of consumpt; and should you commence distiller again, this is the native barley country. I am ignorant if, in your present way of dealing, you would think it worth your while to extend your business so far as this country side. I write you this on the account of an accident, which I must take the merit of having partly designed to. A neighbour of mine, a John Currie, miller in Carsemill-a man who is, in a word, a "very" good man, even for a L.500 bargain-he and his wife were in my house the time 1 broke open the cask. They keep a country public-house, and sell a great deal of foreign spirits, but all along thought that whisky would have degraded their house. They were perfectly astonished at my whisky, both for its taste and strength; and by their desire, I write you to know if you could supply them with liquor of an equal quality, and what price. Please write me by first post, and direct to me at Ellisland, near Dumfries. If you could take a jaunt this way yourself, I have a spare spoon, knife and fork, very much at your service. My compliments to Mrs Ten nant and all the good folks in Glenconner and Barquharry.

R. B.

CLXXI.

TO MR WILLIAM CRUIKSHANK.

ELLISLAND, [December] 1788.

1 HAVE not room, my dear friend, to answer all the particular: of your last kind letter. I shall be in Edinburgh on some business very soon; and as I shall be two days, or perhaps three, in town, we shall discuss matters viva voce. My knee, I believe, will never be entirely well; and an unlucky fall this winter has made it still worse. I well remember the circumstance you allude to respecting Creech's opinion of Mr Nicol; but as the first gentleman owes me still about fifty pounds, I dare not meddle in the affair. It gave me a very heavy heart to read such accounts of the con sequence of your quarrel with that puritanic, rotten-hearted, scoundrel, A If, notwithstanding your unprecedented industry in public, and your irreproachable conduct in private life, ho still has you so much in his power, what ruin may he not bring on some others I could name?

Many and happy returns of seasons to you, with your dearest and worthiest friend, and the lovely little pledge of your happy union. May the great Author of life, and of every enjoyment that can render life delightful, make her that comfortable blessing to you both which you so ardently wish for, and which, allow me to say, you so well deserve! Glance over the foregoing verses, and let me have your blots. Adieu! R. B.

CLXXII.

TO MRS DUNLOP.

ELLISLAND, New-Year-Day Morning, 1789. THIS, dear madam, is a morning of wishes, and would to God that I came under the apostle James's description !-the prayer of a righteous man availeth much. In that case, madam, you should welcome in a year full of blessings: everything that obstructs or disturbs tranquillity and self-enjoyment should be removed, and every pleasure that frail humanity can taste should be yours. I own myself so little a Presbyterian, that I approve set times and seasons of more than ordinary acts of devotion, for breaking in on that habituated routine of life and thought which is so apt to reduce our existence to a kind of instinct, or even sometimes, and with some minds, to a state very little superior to mere machinery.

This day-the first Sunday of May-a breezy, blue-skied noon some time about the beginning, and a hoary morning and calm sunny day about the end of autumn-these, time out of mind, have been with me a kind of holiday.

I believe I owe this to that glorious paper in the "Spectator," The Vision of Mirza-a piece that struck my young fancy before I was capable of fixing an idea to a word of three syllables: "On the 5th day of the moon, which, according to the custom of my fore fathers, I always keep holy, after having washed myself and offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hill of Bagdad, in order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer."

We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the substance or struc ture of our souls, so cannot account for those seeming caprices in them that one should be particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which, on minds of a different cast, makes no extraordinary impression. I have some favourite flowers in spring, among which are the mountain-daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild-brier rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild, mixing cadence of a troop of gray plovers in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the Æolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities-a God that made all things-man's imma terial and immortal nature-and a world of weal or wo beyond death and the grave! R. B.

CLXXIII.

TO DR MOORE.

ELLISLAND, 4th Jan. 1789. SIR,-As often as I think of writing to you, which has been three or four times every week these six months, it gives me something so like the idea of an ordinary-sized statue offering at a conversation with the Rhodian colossus, that my mind misgives me, and the affair always miscarries somewhere between purpose and resolve. I have at last got some business with you, and business letters are written by the style-book. I say my business is with you, sir; for you never had any with me, except the business that benevolence has in the mansion of poverty.

