cannot easily be remedied. Your approbation, | drooping head. Soon and well may her "cruel sir, has given me such additional spirits to wounds" be healed! I have written thus far persevere in this species of poetic composition, with a good deal of difficulty. When I get a that I am already revolving two or three stories little abler you shall hear farther from, in my fancy. If I can bring these floating Madam, yours, &c. ideas to bear any kind of embodied form, it will give me an additional opportunity of assuring you how much I have the honour to be, &c. No. CVIII. TO MRS DUNLOP. Ellisland, 7th February, 1791. WHEN I tell you, madam, that by a fall, not from my horse but with my horse, I have been a cripple some time, and that this is the first day my arm and hand have been able to serve me in writing; you will allow that it is too good an apology for my seemingly ungrateful silence. I am now getting better, and am able to rhyme a little, which implies some tolerable ease; as I cannot think that the most poetic genius is able to compose on the rack. I do not remember if ever I mentioned to you my having an idea of composing an elegy on the late Miss Burnet of Monboddo. I had the honour of being pretty well acquainted with her, and have seldom felt so much at the loss of an acquaintance, as when I heard that so amiable and accomplished a piece of God's works was no more. I have as yet gone no farther than the following fragment, of which please let me have your opinion. You know that elegy is a subject so much exhausted, that any new idea on the business is not to be expected; 'tis well if we can place an old idea in a new light. How far I have succeeded as to this last, you will judge from what follows (Here follows the Elegy, &c. adding this verse.) The parent's heart that nestled fond in thee, I have proceeded no further. Your kind letter, with your kind remembrance of your god-son, came safe. This last, madam, is scarcely what my pride can bear. As to the little fellow, he is, partiality apart, the finest boy I have of a long time seen. He is now seventeen months old, has the smallpox and measles over, has cut several teeth, and yet never had a grain of doctor's drugs in his bowels. I am truly happy to hear that the "little floweret" is blooming so fresh and fair, and that the "mother plant" is rather recovering her No. CIX. TO LADY W. M. CONSTABLE. ACKNOWLEDGING A PRESENT OF A VALUABLE SNUFF-BOX, WITH A FINE PICTURE OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, ON THE LID. MY LADY, NOTHING less than the unlucky accident of having lately broken my right arm, could have prevented me, the moment I received your ladyship's elegant present by Mrs Miller, from returning you my warmest and most grateful acknowledgments. I assure your ladyship, I shall set it apart; the symbols of religion shall only be more sacred. In the moment of poetic composition, the box shall be my inspiring genius. When I would breathe the comprehensive wish of benevolence for the happiness of others, I shall recollect your ladyship; when I would interest my fancy in the distresses incident to humanity, I shall remember the unfortunate Mary. No. CX. MRS GRAHAM, OF FINTRY. MADAM, WHETHER it is that the story of our Mary, Queen of Scots, has a peculiar effect on the feelings of a poet, or whether I have, in the inclosed ballad, succeeded beyond my usual poetic success, I know not: but it has pleased me beyond any effort of my muse for a good while past; on that account I inclose it particularly to you. It is true, the purity of my motives may be suspected. I am already deeply indebted to Mr G- -'s goodness; and, what in the usual ways of men, is of infinitely greater importance, Mr G. can do me service of the utmost importance in time to come. I was born a poor dog; and however I may occasionally pick a better bone than I used to do, I know I must live and die poor; . but I will indulge the flattering faith that my poetry will considerably outlive my poverty and without any fustain affection of spirit, I can promise and affirm, that it must be no ordinary craving of the latter shall ever make me do any thing injurious to the honest fame of the former. Whatever may be my failings, for failings are a part of human nature, may they ever be those of a generous heart, and an independent mind. It is no fault of mine that I was born to dependence; nor is it Mr day; which, I understand, some friends in G 's chiefest praise that he can comScotland talk this year of observing-at that mand influence; but it is his merit to bestow, time it will be resolved, I imagine, to place a not only with the kindness of a brother, but plain, humble stone over his grave. This, at with the politeness of a gentleman; and I least, I trust you will agree to do-to furnish, trust it shall be mine, to receive with thank-in a few couplets, an inscription for it. fulness and remember with undiminished gratitude. No. CXI. FROM THE REV. G. BAIRD. SIR, London, 8th February, 1791. ITROUBLE You with this letter, to inform you that I am in hopes of being able very soon to bring to the press a new edition (long since talked of) of Michael Bruce's Poems. The profits of the edition are to go to his mother-a woman of eighty years of age-poor and helpless. The poems are to be published by subscription; and it may be possible, I think, to make out a 2s. 6d. or 3s. volume, with the assistance of a few hitherto unpublished verses, which I have got from the mother of the poet. But the design I have in view in writing to you, is not merely to inform you of these facts, it is to solicit the aid of your name and pen in support of the scheme. The reputation of Bruce is already high with every reader of classical taste, and I shall be anxious to guard against tarnishing his character, by allowing any new poems to appear that may lower it. For this purpose, the MSS. I am in possession of, have been submitted to the revision of some whose critical talents I can trust to, and I mean still to submit them to others. May I beg to know, therefore, if you will take the trouble of perusing the MSS.