WHETHER, in the way of my trade, I can be of any service to the Rev. Doctor, is I fear very doubtful. Ajax's shield consisted, I think, of seven bull hides and a plate of brass, which altogether set Hector's utmost force at defiance. Alas! I am not a Hector, and the worthy Doctor's foes are as securely armed as Ajax was. Ignorance, superstition, bigotry, stupidity, malevolence, self-conceit, envy-all strongly bound in a massy frame of brazen impudence! Good God, Sir! to such a shield, humour is the peck of a sparrow, and satire the pop-gun of a school-boy. Creation-disgracing scelerats such as they, God only can mend, and the devil only can punish. In the comprehending way of Caligula, I wish they all had but one neck. I feel impotent as a child to the ardour of my wishes! O for a withering curse to blast the germins of their wicked machinations! O for a poisonous tornado, winged from the torrid zone of Tartarus, to sweep the spreading crop of their villainous contrivances to the lowest hell!* epistle, is a pitch of extravagant rapture to which I never rose before. I read your letter-I literally jumped for joy -How could such a mercurial creature as a poet lumpishly keep his seat, on the receipt of the best news from his best friend? I seized my gilt - headed Wangee rod, an instrument indispensably necessary in my left hand, in the moment of inspiration and rapture; and stride, stride quick and quicker-out skipt I among the broomy banks of Nith to muse over my joy by retail. To keep within the bounds of prose was impossible. Mrs. Little's is a more elegant, but not a more sincere, compliment to the sweet little fellow than I, extempore almost, poured out to him in the following verses. "Sweet flow'ret, pledge o' meikle love, (Vide p. 249.) I am much flattered by your approbation of my Tam o' Shanter, which you express in your former letter; though, by the bye, you load me in that said letter with accusations heavy and many; to all which I plead, not guilty! Your book is, I hear, on the road to reach me. As to printing of poetry, when you prepare it for the press, you have only to spell it right, and place the capital letters properly: as to the punctuation, the printers do that themselves. I have a copy of Tam o' Shanter ready to send you by the first opportunity: it is too heavy to send by post. I heard of Mr. Corbet + lately. He, in consequence of your recommendation, is most zealous to serve me. Please favour me soon with an account of your good folks; if Mrs. H. is recovering, and the young gentleman doing well. R. B. I AM not gone to Elysium, most noble colonel, but am still here in this sublunary world, serving my God by propagating his image, and honouring my king by begetting him loyal subjects. Many happy returns of the season await my friend. May the thorns of care never beset his path! May peace be an inmate to his bosom, and rapture a frequent visitor of his soul! May the blood-hounds of misfortune never track his steps, nor the screech-owl of sorrow alarm his dwelling! May enjoyment tell thy hours, and pleasure number thy days, thou friend of the bard! "Blessed be he that blesseth thee, and cursed be he that curseth thee !!!" As a further proof that I am still in the land of existence, I send you a poem, the latest I have composed. I have a particular reason for wishing you only to show it to select friends, should you think it worthy a friend's perusal; but if, at your first leisure hour, you will favour me with your opinion of, and strictures on, the performance, it will be an additional obligation on, dear Sir, your deeply indebted humble servant, R. B. 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 enclosed 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 enclose it particularly to you. It is true, the purity of my motives may be suspected. I am already deeply indebted to Mr. Graham'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 1 will indulge the flattering faith that my poetry will considerably outlive my poverty; and, without any fustian affectation 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. Graham's chiefest praise that he can command influence; but it is his merit to bestow, not only with the kindness of a brother, but with the politeness of a gentleman; and I trust it, shall be mine to receive with thankfulness, and remember with undiminished gratitude. R. B. [This letter was written acknowledging the present of a valuable snuff-box, with a fine picture of Mary Queen of Scots on the lid. This was the gift of Lady Winifred Maxwell Constable, in grateful return for the Poet's "Lament" of that ill-starred Princess. Lady Winifred was the last in descent of the noble family of Nithsdale; a lady equally generous and gentle, and who was not the less respected by the people around because her house had suffered in the cause of the Stuarts. The possessions of the family were once very ample: but few estates thrive in civil wars, rebellions, and confiscations: one noble barony after another passed out of the hands of the Maxwells: and the title was extinguished, never, I fear, to be revived. The baronial Castle of Caerlaverock on the Solway, and the College of Lincluden on the banks of the