Let prudence number o'er each sturdy son, Ye wise ones, hence! ye hurt the social eye! Ere my poor soul such deep damnation stain, The pie-ball'd jacket let me patch once more; FRAGMENT, INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HON, C. J. FOX. How wisdom and folly meet, mix, and unite; How virtue and vice blend their black and their white; How genius, the' illustrious father of fiction, Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradictionI sing: If these mortals, the critics, should bustle, I care not, not I, let the critics go whistle. But now for a Patron, whose name and whose glory At once may illustrate and honour my story. This is our Poet's first epistle to Graham of Fintry. It is not equal to the second; but it contains too much of the characteristic vigour of its author to be suppressed. A little more knowledge of natural history, or of chemistry, was wanted to enable him to execute the original conception correctly. Thou first of our orators, first of our wits; Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits; With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so strong, No man with the half of 'em e'er went far wrong; For using thy name offers fifty excuses. Good L-d, what is man! for as simple he looks, Do but try to develop his hooks and his crooks; With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil, All in all he's a problem must puzzle the devil. On his one ruling passion sir Pope hugely labours, That, like the' old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours: Mankind are his show-box-a friend, would you know him? Pull the string, ruling passion the picture will show him. What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system, One trifling particular, truth, should have miss'd him; For, spite of his fine theoretic positions, Some sort all our qualities each to its tribe, And think human nature they truly describe; Have you As by one drunken fellow his comrades you'll find. TO DR. BLACKLOCK. Ellisland, 21st Oct. 1789. Wow, but your letter made me vauntie! Lord send you ay as weel's I want ye, The ill-thief blaw the Heron south! He'd tak my letter; I lippen'd to the chiel in trouth, And bade nae better. But aiblins honest Master Heron Had at the time some dainty fair one, To ware his theologic care on, And holy study; And tir'd o' sauls to waste his lear on, But what d'ye think, my trusty fier, Ye'll now disdain me, And then my fifty pounds a year Will little gain me. Ye glaiket, gleesome, daintie damies, That strange necessity supreme is ’Mang sons o men. I hae a wife and twa wee laddies, They maun hae brose and brats o' duddies; I need na vaunt, But I'll sned besoms-thraw saugh woodies, Lord help me thro' this warld o' care! I'm weary sick o't late and air! Not but I hae a richer share Than mony ithers; And a' men brithers? But why should ae man better fare, *Mr. Heron, author of the History of Scotland, and of various |