ed, I inclose you two poems I have carded and spun since I passed Glenbuck. One blank in the address to Edinburgh, "Fair B-," is the heavenly Miss Burnet, daughter to Lord Monboddo, at whose house I have had the honour to be more than once. There has not been any thing nearly like her, in all the combinations of beauty, grace, and goodness, the great Creator has formed, since Milton's Eve on the first day of her existence.

I have sent you a parcel of subscriptionbills; and have written to Mr. Ballantine and Mr. Aiken, to call on you for some of them, if they want them. My direction is-Care of Andrew Bruce, merchant, Bridge-street.

No. X.

To the EARL of EGLINTON.

Edinburgh, January, 1787.

MY LORD,

my

As I have but slender pretensions to philosophy, I cannot rise to the exalted ideas of a citizen of the world; but have all those national prejudices which, I believe, glow peculiarly strong in the breast of a Scotchman. There is scarcely any thing to which I am so feelingly alive, as the honour and welfare of country; and, as a poet, I have no higher enjoyment than singing her sons and daughters. Fate had cast my station in the veriest shades of life; but never did a heart pant more ardently, than mine, to be distinguished: though, till very lately, I looked in vain on every side for a ray of light. It is easy, then, to guess

how

how much I was gratified with the countenance and approbation of one of my country's most illustrious sons, when Mr. Wauchope called on me yesterday on the part of your Lordship. Your munificence, my Lord, certainly deserves my very grateful acknowledgments; but your patronage is a bounty peculiarly suited to my feelings. I am not master enough of the etiquette of life, to know whether there be not some impropriety in troubling your Lordship with my thanks; but my heart whispered me From the emotions of my inmost soul Selfish ingratitude, I hope, I am incapable of; and mercenary servility, I trust, I shall ever have so much honest pride as to detest.

to do it.

I do it.

No.

No. XI.

To MRS. DUNLOP.

MADAM,

Edinburgh, 15th January, 1787.

YOURS of the 9th current, which I am this moment honor'd with, is a deep reproach to me for ungrateful neglect. I will tell you the real truth, for I am miserably awkward at a fib: I wished to have written to Dr. Moore before I wrote to you; but though, every day since I received yours of Dec. 30, the idea, the wish to write to him, has constantly pressed on my thoughts, yet I could not for my soul set about it. I know his fame and character, and I am one of "the sons of little men." To write him a mere matter-of-fact affair, like a merchant's order, would be disgracing the little character I have; and to write the author of The View of Society

4

Society and Manners a letter of sentiment-I declare every artery runs cold at the thought. I shall try, however, to write to him to-morrow or next day. His kind interposition in my behalf I have already experienced, as a gentleman waited on me the other day, on the part of Lord Eglinton, with ten guineas, by way of subscription for two copies of my next edition.

The word you object to in the mention I have made of my glorious countryman and your immortal ancestor, is indeed borrowed from Thomson; but it does not strike me as an improper epithet. I distrusted my own judgment on your finding fault with it, and applied for the opinion of some of the Literati here, who honour me with their critical strictures, and they all allow it to be proper. The song you ask I cannot recollect, and I have not a copy of it. I have not composed any thing on the great Wallace, except what you have seen in print, and the inclosed, which I will print in this edition.* You will see I have mentioned some others of

the name. When I composed my Vision long ago, I had attempted a description of Koyle, of

which

*Stanzas in the Vision, vol. iii. beginning page 103, "By stately tower or palace fair," and ending with the first Duan.

E.