you. my power to say that I have a shirt on my back! But the idle wenches, like Solomon's lilies, "they toil not, neither do they spin ;" so I must e'en continue to tie my remnant of a cravat, like the hangman's rope, round my naked throat, and coax my galligaskins to keep together their many-coloured fragments. As to the affair of shoes, I have given that up. My pilgrimages in my ballad-trade, from town to town, and on your stonyhearted turnpikes too, are what not even the hide of Job's behemoth could bear. The coat on my back is no more; I shall not speak evil of the dead. It would be equally unhandsome and ungrateful to find fault with my old surtout, which so kindly supplies and conceals the want of that coat. My hat, indeed, is a great favourite; and though I got it literally for an old song, I would not exchange it for the best beaver in Britain. I was, during several years, a kind of factotum servant to a country clergyman, where I picked up a good many scraps of learning, particularly in some branches of the mathe Whenever I feel inclined to rest myself on my way, I take my seat under a hedge, laying my poetic wallet on the one side, and my fiddle-case on the other, and, placing my hat between my legs, I can by means of its brim, or rather brims, go through the whole doctrine of the couic sections. It is true, Sir, you are a gentleman of rank and fortune, and I am a poor devil-you are a feather in the cap of Society, and I am a very hobnail in his shoes; yet I have the honour to belong to the same family with you, and on that score I now address You will, perhaps, suspect that I am going to claim affinity with the ancient and honour-matics. able house of Kirkpatrick. No, no, Sir; I cannot indeed be properly said to belong to any house, or even any province or kingdom; as my mother, who for many years was spouse to a marching regiment, gave me into this bad world, aboard the packet-boat, somewhere between Donaghadee and Portpatrick. By our common family, I mean, Sir, the family of the muses. I am a fiddler and a poet; and you, I am told, play an exquisite violin, and have a standard taste in the belles lettres. The other day, a brother catgut gave me a charming Scots air of your composition. If I was pleased with the tune, I was in raptures with the title you have given it; and, taking up the idea, I have spun it into the three stanzas enclosed. Will you allow me, Sir, to present you them, as the dearest offering that a misbegotten son of poverty and rhyme has to give! I have a longing to take you by the hand and unburden my heart by saying,- "Sir, I honour you as a man who supports the dignity of human nature, amid an age when frivolity and avarice have, between them, debased us below the brutes that perish! But, alas, Sir! to me you are unapproachable. It is true, the muses baptised me in Castalian streams; but the thoughtless gipsies forgot to give me a name. As the sex have served many a good fellow, the Nine have given me a great deal of pleasure; but, bewitching jades! they have beggared Would they but spare me a little of their cast-linen! were it only to put it in me. However, Sir, don't let me mislead you, as if I would interest your pity. Fortune has so much forsaken me, that she has taught me to live without her; and, amid all my rags and poverty, I am as independent, and much more happy, than a monarch of the world. According to the hackneyed metaphor, I value the several actors in the great drama of life, simply as they act their parts. I can look on a worthless fellow of a duke with unqualified contempt, and can regard an honest scavenger with sincere respect. As you, Sir, go through your rôle with such distinguished merit, permit me to make one in the chorus of universal applause, and assure you, that, with the highest respect, I have the honour to be, &c. (113) NO. CCIX. TO LADY W. M. CONSTABLE. Ellisland, 11th January, 1791. MY LADY-Nothing less than the unlucky accident of having lately broken my right arm, could have prevented me, the NO. CCX. R. B. TO WILLIAM DUNBAR, W. S. Ellisland January 17th, 1791. I AM not going to Elysium, most noble colonel (115), but am still here in this sublunary world, serving my God by propagating his image, and honouring my king by begetting him loyal subjects. moment I received your ladyship's elegant | six months! I can as little write good. present (114) by Mrs. Miller, from returning things as apologies to a man I owe money you my warmest and most grateful acknow- to. Oh the supreme curse of making three ledgments. I assure your ladyship, I shall guineas do the business of five! Not all the set it apart-the symbols of religion shall labours of Hercules; not all the Hebrews' only be more sacred. In the moment of three centuries of Egyptian bondage, were poetic composition, the box shall be my in- such an insuperable business, such an spiring genius. When I would breathe the infernal task!! Poverty, thou half-sister of comprehensive wish of benevolence for the death, thou cousin-german of hell!