-of giving your opinion, and suggesting what curtailments, alterations, or amendments, occur to you as advisable ? And will you allow us to let it be known, that a few lines by you will be added to the volume? I know the extent of this request.-It is bold to make it. But I have this consolation, that though you see it proper to refuse it, you will not blame me for having made it; you will see my apology in the motive. May I just add, that Michael Bruce is one in whose company, from his past appearance, you would not, I am convinced, blush to be found; and as I would submit every line of his that should now be published, to your own criticisms, you would be assured that nothing derogatory either to him or you, would be admitted in that appearance he may make in future. You have already paid an honourable tribute to kindred genius in Fergusson-I fondly hope that the mother of Bruce will experience your patronage. I wish to have the subscription papers circulated by the 14th of March, Bruce's birth On those points may I solicit an answer as early as possible; a short delay might disappoint us in procuring that relief to the mother, which is the object of the whole. You will be pleased to address for me under cover to the Duke of Athole, London. P. S. Have you ever seen an engraving published here some time ago from one of your poems, "O thou pale Orb." If you have not, I shall have the pleasure of sending it to you. No. CXII. TO THE REV. G. BAIRD. IN ANSWER TO THE FOREGOING. WHY did you, my dear sir, write to me in such a hesitating style, on the business of poor Bruce? Don't I know, and have I not felt, the many ills, the peculiar ills that poetic flesh is heir to? You shall have your choice of all the unpublished poems I have; and had your letter had my direction so as to have reached me sooner (it only came to my hand this mo ment), I should have directly put you out of suspense on the subject. I only ask, that some prefatory advertisement in the book, as well as the subscription bills, may bear, that the publication is solely for the benefit of Bruce's mother. I would not put it in the power of ignorance to surmise, or malice to insinuate, that I clubbed a share in the work from mercenary motives. me credit for any remarkable generosity in my part of the business. I have such a host of peccadilloes, failings, follies, and backslidings (any body but myself might perhaps give some of them a worse appellation), that by way of some balance, however trifling, in the account, I am fain to do any good that occurs in my very limited power to a fellow-creature, just for the selfish purpose of clearing a little the vista of retrospection. Nor need you give No. CXIII. TO DR MOORE. Ellisland, 28th February, 1791 I Do not know, sir, whether you are a subscriber to Grose's Antiquities of Scotland. If As to my private concerns, I am going on, a mighty tax-gatherer before the Lord, and have lately had the interest to get myself ranked on the list of excise as a supervisor. I am not yet employed as such, but in a few years I shall fall into the file of supervisorship by seniority. I have had an immense loss in the death of the Earl of Glencairn; the patron from whom all my fame and good fortune took its rise. Independent of my grateful attachment to him, which was indeed so strong that you are, the inclosed poem will not be altogether new to you. Captain Grose did me the favour to send me a dozen copies of the proof-sheet, of which this is one. Should you have read the piece before, still this will answer the principal end I have in view: it will give me another opportunity of thanking you for all your goodness to the rustic bard; and also of showing you, that the abilities you have been pleased to commend and patronize are still employed in the way you wish. The Elegy on Captain Henderson, is a tri-it pervaded my very soul, and was entwined bute to the memory of a man I loved much. Poets have in this the same advantage as Roman Catholics; they can be of service to their friends after they have past that bourne where all other kindness ceases to be of any avail. Whether, after all, either the one or the other be of any real service to the dead, is, I fear, very problematical; but I am sure they are highly gratifying to the living and as a very orthodox text, I forget where in Scripture, says, "whatsoever is not of faith, is sin;" so say I, whatsoever is not detrimental to society, and is of positive enjoyment, is of God, the giver of all good things, and ought to be received and enjoyed by his creatures with thankful delight. As almost all my religious tenets originate from my heart, I am wonderfully pleased with the idea, that I can still keep up a tender intercourse with the dearly beloved friend, or still more dearly beloved mistress, who is gone to the world of spirits. : The ballad on Queen Mary was begun