Mr Corbet can be of little service to me at present; at least I should be shy of applying. I cannot possibly be settled as a supervisor, for several years. I must wait the rotation of the list, and there are twenty names before mine.—I might indeed get a job of officiating, where a settled supervisor was ill, or aged; but that hauls me from my family, as I could not remove them on such an uncertainty. Besides, some envious, malicious devil, has raised a little demur on my political principles, and I wish to let that matter settle before I offer myself too much in the eye of my supervisors. I have set, henceforth, a seal on my lips, as to these unlucky politics; but to you, I must breathe my sentiments. In this, as in every thing else, I shall show the undisguised emotions of my soul. War I deprecate misery and ruin to thousands, are in the blast that announces the destructive demon.

R. B.

No. CCXXVII.

TO MR CUNNINGHAM.

3d March, 1793.

SINCE I wrote to you the last lugubrious sheet, I have not had time to write you farther. When I say that I had not time, that, as usual, means, that the three demons, indolence, business, and ennui, have so completely shared my hours among them, as not to leave me a five minutes' fragment to take up a pen in.

if I make a peaceful voyage on a smooth sea and with no mutiny on board? To a lady (I have it from herself), who remonstrated with him on his danger from drink, and the pursuits of some of his associates, he replied, Madam, they would not thank me for my company, if I did not drink with them.-I must give them a slice of my constitution.' How much to be regretted that he did not give them thinner slices of his constitution, that it might have lasted longer!"-Cromek.

Thank heaven, I feel my spirits buoying upwards with the renovating year. Now I shall in good earnest take up Thomson's songs. I dare say he thinks I have used him unkindly, and I must own with too much appearance of truth. Apropos, do you know the much admired old Highland air called the Sutor's Dochter?' It is a firstrate favourite of mine, and I have written what I reckon one of my best songs to it. I will send it to you as it was sung with great applause in some fashionable circles by Major Robertson, of Lude, who was here with his corps.

There is one commission that I must trouble you with. I lately lost a valuable seal, a present from a departed friend, which vexes me much.

I have gotten one of your Highland pebbles, which I fancy would make a very decent one; and I want to cut my armorial bearing on it; will you be so obliging as inquire what will be the expense of such a business? I do not know that my name is matriculated, as the heralds call it, at all; but I have invented arms for myself, so you know I shall be chief of the name; and, by courtesy of Scotland, will likewise be entitled to supporters. These, however, I do not intend having on my seal. I am a bit of a herald, and shall give you, secundum artem, my arms. On a field, azure, a holly bush, seeded, proper, in base; a shepherd's pipe and crook, saltier-wise, also proper, in chief. On a wreath of the colours, a wood-lark perching on a sprig of bay-tree, proper, for crest. Two mottoes; round the top of the crest, Wood notes wild; at the bottom of the shield, in the usual place, Better a wee bush than nae bield. By the shepherd's pipe and crook I do not mean the nonsense of painters of Arcadia, but a Stock and Horn, and a Club, such as you see at the head of Allan Ramsay, in Allan's quarto edition of the Gentle Shepherd.' By the bye, do you know Allan? He must be a man of very great genius -Why is he not more known?-Has he no patrons ? or do "Poverty's cold wind and crushing rain beat keen and heavy" on him? I once, and but once, got a glance

of that noble edition of the noblest pastoral in the world: and dear as it was, I mean, dear as to my pocket, I would have bought it; but I was told that it was printed and engraved for subscribers only. He is the only artist who has hit genuine pastoral costume. What, my dear Cunningham, is there in riches, that they narrow and harden the heart so? I think, that were I as rich as the sun, I should be as generous as the day; but as I have no reason to imagine my soul a nobler one than any other man's, I must conclude that wealth imparts a bird-lime quality to the possessor, at which the man, in his native poverty, would have revolted. What has led me to this, is the idea of such merit as Mr Allan possesses, and such riches as a nabob or government contractor possesses, and why they do not form a mutual league. Let wealth shelter and cherish unprotected merit, and the gratitude and celebrity of that merit will richly repay it.

