valued friend I have on earth. To tell you that I have been in poor health will not be excuse enough, though it is true. I am afraid that I am about to suffer for the follies of my youth. My medical friends threaten me with a flying gout; but I trust they are mistaken.

I am just going to trouble your critical patience with the first sketch of a stanza I have been framing as I passed along the road. The subject is Liberty: you know, my honoured friend, how dear the theme is to me. I design it as an irregular ode for General Washington's birthday. After having mentioned the degeneracy of other kingdoms, I come to Scotland thus (Thee, Caledonia, p. 175).

You will probably have another scrawl from me in a stage or two. R. B.

CCCXIV.

TO CLARINDA.

BEFORE you ask me why I have not written you, first let me be informed by you, how I shall write you? "In friendship," you say; and I have many a time taken up my pen to try an epistle of "friendship" to you, but it will not do; 'tis like Jove grasping a pop-gun after having wielded his thunder. When I take up the pen, recollection ruins me. Ah, my ever dearest Clarinda! Clarinda! What a host of Memory's tenderest offspring crowd on my fancy at that sound! But I must not indulge that subject; you have forbid it.

I am extremely happy to learn that your precious health is reestablished, and that you are once more fit to enjoy that satisfaction in existence which health alone can give us. My old friend Ainslie has indeed been kind to you. Tell him that I envy him the power of serving you. I had a letter from him awhile ago, but it was so dry, so distant, so like a card to one of his clients, that I could scarce bear to read it, and have not yet answered it. He is a good, honest fellow, and can write a friendly letter, which would do equal honour to his head and his heart, as a whole sheaf of his letters which I have by me will witness; and though Fame does not blow her trumpet at my approach now as she did then, when he first honoured me with his friendship, yet I am as proud as ever; and when I am laid in my grave, I wish to be stretched at my full length, that I may occupy every inch of ground I have a right to.

You would laugh were you to see me where I am just now. Would that you were here to laugh with me, though I am afraid that crying would be our first employment! Here am I set, a solitary hermit, in the solitary room of a solitary inn, with a solitary

bottle of wine by me, as grave and as stupid as an owl, but, like that owl, still faithful to my old song; in confirmation of which, my dear Mrs Mac, here is your good health! May the handwaled benisons o' Heaven bless your bonny face. Amen.

You must know, my dearest madam, that these now many years, wherever I am, in whatever company, when a married lady is called as a toast, I constantly give you; but as your name has never passed my lips, even to my most intimate friend, I give you by the name of Mrs Mac. This is so well known among my acquaintances, that when any married lady is called for, the toast-master will say, 66 Oh, we need not ask him who it is: here's Mrs Mac!" I have also, among my convivial friends, set on foot a round of toasts, which I call a round of Arcadian Shepherdesses —that is, a round of favourite ladies, under female names celebrated in ancient song; and then you are my Clarinda. So, my lovely Clarinda, I devote this glass of wine to a most ardent wish for you happiness.

In vain would Prudence, with decorous sneer,
Point out a censuring world, and bid me fear;
Above that world on wings of love I rise,

I know its worst, and can that worst despise.
"Wronged, injured, shunned, unpitied, unredrest;
The mocked quotation of the scorner's jest❞—
Let Prudence' direst bodements on me fall,
Clarinda, rich reward! o'erpays them all.

I have been rhyming a little of late, but I do not know if they are worth postage.

Tell me what you think of the following monody.

The subject of the foregoing is a woman of fashion in this country, with whom at one period I was well acquainted. By some scandalous conduct to me, and two or three other gentlemen here as well as me, she steered so far to the north of my good opinion, that I have made her the theme of several ill-natured things. The following epigram (Monody, p. 172) struck me the other day as I passed her carriage. SYLVANDER.

CCCXV.

TO MR THOMSON.

July 1794.

Is there no news yet of Pleyel? Or is your work to be at a dead stop until the allies set our modern Orpheus at liberty from the savage thraldom of democrat discords? Alas the day! And wo is me! That auspicious period, pregnant with the happiness of millions*** seems by no means near.

I have presented a copy of your songs to the daughter of a much-valued and much-honoured friend of mine, Mr Graham of

Fintry. I wrote on the blank side of the title-page the following address to the young lady (p. 175).

R. B.

CCCXVI.

TO MR THOMSON.

30th August 1794.

THE last evening, as I was straying out, and thinking of O'er the Hills and far away, I spun the following stanza (p. 282) for it; but whether my spinning will deserve to be laid up in store like the precious thread of the silkworm, or brushed away like the vile manufacture of the spider, I leave, my dear sir, to your usual candid criticism. I was pleased with several lines in it at first, but I own that now it appears rather a flimsy business.

This is just a hasty sketch until I see whether it be worth a critique. We have many sailor-songs, but as far as I at present recollect, they are mostly the effusions of the jovial sailor, not the wailings of his love-lorn mistress. I must here make one sweet exception-Sweet Annie frae the Sea-beach came.

I give you leave to abuse this song, but do it in the spirit of Christian meekness. R. B.

CCCXVII.

TO MR THOMSON.

Sept. 1794.

I SHALL withdraw my On the Seas and far away altogether: it is unequal, and unworthy the work. Making a poem is like begetting a son; you cannot know whether you have a wise man or a fool until you produce him to the world to try him.

