR. M.KENZIE, in Mauchline, my very warm and worthy friend, has informed me how much you are pleased to interest yourself in my fate as a man, and, (what to me is incomparably dearer) my fame as a poet. I have, Sir, in one or two instances, been patronized by those of your character in life, when I was introduced to their notice by ****** friends to them, and honoured acquaintances to me; but you are the first gentleman in the country whose benevolence and goodness of heart has interested him for me, unsolicited and unknown. I am not master enough of the etiquette of these matters to know, nor did I stay to enquire, whether formal duty bade, or cold propriety disallowed, my thanking you in this manner, as I am convinced, from the Light in which you kindly view me, that you will do me the justice to believe this letter is not the manœuvre of the needy, sharping author, fastening on those in upper life, who honour him with a little notice of him or his works. Indeed the situation of poets is generally such, to a proverb, as may, in some measure, palliate that prostitution of heart and talents they have at times been guilty of. I do not think prodigality is, by any means,