dulness. In two or three small instances lately, I have been most shamefully out. I have all along, hitherto, in the warfare of life, been bred to arms among the light-horse-the piquet-guards of fancy; a kind of hussars and Highlanders of the brain; but I am firmly resolved to sell out of these giddy battalions, who have no ideas of a battle but fighting the foe, or of a siege, but storming the town. Cost what it will, I am determined to buy in among the grave squadrons of heavy-armed thought, or the artillery corps of plodding contrivance. What books are you reading, or what is the subject of your thoughts, besides the great studies of your profession? You said something about religion in your last. I don't exactly remember what it was, as the letter is in Ayrshire; but I thought it not only prettily said, but nobly thought. You will make a noble fellow if once you were married. I make no reservation of your being wellmarried: you have so much sense, and knowledge of human nature, that though you may not realize, perhaps, the ideas of romance, yet you will never be ill-married. Were it not for the terrors of my ticklish situation respecting provision for a family of children, I am decidedly of opinion that the step I have taken is vastly for my happiness. As it is, I look to the excise scheme as a certainty of maintenance; a maintenance, luxury to what either Mrs. Burns or I were born to. Adieu. My dear sir, No. XXVI. TO THE SAME. Ellisland, June 30, 1788. I just now received your brief epistle; and, to fake vengeance on your laziness, I have, you see, taken a long sheet of writing paper, and have begun at the top of the page, intending to scribble on the very last corner. I am vext at that affair of the ** but dare not enlarge on the subject until you send me your direction, as I suppose that will be altered on your late master and friend's death. I am concerned for the old fellow's exit, only as I fear it may be to your disadvantage in any respect-for an old man's dying, except he have been a very benevolent character, or in some particular situation of life, that the welfare of the poor or the helpless depended on him, I think it an event of the most trifling moment to the world. Man is naturally a kind benevolent animal, but he is dropt into such a needy situation here in this vexatious world, and has such a whoreson, hungry, growling, multiplying pack of necessities, appetites, passions, and desires about him, ready to deyour him for want of other food; that in fact he must lay aside his cares for others, that he may look properly to himself". You have been imposed upon in paying Mr. M for the profile of a Mr. H. I did not mention it in my letter to you, nor did I ever give Mr. Many such order. I have no objection to lose the money, but I will not have any such profile in my possession. I desired the carrier to pay you, but as I mentioned only 15s. to him, I will rather enclose you a guinea note. I have it not indeed to spare here, as I am only a sojourner in a strange land in this place; but in a day or two I return to Mauchline, and there I have the bank-notes through the house, like salt permits. There is a great degree of folly in talking unnecessarily of one's private affairs. I have just now been interrupted by one of my new neighbours, who has made himself absolutely contemptible in my eyes, by his silly, garrulous prurieney. I know A similar thought occurs in a letter to Mr. Hill-See General Correspondence, No. XCV. it has been a fault of my own too; but, from this moment, I abjure it, as I would the service of hell! Your poets, spendthrifts, and other fools of that kidney, pretend, forsooth, to crack their jokes on prudence, but 'tis a squalid vagabond glorying in his rags. Still, imprudence respecting money matters, is much more pardonable than imprudence respecting character. I have no objection to prefer prodigality to avarice, in some few instances; but I appeal to your observation, if you have not met, and often met, with the same little disingenuousness, the same hollow-hearted insincerity, and disintegritive depravity of principle, in the hackneyed victims of profusion, as in the unfeeling children of parsimony. I have every possible reverence for the much-talked-of world beyond the grave, and I wish that which piety believes and virtue deserves, may be all matter of fact.But in things belonging to, and terminating in this present scene of existence, man has serious and interesting business on hand. Whether a man shall shake hands with welcome in the distinguished elevation of respect, or shrink from contempt in the abject corner of insignificance; whether he shall wanton under the tropic of plenty, at least enjoy himself in the comfortable latitudes of easy convenience, or starve in the arctic circle of dreary poverty; whether he shall rise in the manly consciousness of a self-approving mind, or sink beneath a galling load of regret and remorse-these are alternatives of the last moment. You see how I preach. You used occasionally to sermonize too; I wish you would, in charity, favour me with a sheet full in your own way. I admire the close of a letter lord Bolingbroke writes dean Swift: "Adieu, dear Swift! with all thy faults I love thee entirely make an effort to love me with all mine!" Humble servant, and all that trumpery, is now such a prostituted business, that honest friendship, in her sincere way, must have recourse to her primitive, simple-farewell! ? No. XXVII. To Mr. GEORGE LOCKHART, Merchant, My dear sir, Glasgow. Mauchline, July 18, 1788. I am just going for Nithsdale, else I would certainly have transcribed some of my rhyming things for you. The miss Bailies I have seen in Edinburgh. "Fair and lovely are thy works, Lord God Almighty! Who would not praise Thee for these Thy gifts in Thy goodness to the sons of men!" It needed not your fine taste to admire them. I declare, one day I had the honour of dining at Mr. Bailie's, I was almost in the predicament of the children of Israel, when they could not look on Moses's face for the glory that shone in it, when he descended from Mount Sinai*. I did once write a poetic address from the falls of Bruar to his grace of Athole, when I was in the Highlands. When you return to Scotland let me know, and I will send such of my pieces as please myself best. I return to Mauchline in about ten days. My compliments to Mr. Purden. I am in truth, but at present in haste, Yours, sincerely. * One of Burns's remarks, when he first came to Edinburgh, was, that between the men of rustic life and the polite world he observed little difference-that in the former, though unpolished by fashion, and unenlightened by science, he had found much observation and much intelligencebut a refined and accomplished woman was a being almost new to him, and of which he had formed but a very inadequate idea, E. No. XXVIII. To Mr. BEUGO, Engraver, Edinburgh. My dear sir, Ellisland, Sept. 9, 1788. There is not in Edinburgh above the number of the graces whose letters would have given me so much pleasure as yours of the 3d instant, which only reached me yesternight. I am here on my farm, busy with my harvest; but for all that most pleasurable part of life called social communication, I am here at the very elbow of existence. The only things that are to be found in this country, in any degree of perfection, are stupidity and canting. Prose, they only know in graces, prayers, &c., and the value of these they estimate as they do their plaiding webs-by the ell! As for the muses, they have as much an idea of a rhinoceros as of a poet. For my old capricious, but good-natured hussy of a muse By banks of Nith I sat and wept In midst thereof I hung my harp I am generally about half my time in Ayrshire with my "darling Jean," and then I, at lucid intervals, throw my horny fist across my be-cobwebbed lyre, much in the same manner as an old wife throws her hand across the spokes of her spinning wheel. I will send you "The Fortunate Shepherdess" as soon as I return to Ayrshire, for there I keep it with other precious treasure. I shall send it by a careful hand, as I would not for any thing it should be mislaid or lost. I do not wish to serve you from any benevolence, or other grave Chris |