new house even before it be plaistered. I will inhabit the one end until the other is finished. About three weeks more, I think, will at farthest, be my time beyond which I cannot stay in this present house. If ever you wished to deserve the blessing of him that was ready to perish; if ever you were in a situation that a little kindness would have rescued you from many evils; if ever you hope to find rest in future states of untried being;-get these matters of mine ready. My servant will be out in the beginning of next week for the clock. My compliments to Mrs. Morison.* I am, after all my tribulation,

Dear Sir, Yours.

* This letter refers to chairs, and other articles of furniture which the poet had ordered.

No. 268.

TO MR. JAMES SMITH,

AVON PRINTFIELD, LINLITHGOW.

Mauchline, April 28th, 1788.

BEWARE of your Strasburgh, my good

Sir! Look on this as the opening of a correspondence like the opening of a twenty-four gun battery!

There is no understanding a man properly, without knowing sometimes of his previous ideas (that is to say, if the man has any ideas; for I know many who, in the animal-muster, pass for men, that are the scanty masters of only one idea on any given subject, and by far the greatest part of your acquaintances and mine can barely boast of ideas, 1 25-1.5-1.75, or some such fractional matter) so to let you a little into the secrets of my pericranium, there is, you must know, a certain clean-limbed, handsome, bewitching young hussy of your acquaintance, to whom I have lately and privately given a matrimonial title to my corpus.

'Bode a robe and wear it.'

Says the wise old Scots adage! I hate to presage ill-luck; and as my girl has been doubly kinder to me than even the best of women usually are to their partners of our sex, in similar circumstances, I reckon on twelve times a brace of children against I celebrate my twelfth wedding day:

6

these twenty-four will give me twenty-four gossippings, twenty-four christenings, (I mean one equal to two) and I hope, by the blessing of the God of my fathers, to make them twenty-four useful members of society, and twenty-four approven servants of their God! **** Light's heartsome,' quo' the wife, when she was stedling sheep. You see what a lamp I have hung up to lighten your paths, when you are idle enough to explore the combinations and relations of my ideas. 'Tis now as plain as a pike-staff, why a twenty-four gun battery was a metaphor I could readily employ.

Now for business.-I intend to present Mrs. Burns with a printed shawl, an article of which I dare say you have variety: 'tis my first present to her since I have irrevocably called her mine, and I have a kind of whimsical wish to get her the said first present from an old and much valued friend of hers and mine, a trusty Trojan, on whose friendship I count myself possessed of a life-rent leasė.

Look on this letter as a beginning of sorrows;' I'll write you till your eyes ache with adding

nonsense.

Mrs. Burns ('tis only her private designation) begs her best compliments to you.

No. 269.

TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE.

Mauchline, May 26th, 1788.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I AM two kind of letters in your debt, but I have been from home, and horridly busy buying and preparing for my farming business: over and above the plague of my excise instructions, which this week will finish.

As I flatter my wishes that I forsee many future years correspondence between us, 'tis foolish to talk of excusing dull epistles: a dull letter may be a very kind one. I have the pleasure to tell you that I have been extremely fortunate in all my buyings and bargainings hitherto; Mrs. Burns not excepted; which title I now avow to the world. I am truly pleased with this last affair; it has indeed added to my anxieties for futurity, but it has given a stability to my mind and my resolutions, unknown before; and the poor girl has the most sacred enthusiasm of attachment to me, and has not a wish but to gratify my every idea of her deportment.

I am interrupted,

Farewell! my dear Sir.

No. 270.

TO MRS. DUNLOP.

Mauchline, May 4th, 1788.

Written shortly after the poet's marriage.

MADAM,

To jealousy or infidelity I am an equal stranger: My preservative from the first, is the most thorough consciousness of her sentiments of honour, and her attachment to me; my antidote against the last, is my long and deep rooted affection for her.

In housewife matters, of aptness to learn and activity to execute, she is eminently mistress: and during my absence in Nithsdale, she is regu larly and constantly apprentice to my mother and sisters in their dairy and other rural business.

The Muses must not be offended when I tell them, the concerns of my wife and family will, in my mind, always take the pas; but I assure them their ladyships will ever come next in place.

You are right that a bachelor state would have insured me more friends; but, from a cause you will easily guess, conscious peace in the enjoy ment of my own mind, and unmistrusting confidence in approaching my God, would seldom have been of the number * *