sert every anecdote I can learn, together with my own criticisms and remarks on the songs.-A copy of this kind I shall leave with you, the editor, to publish at some after period, by way of making the Museum a book famous to the end of time, and you renowned for ever. I have got an Highland dirk, for which I have great veneration; as it once was the dirk of lord Balmerino. It fell into bad hands, who stripped it of the silver mounting, as well as the knife and fork. I have some thoughts of sending it to your care, to get it mounted anew. Thank you for the copies of my Volunteer Ballad. Our friend Clarke has done indeed well! 'tis chaste and beautiful. I have not met with any thing that has pleased me so much. You know, I am no connoisseur; but that I am an amateur -will be allowed me. No. LXII. To Miss FONTENELLE, Accompanying a Prologue to be spoken for her Benefit. Madam, In such a bad world as ours, those who add to the scanty sum of our pleasures, are positively our benefactors. To you, madam, on our humble Dumfries boards, I have been more indebted for enter tainment than ever I was in prouder theatres. Your charms, as a woman, would insure applause to the most indifferent actress, and your theatrical talents would insure admiration to the plainest figure. This, madam, is not the unmeaning, or insidious compliment of the frivolous or interested; I pay it from the same honest impulse that the sublime of nature excites my admiration, or her beauties give me delight. Will the foregoing lines be of any service to you on your approaching benefit night? If they will, I shall be prouder of my muse than ever. They are nearly extempore: I know they have no great merit; but though they should add but little to the entertainment of the evening, they give me the happiness of an opportunity to declare how much I have the honour to be, &e. No. LXIII. TO PETER MILLER, Jun. Esq. of Dalswinton. Dear sir, Dumfries, Nov. 1794. Your offer is indeed truly generous, and most sincerely do I thank you for it; but in my present situation, I find that I dare not accept it. You well know my political sentiments; and were I an insular individual, unconnected with a wife and family of children, with the most fervid enthusiasm I would have volunteered my services: I then could and would have despised all consequences that might have ensued. In a conversation with his friend Mr. Perry, (the proprietor of "The Morning Chronicle,") Mr. Miller represented to that gentleman the insufficiency of Burns's salary to answer the imperious demands of a numerous family. In their sympathy for his misfortunes, and in their regret that his talents were nearly lost to the world of letters, these gentlemen agreed on the plan of settling him in London. To accomplish this most desirable object, Mr. Perry, very spiritedly, made the poet a handsome offer of an annual stipend for the exercise of his talents in his newspaper. Burns's reasons for refusing this offer are stated in the present letter. E. My prospect in the excise is something; at least, it is, incumbered as I am with the welfare, the ve ry existence, of near half-a-score of helpless individuals, what I dare not sport with. In the mean time they are most welcome to my ode; only, let them insert it as a thing they have met with by accident and unknown to me.-Nay, if Mr. Perry, whose honour, after your character of him, I cannot doubt; if he will give me an address and channel by which any thing will come safe from those spies with which he may be cer tain that his correspondence is beset, I will now and then send him any bagatelle that I may write. In the present hurry of Europe nothing but news and politics will be regarded; but against the days of peace, which Heaven send soon, my little assistance may perhaps fill up an idle column of a newspaper. I have long had it in my head to try my hand in the way of little prose essays, which I propose sending into the world through the medium of some newspaper; and should these be worth his while, to these Mr. Perry shall be wel come; and all my reward shall be, his treating me with his paper, which, by the bye, to any body who has the least relish for wit, is a high treat indeed. With the most grateful esteem, I am ever, No. LXIV. To GAVIN HAMILTON, Esq. My dear sir, Dumfries. It is indeed with the highest satisfaction that I congratulate you on the return of "days of ease, and nights of pleasure," after the horrid hours of misery, in which I saw you suffering existence when I was last in Ayrshire. I seldom pray for any body. "I'm baith dead sweer, and wretched ill o't." But most fervently do I beseech the great Director of this world, that you may live long and be happy, but that you may live no longer than while you are happy. It is needless for me to advise you to have a reverend care of your health. I know you will make it a point never, at one time, to drink more than a pint of wine; (I mean an English pint ;) and that you will never be witness to more than one bowl of punch at a time; and that cold drams you will never more taste. am well convinced too, that after drinking, perhaps boiling punch, you will never mount your horse and gallop home in a chill, late hour.Above all things, as I understand you are now in habits of intimacy with that Boanerges of gospel powers, father Auld", be earnest with him that I The Revd. Wm. Auld, the then minister of Mauchline. This man was of a morose and malicious disposition; he had quarrelled with Mr. Gavin Hamilton's father, and sought every occasion of revenging himself on the son. Burns dearly loved Gavin Hamilton, and could not view this conduct with indifference: besides, father Auld in his religious tenets was highly Calvinistic, dealing damnation around him with no sparing hand. He was also superstitious and bigotted in the extreme-excellent marks for the poet! The following specimens of father Auld will shew his desire to provoke and irritate Mr. Hamilton, and are a full display of the liberality of his sentiments in matters of religion. He unwarrantably refused to christen Mr. Hamilton's child for the following reasons:-that Mr. Hamilton rode on Sundays-that he had ordered a person to dig a few potatoes in his garden on the Sabbath-day, (for which he was cited before the kirk !) He also charged him with dining in a public house on a king's fast day, with two gentlemen, and that they were even heard to whistle and sing after dinner.-Moreover, which was the heaviest and most awful charge of all--he, Mr. Auld, heard he will wrestle in prayer for you, that you may see the vanity of vanities in trusting to, or even practising the carnal moral works of charity, humanity, generosity, and forgiveness; things which you practised so flagrantly, that it was evident you delighted in them; neglecting, or perhaps profanely despising the wholesome doctrine of "Faith without works, the only anchor of salvation." A hymn of thanksgiving would, in my opinion, be highly becoming for you at present; and in my zeal for your well-being I earnestly press it on you to be diligent in chanting over the two inclosed pieces of sacred poesy. My best compliments to Mrs. Hamilton and Miss Kennedy. Yours in the L-d, Gavin Hamilton say, presence! R. B. "D-mn it," in his own All this idle and vexatious folly tended, as might be expected, to alienate the mind of Mr. Hamilton, both from the parson and his pulpit. Father Auld and his adherents charged him with neglect of religion and disrespect for its professors. The poet took his friend and patron's part, and repelled the attack by extolling Mr. Hamilton's elevation of sentiment, his readiness to forgive injuries, and, above all, his universal active benevolence. These excellent qualities Burns opposed to the fierceness, fanaticism, and monkish gloom of this class of priests. His sentiments on the subject are given in this letter with infinite address, and in a strain of sly, covert humour that he has seldom surpassed. He is equally sly, but more explicit in his poetical dedication of his works to Gavin Hamilton. In a copy, in the poet's writing, that I have scen, the circumstance of riding on the Sabbathday is thus neatly introduced: "He sometimes gallops on a Sunday, An' pricks the beast as it were Monday." E: |