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gloriously formed-for all the most refined luxuries of love-Why was that heart ever wrung? O Clarinda! shall we not meet in a state, some yet unknown state of being, where the lavish hand of plenty shall minister to the highest wish of benevolence; and where the chill north-wind of prudence shall never blow over the flowery fields of enjoyment? If we do not, man was made in vain! I deserved most of the unhappy hours that have lingered over my head; they were the wages of my labour: but what unprovoked demon, malignant as hell, stole on the confidence of unmistrusting busy Fate, and dashed your cup of life with undeserved sorrow?

Let me know how long your stay will be out of town; I shall count the hours till you inform me of your return. Cursed etiquette forbids your seeing me just now; and so soon as I can walk I must bid Edinburgh adieu. Lord, why was I born to see misery which I cannot relieve, and to meet with friends whom I cannot enjoy? I look back with the pang of unavailing avarice on my loss in not knowing you sooner: all last winter, these three months past, what luxury of intercourse have I not lost! Perhaps, though, 'twas better for my peace. You see I am either above, or incapable of, dissimulation. I believe it is want of that particular genius. I despise design, because I want either coolness or wisdom to be capable of it. I am interrupted.-Adieu! my dear Clarinda! SYLVANDER.

NO. LXXXVI. (59)

TO THE SAME

You are right, my dear Clarinda; a friendly correspondence goes for nothing, except one writes his or her undisguised sentiments. Yours please me for their intrinsic merit, as well as because they are yours, which, I assure you, is to me a high recommendation. Your religious sentiments, Madam, I revere. If you have, on some suspicious evidence, from some lying oracle, learned that I despise or ridicule so sacredly important a matter as real religion, you have, my Clarinda, much misconstrued your friend. "I am not mad, most noble Festus!" Have you ever met a perfect character? Do we not sometimes rather exchange faults than get rid of them? For instance, I am perhaps tired with, and shocked at, a life too much the prey of giddy inconsistencies and

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thoughtless follies; by degrees I grow sober, prudent, and statedly pious-I say statedly, because the most unaffected devotion is not at all inconsistent with my first characterI join the world in congratulating myself on the happy change. But let me pry more narrowly into this affair. narrowly into this affair. Have Ĩ, at bottom, any thing of a secret pride in these endowments and emendations? Have I nothing of a presbyterian sourness, an hypocritical severity, when I survey my less regular neighbours? In a word, have I missed all those nameless and numberless modifications of indistinct selfishness, which are so near our own eyes that we can scarcely bring them within the sphere of our vision, and which the known spotless cambric of our character hides from the ordinary observer?

My definition of worth is short; truth and humanity respecting our fellow-creatures; reverence and humility in the presence of that Being, my Creator and Preserver, and who, I have every reason to believe, will one day be my Judge. The first part of my definition is the creature of unbiassed instinct; the last is the child of after reflection. Where I found these two essentials, I would gently note, and slightly mention, any attendant flaws-flaws, the marks, the consequences, of human nature.

I can easily enter into the sublime pleasures that your strong imagination and keen sensibility must derive from religion, particularly if a little in the shade of misfortune but I own I cannot, without a marked grudge, see Heaven totally engross so amiable, so charming, a woman as my friend Clarinda; and should be very well pleased at a circumstance that would put it in the power of somebody (happy somebody!) to divide her attention, with all the delicacy and tenderness of an earthly attachment.

You will not easily persuade me that you have not a grammatical knowledge of the English language. So far from being inaccurate, you are eloquent beyond any woman of my acquaintance, except one, whom I wish you knew.

Your last verses to me have so delighted me that I have got an excellent old Scots air that suits the measure, and you shall see them in print in the Scots Musical Museum, a work publishing by a friend of mine in this town. I want four stanzas; you gave me but three, and one of them alluded to an expression in my former letter; so I have taken your first first two verses, with a slight alteration in the second, and have added a third; but you must help me to a fourth. Here they are: the latter half of

the first stanza would have been worthy of not love you, deserves to be damn'd for his

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You know I must deny.

The alteration in the second stanza is no improvement, but there was a slight inaccuracy in your rhyme. The third I only offer to your choice, and have left two words for your determination. The air is The Banks of Spey,' and is most beautiful.

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To-morrow evening I intend taking a chair, and paying a visit at Park Place to a much-valued old friend. If I could be sure of finding you at home (and I will send one of the chairmen to call), I would spend from five to six o'clock with you, as I go past. I

as I

stupidity! He who loves you, and would injure you, deserves to be doubly damn'd for his villany! Adieu. SYLVANDER.

