the rays of science in a fellow's head whose skull is impervious and inaccessible by any other way than a positive fracture with a cudgel-a fellow whom, in fact, it savours of impiety to attempt making a scholar of, as he has been marked a blockhead in the book of fate at the Almighty fiat of his Creator.

The patrons of Moffat School are the ministers, magistrates, and town-council of Edinburgh; and as the business comes now before them, let me beg my dearest friend to do everything in his power to serve the interests of a man of genius and worth, and a man whom I particularly respect and esteem. You know some good fellows among the magistracy and council; but particularly you have much to say with a reverend gentleman to whom you have the honour of being very nearly related, and whom this country and age have had the honour to produce. I need not name the historian of Charles V. I tell him, through the medium of his nephew's influence, that Mr Clarke is a gentleman who will not disgrace even his patronage. I know the merits of the cause thoroughly, and say it, that my friend is falling a sacrifice to prejudiced ignorance, and

God help the children of dependence! Hated and persecuted by their enemies, and too often, alas! almost unexceptionably, received by their friends with disrespect and reproach, under the thin disguise of cold civility and humiliating advice. Oh to be a sturdy savage, stalking in the pride of his independence, amid the solitary wilds of his deserts, rather than in civilised life helplessly to tremble for a subsistence, precarious as the caprice of a fellowcreature! Every man has his virtues, and no man is without his failings; and curse on that privileged plain-dealing of friendship which, in the hour of my calamity, cannot reach forth the helpinghand without at the same time pointing out those failings, and apportioning them their share in procuring my present distress. My friends-for such the world calls ye, and such ye think yourselves to be-pass by my virtues if you please, but do also spare my follies. The first will witness in my breast for themselves, and the last will give pain enough to the ingenuous mind without you. And since deviating more or less from the paths of propriety and rectitude must be incident to human nature, do thou, Fortune, put it in my power, always from myself and of myself, to bear the the consequence of those errors ! I do not want to be independent that I may sin, but I want to be independent in my sinning.

To return in this rambling letter to the subject I set out with, let me recommend my friend Mr Clarke to your acquaintance and good offices. His worth entitles him to the one, and his gratitude will merit the other. I long much to hear from you. Adieu!

R. B.

CCXLI.

TO MR THOMAS SLOAN.

ELLISLAND, 1st Sept. 1791.

MY DEAR SLOAN,-Suspense is worse than disappointment for that reason I hurry to tell you that I just now learn that Mr Ballantine does not choose to interfere more in the business. I am truly sorry for it, but cannot help it.

You blame me for not writing you sooner; but you will please to recollect that you omitted one little necessary piece of information-your address.

However, you know equally well my hurried life, indolent temper, and strength of attachment. It must be a longer period than the longest life "in the world's hale and undegenerate days," that will make me forget so dear a friend as Mr Sloan. I am prodigal enough at times, but I will not part with such a treasure as that. I can easily enter into the embarrass of your present situation. You know my favourite quotation from Young

"On Reason build RESOLVE!

That column of true majesty in man."

And that other favourite one from Thomson's Alfred"What proves the hero truly GREAT,

Is, never, never to despair."

Or, shall I quote you an author of your acquaintance?

"Whether DOING, SUFFERING, or FORBEARING, You may do miracles by-PERSEVERING."

I have nothing new to tell you. The few friends we have are going on in the old way. I sold my crop on this day se'en-night, and sold it very well. A guinea an acre, on an average, above value. But such a scene of drunkenness was hardly ever seen in this country. After the roup was over, about thirty people engaged in a battle, every man for his own hand, and fought it out for three hours. Nor was the scene much better in the house. You will easily guess how I enjoyed the scene, as I was no farther over than you used to see me.

Mrs B. and family have been in Ayrshire these many weeks. Farewell and God bless you, my dear friend!

R. B.

CCXLII.

TO THE EARL OF BUCHAN.

ELLISLAND, September 1790.

MY LORD,-Language sinks under the ardour of my feelings when I would thank your lordship for the honour you have done

me in inviting me to make one at the coronation of the bust of Thomson. In my first enthusiasm in reading the card you did me the honour to write me, I overlooked every obstacle, and determined to go; but I fear it will not be in my power. A week or two's absence, in the very middle of my harvest, is what I much doubt I dare not venture on. I once already made a pilgrimage up the whole course of the Tweed, and fondly would I take the same delightful journey down the windings of that delightful stream.

