like both the ancient and modern voluptuaries; and will dare to affirm, that such an attachment as mine to Clarinda, and such evenings as she and I have spent, are what these greatly respectable and deeply experienced judges of life and love never dreamed of.

I shall be with you this evening between eight and nine, and shall keep as sober hours as you could wish. I am ever, my dear madam, yours, SYLVANDER.

Five letters of Burns to Clarinda follow, without her answers, which have been lost. It appears that the fears of the lady for the remarks of friends and neighbours had at length been realised.

TO CLARINDA.

MY EVER DEAREST CLARINDA—I make a numerous dinner-party wait me while I read yours and write this. Do not require that I should cease to love you, to adore you in my soul; 'tis to me impossible your peace and happiness are to me dearer than my soul. Name the terms on which you wish to see me, to correspond with me, and you have them. I must love, pine, mourn, and adore in secret this you must not deny me. You will ever be to me

'Dear as the light that visits those sad eyes,

Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.'

I have not patience to read the Puritanic scrawl. Damned sophistry! Ye heavens, thou God of nature, thou Redeemer of mankind! ye look down with approving eyes on a passion inspired by the purest flame, and guarded by truth, delicacy, and honour; but the half-inch soul of an unfeeling, cold-blooded, pitiful Presbyterian bigot cannot forgive anything above his dungeon-bosom and foggy head.

Farewell! I'll be with you to-morrow evening; and be at rest in your mind. I will be yours in the way you think most to your happiness. I dare not proceed. I love, and will love you; and will, with joyous confidence, approach the throne of the Almighty Judge of men with your dear idea; and will despise the scum of sentiment and the mist of sophistry. SYLVANDER.

TO CLARINDA.

Wednesday, Midnight.

MADAM-After a wretched day, I am preparing for a sleepless night. I am going to address myself to the Almighty Witness of my actions some time, perhaps very soon, my Almighty Judge. I am not going to be the advocate of Passion: be Thou my inspirer and testimony, O God, as I plead the cause of truth!

I have read over your friend's haughty dictatorial letter: you are only answerable to your God in such a matter. Who gave any fellow-creature of yours (a fellow-creature incapable of being your

CLARINDA UNDER CENSURE.

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judge, because not your peer) a right to catechise, scold, undervalue, abuse, and insult, wantonly and unhumanly to insult, you thus? I don't wish, not even wish, to deceive you, madam. The Searcher of hearts is my witness how dear you are to me; but though it were possible you could be still dearer to me, I would not even kiss your hand at the expense of your conscience. Away with declamation! let us appeal to the bar of common sense. It is not mouthing everything sacred; it is not vague ranting assertions; it is not assuming, haughtily and insultingly assuming, the dictatorial language of a Roman pontiff, that must dissolve a union like ours. Tell me, madam, are you under the least shadow of an obligation to bestow your love, tenderness, caresses, affections, heart and soul, on Mr M'Lehose—the man who has repeatedly, habitually, and barbarously broken through every tie of duty, nature, or gratitude to you? The laws of your country, indeed, for the most useful reasons of policy and sound government, have made your person inviolate; but are your heart and affections bound to one who gives not the least return of either to you? You cannot do it; it is not in the nature of things that you are bound to do it; the common feelings of humanity forbid it. Have you, then, a heart and affections which are no man's right? You have. It would be highly, ridiculously absurd to suppose the contrary. Tell me, then, in the name of common-sense, can it be wrong, is such a supposition compatible with the plainest ideas of right and wrong, that it is improper to bestow the heart and these affections on another-while that bestowing is not in the smallest degree hurtful to your duty to God, to your children, to yourself, or to society at large?

This is the great test; the consequences: let us see them. In a widowed, forlorn, lonely situation, with a bosom glowing with love and tenderness, yet so delicately situated that you cannot indulge these nobler feelings except you meet with a man who has a soul capable

...

TO CLARINDA.

'I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan.' I have suffered, Clarinda, from your letter. My soul was in arms at the sad perusal. I dreaded that I had acted wrong. If I have wronged you, God forgive me. But, Clarinda, be comforted. Let us raise the tone of our feelings a little higher and bolder. A fellow-creature who leaves us who spurns us without just cause, though once our bosom friend-up with a little honest pride: let him go! How shall I comfort you, who am the cause of the injury? Can I wish that I had never seen you that we had never met? No, I never will. But, have I thrown you friendless ?-there is almost distraction in the thought. Father of mercies! against Thee often have I sinned: through Thy grace I will endeavour to do so no more. She who Thou knowest is dearer to me than myself-pour Thou the balm of peace into her past wounds, and hedge her about with Thy peculiar care, all her future days and nights. Strengthen her tender,

noble mind firmly to suffer and magnanimously to bear. Make me worthy of that friendship, that love she honours me with. May my attachment to her be pure as devotion, and lasting as immortal life! O, Almighty Goodness, hear me ! Be to her at all times, particularly in the hour of distress or trial, a friend and comforter, a guide and guard.

"How are thy servants blest, O Lord,

How sure is their defence!

Eternal wisdom is their guide,

Their help Omnipotence.'

Forgive me, Clarinda, the injury I have done you. To-night I shall be with you, as indeed I shall be ill at ease till I see you.

SYLVANDER.

TO CLARINDA.

Two o'clock.

