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quite at a loss to say whether it was most polite or kind.

Your criticisms, my honoured benefactress, are truly the work of a friend. They are not the blasting depredations of a canker-toothed, caterpillar critic; nor are they the fair statement of cold impartiality, balancing with unfeeling exaetitude, the pro and con of an author's merits; they are the judicious observations of animated friendship, selecting the beauties of the piece. I have

From a letter which is printed in Dr. Cur rie's collection. it appears that Burns entertained no great respect for what may be styled technical criticism. He loved the man who judged of poe tical compositions from the heart-but looked with an evil eye upon those who decided by the cold decisions of the head. This is evinced by the following anecdote.

At a private breakfast in a literary circle at Edinburgh, to which he was invited, the conversation turned on the poetical merit and pathos of Gray's Elegy, a poem of which he was enthusias tieally fond. A clergyman present, remarkable for his love of paradox and for his eccentric notions on every subject, distinguished himself by an injudicious and ill-timed attack on this exquisite poem, which Burns, with a generous warmth for the reputation of Gray, manfully defended.

As

this gentleman's remarks were rather general than specific, Burns urged him to bring forward the passages which he thought exceptionable. He made several attempts to quote the poem, but al Burns ways in a blundering inaceurate manner. bore all this for a considerable time with his usual good nature and forbearance; till, at length, goaded by the fastidious criticisms and wretched quibblings of his opponent, he roused himself, and with an eye flashing contempt and indignation, and with great vehemenee of gesticulation, he thus addressed the old critic. "Sir,-I now perceive a man may be an excellent judge of poetry by

just arrived from Nithsdale, and will be here a fortnight. I was on horseback this morning by three o'clock; for between my wife and my farm is just forty-six miles. As I jogged on in the dark, I was taken with a poetic fit as follows:

"Mrs. F of C's lamentation for the death of her son; an uncommonly promising youth of eighteen or nineteen years of age."

Here follow the verses, entitled, "A Mother's lament for the loss of her Son."

See vol. iii. p. 256. You will not send me your poetic rambles, but you see I am no niggard of mine. I am sure your impromptus give me double pleasure; what falls from your pen, can neither be unentertaining in itself, nor indifferent to me.

The one fault you found, is just; but I cannot please myself in an emendation.

What a life of solicitude is the life of a parent! You interested me much in your young couple.

I would not take my folio paper for this epis tle, and now I repent it. I am so jaded with my dirty long journey, that I was afraid to drawl into the essence of dulness with any thing longer than a quarto, and so I must leave out another rhyme of this morning's manufacture.

I will pay the sapientipotent George most cheer. fully, to hear from you ere I leave Ayrshire.

square and rule, and after all,-be a dd blockhead!"

E.

No. XXXI.

To Mr. JAMES JOHNSON, Engraver,

My dear sir,

Edinburgh.

Mauchline, Nov. 15, 1788.

I have sent you two more songs.-If you have got any tunes, or any thing to correct, please send them by return of the carrier.

I can easily see, my dear friend, that you will very probably have four volumes. Perhaps you may not find your account lucratively, in this business; but you are a patriot for the music of your country; and I am certain, posterity will look on themselves as highly indebted to your public spirit.

Be not in a hurry; let us go on correctly; and your name shall be immortal.

I am preparing a flaming preface for your third volume. I see, every day, new musical publications advertised; but what are they? Gaudy, hunted butterflies of a day, and then vanish for ever but your work will outlive the momentary neglects of idle fashion, and defy the teeth of time.

Have you never a fair goddess that leads you a wild-goose chase of amorous devotion? Let me know a few of her qualities, such as, whether she be rather black, or fair; plump, or thin; short, or tall, &c.; and chuse your air, and I shall task my muse to celebrate her.

No. XXXII.

To Dr. BLACKLOCK.

Rev. and dear sir,

Mauchline, Nov. 15, 1788.

As I hear nothing of your motions but that you are, or were, out of town, I do not know where

this may find you, or whether it will find you at all. I wrote you a long letter, dated from the land of matrimony, in June; but either it had not, found you, or, what I dread more. it found you or Mrs. Blacklock in too precarious a state of health and spirits, to take notice of an idle packet.

I have done many little things for Johnson, since I had the pleasure of seeing you; and I have finished one piece, in the way of Pope's Moral Epistles; but from your silence, I have every thing to fear, so I have only sent you two melancholy things, which I tremble lest they should too well suit the tone of your present feelings.

In a fortnight I move, bag and baggage, to Nithsdale till then, my direction is at this place; after that period, it will be at Ellisland, near Dumfries. It would extremely oblige me, were it but half a line, to let me know how you are, and where you are.-Can I be indifferent to the fate of a man, to whom I owe so much? A man whom I not only esteem, but venerate*.

Gratefully alluding to the doctor's introduction of him to the literary eireles of Edinburgh."There was, perhaps, never one among mankind," says Heron, in a spirited memoir of our bard, inserted in the Edinburgh Magazine, "whom you might more truly have called an angel upon earth, than Dr. Blacklock: he was guileless and innocent as a child, yet endowed with manly sagacity and penetration; his heart was a perpetual spring of overflowing benignity; his feelings were all tremblingly alive to the sense of the sublime, the beautiful, the tender, the pious, the vir tuous.-Poetry was to him the dear solace of perpetual blindness; cheerfulness, even to gaiety, was, notwithstanding that irremediable misfortune, long the predominant colour of his mind. In his latter years, when the gloom might otherwise have thickened around him, hope, faith, devotion the most fervent and sublime, exalted his mind to Heaven, and made him maintain his wont

My warmest good wishes and most respectful compliments to Mrs. Blacklock, and miss Johnson, if she is with you.

I cannot conclude without telling you, that I am more and more pleased with the step I took respecting "my Jean."-Two things, from my happy experience, I set down as apothegms in life. A wife's head is immaterial, compared with her. heart-and-" Virtue's (for wisdom what poet pretends to it) ways are ways of pleasantness, and her paths are peace."

Adieu !

Here follow The mother's lament for the loss of her son," and the song beginning “The lazy mist hangs from the brow of the hill."

See vol. iii. p. 233.

No. XXXIII.

To Mr. ROBERT AINSLIE.

Ellisland, Jan. 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.

ed cheerfulness in the expectation of a speedy dissolution."

In the beginning of the winter of 1786-87, Burns came to Edinburgh: by Dr. B. he was received with the most flattering kindness, and was earnestly introduced to every person of taste and generosity among the good old man's friends. was little Blacklock had in his power to do for a brother poet-but that little he did with a fond alaerity, and with a modest grace.

E.

It

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