P. S. What would you think of this for a fourth stanza?

Your thought, if love must harbour there,
Conceal it in that thought,

Nor cause me from my bosom tear
The very friend I sought.

NO. LXXXVII.

TO THE SAME.

Monday Evening, 11 o'clock,

January 21st, 1788.

WIY have I not heard from you, Clarinda? To-day I expected it; and before supper, when a letter to me was announced, my heart danced with rapture; but behold, 'twas some fool who had taken it in his head to turn poet, and made me an offering of the first-fruits of his nonsense. "It is not poetry, but prose run mad." Did I ever repeat to you an epigram I made on a Mr. Elphinstone, who has given a translation of Martial, a famous Latin poet ?—The poetry cannot do more at this time, as I have someof Elphinstone can only equal his prose notes. I was sitting in the shop of a merthing on my hand that hurries me much. I propose giving you the first call, my old chant of my acquaintance, waiting somefriend the second, and Miss body; he put Elphinstone into my hand, and return home. Do not break any engage-write it on a blank leaf, which I did. asked my opinion of it; I begged leave to ment for me, as I will spend another evening with you, at any rate, before I leave town. Do not tell me that you are pleased when your friends inform you of faults. I am ignorant what they are; but I am sure they must be such evanescent trifles, compared with your personal and mental accomplishments, that I would despise the ungenerous narrow soul who would notice any shadow of imperfections you may seem to have, any other way than in the most delicate, agreeable raillery. Coarse minds are not aware how much they injure the keenly feeling tie of bosom friendship, when, in their foolish officiousness, they mention what nobody cares for recollecting. People of nice sensiability and generous minds have a certain intrinsic dignity that fires at being trifled with, or lowered, or even too nearly approached.

your

You need make no apology for long letters: I am even with you. Many happy new years to you, charming Clarinda! I can't dissemble, were it to shun perdition. He who sees you as I have done, and does

TO MR. ELPHINSTONE, &c.
O thou, whom poesy abhors!
Whom prose has turned out of doors!
Heard'st thou that groan? proceed no further;
'Twas laurel'd Martial roaring Murther.

I am determined to see you, if at all possible, on Saturday evening. Next week I must sing

The night is my departing night,

The morn's the day I maun awa;
There's neither friend nor foe o' mine,
But wishes that I were awa!
What I hae done, for lack o' wit,

I

never, never, can reca';

I hope ye're a' my friends as yet,

Guid night, and joy be wi' you a'!

If I could see you sooner, I would be so much the happier; but I would not purchase the dearest gratification on earth, if it must be at your expense in worldly censure, far less inward peace!

I shall certainly be ashamed of thus

scrawling whole sheets of incoherence. The only unity (a sad word with poets and critics!) in my ideas is CLARINDA. There my heart "reigns and revels."

"What art thou, Love? whence are those charms,

truth, every word of it; and will give you the just idea of a man whom you have honheartoured oured with your friendship. I am afraid you will hardly be able to make sense of so torn a piece. Your verses I shall muse on deliciously, as I gaze on your image in my in time enough for a week to come. mind's eye, in my heart's core; they will be I am truly happy your head-ache is better.-0, how can pain or evil be so daringly, unfeelingly, cruelly savage as to wound so noble a mind, so lovely a form!

That thus thou bear'st an universal rule? For thee the soldier quits his arms,

The king turns slave, the wise man fool. In vain we chase thee from the field,

And with cool thoughts resist thy yoke; Next tide of blood, alas! we yield;

And all those high resolves are broke!”

I like to have quotations for every occasion. They give one's ideas so pat, and save one the trouble of finding expression adequate to one's feelings. I think it is one of the greatest pleasures, attending a poetic genius, that we can give our woes, cares, joys, loves, &c., an embodied form in verse, which to me is ever immediate ease. Goldsmith says finely of his Muse:

"Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe, Thou found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so."

My limb has been so well to-day, that I have gone up and down stairs often without my staff. To-morrow I hope to walk once again on my own legs to dinner. It is only next street-Adieu.

SYLVANDER.

NO. LXXXVIII.

TO THE SAME.

