John of Badenyon, &c. I suppose you know he is a clergyman. It is by far the finest compliment I ever got. I will send you a copy of it.

I go on Thursday or Friday to Dumfries to wait on Mr. Miller about his farms.-Do tell that to lady M'Kenzie, that she may give me credit for a little wisdom. "I wisdom dwell with prudence." What a blessed fire-side! How happy should I be to pass a winter evening under their venerable roof! and smoke a pipe of tobacco, or drink water-gruel with them! What solemn, lengthened, laughter-quashing gravity of phiz! What sage remarks on the good-for-nothing sons and daughters of indiscretion and folly! And what frugal lessons, as we straitened the fire-side circle, on the uses of the poker and tongs!

Miss N. is very well, and begs to be remembered in the old way to you. used all my eloquence, all the persuasive flourishes of the hand, and heart-melting modulation of periods in my power, to urge her out to Harvieston, but all in vain, My rhetoric seems quite to have lost its effect on the lovely half of mankind. I have seen the day. but that is a "tale of other years."-In my conscience, I believe that my heart has been so oft on fire, that it is absolutely vitrified. I look on the sex with something like the admiration with which I regard the starry sky in a frosty December night. I admire the beauty of the Creator's workmanship; I am charmed with the wild, but graceful eccentricity of their motions, and-wish them good night. I mean this with respect to a. certain passion dont j'ai eu l'honneur d'etre un miserable esclave: as for friendship, you and Charlotte have given me pleasure, permanent pleasure," which the world cannot give, nor take away," I hope; and which will outlast the hea vens and the earth.

Vol. IV,

B

Without date.

I have been at Dumfries; and, at one visit more, shall be decided about a farm in that country. I am rather hopeless in it; but as my brother is an excellent farmer, and is, besides, an exceedingly prudent, sober man, (qualities which are only a younger brother's fortune in our family), I am determined, if my Dumfries business fail me, to return into partnership with him, and at our leisure take another farm in the neighbourhood. I assure you I look for high compliments from you and Charlotte on this very sage instance of my unfathomable, incomprehensible wisdom. Talking of Charlotte, I must tell her that I have, to the best of my power, paid her a poetic compliment, now completed. The air is admirable: tune, Old Highland. It was the tune of a Gælic song, which an Inverness lady sung me when I was there; and I was so charmed with it, that I begged her to write me a set of it from her singing; for it never had been set before. I am fixed that it shall go in Johnson's next number; so Charlotte and you need not spend your precious time in contradicting me. I won't say the poetry is first-rate; though I am convinced it is very well: and, what is not always the case with compliments to ladies, it is not only sincere, but just.

(Here follows the song of "The Banks of the Devon.")

Edinburgh, Nov. 21, 1787. I have one vexatious fault to the kindly-welcome, well-filled sheet, which I owe to your and Charlotte's goodness-it contains too much sense, sentiment, and good spelling. It is impossible that even you two, whom I declare to my God, I will give credit for any degree of excellence the sex are capable of attaining, it is impossible you can go on to correspond at that rate; so, like those

who, Shenstone says, retire because they have made a good speech, I shall after a few letters hear no more of you. I insist that you shall write whatever comes first: what you see, what you read, what you hear, what you admire, what you dislike, trifles, bagatelles, nonsense: or to fill up a corner, e'en put down a laugh at full length. Now none of your polite hints about flattery: I leave that to your lovers, if you have or shall have any; though, thank heaven, I have found at last two girls, who can be luxuriantly happy in their own minds and with one another, without that commonly necessary appendage to female bliss-a lover.

Charlotte and you are just two favourite resting places for my soul in her wanderings through the weary, thorny wilderness of this world-God knows I am ill fitted for the struggle: I glory in being a poet, and I want to be thought a wise man-I would fondly be generous, and I wish to be rich. After all, I am afraid I am a lost subject. "Some folk hae a hantle o' fauts, an' I'm but a ne'er-do-weel."

Afternoon.-To close the melancholy reflections at the end of last sheet, I shall just add a piece of devotion, commonly known in Carrick by the title of the "Wabster's grace."

"Some say we're thieves, and e'en sae are we ! Some say we lie, and e'en sae do we!

Gude forgie us, and I hope sae will he!

-Up and to your looms, lads."

Edinburgh, Dec. 12, 1787.

I am here under the care of a surgeon, with a bruised limb extended on a cushion; and the tints of my mind vying with the livid horror preceding a midnight thunder-storm. A drunken coachman was the cause of the first, and incomparably the lightest evil; misfortune, bodily constitution, hell,

and myself, have formed a "quadruple alliance" to guarantee the other. I got my fall on Saturday, and am getting slowly better.

I have taken tooth and nail to the bible, and am got through the five books of Moses, and half way in Joshua. It is really a glorious book. I sent for my book-binder to-day, and ordered him to get me an octavo bible in sheets, the best paper and print in town; and bind it with all the elegance of his craft.

I would give my best song to my worst enemy, I mean the merit of making it, to have you and Charlotte by me. You are angelic creatures, and would pour oil and wine into my wounded spirit.

I inclose you a proof copy of the "Banks of the Devon," which present with my best wishes to Charlotte. The "Ochel-hills," you shall probably have next week for yourself. None of your fine speeches!

Edinburgh, Dec. 19, 1787.

I begin this letter in answer to yours of the 17th eurrent, which is not yet cold since I read it. The atmosphere of my soul is vastly clearer than when I wrote you last. For the first time, yesterday I crossed the room on crutches. It would do your heart good to see my bardship, not on my poetic, but on my oaken stilts; throwing my best leg with an air! and with as much hilarity in my gait and countenance, as a May frog leaping across the newly harrowed ridge, enjoying the fragrance of the refreshed earth after the longexpected shower!

I can't say I am altogether at my ease when I see any where in my path, that meagre, squalid, famine-faced spectre, poverty; attended, as he always is, by iron-fisted oppression, and leering contempt; but I have sturdily withstood his buffet

ings many a hard-aboured day already, and still my motto is-I dare! My worst enemy is moi même. I lie so miserably open to the inroads and incursions of a mischievous, light-armed, wellmounted banditti, under the banners of imagina tion, whim, caprice, and passion; and the heavyarmed veteran regulars of wisdom, prudence, and fore-thought, move so very, very slow, that I am almost in a perpetual state of warfare, and, alas! frequent defeat. There are just two creatures that I would envy, a horse in his wild state traversing the forests of Asia, or an oyster on some of the desart shores of Europe. The one has not a wish without enjoyment, the other has neither wish nor fear.

Edinburgh, March 14, 1788.

I know, my ever dear friend, that you will be pleased with the news when I tell you, I have at last taken a lease of a farm. Yesternight I completed a bargain with Mr. Miller, of Dalswinton, for the farm of Ellisland, on the banks of the Nith, between five and six miles above Dumfries. I begin at Whitsunday to build a house, drive lime, &c., and heaven be my help! for it will take a strong effort to bring my mind into the routine of business. I have discharged all the army of my former pursuits, fancies, and pleasures; a motley host! and have literally and strictly retained only the idea of a few friends, which I have incorporated into a life-guard. I trust in Dr. Johnson's observation, "Where much is attempted, something is done." Firmness both in suffer

ance and exertion, is a character I would wish to be thought to possess; and have always despised the whining yelp of complaint, and the cowardly, feeble resolve.