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

No. CCVIII.

TO MR THOMAS SLOAN.

MY DEAR SLOAN,

ELLISLAND, Sept. 1st, 1791.

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 embarras of your present situation. You know my favourite quotation from Young"On Reason build RESOLVE !

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,

66

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'ennight, 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, eyery man for his own hand, and fought it out for three hours. Nor was the scene much better in the house. No fighting, indeed, but folks lying drunk on the floor, and decanting, until both my dogs got so drunk by attending them, that they could not stand. 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 Aryshire these many weeks.

Farewell! and God bless you, my dear Friend!

R. B.

No. CCIX.

TO COLONEL FULLARTON OF FULLARTON.

SIR,

ELLISLAND, October 3d, 1791.

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-any thing 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 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 eclat 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 life-time 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.*

the Paisley Magazine, 1828, "With the following relic

* This letter originally appeared in accompanied by the following note. from the pen of our Poet, we have been favoured by a friend; and all connected with his name and history possessing a share of interest, it will not, we are confident, require further apology for its insertion. As indeed appears, this casual note was addressed to Colonel Fullarton whilst resident in England, accompanied as would also seem by some verses: what these were, we regret we have been unable to ascertain. It is not perhaps to be expected, that any thing will be discovered tending further to elucidate the character of Burns: indeed, his genius may be said to have been of such an open and uncompromising nature, as irrepressibly to have unfolded in almost every sentence of his inimitable writings. Yet as an additional fragment of that frame of thought so characteristic of its great author, the present letter is certainly worthy of preservation; whilst it seems but justice to give every publicity to an opinion so flattering and so unequivocally expressed towards the object of the writer's admiration. Colonel Fullarton, it is believed, had not been introduced to Burns prior to his return from India about 1784; but having at this period met with him, he continued ever after an enthusiastic and warm friend of his distinguished countryman; and to his imperishable honour, has been commemorated in some of the Poet's finest productions. We shall only farther add, that the original letter remains in the possession of the honourable Mrs Hamilton Fullarton, the Colonel's widow, and till now has never been published."-M

No. CCX.

TO LADY E. CUNNINGHAM.

MY LADY,

I WOULD, as usual, have availed myself of the privilege your goodness has allowed me, of sending you any thing I compose in my poetical way; but as I had resolved, so soon as the shock of my irreparable loss would allow me, to pay a tribute to my late benefactor, I determined to make that the first piece I should do myself the honour of sending you. Had the wing of my fancy been equal to the ardour of my heart, the inclosed had been much more worthy your perusal as it is, I beg leave to lay it at your ladyship's feet.* As all the world knows my obligations to the late Earl of Glencairn, I would wish to show as openly, that my heart glows, and shall ever glow, with the most grateful sense and remembrance of his lordship's goodness. The sables I did myself the honour to wear to his lordship's memory, were not the "mockery of woe." Nor shall my gratitude perish with me!-If, among my children, I shall have a son that has a heart, he shall hand it down to his child as a family honour, and a family debt, that my dearest existence I owe to the noble house of Glencairn!

I was about to say, my lady, that if think the poem you may venture to see the light, I would, in some way or other, give it to the world.

R. B.

The poem inclosed was the Lament for James Earl of Glencairn.-M.

No. CCXI.

TO MR AINSLIE.

ELLISLAND, 1791.

MY DEAR AINSLIE,

CAN you minister to a mind diseased? can you, amid the horrors of penitence, regret, remorse, head-ache, nausea, and all the rest of the damned hounds of hell, that beset a poor wretch, who has been guilty of the sin of drunkenness -can you speak peace to a troubled soul?

Miserable perdu that I am, I have tried every thing that used to amuse me, but in vain : here must I sit, a monument of the vengeance laid up in store for the wicked, slowly counting every chick of the clock as it slowly, slowly, numbers over these lazy scoundrels of hours, who, damn them, are ranked up before me, every one at his neighbour's backside, and every one with a burthen of anguish on his back, to pour on my devoted head-and there is none to pity me. My wife scolds me! my business torments me, and my sins come staring me in the face, every one telling a more bitter tale than his fellow.-When I tell you even *** has lost its power to please, you will guess something of my hell within, and all around me-I began Elibanks and Elibraes, but the stanzas fell unenjoyed, and unfinished from my listless tongue at last I luckily thought of reading over an old letter of yours, that lay by me in my book-case, and I felt something for the first time since I opened my eyes, of pleasurable existence. -Well-I begin to breathe a little, since I began to write to you. How are you, and what are you doing? How goes Law? Apropos, for connexion's sake do not address to me supervisor, for that is an honour I cannot pretend to-I am on the list, as we call it, for a supervisor, and will be called out by and bye to act as one; but at present, I am a simple gauger, tho' t'other day I got an appointment to an excise