Nith, are still included in the family possessions, and are preserved with more care than what is usual with ruins in the South of Scotland. At the family seat, the bed in which Queen Mary slept, during her flight from the fatal field of Langside: a letter from Charles the First, summoning Lord Maxwell with as many armed men as he could muster, to aid him in supporting the Crown against the Parliament: and the letter from the last Countess, describing the all but miraculous escape of her husband from the Tower of London in 1715– unite in telling the history of the House of Nithsdale, and the cause the honourable cause of its decline. - CtsNINGHAM.] [The gentleman to whom the above letter is addressed. and which is for the first time published, was a writer to the Signet in Edinbugh, with whom the poet appears to have been on very intimate and friendly terms. For this and three other letters to the same individual, inserted afterwards, we are indebted to the activity and industry of Mr. P. Buchan of Aberdeen, who has been unremitting in his exertions to recover every scrap connected with the name or fame of cur national Bard. In his communications to us, Mr. Buchan states that "the four letters referred to belong to Misses Ogilvie, daughters of the late Rev. and ingenious Jela Ogilvie, D. D. of Midmar, author of the poems on Providence,' 'Paradise,' and 'Britannia,' and that after having made the tour of part of Europe and America, they had again crossed the Atlantic, and are now first given to the public in this complete edition of Burns" works."— MOTHERWELL.] [So styled as President of the Convivial Society, known by the name of The Crochallan Fencibles.] No. CXCVI. TO MR. PETER HILL Ellisland, 17th January, 1791. TAKE these two guineas, and place them over against that damned account of yours! which has gagged my mouth these five or six months! I can as little write good things as apologies to the man I owe money to. O the supreme curse of making three guineas do the business of five! Not all the labours of Hercules; not all the Hebrews' three centuries of Egyptian bondage, were such an insuperable business, such an infernal task!! Poverty; thou halfsister of death, thou cousin-german of hell! where shall I find force of execration equal to the amplitude of thy demerits? Oppressed by thee, the venerable ancient, grown hoary in the practice of every virtue, laden with years and wretchedness, implores a little-little aid to support his existence, from a stony-hearted son of Mammon, whose sun of prosperity never knew a cloud; and is by him denied and insulted. Oppressed by thee, the man of sentiment, whose heart glows with independence, and melts with sensibility, inly pines under the neglect, or writhes in bitterness of soul under the contumely, of arrogant, unfeeling wealth. Oppressed by thee, the son of genius, whose ill-starred ambition plants him at the tables of the fashionable and polite, must see, in suffering silence, his remarks neglected, and his person despised, while shallow greatness, in his idiot attempts at wit, shall meet with countenance and applause. Nor is it only the family of worth that have reason to complain of thee: the children of folly and vice, though in common with thee the offspring of evil, smart equally under thy rod. Owing to thee, the man of unfortunate disposition and neglected education is condemned as a fool for his dissipation, despised and shunned as a needy wretch, when his follies, as usual, bring him to want; and when his unprincipled necessities drive him to dishonest practices, he is abhorred as a [The poet's eloquent apostrophe to Poverty has all his usual strength of sentiment and language. In conversation he loved to dwell upon the subject: he felt that without wealth he could not have full independence: he beheld the little that his poems brought melt silently away, and he looked forward with much fear and with little hope.CUNNINGHAM.] [The following is an extract of a letter from Mr. Alexander Cunningham to the Poet, dated Edinburgh, October 14th, 1790. "I lately received a letter from our friend Barncallie. [John Syme, Esq., of Barncallie, afterwards of Ryedale.] What a charming fellow lost to society-born to great expectations-with superior abilities, a pure heart, and untainted morals, his fate in life has been hard indeed-still I am. persuaded he is happy; not like the gallant, the gay Lothario, but in the simplicity of rural enjoyment, unmixed with regret at the remembrance of the days of other years. I saw Mr. Dunbar put under the cover of your newspaper, miscreant, and perishes by the justice of his country. But far otherwise is the lot of the man of family and fortune. His early follies and extravagance are spirit and fire; his consequent wants are the embarrassments of an honest fellow; and when, to remedy the matter, he has gained a legal commission to plunder he returns, perhaps, laden with the spoils of distant provinces, or massacre peaceful nations, rapine and murder; lives wicked and respected, and dies a scoundrel and a lord.