XXXIII. EXTRACT OF A LETTER TO THE SAME. Edinburgh, 12th Feb. 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 enjoyment. 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. MADAM, XXXIV. TO MRS. DUNLOP. Mossgiel, 7th March, 1788. THE last paragraph in yours of the 30th February. affected me most, so I shall begin my answer where you ended your letter. That I am often a sinner with any little wit I have, I do confess; but I have taxed my recollection to no purpose to find out when it was employed against you. I hate an ungenerous sarcasm a great deal worse than I do the devil; at least, as Milton describes him; and though I may be rascally enough to be sometimes guilty of it myself, I cannot endure it in others. You, my honoured friend, who cannot appear in any light but you are sure of being respectableyou can afford to pass by an occasion to display your wit, because you may depend for fame on your sense; or if you choose to be silent, you know you can rely on the gratitude of many and the esteem of all; but, God help us who are wits or witlings by profession, if we stand not for fame there, we sink unsupported! I am highly flattered by the news you tell me of Coila.* I may say to the fair painter who does mè so much honour, as Dr. Beattie says to Ross the poet of his muse Scota, from which, by the bye, I took the idea of Coila: ("Tis a poem of Beattie's in the Scots dialect, which perhaps you have never seen.) "Ye shak your head, but o' my fegs, Her fiddle wanted strings and pegs, XXXV. TO MR. ROBERT CLEGHORN. Mauchline, 31st March, 1788. YESTERDAY, my dear sir, as I was riding through a track of melancholy, joyless muirs, between Gal * A lady (daughter of Mrs. Dunlop) was making a picture from the description of Coila in the Vision. loway and Ayrshire, it being Sunday, I turned my thoughts to psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs; and your favourite air Captain Okean coming at length in my head, I tried these words to it. You will see that the first part of the tune must be repeated.* I am tolerably pleased with these verses; but, as I have only a sketch of the tune, I leave it with you to try if they suit the measure of the music. I am so harassed with care and anxiety about this farming project of mine, that my muse has degenerated into the veriest prose-wench that ever picked cinders or followed a tinker. When I am fairly got into the routine of business, I shall trouble you with a longer epistle; perhaps with some queries respecting farming at present, the world sits such a load on my mind, that it has effaced almost every trace of the * * * * in me. My very best compliments and good wishes to Mrs. Cleghorn. MADAM, XXXVI. TO MRS. DUNLOP. Mauchline, 28th April, 1788. YOUR powers of reprehension must be great indeed, as I assure you they made my heart ache with penitential pangs, even though I was really not guilty. As I commence farmer at Whitsunday, you will • Here the Bard gives the first stanza of the Chevalier's Lament. easily guess I must be pretty busy! but that is not all. As I got the offer of the excise-business without solicitation; and as it costs me only six months' attendance for instructions to entitle me to a commission, which commission lies by me, and at any future period, on my simple petition, can be resumed; I thought five-and-thirty pounds a-year was no bad dernier resort for a poor poet, if fortune, in her jade tricks, should kick him down from the little eminence to which she has lately helped him up. For this reason, I am at present attending these instructions, to have them completed before Whitsunday. Still, madam, I prepared, with the sincerest pleasure, to meet you at the Mount, and came to my brother's on Saturday night, to set out on Sunday; but for some nights preceding, I had slept in an apartment where the force of the winds and rains was only mitigated by being sifted through numberless apertures in the windows, walls, &c. In consequence, I was on Sunday, Monday, and part of Tuesday, unable to stir out of bed, with all the miserable effects of a violent cold. You see, madam, the truth of the French maxim Le vrai n'est pas toujours le vrai-semblable. Your last was so full of expostulation, and was something so like the language of an offended friend, that I began to tremble for a correspondence which I had with grateful pleasure set down as one of the greatest enjoyments of my future life. Your books have delighted me: Virgil, Dryden, and Tasso, were all equally strangers to me: but of this more at large in my next. SIR, XXXVII. TO PROFESSOR DUGALD STEWART. Mauchline, 3d May, 1788. I ENCLOSE you one or two more of my bagatelles. If the fervent wishes of honest gratitude have any influence with that great unknown Being, who frames the chain of causes and events, prosperity and happiness will attend your visit to the Continent, and return you safe to your native shore. Wherever I am, allow me, sir, to claim it as my privilege to acquaint you with my progress in my trade of rhymes; as I am sure I could say it with. truth, that, next to my little fame, and the having it in my power to make life more comfortable to those whom nature has made dear to me, I shall ever regard your countenance, your friendly good offices, as the most valued consequence of my late success in life. MADAM, XXXVIII. EXTRACT OF A LETTER TO MRS. DUNLOP. Mauchline, 4th May, 1788. DRYDEN'S Virgil has delighted me. I do not know whether the critics will agree with me, but the Georgics are to me by far the best of Virgil. It is, |