R. B.*

* "The seal with the arms which the ingenious poet invented for his house was carefully cut in Edinburgh and hung at his watch for several years. It is still in the family and regarded as

a relick.

"That Burns admired such a painter as Allan was to be expected: they both wrought on nature of Scottish growth, and both excelled in pictures of humour and glee. 'As an artist, however, Allan's merits are of a limited nature; he neither excelled in fine drawing nor in harmonious colouring, and grace and grandeur were beyond his reach. He painted portraits, which are chiefly remarkable for a strong homely resemblance: he painted landscapes, but these want light and air; and he attempted the historical, but, save in one picture, The Corinthian Maid,' all his efforts in that way were failures. His genius lay in expression, especially in grave humour and open drollery. Yet it would be difficult perhaps to name one of his pictures where nature is not overcharged: he could not stop his hand till he had driven his subject into the debatable land that lies between truth and caricature. He is among painters, what Allan Ramsay is among poets, a fellow of infinite humour, and excelling in all manner of rustic drollery, but deficient in fine sensibility of conception, and little acquainted with lofty emotion or high imagination."

"To the above brief character which I wrote for the Lives of

MADAM,

No. CCXXVIII.

TO MISS BENSON,

NOW MRS BASIL MONTAGU.

DUMFRIES, 21st March, 1793.

AMONG many things for which I envy those hale, longlived old fellows before the flood, is this in particular, that when they met with any body after their own heart, they had a charming long prospect of many, many happy meetings with them in after-life.

Now, in this short, stormy, winter day of our fleeting existence, when you now and then, in the Chapter of Accidents, meet an individual whose acquaintance is a real acquisition, there are all the probabilities against you, that you shall never meet with that valued character more. On the other hand, brief as this miserable being is, it is none of the least of the miseries belonging to it, that if there is any miscreant whom you hate, or creature whom you despise, the ill-run of the chances shall be so against you, that in the over-takings, turnings, and jostlings of life, pop, at some unlucky corner, eternally comes the wretch upon you, and will not allow your indignation or contempt a moment's repose. As I am a sturdy believer in the powers of darkness, I take these to be the doings of that old author of

the British Artists, in Murray's Family Library, may be added, from the same source, that Allan was born at Alloa, in Stirlingshire; studied in Glasgow and at Rome; returned to his native land, became Master of the Edinburgh Academy, and died there 6th August, 1796, in the fifty-third year of his age. In person

he was under the middle size, his form slender, his face coarse and long, and his hair of the colour of sand. His looks were mean and unpromising, till he was in company to his liking, when his large grey eyes grew bright and penetrating, his manners pleasing, and his conversation sprightly and humorous, inclining to satire, and replete with observation and anecdote."- Cunningham.

mischief, the devil. It is well-known that he has some kind of short-hand way of taking down our thoughts, and I make no doubt that he is perfectly acquainted with my sentiments respecting Miss Benson: how much I admired her abilities and valued her worth, and how very fortunate I thought myself in her acquaintance. For this last reason, my dear Madam, I must entertain no hopes of the very great pleasure of meeting with you again.

Miss Hamilton tells me that she is sending a packet to you, and I beg leave to send you the inclosed sonnet, though, to tell you the real truth, the sonnet is a mere pretence, that I may have the opportunity of declaring with how much respectful esteem I have the honour to be, &c. R. B.

SIR,

No. CCXXIX.

TO PATRICK MILLER, ESQ.

OF DALSWINTON.

DUMFRIES, April, 1793.

My poems having just come out in another edition, will you do me the honour to accept of a copy ? A mark of my gratitude to you, as a gentleman to whose goodness I have been much indebted; of my respect for you, as a patriot who, in a venal, sliding age, stands forth the champion of the liberties of my country; and of my veneration for you, as a man, whose benevolence of heart does honour to human nature.

There was a time, Sir, when I was your dependant: this language then would have been like the vile incense of flattery-I could not have used it.-Now that connexion is at

* Alluding to the time when he held the farm of Ellisland, as tenant to Mr Miller.