can look on a worthless fellow of a duke with unqualified contempt; and can regard an honest scavenger with sincere respect. As you, sir, go through your role with such distinguished merit, permit me to make one in the chorus of univer sal applause, and assure you that, with the highest respect, I have the honour to be, &c. No. LXXXIX. To Mr. GILBERT BURNS. Dear brother, in a Ellisland, 11th January, 1790. I mean to take advantage of the frank, though I have not, in my present frame of mind, much appetite for exertion in writing. My nerves are * state. I feel that horrid hypochondria pervading every atom of both body and soul. This farm has undone my enjoyment of myself. It is a ruinous affair on all hands. But let it go to ****! I'll fight it out and be off with it. We have gotten a set of very decent players here just now. I have seen them an evening or two. David Campbell, in Ayr, wrote to me by the manager of the company, a Mr. Sutherland, who is a man of apparent worth. On new-year-day evening I gave him the following prologue, which he spouted to his audience with applause. No song nor dance I bring from yon great city, That queens it o'er our taste-the more's the pity: Tho', by the bye, abroad why will you roam? Good sense and taste are natives here at home; But not for panegyric I appear, I come to wish you all a good new year! Old Father Time deputes me here before ye, But 'twould be rude, you know, to ask the question; And with a would-be-roguish leer and wink, Ye sprightly youths, quite flush with hope and spirit, Who think to storm the world by dint of merit, To you the dotard has a deal to say, In his sly, dry, sententious, proverb way! He bids you mind, amid your thoughtless rattle, That the first blow is ever half the battle; That tho' some by the skirt may try to snatch him, Yet by the forelock is the hold to catch him; Last, tho' not least in love, ye youthful fair, Angelic forms, high Heaven's peculiar care! To you old Bald-pate smooths his wrinkled brow, And humbly begs you'll mind the important-now! To crown your happiness he asks your leave, And offers, bliss to give and to receive. For our sincere, tho' haply weak endeavours, With grateful pride we own your many favours; And howsoe'er our tongues may ill reveal it, Believe our glowing bosoms truly feel it. I can no more.-If once I was clear of this **** farm, I should respire more at ease. No. XC. To Mrs. DUNLOP. Ellisland, 25th January, 1790. It has been owing to unremitting hurry of business that I have not written to you, madam, long ere now. My health is greatly better, and I now begin once more to share in satisfaction and enjoyment with the rest of my fellow-creatures. Many thanks, my much-esteemed friend, for your kind letters; but why will you make me run the risk of being contemptible and mercenary in my own eyes? When I pique myself on my independent spirit, I hope it is neither poetic licence, nor poetic rant; and I am so flattered with the honour you have done me, in making me your compeer in friendship and friendly correspondence, that I cannot without pain, and a degree of mortification, be reminded of the real inequality be. tween our situations. Most sincerely do I rejoice with you, dear madam, in the good news of Anthony. Not only your anxiety about his fate, but my own esteem for such a noble, warm-hearted, manly young fellow, in the little I had of his acquaintance, has interested me deeply in his fortunes. Falconer, the unfortunate author of the Shipwreck, which you so much admire, is no more. After weathering the dreadful catastrophe he so feelingly describes in his poem, and after weathering many hard gales of fortune, he went to the bottom with the Aurora frigate! I forget what part of Scotland had the honour of giving him birth, but he was the son of obscurity and misfortune". He was one of those daring adventurous * Falconer was in early life a sea-boy, to use a word of Shakspeare, on board a man of war, in which capacity he attracted the notice of Campbell, the author of the satire on Dr. Johnson, en spirits, which Scotland beyond any other country is remarkable for producing. Little does the fond mother think, as she hangs delighted over the sweet little leech at her bosom, where the poor fellow may hereafter wander, and what may be his fate. I remember a stanza in an old Scottish ballad, which, notwithstanding its rude simplicity, speaks feelingly to the heart: "Little did my mother think, Or what death I should die!" Old Scottish songs are, you know, a favourite study and pursuit of mine, and now I am on that subject, allow me to give you two stanzas of ano titled Lexiphanes, then purser of the ship. Campbell took him as his servant, and delighted in giving him instruction; and when Falconer afterwards acquired celebrity, boasted of him as his scholar. The editor had this information from a surgeon of a man of war, in 1777, who knew both Campbell and Falconer, and who himself perished soon after by shipwreck, on the coast of America. Though the death of Falconer happened so lately as 1770 or 1771, yet in the biography prefixed by Dr. Anderson to his works, in the complete edition of the Poets of Great Britain, it is said, "of the family, birth-place, and education of William Falconer, there are no memorials." On the authority already given, it may be mentioned, that he was a native of one of the towns on the coast of Fife, and that his parents, who had suffered some misfortunes, removed to one of the sea-ports of England, where they both died soon after of an epidemic fever, leaving poor Falconer, then a boy, forlorn and destitute. In consequence of which he entered on board a man of war. These last eir umstances are however less certain. c E. Vol. II. H ther old simple ballad, which I am sure will please you. The catastrophe of the piece is a poor ruined female, lamenting her fate. She concludes with this pathetic wish: O that my father had ne'er on me smil'd; O that my mother had ne'er to me sung O that my cradle had never been rock'd; But that I had died when I was young! O that the grave it were my bed; My blankets were my winding sheet; I do not remember, in all my reading, to have met with any thing more truly the language of misery, than the exclamation in the last line. Misery is like love; to speak its language truly, the author must have felt it. I am every day expecting the doctor to give your little godson* the small-pox. They are rife in the country, and I tremble for his fate. By the way I cannot help congratulating you on his looks and spirit. Every person who sees him, acknowledges him to be the finest, handsomest child he has ever seen. I am myself delighted with the manly swell of his little chest, and a certain miniature dignity in the carriage of his head, and the glance of his fine black eye, which promise the undaunted gallantry of an independent mind. I thought to have sent you some rhymes, but time forbids. I promise you poetry until you are tired of it, next time I have the honour of assuring you how truly I am, &c. *The bard's second son, Francis. |