while I was busy with Percy's Reliques of English Poetry. By the way, how much is every honest heart, which has a tincture of Caledonian prejudice, obliged to you for your glorious story of Buchanan and Targe. Twas an unequivocal proof of your loyal gallantry of soul, giving Targe the victory. I should have been mortified to the ground if you had not. I have just read over, once more of many times, your Zeluco. I marked with my pen. cil, as I went along, every passage that pleased me particularly above the rest; and one, or two, I think, which, with humble deference, I am disposed to think unequal to the merits of the book. I have sometimes thought to transcribe these marked passages, or at least so much of them as to point where they are, and send them to you. Original strokes that strongly depict the human heart, is your and Fielding's province, beyond any other novelist I have ever perused. Richardson indeed might perhaps be excepted; but, unhappily, his dramatis persone are beings of some other world; and however they may captivate the unexperienced, romantic fancy of a boy or a girl, they will ever, in proportion as we have made human nature our study, dissatisfy our riper minds. with the thread of my existence; so soon as the prince's friends had got in (and every dog, you know, has his day), my getting forward in the excise would have been an easier business than otherwise it will be. Though this was a consummation devoutly to be wished, yet, thank Heaven, I can live and rhyme as I am; and as to my boys, poor little fellows! if I cannot place them on as high an elevation in life as I could wish, I shall, if I am favoured so much of the Disposer of events as to see that period, fix them on as broad and independent a basis as possible. Among the many wise adages which have been treasured up by our Scottish ancestors, this is one of the best, Better be the head of the commonalty, as the tail o' the gentry. But I am got on a subject, which, however interesting to me, is of no manner of consequence to you; so I shall give you a short poem on the other page, and close this with assuring you how sincerely I have the honour to be, yours, &c, Written on the blank leaf of a book, which I presented to a very young lady, whom I had formerly characterised under the denomination of The Rose-bud. No. CXIV. FROM DR MOORE. DEAR SIR, London, 29th March, 1791. YOUR letter of the 28th of February I received only two days ago, and this day I had the pleasure of waiting on the Rev. Mr Baird, at the Duke of Athole's, who had been so obliging as to transmit it to me, with the printed verses on Alloway Church, the Elegy & Capt. Henderson, and the Epitaph. There are many poetical beauties in the former: what I particularly admire are the three striking similes from "Or like the snow falls in the river," and the eight lines which begin with "By this time he was cross the ford;" so exquisitely expressive of the superstitious you, but for the business part, that is, to instiimpressions of the country. And the twenty-gate you to a new publication; and to tell you two lines from that when you think you have a sufficient number to make a volume, you should set your friends on getting subscriptions. I wish I could have a few hours conversation with "Coffins stood round like open presses," which, in my opinion, are equal to the ingre-you-I have many things to say which I candients of Shakspeare's cauldron in Macbeth. As for the Elegy, the chief merit of it consists in the very graphical description of the objects belonging to the country in which the poet writes, and which none but a Scottish poet could have described, and none but a real poet, and a close observer of Nature could have so described. not write. If I ever go to Scotland, I will let There is something original, and to me wonderfully pleasing, in the Epitaph. I remember you once hinted before, what you repeat in your last, that you had made some remarks on Zeluco, on the margin. I should be very glad to see them, and regret you did not send them before the last edition, which is just published. Pray transcribe them for me, I sincerely value your opinion very highly, and pray do not suppress one of those in which you censure the sentiment or expression. Trust me it will break no squares between us-I am not akin to the Bishop of Grenada. You must, by this time, have set me down as one of the most ungrateful of men. You did me the honour to present me with a book which does honour to science and the intellectual powers of man, and I have not even so much as acknowledged the receipt of it. The fact is, you yourself are to blame for it. Flattered as I was by your telling me that you wished to have my opinion of the work, the old spiritual enemy of mankind, who knows well that vanity is one of the sins that most easily beset me, put it into my head to ponder over the performance with the look-out of a critic, and to draw up forsooth a deep learned digest of strictures on a composition, of which, in fact, until I read the book, I did not even know the first principles. I own, sir, that at first glance, several of your propositions startled me as paradoxical. That the martial clangor of a trumpet had something in it vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime, than the twingle twangle of a Jews' harp; that the delicate flexure of a rose-twig, when the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of the dawn, was infinitely more beautiful and elegant than