certainly have transcribed some of my rhyming things for you. The Misses Baillie I have seen in Edinburgh. "Fair and lovely are thy works, Lord God Almighty! Who would not praise thee for these thy gifts in thy goodness to the sons of men!" It needed not your fine taste to admire them. I declare, one day I had the honour of dining at Mr. Baillie's, I was almost in the predicament of the children of Israel, when they could not look on Moses' face for the glory that shone in it when he descended from Mount Sinai. I did once write a poetic address from the Falls of Bruar to his Grace of Athole, when I was in the Highlands. When you return to Scotland, let me know, and I will send such of my pieces as please myself best. I return to Mauchline in about ten days. My compliments to Mr. Purden. I am in truth, but at present in haste, No. CXIX. Yours,-R. B. TO MR. PETER HILL. MY DEAR HILL: I SHALL say nothing to your mad present you have so long and often been of important service to me, and I suppose you mean to go on conferring obligations until I shall not be able to lift up my face before you. In the mean time as Sir Roger de Coverley, because it happened to be a cold day in which he made his will, ordered his servants great coats for mourning, so, because I have been this week plagued with an indigestion, I have sent you by the carrier a fine old ewe-milk cheese.* Indigestion is the devil: nay, 'tis the devil and all. It besets a man in every one of his senses. I lose my appetite at the sight of successful knavery, and sicken to loathing at the noise and nonsense of self-important folly. When the hollow-hearted wretch takes me by the hand, the feeling spoils my dinner; the proud man's wine so offends my palate that it chokes me in the gullet; and the pulvilised, feathered, pert coxcomb, is so disgustful in my nostril that my stomach turns. If ever you have any of these disagreeable sensations, let me prescribe for you patience and a bit of my cheese. I know that you are no niggard of good things among your friends, and some of them are in much need of a slice. There, in my eyes, is our friend Smellie; a man positively of the first abilities and greatest [Peter Hill was a bookseller, and the present to which the Poet alludes was some valuable books. Burns felt unwilling to lie under obligations: and hence his return in "a fine old ewe milk cheese,' a savoury morsel that no doubt smacked of the ewe-bughts.] strength of mind, as well as one of the best hearts and keenest wits that I have ever met with; when you see him, as, alas! he too is smarting at the pinch of distressful circumstances, aggravated by the sneer of contumelious greatness-a bit of my cheese alone will not cure him, but if you add a tankard of brown stout, and superadd a magnum of right Oporto, you will see his sorrows vanish like the morning mist before the summer sun. Candlish, the earliest friend, except my only brother, that I have on earth, and one of the worthiest fellows that ever any man called by ! the name of friend, if a luncheon of my cheese would help to rid him of some of his superabundant modesty, you would do well to give it him. David,+ with his Courant, comes, too, across my recollection, and I beg you will help him. largely from the said ewe-milk cheese, to enable him to digest those bedaubing paragraphs with which he is eternally larding the lean characters of certain great men in a certain great town. I grant you the periods are very well turned; so, a fresh egg is a very good thing, but when thrown at a man in a pillory, it does not at all improve his figure, not to mention the irreparable loss of the egg. My facetious friend Dunbar I would wish also to be a partaker: not to digest his spleen, for that he laughs off, but to digest his last night's wine at the last field-day of the Crochallan corps. Among our common friends I must not forget one of the dearest of them-Cunningham. The brutality, insolence, and selfishness of a world unworthy of having such a fellow as he is in it, I know, sticks in his stomach, and if you can · help him to anything that will make him a little easier on that score, it will be very obliging. As to honest John Somerville, he is such a contented, happy man, that I know not what can annoy him, except, perhaps, he may not have got the better of a parcel of modest apecdotes which a certain poet gave him one night at supper, the last time the said poet was in town. Though I have mentioned so many men of law, I shall have nothing to do with them pro- ! fessedly-the faculty are beyond my prescription. As to their clients that is another thing; God knows they have much to digest! The clergy I pass by; their profundity of erudition, and their liberality of sentiment; their total want of pride, and their detestation of hypocrisy, are so proverbially notorious as to place them far, far above either my praise or censure. I was going to mention a man of worth, + Mr. David Ramsay, printer of the Edinburgh Evening Courant. A club of choice spirits, already alluded to. WHEN I had the honour of being introduced to you at Athole-house, I did not think so soon of asking a favour of you. When Lear, in Shakspeare, asked Old Kent, why he wished to be in his service, he answers, "Because you have that in your face which I would fain call master." For some such reason, Sir, do I now solicit your patronage. You know, I dare say, of an application I lately made to your Board to be admitted an officer of Excise. I have, according to form, been examined by a supervisor, and to-day I gave in his certificate, with a request for an order for instructions. In this affair, if I succeed, I am afraid I shall but too much need a patronizing friend. Propriety of conduct as a man, and fidelity and attention as an officer, I dare engage for; but with any thing like business, except manual labour, I am totally unacquainted. I had intended to have closed my late appearance on the stage of life, in the character of a country farmer; but after discharging some filial and fraternal claims, I find I could only fight for existence in that miserable manner which I have lived to see throw a venerable parent into the jaws of a jail; whence death, the poor man's last, and often best, friend, rescued him.