I do not remember in all my reading to have met with any thing more truly the language of misery, than the exclamation in the last line. Misery is like love; to speak its language truly, the author must have felt it.

I am every day expecting the doctor to give your little godson* the small pox. They are rife in the country, and I tremble for his fate. By the way, I cannot help congratulating you on his looks and spirit. Every person who sees him, acknowledges him to be the finest, handsomest child he has ever seen. I am myself delighted with the manly swell of his little chest, and a certain miniature dignity in the carriage of his head, and the glance of his fine black eye, which promise the undaunted gallantry of an independent mind.

I thought to have sent you some rhymes, but time forbids. I promise you poetry until you are tired of it, next time I have the honour of assuring you how truly I am, &c.

No. 88.

FROM MR. CUNNINGHAM.

28th January, 1790.

IN some instances it is reckoned unpar.

donable to quote any one's own words, but the value I have for your friendship, nothing can more truly or more elegantly express, than

* The bard's second's son, Francis.

'Time but the impression stronger makes,
As streams their channels deeper wear.'

Having written to you twice without having heard from you, I am apt to think my letters have miscarried. My conjecture is only framed upon the chapter of accidents turning up against me, as it too often does, in the trivial, and I may with truth add, the more important affairs of life; but I shall continue occasionally to inform you what is going on among the circle of your friends in these parts. In these days of merriment, I have frequently heard your name proclaimed at the jovial board-under the roof of our hospitable friend at Stenhouse-mills, there were no

'Lingering moments number'd with care.'

I saw your Address to the New-year in the Dumfries Journal. Of your productions I shall say nothing, but my acquaintances alledge, that when your name is mentioned, which every man of celebrity must know often happens, I am the champion, the Mendoza, against all snarling critics, and narrow-minded reptiles, of whom a few on this planet do crawl.

With best compliments to your wife, and her black-eyed sister, I remain yours, &c.

No. 89.

TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.

Ellisland, 13th February, 1790.

I BEG your pardon, my dear and much

valued friend, for writing to you on this very unfashionable, unsightly sheet

'My poverty but not my will consents.'

But to make amends, since of modish post I have none, except one poor widowed half-sheet of gilt, which lies in my drawer among my plebeian fool's-cap pages, like the widow of a man of fashion, whom that unpolite scoundrel, Necessity, has driven from Burgundy and Pine-apple, to a dish of Bohea, with the scandal-bearing help-mate of a village priest; or a glass of whisky-toddy, with the ruby-nosed yoke-fellow of a foot-padding exciseman-I make a vow to inclose this sheet-full of epistolary fragments in that my only scrap of gilt-paper.

I am indeed your unworthy debtor for three friendly letters. I ought to have written to you long ere now, but it is a literal fact, I have scarcely a spare moment. It is not that I will not write to you; Miss Burnet is not more dear to her guardian angel, nor his grace the duke of ********** to the powers of *******, than my friend Cunningham to me. It is not that I cannot write to you; should you doubt it, take the following

fragment which was intended for you some time ago, and be convinced that I can antithesize sentiment, and circumvolute periods, as well as any coiner of phrase in the regions of philology.

MY DEAR CUNNINGHAM,

December, 1789.

WHERE are you? And what are you doing? Can you be that son of levity, who takes up a friendship as he takes up a fashion? or are you, like some other of the worthiest fellows in the world, the victim of indolence, laden with fetters of ever-increasing weight?

What strange beings we are! Since we have a portion of conscious existence, equally capable of enjoying pleasure, happiness, and rapture, or of suffering pain, wretchedness and misery, it is surely worthy of an inquiry, whether there be not such a thing as a science of life; whether method, economy, and fertility of expedients, be not applicable to enjoyment; and whether there be not a want of dexterity in pleasure, which renders our little scantling of happiness still less; and a profuseness, an intoxication in bliss, which leads to satiety, disgust, and self-abhorrence. There is not a doubt but that health, talents, character, decent competency, respectable friends, are real substantial blessings; and yet do we not daily see those who enjoy many or all of these good things, contrive notwithstanding to be as unhappy as others to whose lot few of them have fallen. I believe one great source of this mistake or misconduct is owing to a certain stimulus, with us called ambition, which goads us up the hill of life, not

as we ascend other eminences, for the laudable curiosity of viewing an extended landscape, but rather for the dishonest pride of looking down on others of our fellow-creatures, seemingly diminutive, in humbler stations, &c. &c.

Sunday, 14th February, 1790.

GOD help me! I am now obliged to join

'Night to day, and Sunday to the week.'

If there be any truth in the orthodox faith of these churches, I am ****** past redemption, and what is worse, ****** to all eternity. I am deeply read in Boston's Four-fold State, Marshall on Sanctification, Guthrie's Trial of a Saving Interest, &c. but There is no balm in Gilead, there is no physician there,' for me; so I shall e'en turn Arminian, and trust to sincere though imperfect obedience.'

Tuesday, 16th.

LUCKILY for me I was prevented from the discussion of the knotty point at which I had just made a full stop. All my fears and cares are of this world: if there is another, an honest man has nothing to fear from it. I hate a man that wishes to be a Deist; but I fear, every fair, unprejudiced inquirer must in some degree be a Sceptic. It is not that there are any very staggering arguments against the immortality of man; but like electricity, phlogiston, &c. the subject is so involved in darkness, that we want data to go upon. One thing frightens me much; that we are to live for