other and more important concerns than studying the brilliancy of wit, or the pathos of sentiment! However, hope is the cordial of the human heart, and I endeavour to cherish it as well as I can.

Let me hear from you as soon as convenient.Your work is a great one; and now that it is near finished, I see, if we were to begin again, two or three things that might be mended; yet I will venture to prophecy, that to future ages your publication will be the text book and standard of Scottish song and music.

I am ashamed to ask another favor of you, because you have been so very good already; but my wife has a very particular friend of hers, a young lady who sings well, to whom she wishes to present the Scots Musical Museum.* If you

have

* In this humble and delicate manner did poor Burns ask for a copy of a work of which he was principally the founder, and to which he had contributed, gratuitously, not less than 184 original, altered, and collected songs! The Editor has seen 180 transcribed by his own hand, for the Museum.

This Letter was written on the 4th of July, the Poet died on the 21st. No other letters of this interesting pe

riod

have a spare copy, will you be so obliging as to send it by the very first Fly, as I am anxious to have it soon.

Yours ever,

ROBERT BURNS.

riod have been discovered, except one addressed to Mrs. Dunlop, of the 12th of July, which Dr. Currie very properly supposes to be the last production of the dying

Bard.

E.

STRICTURES

ON

SCOTTISH SONGS AND BALLADS,

ANCIENT AND MODERN;

WITH

ANECDOTES OF THEIR AUTHORS.

"There needs na' be so great a phrase
Wi' dringing dull Italian lays,
I wad na gi'e our ain Strathspeys
For half a hundred score o' em:
They're douff and dowie at the best,
Douff and dowie, douff and dowie;
They're douff and dowie at the best,
Wi' a' their variorum:

They're douff and dowie at the best,
Their Allegros, and a' the rest,
They cannot please a Scottish taste,
Compar'd wi' Tullochgorum."

Rev. John Skinner.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The chief part of the following Remarks on Scottish Songs and Ballads exist in the hand-writing of ROBERT BURNS, in an interleaved Copy, in 4 Volumes, Octavo, of "JOHNSON'S SCOTS MUSICAL MUSEUM." They were written by the Poet for CAPTAIN RIDDEL, of GLENRIDDEL, whose Autograph the Volumes bear. These valuable Volumes were left by MRS. RIDDEL, to her Niece, MISS ELIZA BAYLEY, of MANCHESTER, by whose kindness the Editor is enabled to give to the Public transcripts of this amusing and miscellaneous Collection.

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF THE SONGS INTRODUCED

IN THE FOLLOWING REMARKS.