--where happiness of others, I shall recollect your shall I find force of execration equal to the ladyship; when I would interest my fancy amplitude of thy demerits? Oppressed by in the distresses incident to humanity, I thee, the venerable ancient, grown hoary in shall remember the unfortunate Mary the practice of every virtue, laden with years and wretchedness, implores a little, little aid to support his existence, from a stonyhearted son of Mammon, whose sun of prosperity neve knew a cloud, and is by him denied and insulted. Oppressed by thee, the man of sentiment, whose heart glows with independence, and melts with sensibility, inwardly pines under the neglect, or writhes, in bitterness of soul, under the contumely of arrogant, unfeeling wealth. Oppressed by thee, the son of genius, whose ill-starred ambition plants him at the tables of the fashionable and polite, must see, in suffering silence, his remark neglected, and his person despised, while shallow greatness, in his idiot attempts at wit, shall meet with countenance and applause. Nor, is it only the family of worth that have reason to complain of thee:-the children of folly and vice, though in common with thee the offspring of evil, smart equally under thy rod. Owing to thee, the man of unfortunate disposition and neglected education, is condemned as a fool for his dissipation, despised and shunned as a needy wretch, when his follies as usual bring him to want; and when his unprincipled necessities drive him to dishonest practices, he is abhorred as a miscreant, and perishes by the justice of his country. But, far otherwise is the lot of the man of family and fortune.His early follies and extravagance spirit and fire;-his consequent wants are the embarrasments of an honest fellow; and when, to remedy the matter, he has gained a legal commission to plunder distant provinces, or massacre peaceful nations, he returns, perhaps, laden with the spoil of rapine and murder; lives wicked and respected, and dies a scoundrel and a lord. Nay, worst of all, alas for helpless woman! -the needy prostitute, who has shivered at the corner of the street, waiting to earn the wages of casual prostitution, is left neglected and insulted, ridden down by the chariot wheels of the coroneted RIP, hurrying on to the guilty assignation-she who, without. Many happy returns of the season await my friend. May the thorns of care never beset his path! May peace be an inmate of his bosom, and rapture a frequent visitor of his soul! May the blood-hounds of misfortune never track his steps, nor the screech-owl of sorrow alarm his dwelling! May enjoyment tell thy hours, and pleasure number thy days, thou friend of the bard! Blessed be he that blesseth thee, and cursed be he that curseth thee!" As a further proof that I am still in the land of existence, I send you a poem, the latest I have composed. I have a particular reason for wishing you only to show it to select friends, should you think it worthy a friend's perusal; but if, at your first leisure hour, you will favour me with your opinion of, and strictures on the performance, it will be an additional obligation on, dear Sir, your deeply indebted humble servant, NO. CCXI. TO MR. PETER HILL. R. B. Ellisland, January 17th, 1791. TAKE these two guineas, and place them over against that damned account of yours, which has gagged my mouth these five or B B are the same necessities to plead, riots nightly in the same guilty trade. Well! divines may say of it what they please; but execration is to the mind what phlebotomy is to the body--the vital sluices of both are wonderfully relieved by their respective evacuations. NO. CCXII. TO MR. CUNNINGHAM, R. B. Ellisland Jan. 23d, 1791. MANY happy returns of the season to you, my dear friend! As many of the good As many of the good things of this life, as is consistent with the usual mixture of good and evil in the cup of being! of the first judges, was the most delicious vibration that ever thrilled along the heartstrings of a poor poet However, Providence, to keep up the proper proportion of evil with the good, which it seems is necessary in this sublunary state, thought proper to check my exultation by a very serious misfortune. A day or two after I received your letter, my horse came down with me and broke my right arm. As this is the first service my arm has done me since its disaster, I find myself unable to do more than just, in general terms, thank you for this additional instance of your patronage and friendship. As to the faults you detected in the piece, they are truly there; one of them, the hit at the lawyer and priest. I shall cut out; as to the falling off in the catastrophe, for the reason you justly adduce, it cannot easily be remedied. Your approbation, Sir, has given me such additional spirits to persevere in this species of poetic I have these several months been hammer- composition, that I am already revolving two ing at an elegy on the amiable and accomor three stories in my fancy. If I can bring plished Miss Burnet. I have got, and can these floating ideas to bear any kind of emget, no farther than the following fragment, bodied form, it will give me an additional on which please give me your strictures. In In opportunity of assuring you how much I all kinds of poetic composition, I set great have the honour to be, &c. R. B. store by your opinion; but in sentimental verses, in the poetry of the heart, no Roman Catholic ever set more value on the infallibility of the Holy Father, than I do on yours. I mean the introductory couplets as text I have just finished a poem ("Tam o' Shanter"), which you will receive enclosed. It is my first in the way of tales. verses. essay NO. CCXIV. Ellisland, 1791. DEAR SIR-I am exceedingly to blame in not writing you long ago; but the truth is, that I am the most indolent of all human beings, and when I matriculate in the Herald's Office, I intend that my supporters shall be two sloths, my crest a slowworm, and the motto, "Deil take the formost." So much by way of apology for not thanking you sooner for your kind execution of my commission. I would have sent you the poem; but somehow or other it found its way into the public papers, where you must have seen it. I am ever, dear Sir, yours sincerely, NO. CCXV. R. B. TO THE REV. G. BAIRD. (117) Ellisland, 1791. REVEREND SIR-Why did you, my dear Sir, write to me in such a hesitating style, on the business of poor Bruce? Don't I know, and have I not felt, the many ills, the peculiar ills, that poetic flesh is heir to? You shall have your choice of all the unpublished poems I have; and had your letter had my direction so as to have reached me sooner (it only came to my hand this moment), I should have directly put you out of suspense on the subject. I only ask, that some prefatory advertisement in the book, as well as the subscription bills, may bear, that the publication is solely for the benefit of Bruce's mother. I would not put it in the power of ignorance to surmise, or malice to insinuate, that I clubbed a share in the work from mercenary motives. Nor need you give me credit for any remarkable generosity in my part of the business. I have such a host of peccadilloes, failings, follies, and backslidings (any body but my self might perhaps give some of them a worse appellation), that by way of some balance, however trifling, in the account, I am fain to do any good that occurs in my very limited power to a fellow creature, just for the selfish purpose of clearing a little the vista of retrospection. NO. CCXVI. TO MRS. DUNLOP. R. B Ellisland, Feb. 7th, 1791. WHEN I tell you, Madam, that by a fall, not from my horse, but with my horse, I have been a cripple some time, and that this is the first day my arm and hand have been able to serve me in writing, you will allow that it is too good an apology for my seemingly ungrateful silence. I am now getting better, and am able to rhyme a little, which implies some tolerable ease, as I cannot think that the most poetic genius is able to compose on the rack. I do not remember if ever I mentioned to you my having an idea of composing an elegy on the late Miss Burnet of Monboddo. I had the honour of being pretty well acquainted with her, and have seldom felt so much at the loss of an acquaintance, as when I heard that so amiable and accomplished a piece of God's work was no more. I have, as yet, gone no farther than the following fragment, of which please let me have your opinion. You know that elegy is a subject so much exhausted, that any new idea on the business is not to be expected: 'tis well if we can place an old idea in a new light. How far I have succeeded as to this last, you will judge from what follows: I have proceeded no farther. Your kind letter, with your kind remembrance of your godson, came safe. This last, Madam, is scarcely what my pride can bear. As to the little fellow, he is, partiality apart, the finest boy I have for a long time seen. He is now seventeen months old, has the small-pox and measles over, has cut several teeth, and never had a grain of doctors' drugs in his bowels. I am truly happy to hear that the "little flow'ret" is blooming so fresh and fair, and that the "mother plant" is rather recovering her drooping head. Soon and well may her thus far with a good deal of difficulty. When I get a little abler, you shall hear farther from, Madam, yours, cruel wounds" be healed! I have written NO. CCXVII. R. B. TO THE REV. ARCH. ALISON. SIR-You must, by this time, have set me down as one of the most ungrateful of men. You did me the honour to present me with a book, which does honour to science and the intellectual powers of man, and I have not even so much as acknowledged the receipt of it. The fact is, you yourself are to blame for it. Flattered as I was by your telling me that you wished to have my opinion of the work, the old spiritual enemy of mankind, who knows well that vanity is one of the sins that most easily beset me, put it into my head to ponder over the performance with the lookout of a critic, and to draw up, forsooth, a deep learned digest of strictures on a composition, of which, in fact, until I read the book, I did not even know the first principles. ciples. I own, Sir, that at first glance several of your propositions startled me as paradoxical. That the martial clangor of a trumpet had something in it vastly more grand, heroic, and sublime, than the twingle twangle of a Jew's harp: that the delicate flexure of a rose-twig, when the half-blown flower is heavy with the tears of the dawn, was infinitely more beautiful and elegant than the upright stub of a burdock; and that from something innate and independent of all associations of ideas-these I had set down as irrefragable, orthodox truths, until perusing your book shook my faith. In short, Sir, except Euclid's Elements of Geometry, which I made a shift to unravel by my father's fireside, in the winter evenings of the first season I held the plough, I never read a book which gave me such a quantum of information, and added so much to my stock of ideas, as your "Essays on the Principles of Taste." One thing, Sir, you must forgive my mentioning as an uncommon merit in the work-I mean the language. To clothe abstract philosophy in elegance of style sounds something like a contradiction in terms; but you have convinced me that they are quite compatible. I enclose you some poetic bagatelles of my late composition. The one in print is my first essay in the way of telling a tale. I am, Sir, &c, R. B. (118) NO. CCXVIII. TO DR. MOORE. Ellisland, Feb. 28th, 1791. I Do not know, Sir, whether you are a subscriber to Grose's Antiquities of Scotland. If you are, the enclosed poem will not be altogether new to you. Captain Grose did me the favour to send me a dozen copies of the proof sheet, of which this is one. Should you have read the piece before, still this will answer the principal end I have in view-it will give me another opportunity of thanking you for all your goodness to the rustic bard; and also of showing you, that the abilities you have been pleased to commend and patronise are still employed in the way you wish. The Elegy on Captain Henderson is a tribute to the memory of a man I loved much. Poets have in this the same advantage as Roman Catholics; they can be of service to their friends after they have passed that bourne where all other kindness ceases to be of avail. Whether, after all, either the one or the other be of any real service to the dead, is, I fear, very problematical, but I am sure they are highly gratifying to the living: and as a very orthodox text, I forget where in Scripture, says, whatsoever is not of faith is sin so say I, whatsoever is not detrimental to society, and is of positive enjoyment, is of God, the giver of all good things, and ought to be received and enjoyed by his creatures with thankful delight. As almost all my religious tenets originate from my heart, I am wonderfully pleased with the idea, that I can still keep up a tender intercourse with the dearly beloved friend, or still more dearly beloved mistress, who is gone to the world of spirits. The ballad on Queen Mary was begun while I was busy with Percy's Reliques of English Poetry. By the way, how much is every honest heart, which has a tincture of Caledonian prejudice, obliged to you for your glorious story of Buchanan and Targe! "Twas an unequivocal proof of your loyal gallantry of soul, giving Targe the victory I should have been mortified to the ground if you had not. I have just read over once more of many times, your Zeluco. I marked with my pencil, as I went along, every passage that pleased me particularly above the rest; and one or two, which, with humble deference, I am disposed to think unequal to the merits of the book. I have sometimes thought to transcribe these marked passages, or at least so much of them as to point where they are, and send them to you. Original strokes that strongly depict the human heart, is your and Fielding's province, beyond any other novelist I have ever perused. Richardson indeed might, perhaps, be excepted; but unhappily, his dramatis personæ are beings of another world; and however they may captivate the inexperienced, romantic fancy of a boy or a girl, they will ever, in proportion as we have made human nature our study, dissatisfy our riper years. As to my private concerns, I am going on, a mighty tax-gatherer before the Lord, and have lately had the interest to get myself ranked on the list of Excise as a supervisor. I am not yet employed as such, but in a few years I shall fall into the file of supervisorship by seniority. I have had an immense loss in the death of the Earl of Glencairn, the patron from whom all my fame and fortune took its rise. Independent of my grateful attachment to him, which was indeed so strong that it pervaded my very soul, and was entwined with the thread of my existence: so soon as the prince's friends had got in (and every dog you know has his day), my getting forward in the Excise would have been an easier business than otherwise it will be. Though this was a consummation devoutly to be wished, yet, thank Heaven, I can live and rhyme as I am; and as to my boys, poor little fellows! if I |