The character and employment of a poet were formerly my pleasure, but are now my pride. I know that a very great deal of my late éclat was owing to the singularity of my situation, and the honest prejudice of Scotsmen; but still, as I said in the preface to my first edition, I do look upon myself as having some pretensions from nature to the poetic character. I have not a doubt but the knack, the aptitude to learn the Muses' trade, is a gift bestowed by Him "who forms the secret bias of the soul;" but I as firmly believe that excellence in the profession is the fruit of industry, labour, attention, and pains-at least I am resolved to try my doctrine by the test of experience. Another appearance from the press I put off to a very distant day-a day that may never arrive; but poesy I am determined to prosecute with all my vigour. Nature has given very few, if any, of the profession the talents of shining in every species of composition. I shall try (for until trial it is impossible to know) whether she has qualified me to shine in any one. The worst of it is, by the time one has finished a piece, it has been so often viewed and reviewed before the mental eye, that one loses in a good measure the powers of eritical discrimination. Here the best criterion I know is a friend, not only of abilities to judge, but with good-nature enough, like a prudent teacher with a young learner, to praise perhaps a little more than is exactly just, lest the thin-skinned animal fall into that most deplorable of all poetic diseases-heart-breaking despon. dency of himself. Dare I, sir, already immensely indebted to your goodness, ask the additional obligation of your being that friend to me? I enclose you an essay of mine, in a walk of poesy to me entirely new; I mean the Epistle addressed to R. G., Esquire, or Robert Graham of Fintry, Esq., a gentleman of uncommon worth, to whom I lie under very great obligations. The story of the poem, like most of my poems, is connected with my own story; and to give you the one I must give you something of the other. I can. not boast of Mr Creech's ingenuous fair-dealing to me. He kept

me hanging about Edinburgh from the 7th August 1787 until the 13th April 1788, before he would condescend to give me a statement of affairs; nor had I got it even then, but for an angry letter I wrote him, which irritated his pride. "I could" not a tale," but a detail " unfold;" but what am I that should speak against the Lord's anointed Bailie of Edinburgh?

I believe I shall in whole (£100 copyright included) clear about £400 some little odds; and even part of this depends upon what the gentleman has yet to settle with me. I give you this information, because you did me the honour to interest yourself much in my welfare. I give you this information, but I give it to yourself only; for I am still much in the gentleman's mercy. Perhaps I injure the man in the idea I am sometimes tempted to have of him: God forbid I should! A little time will try, for in a month I shall go to town to wind up the business, if possible.

To give the rest of my story in brief: I have married "my Jean," and taken a farm. With the first step, I have every day more and more reason to be satisfied; with the last, it is rather the reverse. I have a younger brother, who supports my aged mother; another still younger brother, and three sisters in a farm. On my last return from Edinburgh, it cost me about £180 to save them from ruin. Not that I have lost so much: I only interposed between my brother and his impending fate by the loan of so much. I give myself no airs on this, for it was mere selfishness on my part. I was conscious that the wrong scale of the balance was pretty heavily charged, and I thought that throwing a little filial piety and fraternal affection into the scale in my favour, might help to smooth matters at the grand reckoning. There is still one thing would make my circumstances quite easy; I have an Excise-officer's commission, and I live in the midst of a country division. My request to Mr Graham, who is one of the commissioners of Excise, was, if in his power, to procure me that division. If I were very sanguine, 1 might hope that some of my great patrons might procure me a treasury-warrant for supervisor, surveyor-general, &c.

Thus, secure of a livelihood, "to thee, sweet Poetry, delightful maid," I would consecrate my future days.

R. B.

CLXXIV.

TO MR ROBERT AINSLIE.

ELLISLAND, January 6, 1789.

MANY happy returns of the season to you, my dear sir. May you be comparatively happy, up to your comparative worth, among the sons of men which wish would, I am sure, make you one of the most blest of the human race.

I do not know if passing a "writer to the signet" be a trial of scientific merit, or a mere business of friends and interest. However it be, let me quote you my two favourite passages, which, though I have repeated them ten thousand times, still they rouse my manhood, and steel my resolution like inspiration :

"On Reason build resolve,

That column of true majesty in man."-Young.

"Hear, Alfred, hero of the state,

Thy genius heaven's high will declare;

The triumph of the truly great,

Is never, never to despair!

Is never to despair."-Masque of Alfred.

I grant you enter the lists of life to struggle for bread, business, notice, and distinction, in common with hundreds. But who are they? Men like yourself, and of that aggregate body your compeers, seven-tenths of them come short of your advantages, natural and accidental; while two of those that remain either neglect their parts, as flowers blooming in a desert, or misspend their strength like a bull goring a bramble bush.

But to change the theme: I am still catering for Johnson's publication; and among others, I have brushed up the following old favourite song a little, with a view to your worship. I have only altered a word here and there; but if you like the humour of it, we shall think of a stanza or two to add to it.

R, }

CLXXV.

TO JOHN M'MURDO, ESQ.

ELLISLAND, 9th Jan. 1789

SIR,-A poet and a beggar are in so many points of view alike, that one might take them for the same individual character under different designations; were not, that though, with a trifling poetic license, poets may be styled beggars, yet the converse of the proposition does not hold, that every beggar is a poet. In one particular, however, they remarkably agree; if you help either the one or the other to a mug of ale or the picking of a bone, they will very willingly repay you with a song. This occurs to me at present (as I have just despatched a well-lined rib of J. Kilpatrick's Highlander; a bargain for which I am indebted to you), in the style of our ballad-printers, "Five Excellent New Songs." The enclosed is nearly my newest song, and one that has cost me some pains, though that is but an equivocal mark of its excellence. Two or three others which I have by me shall do themselves the honour to wait on your after-leisure: petitioners for admitLance into favour must not harass the condescension of their benefactor.

You see, sir, what it is to patronize a poet. 'Tis like being a