many pleasures annexed to the states of husband and father, for, God knows, they have many peculiar cares. I cannot describe to you the anxious, sleepless hours these ties frequently give me. I see a train of helpless little folks; myself and my exertions all their stay; and on what a brittle thread does the life of man hang! If I am nipt off at the command of fate, even in all the vigour of manhood, as I am-such things happen every day-Gracious God! what would become of my little flock! 'Tis here that I envy your people of fortune. A father on his death-bed, taking an everlasting leave of his children, has indeed woe enough; but the man of competent fortune leaves his sons and daughters | independency and friends; while I-but I shall run distracted if I think any longer on the subject! To leave talking of the matter so gravely, I shall sing with the old Scots ballad "Oh that I had neʼer been married, Crowdie ance, crowdie twice, Crowdie three times in a day: Ye'll crowdie a' my meal away." December 24th. We have had a brilliant theatre here this season; only, as all other business does, it experiences a stagnation of trade from the epidemical complaint of the country, want of cash. I mentioned our theatre merely to lug in an occasional Address, which I wrote for the benefit night of one of the actresses, and which is as follows:- * 25th, Christmas Morning. This, my much-loved friend, is a morning of wishes; accept mine-so Heaven hear me as they are sincere!-that blessings may attend your steps, and affliction know you not! In the charming words of my favourite author, The Man of Feeling, "May the Great Spirit bear up the weight of thy grey hairs, and blunt the arrow that brings them rest!" notes through the book. I would not give a farthing for a book, unless I were at liberty to blot it with my criticisms. I have lately collected, for a friend's perusal, all my letters; I mean those which I first sketched, in a rough draught, and afterwards wrote out fair. On looking over some old musty papers, which from time to time I had parcelled by, as trash that were scarce worth preserving, and which yet, at the same time, I did not care to destroy, I discovered many of these rude sketches, and have written, and am writing them out, in a bound MS. for my friend's library. As I wrote always to you the rhapsody of the moment, I cannot find a single scroll to you, except one, about the commencement of our acquaintance. If there were any possible conveyance, I would send you a perusal of my book. R. B. NO. CCCLVIII. TO MR. ALEXANDER FINDLATER (213), SUPERVISOR OF EXCISE, DUMFRIES. SIR-Enclosed are the two schemes. I would not have troubled you with the collector's one, but for suspicion lest it be not right. Mr. Erskine promised me to make it right, if you will have the goodness to show him how. As I have no copy of the scheme for myself, and the alterations being very considerable from what it was formerly, I hope that I shall have access to this scheme I send you, when I come to face up my new books. So much for schemes. And that no scheme to betray a FRIEND, or mislead a STRANGER; to seduce a YOUNG GIRL, or rob a HEN-ROOST; to subvert LIBERTY, or bribe an EXCISEMAN; to disturb the GENERAL ASSEMBLY, or annoy a GOSSIPPING; to overthrow the credit of ORTHODOXY, or the authority of OLD SONGS; to oppose your wishes, or frustrate my hopes,— MAY PROSPER-is the sincere wish and prayer of R. B. NO. CCCLIX. Now that I talk of authors, how do you like Cowper? Is not the "Task" a glorious TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING poem? The religion of the "Task," bating a few scraps of Calvanistic divinity, is the religion of God and Nature-the religion that exalts, that ennobles man. Were not you to send me your "Zeluco," in return for mine? Tell me how you like my marks and marks and CHRONICLE. Dumfries, 1795. SIR-You will see, by your subscribers' list, that I have been about nine months of that number. As I hope to get a frank from my friend Captain Miller, I shall, every leisure hour, take up the pen, and gossip away whatever comes first, prose or poetry, sermon or song. In this last article I have abounded of late. I have often mentioned to you a superb publication of Scottish songs, which is making its appearance in your great metropolis, and where I have the honour to preside over the Scottish verse, as no less a personage than Peter Pindar does over the English. December 29th. I am sorry to inform you that in that time seven or eight of your papers either havé never been sent me, or else have never reached me. To be deprived of any one number of the first newspaper in Great Britain for information, ability, and independence, is what I can ill brook and bear; but to be deprived of that most admirable oration of the Marquis of Lansdowne, when he made the great, though ineffectual attempt (in the language of the poet, I fear too true) "to save a SINKING STATE this was a loss that I neither can, nor will forgive you. That paper, Sir, never reached me; but I demand it of you. I am a BRITON, and must be interested in the cause of LIBERTY; I am a MAN, and the RIGHTS OF HUMAN