* I know, Sir, that to need your goodness is to have a claim on it; may I, therefore, beg your patronage to forward me in this affair, till I be appointed to a division; where, by the help of rigid economy, I will try to support that independence so dear to my soul, but which has been too often so distant from my situation. R. B. * [The filial and fraternal claims to which this letter refers were as follows. Two hundred pounds lent to his brother Gilbert, to enable him to fight out the remainder of the lease of Mossgiel and a considerable sum given to his mother for her own contingencies. Burns was ever a dutiful son and a kind brother.] [The verses inclosed were the lines written in Friars'Carse Hermitage ;-"the first fruits," says the Poet else No. CXXI. TO WILLIAM CRUIKSHANK. Ellisland, August, 1788. I HAVE not room, my dear friend, to answer all the particulars of your last kind letter. I shall be in Edinburgh on some business very three, in town, we shall discuss matters vivá soon; and, as I shall be two days, or perhaps voce. My knee, I believe, will never be entirely well; and an unlucky fall this winter has made it still worse. I well remember the circumstance you allude to, respecting Creech's opinion of Mr. Nicol; but, as the first gentleman owes me still about fifty pounds, I dare not meddle in the affair. It gave me a very heavy heart to read such accounts of the consequence of your quarrel with that puritanic, rotten-hearted, hell-commissioned scoundrel, A- —. If, notwithstanding your unprecedented industry in public, and your irreproachable conduct in private life, he still has you so much in his power, what ruin may he not bring on some others I could name? Many and happy returns of seasons to you, with your dearest and worthiest friend, and the lovely little pledge of your happy union. May the great Author of life, and of every enjoyment that can render life delightful, make her that comfortable blessing to you both, which you so ardently wish for, and which, allow me to say, you so well deserve! Glance over the foregoing verses, and let me have your blots! † Adieu. No. CXXII. TO MRS. DUNLOP. R. B. Mauchline, August 2nd, 1788. HONOURED MADAM: YOUR kind letter welcomed me, yesternight, to Ayr-shire. I am, indeed, seriously angry with you at the quantum of your luckpenny; but, vexed and hurt as I was, I could not help laughing very heartily at the noble lord's apology for the missed napkin. I would write you from Nithsdale, and give you my direction there, but I have scarce an opportunity of calling at a post-office once in a fortnight. I am six miles from Dumfries, am where, "of my intercourse with the Nithsdale Muse." Some of his best poems were written on the Banks of the Nith; viz., the "Lines on Friars'-Carse Hermitage;" the verses "On Captain Grose's Peregrinations;" "The Whistle;" the "Elegy on Captain Matthew Henderson," and "Tam o' Shanter," with many exquisite songs. The walk in which the Poet loved to muse is still shewn and reverenced at Ellisland.] scarcely ever in it myself, and, as yet, have mons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, little acquaintance in the neighbourhood. Be-answering a speech from the best of kings! I sides, I am now very busy on my farmı, build- express myself in the fulness of my heart, and ing a dwelling-house; as at present I am almost may, perhaps, be guilty of neglecting some of an evangelical man in Nithsdale, for I have your kind inquiries; but not, from your very scarce "where to lay my head." odd reason, that I do not read your letters. All your epistles for several months have cost me nothing, except a swelling throb of gratitude, or a deep-felt sentiment of veneration. There are some passages in your last that brought tears in my eyes. "The heart knoweth its own sorrows, and a stranger intermeddleth not therewith." The repository of these "sorrows of the heart" is a kind of sanctum sanctorum and 'tis only a chosen friend, and that, too, at particular, sacred times, who dares enter into them: "Heaven oft tears the bosom-chords That nature finest strung.' When Mrs. Burns, Madam, first found herself "as women wish to be who love their lords," as I loved her nearly to distraction, we took steps for a private marriage. Her parents got the hint; and not only forbade me her company and their house, but, on my rumoured West Indian voyage, got a warrant to put me You will excuse this quotation for the sake in jail, till I should find security in my aboutof the author. Instead of entering on this sub-to-be paternal relation. You know my lucky ject farther, I shall transcribe you a few lines I reverse of fortune. On my eclatant return to wrote in a hermitage, belonging to a gentleman Mauchline, I was made very welcome to visit in my Nithsdale neighbourhood. They are my girl. The usual consequences began to bealmost the only favours the muses have con- tray her; and, as I was at that time laid up a ferred on me in that country.