-Nay, worst of all, alas for helpless woman! the needy prostitute, who has shivered at the corner of the street, waiting to earn the wages of casual prostitution, is left neglected and insulted, ridden down by the chariot wheels of the coroneted RIP, hurrying on to the guilty assignation; she who, without the same necessities to plead, riots nightly in the same guilty trade. Well! divines may say of it what they please; but execration is to the mind what phlebotomy is to the body: the vital sluices of both are wonderfully relieved by their respective evacuations.* No. CXCVII. R. B. TO MR. ALEX". CUNNINGHAM.† Ellisland, 23d January, 1791. MANY happy returns of the season to you, my dear friend! As many of the good things of this life as are consistent with the usual mixture of good and evil in the cup of Being! I have just finished a poem (Tam o' Shanter) which you will receive enclosed. It is my first essay in the way of tales. I have these several months been hammering at an elegy on the amiable and accomplished Miss Burnet. I have got, and can get, no farther than the following fragment, on which please give me your strictures. In all kinds of poetic composition, I set great store by your opinion; but in sentimental verses, in the poetry of the heart, no Roman Catholic ever set more We Mr. Wood's poem on Thomson. This poem has suggested an idea to me which you alone are capable to execute a song adapted to each season of the year. The task is difficult, but the theme is charming; should you succeed, I will undertake to get new music worthy of the subject. What a fine field for your imagination, and who is there alive can draw so many beauties from Nature and pastoral imagery as yourself? It is, by the way, surprising that there does not exist, so far as I know, a proper song for each season. have songs on hunting, fishing, skaiting, and one autumnal song, Harvest Home. As your muse is neither spavined nor rusty, you may mount the hill of Parnassus, and return with a sonnet in your pocket for every season. suggestions, if I be rude, correct me; if impertinent, chastise me; if presuming, despise me. But if you blend all my weaknesses, and pound out one grain of insincerity, then am I not thy For my Faithful Friend &c."] Ellisland, February, 1791. SIR, NOTHING less than the unfortunate accident I have met with could have prevented my grateful acknowledgments for your letter. His own favourite poem, and that an essay in the walk of the muses entirely new to him, where consequently his hopes and fears were on the most anxious alarm for his success in the attempt; to have that poem so much applauded by one of the first judges, was the most delicious vibration that ever thrilled along the heartstrings of a poor poet. However, Providence, to keep up the proper proportion of evil with the good, which it seems is necessary in this sublunary state, thought proper to check my ex [That no one welcomed the appearance of the far-famed Tam o' Shanter with a livelier sense of its merits than the late Lord Woodhouselee, the following letter will testify. Edinburgh, March 12th, 1791. "Mr. Hill yesterday put into my hands a sheet of Grose's Antiquities, containing a Poem of yours, entitled, Tam o' Shanter, a tale. The very high pleasure I have received from the perusal of this admirable piece I feel demands the warmest acknowledgments. "Hill tells me he is to send off a packet for you this day; I cannot resist, therefore, putting on paper what I must have told you in person, had I met with you after the recent perusal of your tale, which is, that I feel I owe you a debt which, if undischarged, would reproach me with ingratitude. I have seldom in my life tasted of higher enjoyment from any work of genius than I have received from this composition; and I am much mistaken if this poem alone, had you never written another syllable, would not have been sufficient to have transmitted your name down to posterity with high reputation. In the introductory part, where you paint the character of your hero, and exhibit him at the ale-house ingle, with his tippling cronies, you have delineated nature with a humour and naireté that would have done honour to Matthew Prior; but when you describe the infernal orgies of the witches' sabbath, and the hellish scenery in which they are exhibited, you display a power of imagination that Shakspeare himself could not have exceeded. I know not that I have ever met with a picture of more horrible fancy than the following: 'Coffins stood round like open presses, But when I came to the succeeding lines, my blood ran cold within me : 'A knife a father's throat had mangled, The grey hairs yet stack to the heft.' ultation by a very serious misfortune. A day or two after I received your letter, my horse came down with me and broke my right arm. " As this is the first service my arm has done me since its disaster, I find myself unable to do more than just in general terms thank you for this additional instance of your patronage and friendship. As to the faults you detected in the piece, they are truly there: one of them, the hit at the lawyer and priest, I shall cut out; as to the falling off in the catastrophe, for the reason you justly adduce it cannot easily be remedied. Your approbation, Sir, has given me such additional spirits to persevere in this species of poetic composition that I am already revolving two or three stories in my fancy. If I can bring these floating 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. CXCIX. TO MRS. DUNLOP. R. B.