I just now received your first letter of yesterday, by the careless negligence of the penny-post. Clarinda, matters are grown very serious with us; then seriously hear me, and hear me, Heaven-I met you, my dear. by far the first of womankind, at least to me; I esteemed, I loved you at first sight; the longer I am acquainted with you, the more innate amiableness and worth I discover in you. You have suffered a loss, I confess, for my sake: but if the firmest, steadiest, warmest friendship-if every endeavour to be worthy of your friendship-if a love, strong as the ties of nature, and holy as the duties of religion-if all these can make anything like a compensation for the evil I have occasioned you, if they be worth your acceptance, or can in the least add to your enjoyments— so help Sylvander, ye Powers above, in his hour of need, as he freely gives these all to Clarinda!

I esteem you, I love you as a friend; I admire you, I love you as a woman, beyond any one in all the circle of creation; I know I shall continue to esteem you, to love you, to pray for you-nay, to pray for myself for your sake.

Expect me at eight-and believe me to be ever, my dearest madam, yours most entirely, SYLVANDER.

TO CLARINDA.

When matters, my love, are desperate, we must put on a desperate face

'On reason build resolve,

That column of true majesty in man'

or, as the same author finely says in another place,

'Let thy soul spring up,

And lay strong hold for help on him that made thee.*

I am yours, Clarinda, for life. Never be discouraged at all this. Look forward in a few weeks I shall be somewhere or other, out of the possibility of seeing you: till then, I shall write you often,

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but visit you seldom. Your fame, your welfare, your happiness, are dearer to me than any gratification whatever. Be comforted, my love! the present moment is the worst; the lenient hand of time is daily and hourly either lightening the burden, or making us insensible to the weight. None of these friends-I mean Mr and the other gentleman-can hurt your worldly support: and of their friendship, in a little time you will learn to be easy, and by and by to be happy without it. A decent means of livelihood in the world, an approving God, a peaceful conscience, and one firm trusty friend --can anybody that has these be said to be unhappy? These are yours.

To-morrow evening I shall be with you about eight, probably for the last time till I return to Edinburgh. In the meantime, should any of these two unlucky friends question you respecting me, whether I am the man, I do not think they are entitled to any information. As to their jealousy and spying, I despise them. Adieu, my dearest madam! SYLVANDER.

While the time was thus drawing nigh for his leaving Edinburgh, he found time to pen a few letters to other friends.

TO MR JAMES CANDLISH.

[EDINBURGH, 1788.]

MY DEAR FRIEND - If once I were gone from this scene of hurry and dissipation, I promise myself the pleasure of that correspondence being renewed which has been so long broken. At present I have time for nothing. Dissipation and business engross every moment. I am engaged in assisting an honest Scotch enthusiast, a friend of mine, who is an engraver, and has taken it into his head to publish a collection of all our songs set to music, of which the words and music are done by Scotsmen. This, you will easily guess, is an undertaking exactly to my taste. I have collected, begged, borrowed, and stolen, all the songs I could meet with. Pompey's Ghost, words and music, I beg from you immediately, to go into his second number -the first is already published. I shall shew you the first number when I see you in Glasgow, which will be in a fortnight or less. Do be so kind as to send me the song in a day or two-you cannot imagine how much it will oblige me.

Direct to me at Mr W. Cruikshank's, St James's Square, New Town, Edinburgh.

R. B.

TO MRS DUNLOP.

EDINBURGH, February 12, 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 enjoy

1 Mr Johnson, publisher of the Scots Musical Museum.

K

ment. 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. R. B.

TO THE REV. JOHN SKINNER.

EDINBURGH, 14th February 1788. REVEREND AND DEAR SIR-I have been a cripple now near three months, though I am getting vastly better, and have been very much hurried besides, or else I would have wrote you sooner. I must beg your pardon for the epistle you sent me appearing in the magazine. I had given a copy or two to some of my intimate friends, but did not know of the printing of it till the publication of the magazine. However, as it does great honour to us both, you will forgive it.

The second volume of the songs I mentioned to you in my last is published to-day. I send you a copy, which I beg you will accept as a mark of the veneration I have long had, and shall ever have, for your character, and of the claim I make to your continued acquaintance. Your songs appear in the third volume, with your name in the index; as I assure you, sir, I have heard your Tullochgorum, particularly among our west-country folks, given to many different names, and most commonly to the immortal author of The Minstrel, who indeed never wrote anything superior to Gie's a sang, Montgomery cried. Your brother1 has promised me your verses to the Marquis of Huntly's reel, which certainly deserve a place in the collection. My kind host, Mr Cruikshank, of the High School here, and said to be one of the best Latins in this age, begs me to make you his grateful acknowledgments for the entertainment he has got in a Latin publication of yours, that I borrowed for him from your acquaintance and much-respected friend in this place, the Reverend Dr Webster. 2 Mr Cruikshank maintains that you write the best Latin since Buchanan. I leave Edinburgh tomorrow, but shall return in three weeks. Your song you mentioned in your last, to the tune of Dumbarton Drums, and the other, which you say was done by a brother in trade of mine, a ploughman, I shall thank you for a copy of each. I am ever, reverend sir, with the most respectful esteem and sincere veneration, yours, R. B.

TO MR RICHARD BROWN.

EDINBURGH, February 15, 1788.

MY DEAR FRIEND-I received yours with the greatest pleasure.

'Mr James Skinner, a legal practitioner in Edinburgh. He was half-brother of the poet, and thirty years his junior. He died only a few years ago. 2 A clergyman of the Scottish Episcopal church in Edinburgh.