No. CLII.

TO MR SAMUEL BROWN.

DEAR UNCLE,

MOSSGIEL, 4th May, 1789.

THIS, I hope, will find you and your conjugal yoke-fellow in your good old way; I am impatient to know if the Ailsa fowling be commenced for this season yet, as I want three or four stones of feathers, and I hope you will bespeak them

pleasure in reading it. Pray give me likewise for myself, and her too, a copy (as much amended as you please) of the Water Fowl on Loch Turit.'

"The Wounded Hare' is a pretty good subject; but the measure or stanza you have chosen for it is not a good one; it does not flow well; and the rhyme of the fourth line is almost lost by its distance from the first, and the two interposed close rhymes. I were you, I would put it into a different stanza yet.

If

"Stanza 1. The execrations in the first two lines are too strong or coarse; but they may pass. 'Murder-aiming' is a bad compound epithet, and not very intelligible. 'Blood-stained,' in stanza iii. line 4, has the same fault: Bleeding bosom infinitely better. You have accustomed yourself to such epithets, and have no notion how stiff and quaint they appear to others, and how incongruous with poetic fancy and tender sentiments. Suppose Pope had written, Why that blood-stained bosom gored,' how would you have liked it? Form is neither a poetic, nor a dignified, nor a plain common word: it is a mere sportsman's word; unsuitable to pathetic or serious poetry.

"Mangled' is a coarse word. 'Innocent,' in this sense, is a nursery word, but both may pass.

"Stanza 4. Who will now provide that life a mother only can bestow?' will not do at all: it is not grammar-it is not intelligible. Do you mean, 'provide for that life which the mother had bestowed and used to provide for ?'

"There was a ridiculous slip of the pen, 'Feeling' (I suppose) for Fellow,' in the title of your copy of verses; but even fellow would be wrong; it is but a colloquial and vulgar word, unsuitable to your sentiments. Shot' is improper too.—On seeing a person (or a sportsman) wound a hare; it is needless to add with what weapon; but if you think otherwise, you should say, with a fowling-piece.

"Let me see you when you come to town, and I will show you some more of Mrs Hunter's poems."

for me. It would be a vain attempt for me to enumerate the various transactions I have been engaged in since I saw you last, but this know, I am engaged in a smuggling trade, and God knows if ever any poor man experienced better returns, two for one, but as freight and delivery have turned out so dear, I am thinking of taking out a license and beginning in fair trade. I have taken a farm on the borders of the Nith, and in imitation of the old patriarchs, get men-servants and maid-servants, and flocks and herds, and beget sons and daughters.

Your obedient Nephew,

R. B.

No. CLIII.

TO RICHARD BROWN.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

MAUCHLINE, 21st May, 1789.

I WAS in the country by accident, and hearing of your safe arrival, I could not resist the temptation of wishing you joy on your return,-wishing you would write to me before

you

sail again,—wishing you would always set me down as your bosom friend,—wishing you long life and prosperity, and that every good thing may attend you,-wishing Mrs Brown and your little ones as free of the evils of this world

It must be admitted, that this criticism is not more distinguished by its good sense, than by its freedom from ceremony. It is impossible not to smile at the manner in which the poet may be supposed to have received it. In fact it appears, as the sailors say, to have thrown him quite aback. In a letter which he wrote soon after, he says "Dr Gregory is a good man, but he crucifies me." And again, "I believe in the iron justice of Dr Gregory; but, like the devils, I believe and tremble." However, he profited by these criticisms, as the reader will find by comparing this first edition of the poem with that published, Vol. I. p. 239. Currie.

as is consistent with humanity,—wishing you and she were to make two at the ensuing lying-in, with which Mrs B. threatens very soon to favour me,-wishing I had longer time to write to you at present; and, finally, wishing that if there is to be another state of existence, Mr B., Mrs B. our little ones, and both families, and you and I, in some snug retreat, may make a jovial party to all eternity! My direction is at Ellisland, near Dumfries.

I SEND you by John Glover, carrier, the above account for Mr Turnbull, as I suppose you know his address.

I would fain offer, my dear Sir, a word of sympathy with your misfortunes; but it is a tender string, and I know not how to touch it. It is easy to flourish a set of high-flown sentiments on the subjects that would give great satisfaction to a breast quite at ease; but as ONE observes, who was very seldom mistaken in the theory of life," The heart knoweth its own sorrows, and a stranger intermeddleth not therewith."

Among some distressful emergencies that I have experienced in life, I ever laid this down as my foundation of comfort-That he who has lived the life of an honest man, has by no means lived in vain!

• Mr James Hamilton was a grocer in Glasgow, who had interested himself in the Poet's fortunes at one time; but who, apparently from the tenor of the present letter, appears to have latterly suffered from losses in business.-M.

I HAD intended to have troubled you with a long letter, but at present the delightful sensations of an omnipotent tooth-ache so engross all my inner man, as to put it out of my power even to write nonsense. However, as in duty bound, I approach my bookseller with an offering in my hand a few poetic clinches, and a song:-to expect any other kind of offering from the Rhyming Tribe would be to know them much less than you do. I do not pretend that there is much merit in these morceaux, but I have two reasons for sending them; primo, they are mostly illnatured, so are in unison with my present feelings, while fifty troops of infernal spirits are driving post from ear to ear along my jaw bones; and secondly, they are so short, that you cannot leave off in the middle, and so hurt my pride in the idea that you found any work of mine too heavy to get through.

I have a request to beg of you, and I not only beg of you, but conjure you, by all your wishes and by all your hopes, that the muse will spare the satiric wink in the moment of your foibles; that she will warble the song of rapture round your hymeneal couch; and that she will shed on your turf the honest tear of elegiac gratitude! Grant my request as speedy as possible-send me by the very first fly or coach for this place three copies of the last edition of my poems, which place to my account.

Now may the good things of prose, and the good things of verse, come among thy hands, until they be filled with the good things of this life, prayeth

R. B.

No. CLVI.

TO MR M'AULEY, OF DUMBARTON.

DEAR SIR,

ELLISLAND, 4th June, 1789.

THOUGH I am not without my fears respecting my fate, at that grand, universal inquest of right and wrong, commonly called The Last Day, yet I trust there is one sin, which that arch-vagabond, Satan, who I understand is to be king's evidence, cannot throw in my teeth, I mean ingratitude. There is a certain pretty large quantum of kindness for which I remain, and from inability, I fear must still remain, your debtor; but though unable to repay the debt, I assure you, Sir, I shall ever warmly remember the obligation. It gives me the sincerest pleasure to hear by my old acquaintance, Mr Kennedy, that you are, in immortal Allan's language, "Hale, and weel, and living;" and that your charming family are well, and promising to be an amiable and respectable addition to the company of performers, whom the Great Manager of the Drama of Man is bringing into action for the succeeding age.

With respect to my welfare, a subject in which you once warmly and effectively interested yourself, I am here in my old way, holding my plough, marking the growth of my corn, or the health of my dairy; and at times sauntering by the delightful windings of the Nith, on the margin of which I have built my humble domicile, praying for seasonable weather, or holding an intrigue with the Muses; the only gypsies with whom I have now any intercourse. As I am entered into the holy state of matrimony, I trust my