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I cursed them in my soul; they sacrilegiously disturbed my meditations on her who holds my heart. What a creature is man! A little alarm last night and to-day, that I am mortal, has made such a revolution on Saturday Noon, January 26th, 1788. my spirits! There is no philosophy, no SOME days, some nights, nay, some hours, divinity, comes half so home to the mind. I have no idea of courage that braves heaven. like the "ten righteous persons in Sodom," save the rest of the vapid, tiresome, miser-Tis the wild ravings of an imaginary hero

able months and years of life. One of these

hours, my dear Clarinda blessed me with yesternight.

"One well spent hour,

In such a tender circumstance for friends,
Is better than an age of common time!"
THOMSON.

My favourite feature in Milton's Satan is his manly fortitude in supporting what cannot be remedied-in short, the wild broken fragments of a noble exalted mind in ruins. I meant no more by saying he was a favourite hero of mine.

I mentioned to you my letter to Dr. Moore, giving an account of my life: it is

in bedlam.

hold up my head; but I am happy you do I can no more, Clarinda; I can scarcely not know it, you would be so uneasy. SYLVANDER.

Monday Morning, January 28th, 1788.

I AM, my lovely friend, much better this morning on the whole; but I have a horrid langour on my spirits.

"Sick of the world, and all its joys,

My soul in pining sadness mourns ; Dark scenes of woe my mind employs, The past and present in their turns.

Have you ever met with a saying of the great, and likewise good Mr. Locke, author of the famous Essay on the Human Understanding? He wrote a letter to a friend, directing it "not to be delivered till after my decease:" it ended thus-"I know you loved me when living, and will preserve my memory now I am dead. All the use to be made of it is, that this life affords no solid satisfaction, but in the consciousness of having done well, and the hopes of another life. Adieu! I leave my best wishes with you.-J. LOCKE."

Clarinda, may I reckon on your friendship for life? I think I may. Thou Almighty Preserver of men! thy friendship, which hitherto I have too much neglected, to secure it, shall all the future days and nights of my life, be my steady care! The idea of my

Clarinda follows

“Hide it my heart, within that close disguise, Where mix'd with God's, her lov'd idea lies."

But I fear that inconstancy, the consequent imperfection of human weakness. Shall I meet with a friendship that defies years of absence, and the chances and changes of fortune? Perhaps "such things are;" one honest man I have great hopes from that way but who, except a romance writer, would think on a love that could promise for life, in spite of distance, absence, chance, and change; and that, too, with slender hopes of fruition? For my own part, I can say to myself in both requisitions, "Thou art the man!" I dare, in cool resolve I dare, declare myself that friend, and that lover. If womankind is capable of such things, Clarinda is. I trust that she is I trust that she is; and feel I shall be miserable if she be not. There is not one virtue which gives worth, nor one sentiment which does honour to the sex, that she does not possess, superiorly to any woman I ever saw her exalted mind, aided a little, perhaps, by her situation, is, I think, capable of that nobly-romantic love-enthusiasm.

May I see you on Wednesday evening, my dear angel? The next Wednesday again will, I conjecture, be a hated day to us both. I tremble for censorious remark, for your sake; but in extraordinary cases, may not usual and useful precaution be a little dispensed with? Three evenings, three swiftwinged evenings, with pinions of down, are all the past; I dare not calculate the future. I shall call at Miss's to morrow evening: 'twill be a farewell call.

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What a strange mysterious faculty is that thing called imagination! We have no ideas almost at all of another world; but I have often amused myself with visionary schemes of what happiness might be enjoyed by small alterations-alterations that we can fully enter into, in this present state of existence. For instance, suppose you and I, just as we are at present; the same reasoning powers, sentiments, and even desires; the same fond curiosity for knowledge and remarking observation in our minds; aud imagine our bodies free from pain and the necessary supplies for the wants of nature at all times, and easily within our reach: imagine further, that we were set free from the laws of gravitation, which bind us to this globe, and could at pleasure fly, without inconvenience, through all the yet unconjectured bounds of creation, what a life of bliss would we lead, in our mutual pursuit of virtue and knowledge, and our mutual enjoyment of friendship and love!