For that reason, I send you the offspring of my brain, abortions and all; and, as such, pray look over them, and forgive them, and burn them. I am flattered at your adopting Ca' the Yowes to the Knowes, as it was owing to me that ever it saw the light. About seven years ago, I was well acquainted with a worthy little fellow of a clergyman, a Mr Clunie, who sang it charmingly; and, at my request, Mr Clarke took it down from his singing. When I gave it to Johnson, I added some stanzas to the song, and mended others; but still it will not do for you. In a solitary stroll which I took to-day, I tried my hand on a few pastoral lines, following up the idea of the chorus, which I would preserve. Here it is, with all its crudities and imperfections on its head (p. 283).

I shall give you my opinion of your other newly-adopted songs my first scribbling fit. R. B.

CCCXVIII.

TO MR THOMSON.

Sept. 1794. Do you know an Irish song called Onagh's Waterfall? Our friend Cunningham sings it delightfully. The air is charming, and I have often regretted the want of decent verses to it. It is too much, at least for my humble rustic Muse, to expect that every effort of hers shall have merit; still, I think that it is better to have mediocre verses to a favourite air than none at all. On this principle I have all along proceeded in the Scots Musical Museum; and as that publication is at its last volume, I intend the following song (p. 284), to the air above mentioned, for that work.

If it does not suit you as an editor, you may be pleased to have verses to it that you can sing in the company of ladies.

Not to compare small things with great, my taste in music is like the mighty Frederick of Prussia's taste in painting. We are told that he frequently admired what the connoisseurs decried, and always, without any hypocrisy, confessed his admiration. I am sensible that my taste in music must be inelegant and vulgar, because people of undisputed and cultivated taste can find no merit in my favourite tunes. Still, because I am cheaply pleased, is that any reason why I should deny myself that pleasure? Many of our strathspeys, ancient and modern, give me most exquisite enjoyment, where you and other judges would probably be showing disgust. For instance, I am just now making verses for Rothemurchie's Rant, an air which puts me in raptures; and, in fact, unless I be pleased with the tune, I never can make verses to it. Here I have Clarke on my side, who is a judge that I will pit against any of you. Rothemurchie, he says, "is an air both original and beautiful;" and on his recommendation I have taken the first part of the tune for a chorus, and the fourth or last part for the song. I am but two stanzas deep in the work, and possibly you may think, and justly, that the poetry is as little worth your attention as the music.

I have begun anew, Let me in this ae Night. Do you think that we ought to retain the old chorus? I think we must retain both the old chorus and the first stanza of the old song. I do not altogether like the third line of the first stanza, but cannot alter it to please myself. I am just three stanzas deep in it. Would you have the denouement to be successful or otherwise ?-should she "let him in" or not?

Did you not once propose The Sow's Tail to Geordie as an air for your work? I am quite delighted with it; but I acknowledge that is no mark of its real excellence. I once set about verses for it, which I meant to be in the alternate way of a lover and his

mistress chanting together. I have not the pleasure of knowing Mrs Thomson's Christian name, and yours, I am afraid, is rather burlesque for sentiment, else I had meant to have made you [two] the hero and heroine of the little piece.

How do you like the following epigram, which I wrote the other day on a lovely young girl's recovery from a fever? Dr Maxwell was the physician who seemingly saved her from the grave; and to him I address the following (p. 178). R. B.

CCCXIX.

TO MR THOMSON.

19th October 1794

MY DEAR FRIEND,-By this morning's post I have your list, and, in general, I highly approve of it. I shall, at more leisure, give you a critique on the whole. Clarke goes to your town by to-day's fly, and I wish you would call on him, and take his opinion in general: you know his taste is a standard. He will return here again in a week or two, so please do not miss asking for him. One thing I hope he will do, which would give me high satisfaction-persuade you to adopt my favourite, Craigieburn Wood, in your selection: it is as great a favourite of his as of mine. The lady on whom it was made is one of the finest women in Scotland; and, in fact (entre nous), is in a manner to me what Sterne's Eliza was to him-a mistress, or friend, or what you will, in the guileless simplicity of Platonic love. (Now, don't put any of your squinting constructions on this, or have any clishmaclaver about it among our acquaintances.) I assure you, that to my lovely friend you are indebted for many of your best songs of mine. Do you think that the sober, gin-horse routine of existence could inspire a man with life, and love, and joy-could fire him with enthusiasm, or melt him with pathos, equal to the genius of your book? No-no! Whenever I want to be more than ordinary in song-to be in some degree equal to your diviner airs-do you imagine I fast and pray for the celestial emanation? Tout au contraire! I have a glorious recipe; the very one that for his own use was invented by the divinity of healing and poetry, when erst he piped to the flocks of Admetus. I put myself in a regimen of admiring a fine woman; and, in proportion to the adorability of her charms, in proportion you are delighted with my verses. The lightning of her eye is the godhead of Parnassus, and the witchery of her smile the divinity of Helicon !

To descend to the business with which I began: If you like my idea of When she cam ben she bobbit, the following stanzas of mine (p. 285), altered a little from what they were formerly, when set to another air, may perhaps do instead of worse stanzas.