the upright stub of a burdock; and that from something innate and independent of all asso I must now mention what has been on my mind for some time: I cannot help thinking you imprudent in scattering abroad so many copies of your verses. It is most natural to give a few to confidential friends, particularly to those who are connected with the subject, or who are perhaps themselves the subject, but this ought to be done under promise not to give other copies. Of the poem you sent me on Queen Mary, I refused every solicitation for copies, but I lately saw it in a newspaper. My motive for cautioning you on this subject is, that I wish to engage you to collect all your fugitive pieces, not already printed, and after they have been re-considered, and polished to the utmost of your power, I would have you publish them by another subscription; in promoting of which I will exert myself with plea-ciation of ideas;-these I had set down as sure. In your future compositions, I wish you would use the modern English. You have shown your powers in Scottish sufficiently. Although in certain subjects it gives additional zest to the humour, yet it is lost to the English; and why should you write only for a part of the island, when you can command the admiration of the whole. If you chance to write to my friend Mrs Dunlop of Dunlop, I beg to be affectionately remembered to her. She must not judge of the warmth of my sentiments respecting her, by the number of my letters; I hardly ever write a line but on business: and I do not know that I should have scribbled all this to irrefragible, orthodox truths, until perusing your book shook my faith.-In short, sir, except Euclid's Elements of Geometry, which I made a shift to unravel by my father's fire-side, in the winter evening of the first season I held the plough, I never read a book which gave me such a quantum of information, and added so much to my stock of ideas as your "Essays. on the Principles of Taste." One thing, sir, you must forgive my mentioning as an uncommon merit in the work, I mean the language. To clothe abstract philosophy in elegance of style, sounds something like a contradiction in terms; but you have convinced me that they are quite compatible. I inclose you some poetic bagatelles of my late composition. The one in print is my No. CXVI. EXTRACT OF A LETTER TO MR CUNNINGHAM. give my honest effusion to "the memory of joys that are past," to the few friends whom you indulge in that pleasure. But I have scribbled on 'till I hear the clock has intimated the near approach of "That hour o' night's black arch the key-stane."→→ So good-night to you! Sound be your sleep, and delectable your dreams! A propos, how do you like this thought in a ballad, I have just now on the tapis ? I look to the west, when I gae to rest, That happy my dreams and my slumbers may be: For far in the west is he I lo'e best The lad that is dear to my baby and me! 12th March, 1791. Ir the foregoing piece be worth your strictures, let me have them. For my own part, a thing that I have just composed, always appears through a double portion of that partial medium in which an author will ever view his own works. I believe, in general, novelty has something in it that inebriates the fancy, and not unfrequently dissipates and fumes away Good night, once more, and God bless you! -like other intoxication, and leaves the poor patient, as usual, with an aching heart. striking instance of this might be adduced, in the revolution of many a hymeneal honeymoon. But lest I sink into stupid prose, and so sacrilegiously intrude on the office of my parish priest, I shall fill up the page in my own way, and give you another song of my late composition, which will appear, perhaps, in Johnson's work, as well as the former. A No. CXVII. TO MRS DUNLOP. Ellisland, 11th April, 1791. I AM once more able, my honoured friend, to return you, with my own hand, thanks for the many instances of your friendship, and parti, cularly for your kind anxiety in this last disaster that my evil genius had in store for me. However, life is chequered-joy and sorrow➡ for on Saturday morning last, Mrs Burns made me a present of a fine boy; rather stouter but not so handsome as your god-son was at his time of life. Indeed I look on your little namesake to be my chef d'œuvre in that species of manufacture, as I look on Tam o' Shanter to be my standard performance in the poetical line. 'Tis true, both the one and the other discover a spice of roguish waggery, that might, perhaps, be as well spared; but then they also show, in my opinion, a force of genius, and a finishing polish, that I despair of ever excelling. Mrs Burns is getting stout again, and laid as lustily about her to-day at breakfast, as a reaper from the corn-ridge. That is the peculiar privilege and blessing of our hale, sprightly damsels, that are bred among the hay and heather. We cannot hope for that highly polished mind, that charming delicacy of soul, which is found among the female world in the more elevated stations of life, and which is certainly by far the most bewitching charm in the famous cestus of Venus. It is indeed such an inestimable treasure, that where it can be had in its native heavenly purity, unstained by some one or other of the many shades of affectation, and unalloyed by some one or other of the many species of caprice, I declare to Heaven, I should think it cheaply purchased at the expense of every other earthly good! But as this angelic crea |