I see you laughing at my fairy fancies, and calling me a voluptuous Maliometan; but I am certain I would be a happy creature, beyond any thing we call bliss here below; nay, it would be a paradise congenial to you too. too. Don't you see us, hand in hand, or rather, my arm about your lovely waist, making our remarks on Sirius, the nearest of the fixed stars; or surveying a comet, flaming innoxious by us, as we just now would mark the passing pomp of a travelling monarch; or in the shady bower of Mercury or Venus, dedicating the hour to love, in mutual converse, relying honour, and revelling endearment, whilst the most exalted strains of poesy and harmony would be the ready, spontaneous language of our souls! Devotion is the favourite employment of your heart; so it is of mine: what incentives then to, and powers for, reverence, gratitude, faith, and hope, in all the fervours of adoration and praise to that Being, whose unsearchable wisdom, power and goodness, so pervaded, so inspired, every sense and feeling!-By this time, I dare say, you will be blessing the neglect of the maid that leaves me destitute of paper!

NO. XC. (CO)

SYLVANDER.

TO THE SAME.

Tuesday Night, 1788.

I have written out my last sheet of paper, I AM delighted, charming Clarinda, with 80 I am reduced to my last half-sheet. your honest enthusiasm for religion. Those

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of either sex, but particularly the female, who are lukewarm in that most important of all things, "O my soul, come not thou into their secrets!"-I feel myself deeply interested in your good opinion, and will lay before you the outlines of my belief. He who is our Author and Preserver, and will one day be our Judge, must be (not for his sake in the way of duty, but from the native impulse of our hearts,) the object of our reverential awe and grateful adoration: He is Almighty and all-bounteous, we are weak and dependent; hence prayer and every other sort of devotion. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to everlasting life;" consequently, it must be in every one's power to embrace his offer of "everlasting life;" otherwise he could not, in justice, condemn those who did not. A mind pervaded, actuated, and governed by purity, truth and charity, though it does not merit heaven, yet is an absolutely necessary pre-requisite, without which heaven can neither be obtained nor enjoyed; and, by divine promise, such a mind shall never fail of attaining "everlasting life;" hence the impure, the deceiv. ing, and the uncharitable exclude themselves from eternal bliss, by their unfitness for enjoying it. The Supreme Being has put the immediate administration of all this, for wise and good ends known to himself, into the hands of Jesus Christ, a great personage, whose relation to him we cannot comprehend, but whose relation to us is a guide and Saviour; and who, except for our own obstinacy and misconduct, will bring us all, through various ways, and by various means, to bliss at last.

These are my tenets, my lovely friend; and which, I think, cannot be well disputed. My creed is pretty nearly expressed in the last clause of Jamie Dean's grace, an honest weaver in Ayrshire: "Lord, grant that we may lead a guid life! for a guid life maks a guid end, at least it helps weel!”

I am flattered by the entertainment you tell me you have found in my packet. You see me as I have been, you know me as I am, and may guess at what I am likely to be. I too may say, "Talk not of love," &c., for indeed he has "plunged me deep in woe!" Not that I ever saw a woman who pleased unexceptionably, as my Clarinda elegantly "in the companion, the friend, and the mistress.' One indeed I could except-One, before passion threw its mists over my discernment, I knew the first of women! Her name is indelibly written in my heart's core-but I dare not look in on it—a degree

says,

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of agony would be the consequence. Oh! thou perfidous, cruel, mischief-making demon, who presidest over that frantic passion— thou mayest, thou dost poison my peace, but thou shalt not taint my honour-I would not, for a single moment, give an asylum to the most distant imagination that would shadow the faintest outline of a selfish gratification, at the expense of her whose happiness is twisted with the threads of my existence.- -May she be as happy as she deserves! And if my tenderest, faithfulest friendship can add to her bliss, I shall, at least, have one solid mine of enjoyment in my bosom! Don't guess at these ravings!

I watched at our front window to-day, but was disappointed. It has been a day of disappointments. I am just risen from a two hours' bout after supper, with silly or sordid souls, who could relish nothing in common with me but the port. -One'Tis now "witching time of night;" and whatever is out of joint in the foregoing scrawl, impute it to enchantments and spells; for I can't look over it, but will seal it up directly, as I don't care for to-morrow's criticisms on it.

You are by this time fast asleep, Clarinda; may good angels attend and guard you as constantly and faithfully as my good wishes do!

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TO THE SAME.

Tuesday Noon, January 17th, 1788.

I AM certain I saw you, Clarinda; but you don't look to the proper story for a poet's lodging

"Where speculation's roosted near the sky." I could almost have thrown myself over for very vexation. Why did'nt you look higher? It has spoiled my peace for this day. To be so near my charming Clarinda; to miss her look when it was searching for me-I am sure the soul is capable of disease, for mine has convulsed itself into an inflammatory fever.

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