-[See Lines cripple in Edinburgh, she was turned, literally written in Friars-Carse Hermitage, page 278.] turned out of doors, and I wrote to a friend to Since I am in the way of transcribing, the shelter her till my return, when our marriage following were the production of yesterday as was declared. Her happiness or misery were I jogged through the wild hills of New Cum- in my hands, and who could trifle with such a nock. I intend inserting them, or something deposit? like them, in an epistle I am going to write to the gentleman on whose friendship my Excise hopes depend, Mr. Graham of Fintray, one of the worthiest and most accomplished gentlemen, not only of this country, but, I will dare to say it, of this age. The following are just the first crude thoughts "unhousel'd, unanointed, unanneal'd:" I can easily fancy a more agreeable companion for my journey of life; but, upon my honour, I have never seen the individual in stance. Circumstanced as I am, I could never have got a female partner for life who could have entered into my favourite studies, relished my favourite authors, &c., without probably entailing on me at the same time expensive living, fantastic caprice, perhaps apish affectation, with all the other blessed boarding-school acquiresometimes to be found among females of the ments, which (pardonnez moi, Madame,) are upper ranks, but almost universally pervade ¦ the misses of the would-be gentry. I like your way in your church-yard lucubrations. Thoughts that are the spontaneous result of accidental situations, either respecting health, place, or company, have often a strength and always an originality that would in vain be looked for in fancied circumstances and studied paragraphs. For me, I have often thought of keeping a letter, in progression by me, to send you when the sheet was written out. Now I talk of sheets, I must tell you, my reason for writing to you on paper of this! kind is my pruriency of writing to you at large. A page of post is on such a dis-social, narrowminded scale, that I cannot abide it; and double letters, at least in my miscellaneous reverie manner, are a monstrous tax in a close correspondence.* R. B. [In Burns's own Memoranda are these words: I am more and more pleased with the step I took respecting my Jean. No. CXXIV. TO THE SAME. Ellisland, 16th August, 1788. I AM in a fine disposition, my honoured friend, to send you an elegiac epistle; and want only genius to make it quite Shenstonian: "Why droops my heart with fancied woes forlorn? Why sinks my soul beneath each wintry sky?" My increasing cares in this, as yet, strange country-gloomy conjectures in the dark vista of futurity-consciousness of my own inability for the struggle of the world-my broadened mark to misfortune in a wife and children;-I could indulge these reflections, till my humour should ferment into the most acid chagrin, that would corrode the very thread of life. To counterwork these baneful feelings, I have sat down to write to you; as I declare upon my soul I always find that the most sovereign balm for my wounded spirit. I was yesterday at Mr. Miller's to dinner, for the first time. My reception was quite to my mind: from the lady of the house quite flattering. She sometimes hits on a couplet or two, impromptu. She repeated one or two to the admiration of all present. My suffrage, as a professional man, was expected: I for once went agonizing over the belly of my conscience. Pardon me, ye, my adored household gods, independence of spirit, and integrity of soul! In the course of conversation, "Johnson's Musical Museum,' a collection of Scottish songs with the music, was talked of. We got a song on the harpsichord, beginning, "Raving winds around her blowing."* The air was much admired: the lady of the house asked me whose were the words. "Mine, Madam-they are indeed my very best verses;' she took not the smallest notice of them! The old Scottish proverb says well, "king's chaff is better than ither folks' corn." I was going to make a New Testament quotation about "casting pearls," but that would be too virulent, for the lady is actually a woman of sense and taste. After all that has been said on the other side of the question, man is by no means a happy creature, I do not speak of the selected few, favoured by partial heaven, whose souls are tuned to gladness amid riches and honours, and prudence and wisdom. I speak of the neglected many, whose nerves, whose sinews, whose days are sold to the minions of fortune. If I thought you had never seen it, I would transcribe for you a stanza of an old Scottish ballad, called, "The Life and Age of Man;" beginning thus: I had an old grand-uncle, with whom my mother lived awhile in her girlish years; the good old man, for such he was, was long blind ere he died, during which time his highest enjoyment was to sit down and cry, while my mother would sing the simple old song of "The Life and Age of Man." It is this way of thinking, it is these melancholy truths, that make religion so precious to the poor, miserable children of men.