ber; I hate delays in little marks of friendship, as I hate dissimulation in the language of the heart. I am determined to pay Charlotte a poetic compliment, if I could hit on some glorious old Scotch air, in number second. You will see a small attempt on a shred of paper in the book ; but though Dr. Blacklock commended it very highly, I am not just satisfied with it myself. I intend to make it description of some kind: the whining cant of love, except in real passion, and by a masterly hand, is to me as insufferable as the preaching cant of old Father Smeaton, Whigminister at Kilmaurs. Darts, flames, cupids, loves, graces, and all that farrago, are just a Mauchline****—a senseless rabble.

I got an excellent poetic epistle yesternight from the old, venerable author of Tullochgorum, John of Badenyon, &c. I suppose you know he is a clergyman. It is by far the finest poetic compliment I ever got. I will send you a copy of

it.

I go on Thursday or Friday to Dumfries to wait on Mr. Miller about his farms.-Do tell that to lady M'Kenzie, that she may give me credit for a little wisdom. I wisdom dwell with prudence.' What a blessed fire side! How happy should I be to pass a winter evening under their venerable roof! and smoke a pipe of tobacco, or drink water-gruel with them! What solemn, lengthened, laughter-quashing gravity of phiz! What sage remarks on the good-for-nothing sons and daughters of indiscretion and folly! And

Of the Scots Musical Museum.

what frugal lessons, as we straightened the fireside circle, on the uses of the poker and tongs!

Miss N. is very well, and begs to be remembered in the old way to you. I used all my eloquence, all the persuasive flourishes of the hand, and heart-melting modulation of periods in my power, to urge her out to Harvieston, but all in vain. My rhetoric seems quite to have lost its effect on the lovely half of mankind. I have seen the day-but that is a tale of other years.'-In my conscience I believe that my heart has been so oft on fire that it is absolutely vitrified. I look on the sex with something like the admiration with which I regard the starry sky in a frosty December night. I admire the beauty of the Creator's workmanship; I am charmed with the wild but graceful eccentricity of their motions, and-wish them good night. I mean this with respect to a certain passion dont j'ai eu l'honneur d'etre un miserable esclave: as for friendship, you and Charlotte have given me pleasure, permanent pleasure, which the world cannot give, nor take away,' I hope; and which will outlast the heavens and the earth.

No. 256.

TO THE SAME.

Without date.

I HAVE been at Dumfries, and at one

visit more shall be decided about a farm in that

country. I am rather hopeless in it; but as my
brother is an excellent farmer, and is, besides, an
exceedingly prudent, sober man, (qualities which
are only a younger brother's fortune in our family,)
I am determined, if my Dumfries business fail
me, to return into partnership with him, and at
our leisure take another farm in the neighbour-
hood. I assure you I look for high compliments
from you and Charlotte on this very sage
very sage instance
of my unfathomable, incomprehensible wisdom.
Talking of Charlotte, I must tell her that I have
to the best of my power, paid her a poetic com-
pliment, now compleated. The air is admirable:
true old Highland. It was the tune of a Galic
song which an Inverness lady sung me when I
was there; and I was so charmed with it that I
begged her to write me a set of it from her sing-
ing; for it had never been set before. I am fixed
that it shall go in Johnson's next number; so
Charlotte and you need not spend your precious
time in contradicting me. I won't say the poetry
is first-rate; though I am convinced it is very
well: and, what is not always the case with com-
pliments to ladies, it is not only sincere but just.

Here follows the song of the Banks of the Devon.'
See Poems, p. 443.

No. 257.

TO THE SAME.

Edinburgh, Nov. 21, 1787.

I HAVE one vexatious fault to the kindly-welcome, well filled sheet which I owe to your and Charlotte's goodness-it contains too much sense, sentiment, and good-spelling. It is impossible that even you two, whom I declare to my God, I will give credit for any degree of excellence the sex are capable of attaining; it is impossible you can go on to correspond at that rate; so like those who, Shenstone says, retire because they have made a good speech, I shall after a few letters hear no more of you. I insist that you shall write whatever comes first: what you see, what you read, what you hear, what you admire, what you dislike; trifles, bagatelles, nonsense; or to fill up a corner, e'en put down a laugh at full length. Now none of your polite hints about flattery: I leave that to your lovers, if you have or shall have any though thank heaven I have found at last two girls who can be luxuriantly happy in their own minds and with one another, without that commonly necessary appendage to female bliss, A LOVER.

Charlotte and you are just two favourite resting places for my soul in her wandering through the weary, thorny wilderness of this world-God knows I am ill-fitted for the struggle: I glory in being a poet, and I want to be thought a wise

man-1 would fondly be generous, and I wish to be rich. After all, I am afraid I am a lost subject. 'Some folk hae a hantle o' fauts, an' I'm but a ne'er-do-weel.'

Afternoon.-To close the melancholy reflections at the end of last sheet, I shall just add a piece of devotion, commonly known in Carrick, by the title of the Wabster's grace.'

'Some say we're thieves, and e'en sae are we,

Some say we lie, and e'en sae do we!

Gude forgie us, an' I hope sae will he!

-Up and to your looms, lads.'

No. 258.

TO THE SAME.

Edinburgh, Dec. 12th, 1787.

I AM here under the care of a surgeon,

with a bruised limb extended on a cushion; and the tints of my mind vying with the livid horror preceding a midnight thunder-storm. A drunken coachman was the cause of the first, and incomparably the lightest evil; misfortune, bodily constitution, hell and myself have formed a Quadruple Alliance' to guarantee the other. I got my fall on Saturday, and am getting slowly better.

I have taken tooth and nail to the bible, and am got through the five books of Moses, and half way in Joshua. It is really a glorious book. I sent for my book-binder to-day, and ordered him to get me an octavo bible in sheets, the best paper