No. XLI. To MRS. DUNLOP. Edinburgh, 21st January, 1788. AFTER six weeks confinement, I am beginning to walk across the room. They have been six horrible weeks, anguish and low spirits made me unfit to read, write, or think. I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an officer resigns a commission: for I would not take in any poor, ignorant wretch, by selling out. Lately I was a sixpenny private; and, God knows, a miserable soldier enough: now I march to the campaign, a starving cadet; a little more conspicuously wretched. I am ashamed of all this; for though I do want want bravery for the warfare of life, I could wish, like some other soldiers, to have as much fortitude or cunning as to dissemble or conceal my cowardice. As soon as I can bear the journey, which will be, I suppose, about the middle of next week, I leave Edinburgh, and soon after I shall pay my grateful duty at Dunlop-house. No. No. XLII. EXTRACT OF A LETTER TO THE SAME. Edinburgh, 12th February, 1788. SOME things in your late letters hurt me: not that you say them, but that you mistake me. Religion, my honoured Madam, has not only been all my life my chief dependence, but my dearest enjoyment. I have indeed been the luckless victim of wayward follies: but, alas I have ever been "more fool than knave." A mathematician without religion, is a probable character; an irreligious poet, is a monster. VOL. II. * No. No. XLIII. To MRS. DUNLOP. Mossgiel, 7th March, 1788. MADAM, THE last paragraph in yours of the 30th February affected me most, so I shall begin my answer where you ended your letter. That I am often a sinner with any little wit I have, I do confess; but I have taxed my recollection to no purpose to find out when it was employed against you. I hate an ungenerous sarcasm a great deal worse than I do the devil; at least, as Milton describes him; and though I may be rascally enough to be sometimes guilty of it myself, I cannot endure it in others. You, my honoured friend, who cannot appear in any light but you are sure of being respectableyou can afford to pass by an occasion to dis play play your wit, because you may depend for fame on your sense; or if you choose to be silent, you know you can rely on the gratitude of many and the esteem of all; but, God help us who are wits or witlings by profession, if we stand not for fame there, we sink unsupported! I am highly flattered by the news you tell me of Coila.* I may say to the fair painter who does me so much honour, as Dr. Beattie says to Ross the poet, of his muse Scota, from which, by the bye, I took the idea of Coila: ('Tis a poem of Beattie's in the Scots dialect, which perhaps you have never seen.) i "Ye shak your head, but o' my fegs, Her fiddle wanted strings and pegs, Waes me, poor hizzie!" No. * A lady (daughter of Mrs. Dunlop) was making a picture from the description of Coila in the Vision. E. |