NATURE cannot be indifferent to me. However, do not let me mislead you-manded ten minutes to have spoken to you, I am not a man in that situation of life, which, as your subscriber, can be of any consequence to you, in the eyes of those to whom SITUATION OF LIFE ALONE is the criterion of MAN. I am but a plain tradesman, in this distant, obscure country town; but that humble domicile in which I shelter my wife and children, is the CASTELLUM of a BRITON; and that scanty, hard-earned income which supports them, is as truly my property, as the most magnificent fortune of the most PUISSANT MEMBER of your HOUSE OF NOBLES. These, Sir, are my sentiments, and to them I subscribe my name; and were I a man of ability and consequence enough to address the PUBLIC, with that name should they appear. I am, &c. (214) NO. CCCLX. TO MRS. DUNLOP, IN LONDON. Dumfries, 20th December, 1795. I HAVE been prodigiously disappointed in this London journey of yours. In the first place, when your last to me reached Dumfries, I was in the country, and did not return until too late to answer your letter; in the next place, I thought you would certainly take this route; and now I know not what is become of you, or whether this may reach you at all. God grant that it may find you and yours in prospering health and good spirits! Do let me hear from you the soonest possible. Since I began this letter, I have been appointed to act in the capacity of supervisor here, and I assure you, what with the load of business, and what with that business being new to me, I could scarcely have com had you been in town, much less to have written you an epistle. This appointment is only temporary, and during the illness of the present incumbent; but I look forward to an early period when I shall be appointed in full form-a consummation devoutly to be wished! My political sins seem to be for given me. This is the season (New-year's-day is now my date) of wishes; and mine are most fervently offered up for you! May life to you be a positive blessing while it lasts, for your own sake; and that it may yet be greatly prolonged, is my wish for my own sake, and for the sake of the rest of your friends! What a transient business is life? Very lately I was a boy; but t'other day I was a young man; and I already begin to feel the rigid fibre and stiffening joints of old age coming fast o'er my frame. With all my follies of youth, and I fear, a few vices of manhood, still I congratulate myself on having had, in early days, religion strongly impressed on my mind. I have nothing to say to any one as to which sect he belongs to, or what creed he believes; but I look on the man who is firmly persuaded of infinite wisdom and goodness superintending and in his lot-I felicitate such a man as having directing every circumstance that can happen a solid foundation for his mental enjoyment --a firm prop and sure stay in the hour of difficulty, trouble, and distress--and a neverfailing anchor of hope, when he looks beyond the grave. January 12th. You will have seen our worthy and ingenious friend, the doctor, long ere this. I hope he is well, and beg to be remembered to him. I have just been reading over again, I dare say for the hundred and fiftieth time, his View of Society and Manners; and still I read it with delight. His humour is perfectly original-it is neither the humour of Addison, nor Swift, nor Sterne, nor of anybody but Dr. Moore. By the bye, you have deprived me of Zeluco; remember that, when you are disposed to rake up the sins of my neglect from among the ashes of my laziness. He has paid me a pretty compliment, by quoting me in his last publication (215). NO. CCCLXI. R. B. ADDRESS OF THE SCOTCH DISTILLERS TO THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM PITT. SIR-While pursy burgesses crowd your gate, sweating under the weight of heavy addresses, permit us, the quondam distillers in that part of Great Britain called Scotland, to approach you, not with venal approbation, but with fraternal condolence; not as what you are just now, or for some time have been, but as what, in all probability, you will shortly be. We shall have the merit of not deserting our friends in the day of their calamity, and you will have the satisfaction of perusing, at least, one honest address. You are well acquainted with the dissection of human nature; nor do you need the assistance of a fellow-creature's bosom to inform you, that man is always a selfish, often a perfidious being. This assertion, however the hasty conclusions of superficial observation may doubt of it, or the raw inexperience of youth may deny it, those who make the fatal experiment we have done, will feel. You are a statesman, and consequently are not ignorant of the traffic of these corporation compliments. The little great man who drives the borough to market, and the very great man who buys the borough in that market, they two do the whole business; and you well know, they, likewise, have their price. With that sullen disdain which you can so well assume, rise illustrious Sir, and spurn these hireling efforts of venal stupidity. At best they are the compliments of a man's