* Ellisland, 7th Feb. 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 "And here, after the two following lines, Wi' mair e' horrible and awfu',' &c., the descriptive part might perhaps have been better closed than the four lines which sureerd, which, though good in themselves, yet, as they derive all their merit from the satire they contain, are here rather misplaced among the circumstances of pure horror. The initiation of the young witch is most happily described-the effect of her charms exhibited in the dance on Satan himself-the apostrophe-Ah, little thought thy reverend graunie-the transport of Tam, who forgets his situation, and enters completely into the spirit of the scene, are all features of high merit in this excellent composition. The only fant it possesses is that the winding up, or conclusion, of the story, is not commensurate to the interest which is excited by the descriptive and characteristic painting of the preceding parts. -The preparation is fine, but the result is not adequate But for this perhaps you have a good apology-you stick to the popular tale. "And now that I have got out my mind, and feel a little relieved of the weight of that debt I owed you, let me end this desultory scroll by an advice;-You have proved your talent for a species of composition, in which but a very tes of our own poets have succeeded-Go on-write more tales in the same style-you will eclipse Prior and La Fontaine; for, with equal wit, equal power of numbers, and equal naïveté of expression, you have a bolder and more vigorous imagination."] 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 work 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: (See the Elegy page 308.) I have proceeded no further. Your kind letter, with your kind remembrance of your godson, 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 for a long time seen. He is now seventeen months old, has the small-pox and measles over, has cut several teeth, and 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 drooping head. Soon and well may her "cruel wounds" be healed! I have written thus far with a good deal of difficulty. When I get a little abler you shall hear farther from, Madam, yours, R. B. No. CC. TO THE REV. ARCH. ALISON. Ellisland, near Dumfries, 14th Feb. 1791. SIR, You must by this time have set me down as one of the most ungrateful of men. You did [The eloquent Alison was much pleased with this rustic recognition of the principles which he laid down in his able and popular work. The theory, however, has been rudely shaken by various hands. A man must have forgot nature who at any time preferred a rank weed to a fragrant flower, or thought the skreigh of a clockin' hen more martial than the clang of a trumpet or the cry of the eagle. But "legs were made for stockings," says Voltaire, "therefore we wear stockings."-CUNNINGHAM. "A present which Mr. Alison sent him afterwards of his Essays on Taste' drew from Burns a letter of acknowledgment, which I remember to have read with some degree of surprise at the distinct conception he appeared from it to have formed of the general principles of the doctrine of association. When I saw Mr. Alison in Shrop-shire last autumn, I forgot to enquire if the letter be still in existence. If it is, you may easily procure it by means of our friend Mr. Houlbrooke."-DUGALD STEWART. The above letter is the one alluded to by the learned Professor. me the honour to present me with a book, which does honour to science and the intellectual powers of men, 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 jew's-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 associations of ideas;-these I had set down as irrefragable, 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 enclose you some poetic bagatelles of my late composition. The one in print is my first essay in the way of telling a tale. I am, Sir, &c. R. B. "It is difficult to read without a smile that letter of Mr. Dugald Stewart, in which he describes himself to Mr. Alison, as being surprised to discover that Burns, after reading the latter author's elegant Essay on Taste, had really been able to form some shrewd-enough notion of the general principles of the association of ideas! It is amusing enough to trace the lingering reluctance of some of these polished scholars; about admitting even to themselves in his absence, what it is certain they all felt sufficiently when they were actually in his presence. The extraordinary resources Burns displayed in conversation-the strong vigorous sagacity of his observations on life and manners-the splendour of his wit, and the glowing energy of his eloquence, when his feelings were stirred, made him the object of serious admiration among those practised masters of the art of talk; that galaxy of eminent men of letters, who, in their various departments, shed lustre at that period on the name of Scotland.” — LOCKHART. The doctrine here alluded to is one peculiar. we believe, to the Scotch school of metaphysicians, and mainly consists in |