thy kinsman, or favourite, and adjure the god by the scenes of his infant years, no longer to repulse me as a stranger, or an alien, but to favour me with his peculiar countenance and protection! He daily bestows his greatest kindness on the undeserving and the worthless,—assure him that I bring ample documents of meritorious demerits! Pledge yourself for me, that, for the glorious cause of lucre, I will do any thing, be any thing; but the horse-leech of private oppression, or the vulture of public robbery! But to descend from heroics. I want a Shakspeare; I want likewise an English dictionary,-Johnson's, I suppose, is best. In these and all my prose commissions, the cheapest is always the best for me. There is a small debt of honour that I owe Mr Robert Cleghorn, in Saughton Mills, my worthy friend, and your well-wisher. Please give him, and urge him to take it, the first time you see him, ten shillings worth of any thing you have to sell, and place it to my account. The library scheme that I mentioned to you is already begun under the direction of Captain Riddel. There is another in emulation of it going on at Closeburn, under the auspices of Mr Monteith of Closeburn, which will be on a greater scale than ours. Captain Riddel gave his infant society a great many of his old books, else I had written you on that subject; but, one of these days, I shall trouble you with a commission for " The Monkland Friendly Society,”— -a copy of The Spectator,' Mirror,' and Lounger,' Man of Feeling,' Man of the World,' 'Guthrie's Geographical Grammar,' with some religious pieces, will likely be our first order. When I grow richer, I will write to you on gilt-post, to make amends for this sheet. At present every guinea has a five guinea errand with, My dear Sir, Your faithful, poor, but honest friend, R. B. No. CXLIX. TO MRS DUNLOP. ELLISLAND, 4th April, 1789. I No sooner hit on any poetic plan or fancy, but I wish to send it to you; and if knowing and reading these give half the pleasure to you, that communicating them to you gives to me, I am satisfied. I have a poetic whim in my head, which I at present dedicate, or rather inscribe, to the Right Hon. Charles James Fox; but how long that fancy may hold, I cannot say. A few of the first lines I have just rough sketched as follows: SKETCH. 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 contradiction I 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, Thou first of our orators, first of our wits; Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits; No man with the half of 'em e'er went quite right; For using thy name offers fifty excuses. See vol. ii. page 16. On the 20th current I hope to have the honour of assur ing you, in person, how sincerely I am, R. B. No. CL. TO MRS M'MURDO, DRUMLANRIG. MADAM, ELLISLAND, 2d May, 1789. I HAVE finished the piece which had the happy fortune to be honoured with your approbation; and never did little Miss with more sparkling pleasure show her applauded sampler to partial Mamma, than I now send my poem to you and Mr M'Murdo, if he is returned to Drumlanrig. You cannot easily imagine what thin-skinned animals— what sensitive plants poor poets are. How do we shrink into the imbittered corner of self-abasement, when neglected or condemned by those to whom we look up! and how do we, in erect importance, add another cubit to our stature on being noticed and applauded by those whom we honour and respect! My late visit to Drumlanrig has, I can tell you, Madam, given me a balloon waft up Parnassus, where on my fancied elevation I regard my poetic self with no small degree of complacency. Surely with all their sins, the rhyming tribe are not ungrateful creatures.-I recollect your goodness to your humble guest-I see Mr M'Murdo adding to the politeness of the gentleman, the kindness of a friend, and my heart swells as it would burst, with warm emotions and ardent wishes! It may be it is not gratitude -it may be a mixed sensation. That strange, shifting, doubling animal MAN is so generally, at best, but a negative, often a worthless creature, that we cannot see real goodness and native worth without feeling the bosom glow with sympathetic approbation. With every sentiment of grateful respect, I have the honour to be, Madam, Your obliged and grateful humble servant, R. B. No. CLI. TO MR CUNNINGHAM. ELLISLAND, 4th May, 1789. MY DEAR SIR, YOUR duty-free favour of the 26th April I received two days ago; I will not say I perused it with pleasure; that is the cold compliment of ceremony; I perused it, Sir, with delicious satisfaction ;—in short, it is such a letter, that not you, nor your friend, but the legislature, by express proviso in their postage laws, should frank. A letter informed with the soul of friendship is such an honour to human nature, that they should order it free ingress and egress to and from their bags and mails, as an encouragement and mark of distinction to supereminent virtue. I have just put the last hand to a little poem, which I think will be something to your taste. One morning lately, as I was out pretty early in the fields, sowing some grass seeds, I heard the burst of a shot from a neighbouring plantation, and presently a poor little wounded hare came crippling by me. You will guess my indignation at the inhuman fellow who could shoot a hare at this season, when all of them have young ones. Indeed there is something in that business of destroying for our sport individuals in the animal creation that do not injure us materially, which I could never reconcile to my ideas of virtue. Inhuman man! curse on thy barb'rous art, Go live, poor wanderer of the wood and field No more the thickening brakes or verdant plains, Seek, mangled innocent, some wonted form; The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head, Perhaps a mother's anguish adds its woe; Oft as by winding Nith, I, musing, wait The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn, And curse the ruthless wretch, and mourn thy hapless fate. Let me know how you like my poem. I am doubtful whether it would not be an improvement to keep out the last stanza but one altogether. Cruikshank is a glorious production of the author of You, he, and the noble Colonel* of the Crochallan man. Fencibles are to me "Dear as the ruddy drops which warm my heart." I have got a good mind to make verses on you all, to the tune of Three guid fellows ayont the glen.' R. B.t * That is, William Dunbar, W. S. + The poem in the above letter had also been sent by our Bard to Dr Gregory for his criticism. The following is that gentleman's reply: "EDINBURGH, 2d June, 1789. "DEAR SIR,-I take the first leisure hour I could command, to thank you for your letter, and the copy of verses inclosed in it. As there is real poetic merit, I mean both fancy and tenderness, and some happy expressions in them, I think they well deserve that you should revise them carefully, and polish them to the utmost. This I am sure you can do if you please, for you have great command both of expression and of rhymes: and you may judge from the two last pieces of Mrs Hunter's poetry, that I gave you, how much correctness and high polish enhance the value of such compositions. As you desire it, I shall, with great freedom, give you my most rigorous criticisms on your verses. wish you would give me another edition of them, much amended, and I will send it to Mrs Hunter, who, I am sure, will have muc!. I |