friends on the morning of his execution: they take a decent farewell: resign you to your fate; and hurry away from your approaching hour. . If fame say true, and omens be not very much mistaken, you are about to make your exit from that world where the sun of gladness gilds the paths of prosperous men: permit us, great Sir, with the sympathy of fellow-feeling, to hail your passage to the realms of ruin. Whether the sentiment proceed from the selfishness or cowardice of mankind, is immaterial; but to point out to a child of misfortune those who are still more unhappy, is to give him some degree of positive enjoyment. In this light, Sir, our downfall may be again useful to you: though not exactly in the same way, it is not, perhaps, the first time it has gratified your feelings. It is true, the triumph of your evil star is exceedingly despiteful. At an age when others are the votaries of pleasure, or underlings in business, you had attained the highest wish of a British statesman; and with the ordinary date of human life, what a prospect was before you! Deeply rooted in royal favour, you overshadowed the land. The birds of passage which follow ministerial sunshine through every clime of political faith and manners, flocked to your branches; and the beasts of the field (the lordly possessors of hills and valleys) crowded under your shade. "But behold a watcher, a holy one, came down from heaven, and cried aloud, and said thus: Hew down the tree, and cut off his brauches; shake off his leaves, and scatter his fruit; let the beasts get away from under it, and the fowls from his branches!" A blow from an unthought-of quarter, one of those terrible accidents which peculiarly mark the hand of Omnipotence, overset your career, and laid all your fancied honours in the dust. But turn your eyes, Sir, to the tragic scenes of our fate. An ancient nation, that for many ages had gallantly maintained the unequal struggle for independence with her much more powerful neighbour, at last agrees to a union which should ever after make them one people. In consideration of certain circumstances, it was covenanted that the former should enjoy a stipulated alleviation in her share of the public burdens, particularly in that branch of the revenue called the Excise. This just privilege has of late given great umbrage to some interested, powerful individuals of the more potent part of the empire, and they have spared no wicked pains, under insidious pretexts, to subvert what they dared not openly to attack, from the dread which they yet entertained of the spirit of their ancient enemies. In this conspiracy we fell; nor did we alone suffer-our country our country was deeply large family, and very stinted income, to give my young ones that education I wish, at the high-school fees which a stranger pays, will bear hard upon me. this mark of distinction may extend so far as to put me on a footing of a real freeman of the town, in the schools ? wounded. A number of (we will say) respectable individuals, largely engaged in trade, where we were not only useful, but absolutely necessary, to our country in her dearest interests; we, with all that was near Some years ago your good town did me and dear to us, were sacrificed, without the honour of making me an honorary burremorse, to the infernal deity of political ex-gess. Will you allow me to request that pediency! We fell to gratify the wishes of dark envy, and the views of unprincipled ambition! Your foes, Sir, were avowed; were too brave to take an ungenerous advantage: you fell in the face of day. On the contrary, our enemies, to complete our overthrow, contrived to make their guilt appear the villany of a nation. Your downfall only drags with you your private friends and partisans in our misery are more or less involved the most numerous and most valuable part of the community-all those who immediately depend on the cultivation of the soil, from the landlord of a province down to his lowest hind. Allow us, Sir, yet further, just to hint at another rich vein of comfort in the dreary regions of adversity-the gratulations of an approving conscience. In a certain great assembly, of which you are a distinguished member, panegyrics on your private virtues have so often wounded your delicacy, that, we shall not distress you with anything on the subject. There is, however, one part of your public conduct which our feelings will not permit us to pass in silence; our gratitude must trespass on your modesty: we mean, worthy Sir, your whole behaviour to the Scots distillers. In evil hours, when obtrusive recollection presses bitterly on the sense, let that, Sir, come, like a healing angel, and speak the peace to your soul which the world can neither give nor take away. We have the honour to be, Sir, your sympathising fellow-sufferers and grateful humble servants, JOHN BARLEYCORN, Præses. If you are so very kind as to grant my request, it will certainly be a constant incentive to me to strain every nerve where I can officially serve you; and will, if possible, increase that grateful respect with which I have the honour to be, gentlemen, your devoted, humble