-If it is a mere phantom, existing only in the heated imagination of enthusiasm, "What truth on earth so precious as the lie!" My idle reasonings sometimes make me a little sceptical, but the necessities of my heart always give the cold philosophisings the lie. Who looks for the heart weaned from earth; the soul affianced to her God; the correspondence fixed with heaven; the pious supplication and devout thanksgiving, constant as the vicissitudes of even and morn; who thinks to meet with these in the Court, the palace, in the glare of public life? No: to find them in their precious importance and divine efficacy, we must search among the obscure recesses of disappointment, affliction, poverty, and distress. I am sure, dear Madam, you are now more than pleased with the length of my letters. I return to Ayr-shire the middle of next week: and it quickens my pace to think that there will be a letter from you waiting me there. I must be here again very soon for my harvest. R. B. M'Lehose, Miss Hamilton, Mrs. Dunlop, and many others. His whole conduct on this point only manifests that when, after some experience of Edinburgh society, he had to content himself with his village mistress, he did not make up his mind to the union without some degree of soreness, and that the cause of this soreness was his preference of those very elegancies in the female character which he affected to condemn. Under no other feeling, perhaps, could so sensible a man as Burns have expressed disregard for so important a matter as the intellect of the woman who was to be his wife and the mother of his children.-CHAMBERS.] * [See page 371.] THERE is not in Edinburgh above the number of the graces whose letters would have given me so much pleasure as yours of the 3d instant, which only reached me yesternight. I am here on my farm, busy with my harvest; but for all that most pleasurable part of life called SOCIAL COMMUNICATION, I am here at the very elbow of existence. The only things that are to be found in this country, in any degree of perfection, are stupidity and canting. Prose, they only know in graces, prayers, &c., and the value of these they estimate as they do their plaiding webs-by the ell! As for the muses, they have as much an idea of a rhinoceros as of a poet. For my old capricious, but good-natured, hussy of a muse "By banks of Nith I sat and wept I am generally about half my time in Ayr-shire with my darling Jean," and then I, at lucid intervals, throw my horny fist across my becobwebbed lyre, much in the same manner as an old wife throws her hand across the spokes of her spinning-wheel. I will send the "Fortunate Shepherdess," as soon as I return to Ayr-shire, for there I keep it with other precious treasure. I shall send it by a careful hand, as I would not for any thing it should be mislaid or lost. I do not wish to serve you from any benevolence, or other grave Christian virtue; 'tis purely a selfish gratification of my own feelings whenever I think of you. If your better functions would give you leisure to write me, I should be extremely happy; that is to say, if you neither keep nor look for a regular correspondence. I hate the idea of being obliged to write a letter. I sometimes write a friend twice a week, at other times once a quarter. I am exceedingly pleased with your fancy in making the author you mention place a map of Iceland instead of his portrait before his works: 'twas a glorious idea. Could you conveniently do me one thing?whenever you finish any head I should like to have a proof copy of it. I might tell you a long story about your fine genius; but, as what every body knows cannot have escaped you, I shall not say one syllable about it. R. B. No. CXXVI. TO MISS CHALMERS, EDINBURGH. Ellisland, near Dumfries, Sept. 16th, 1788. WHERE are you? and how are you? and is Lady Mackenzie recovering her health? for I have had but one solitary letter from you. I will not think you have forgot me, Madam; and, for my part “When thee, Jerusalem, I forget, Skill part from my right hand!" "My heart is not of that rock, nor my soul careless as that sea." I do not make my progress among mankind as a bowl does among its fellows-rolling through the crowd without bearing away any mark or impression, except where they hit in hostile collision. I can I am here, driven in with my harvest-folks by bad weather; and as you and your sister once did me the honour of interesting yourselves much à l'egard de moi, I sit down to beg the continuation of your goodness. truly say that, all the exterior of life apart, I never saw two, whose esteem flattered the nobler feelings of my soul-I will not say more, but so much, as Lady Mackenzie and Miss Chalmers. When I think of you-hearts the best, minds the noblest of human kind unfortunate even in the shades of life-when I think I have met with you, and have lived more of real life with you in eight days than I can do with almost anybody I meet with in eight years-when I think on the improbability of meeting you in this world again-I could sit down and cry like a child! If ever you honoured me with a place in your esteem, I trust I can now plead more desert. I am secure against that crushing grip of iron poverty, which, alas! is less or more fatal to the native worth and purity of, I fear, the noblest souls; and a late important step in my life has kindly taken me out of the way of those ungrateful iniquities, which, however overlooked in fashionable license, or varnished in fashionable phrase, are indeed but lighter and deeper shades of VILLANY. Shortly after my last return to Ayr-shire, I married "my Jean." This was not in consequence of the attachment of romance, perhaps: but I had a long and much-loved fellowcreature's happiness or misery in my determination, and I durst not trifle with so important a deposit. Nor have I any cause to repent it. If I have not got polite tattle, modish manners, and fashionable dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse of boardingschool affectation: and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest |