older than yesterday, except Jenny Geddes, the old mare I ride on; while uncouth cares, and novel plans, hourly insult my awkward ignorance, and bashful inexperience. There is a foggy atmosphere native to my soul, in the hour of care, consequently the dreary objects seem larger than the life. Extreme sensibility, irritated and prejudiced on the gloomy side by a series of misfortunes and disappointments, at that period of my existence, when the soul is laying in her cargo of ideas for the voyage of life, is, I believe, the principal cause of this unhappy frame of mind. "The valiant, in himself, what can he suffer? Or what need he regard his single woes?" &c. Your surmise, madam, is just; I am indeed a husband. I found a once much-loved, and still much-loved female, literally and truly cast out to the mercy of the naked elements, but as I enabled her to pur chase a shelter; and there is no sporting with a fellow-creature's happiness or misery. The most placid good-nature and sweetness of disposition; a warm heart, gratefully devoted with all its powers to love me; vigorous health and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to the best advantage, by a more than commonly handsome figure; these, I think, in a woman, may make a good wife, though she should never have read a page, but the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, nor have danced in a brighter assembly than a penny-pay wedding. My dear Hill, No. LI. To Mr. P. HILL. I shall say nothing at all to your mad presentyou 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 hollowhearted wretch takes me by the hand, the feeling spoils my dinner; the proud man's wine so offends my palate, that it choaks me in the gullet; and the pulvilis'd, 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 your good things among your friends, and some of them are in much need of a slice. There in my eye is our friend Smellie; a man positively of the first abilities and greatest 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 be fore the summer sun. Ch, 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 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, D-r, 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 corpst. 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 any thing that will make him a little easier on that score, it will be very obliging. As to honest J Se, 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 anecdotes which a cer tain 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 professedly -the faculty are beyond my prescription. As to their clients, that is another thing; God knows they have much to digest! * Printer of the Edinburgh Evening Courant, † A club of choice spirits. The clergy, I pass by; their profundity of erudition, and their liberality of sentiment; their to tal 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, whom I have the honour to call friend, the laird of Craigdarroch; but I have spoken to the landlord of the king's-arms inn here, to have, at the next county meeting, a large ewe-milk cheese on the table, for the benefit of the Dumfries-shire whigs, to enable them to digest the duke of Queensbury's late political conduct. I have just this moment an opportunity of a private hand to Edinburgh, as perhaps you would not digest double postage. No. LII. To Mrs. DUNLOP. Honoured madam, Mauchline, 2d August, 1788. Your kind letter welcomed me, yesternight, to Ayrshire. 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 scarcely ever in it myself, and, as yet, have little acquaintance in the neighbourhood. Besides, I am now very busy on my farm, building a dwelling-house; as at present I am almost an evangelical man in Nithsdale, for 1 have scarce" where to lay my head." 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 particu lar, sacred times, who dares enter into them. "Heaven oft tears the bosom-chords You will excuse this quotation for the sake of the author. Instead of entering on this subject farther, I shall transcribe you a few lines I wrote in a hermitage, belonging to a gentleman in my Nithsdale neighbourhood. They are almost the only favours the muses have conferred on me in that country. Thou whom chance may hither lead, Be thou deckt in silken stole, 'Grave these maxims on thy soul. Life is but a day at most, Sprung from night, in darkness lost: Fear not clouds will ever lour. Happiness is but a name, Make content and ease thy aim. Fame, an idle restless dream; Peace, the tend'rest flow'r of spring; But, thy utmost duly done, Welcome what thou canst not shun. Follies past, give thou to air, Make their consequence thy care: |