servant, R. B. (216) NO. CCCLXIII. TO MRS. RIDDEL. Dumfries, January 20th, 1796. I CANNOT express my gratitude to you for allowing me a longer perusal of " Anacharsis." In fact, I never met with a book that bewitched me so much; and I, as a member of the library, must warmly feel the obligation you have laid us under. Indeed, to me the obligation is stronger than to any other individual of our society; as "Anacharsis" is an indispensable desideratum to a son of the muses. The health you wished me in your morning's card, is, I think, flown from me for ever. I have not been able to leave my bed to-day till about an hour ago. These wickedly unlucky advertisements I lent (I did wrong) to a friend, and I am ill able to go in quest of him. The muses have not quite forsaken me. The following detached stanzas I intend to interweave in some disastrous tale of a shepherd. R. B. NO. CCCLXII. TO THE HON. THE PROVOST, GENTLEMEN-The literary taste and liberal spirit of your good town has so ably filled the various departments of your schools, as to make it a very great object for a parent to have his children educated in them. Still, to me, a stranger, with my NO. CCCLXIV. TO MRS. DUNLOP. Dumfries, January 31st, 1796. THESE many months you have been two packets in my debt-what sin of ignorance I have committed against so highly valued a friend, I am utterly at a loss to guess. Alas! Madam, ill can I afford, at this time, to be deprived of any of the small remnant of my pleasures. I have lately drunk deep of the cup of affliction. The autumn robbed me of my only daughter and darling child (217), and that at a distance, too, and so rapidly, as to put it out of my power to pay the last duties to her. I had scarcely begun to recover from that shock, when I became myself the victim of a most severe rheumatic fever, and long the die spun doubtful; until, after many weeks of a sick-bed, it seems to have turned up life, and I am beginning to crawl across my room, and once, indeed, have been before my own door in the street. When pleasure fascinates the mental sight, Affliction purifies the visual ray, Religion hails the drear, the untried night, And shuts, for ever shuts! life's doubtful day. NO. CCCLXV. R. B. MR. THOMSON TO BURNS. February 5th, 1796. OH Robby Burns, are ye sleeping yet? Or are ye wauking, I would wit? THE pause you have made, my dear Sir, is awful! Am I never to hear from you again? I know, and I lament how much you have been afflicted of late; but I trust that returning health and spirits will now enable you to resume the pen, and delight us with your musings. I have still about a dozen Scotch and Irish airs that I wish "married to immortal verse." We have several true-born Irishmen on the Scottish list; but they are now naturalized, and reckoned our own good subjects. Indeed, we have none better. I believe I before told you that I have been much urged by some friends to publish a collection of all our favourite airs and songs in octavo, embellished with a number of etchings by our ingenious friend Allan; what is your opinion of this ? NO. CCCLXVI. BURNS TO MR. THOMSON. MANY thanks, my dear Sir, for your handsome, elegant present to Mrs. Burns, and for my remaining volume of P. Pindar, Peter is a delightful fellow, and a first favourite of mine. I am much pleased with your idea of publishing a collection of our songs in octavo with etchings. I am extremely willing to lend willing to lend every assistance in my power. The Irish airs I shall cheerfully undertake the task of finding verses for. I have already, you know, equipt three with words, and the other day I strung up a kind of rhapsody to another Hibernian melody, which I admire much. [Here follows "Hey for a lass wi' a tocher."] If this will do, you have now four of my Irish engagement. In my by-past songs I dislike one thing; the name Chloris-I meant it as the fictitious name of a certain lady: but, on second thoughts, it is a high incongruity to have a Greek appellation to a Scottish pastoral ballad. Of this, and some things else, in my next: I have more amendments to propose. What you once mentioned of "flaxen locks" is just they cannot enter into an elegant description of beauty. Of this also again-God bless you! (218). NO. CCCLXVII. MR. THOMSON TO BURNS. YOUR "Hey for a lass wi' a tocher" is a most excellent song, and with you the subject is something new indeed. It is the first time I have seen you debasing the god of soft desire into an amateur of acres and guineas. I am happy to find you approve of my proposed octavo edition. Allan has designed and etched about twenty plates, and I am to have my choice of them for that work. Independently of the Hogarthian humour with which they abound, they exhibit the character and costume of the Scottish peasantry with inimitable felicity. In this respect, he himself says, they will far exceed the aquatinta plates he did for the Gentle Shepherd, because in the etching he sees clearly what he is doing, but not so with the aquatinta, which he could not manage to his mind. The Dutch boors of Ostade are scarcely more characteristic and natural than the Scottish figures in those etchings. |