Your lordship hints at an ode for the occasion; but who would write after Collins? I read over his verses to the memory of Thomson, and despaired. I got indeed to the length of three or four stanzas, in the way of address to the shade of the bard, on crowning his bust. I shall trouble your lordship with the subjoined copy of them (p. 168), which, I am afraid, will be but too convincing a proof how unequal I am to the task. However, it affords me an opportunity of approaching your lordship, and declaring how sincerely and gratefully I have the honour to be, &c. R. B.

CCXLIII.

TO COLONEL FULLARTON, OF FULLARTON. ELLISLAND, October 3, 1791. SIR, I have just this minute got the frank, and next minute must send it to post; else I purposed to have sent you two or three other bagatelles that might have amused a vacant hour, about as well as Six Excellent New Songs, or the Aberdeen Prognostications for the Year to come. I shall probably trouble you soon with another packet. About the gloomy month of November, when the people of England hang and drown themselves, anything generally is better than one's own thoughts.

Fond as I may be of my own productions, it is not for their sake that I am so anxious to send you them. I am ambitious, covetously ambitious, of being known to a gentleman whom I am proud to call my countryman-a gentleman, who was a foreign ambassador as soon as he was a man, and a leader of armies as soon as he was a soldier, and that with an éclat unknown to the usual minions of a court-men who, with all the adventitious advantages of princely connections and princely fortunes, must yet, like the caterpillar, labour a whole lifetime before they reach the wished-for height, there to roost a stupid chrysalis, and doze out the remaining glimmering existence of old age.

If the gentleman that accompanied you when you did me the honour of calling on me, is with you, I beg to be respectfully remembered to him. I have the honour to be your highly obliged, and most devoted humble servant,

R. B.

CCXLIV.

TO MISS DAVIES.

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 daresay 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 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, my Muse is 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.

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 Æolian 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 gray-bearded age; but where my theme is youth and beauty,—a young lady whose personal charms, wit, and sentiment, are equally striking and unaffected, though I had lived threescore years a married man, and threescore years before I was a married man, my imagination would hallow the very idea: and I am truly sorry that the enclosed stanzas (Lovely Davies, p. 244) have done such poor justice to such a subject. R. B.

CCXLV.

TO MISS DAVIES.

It is impossible, madam, that the generous warmth and angelic purity of your youthful mind can have any idea of that moral

disease under which I unhappily must rank as the chief of sinners -I mean a torpitude of the moral powers, that may be called a lethargy of conscience. In vain Remorse rears her horrent crest, and rouses all her snakes: beneath the deadly fixed eye and leaden hand of Indolence, their wildest ire is charmed into the torpor of the bat, slumbering out the rigours of winter in the chink of a ruined wall. Nothing less, madam, could have made me so long neglect your obliging commands. Indeed, I had one apologythe bagatelle was not worth presenting. Besides, so strongly am I interested in Miss Davies' fate and welfare in the serious business of life, amid its chances and changes, that to make her the subject of a silly ballad is downright mockery of these ardent feelings; 'tis like an impertinent jest to a dying friend.

Why this disparity between our wishes and our powers? Why is the most generous wish to make others blest impotent and ineffectual as the idle breeze that crosses the pathless desert? In my walks of life I have met with a few people to whom how gladly would I have said-" Go! be happy! I know that your hearts have been wounded by the scorn of the proud, whom accident has placed above you-or, worse still, in whose hands are perhaps placed many of the comforts of your life. But there! ascend that rock, Independence, and look justly down on their littleness of soul. Make the worthless tremble under your indignation, and the foolish sink before your contempt; and largely impart that happiness to others which, I am certain, will give yourselves so much pleasure to bestow."

Why, dear madam, must I wake from this delightful reverie, and find it all a dream? Why, amid my generous enthusiasm, must I find myself poor and powerless, incapable of wiping one tear from the eye of Pity, or of adding one comfort to the friend I love! Out upon the world! say I, that its affairs are administered so ill! They talk of reform; what a reform would I make among the sons, and even the daughters, of men! Down immediately should go fools from the high places where misbegotten chance has perked them up, and through life should they skulk, ever haunted by their native insignificance, as the body marches accompanied by its shadow. As for a much more formidable class, the knaves,-I am at a loss what to do with them. Had I a world, there should not be a knave in it.

But the hand that could give I would liberally fill; and I would pour delight on the heart that could kindly forgive, and generously love.

Still, the inequalities of life are, among men, comparatively tolerable; but there is a delicacy, a tenderness, accompanying every view in which we can place lovely woman, that are grated and shocked at the rude, capricious distinctions of Fortune. Woman is the blood-royal of life. Let there be slight degrees of