When I must skulk into a corner, lest the rattling equipage of some gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to exclaim: 'What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some state of pre-existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the sceptre of rule, and the key of riches in his puny fist, and I am kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?' I have read somewhere of a monarch (in Spain, I think it was), who was so out of humour with the Ptolemæan system of astronomy, that he said, had he been of the Creator's council, he could have saved him a great deal of labour and absurdity. I will not defend this blasphemous speech; but often, as I have glided with humble stealth through the pomp of Princes Street, it has suggested itself to me, as an improvement on the present human figure, that a man, in proportion to his own conceit of his consequence in the world, could have pushed out the longitude of his common size, as a snail pushes out his horns, or as we draw out a prospect-glass. This trifling alteration, not to mention the prodigious saving it would be in the tear and wear of the neck and limb sinews of many of his majesty's liege subjects, in the way of tossing the head and tiptoe strutting, would evidently turn out a vast advantage, in enabling us at once to adjust the ceremonials in making a bow, or making way to a great man, and that, too, within a second of the precise spherical angle of reverence, or an inch of the particular point of respectful distance, which the important creature itself requires; as a measuring-glance at its towering altitude would determine the affair like instinct. You are right, madam, in your idea of poor Mylne's poem, which he has addressed to me. The piece has a good deal of merit, but it has one great fault-it is by far too long. Besides, my success has encouraged such a shoal of ill-spawned monsters to crawl into public notice, under the title of Scottish poets, that the very term, Scottish poetry, borders on the burlesque. When I write to Mr Carfrae, I shall advise him rather to try one of his deceased friend's English pieces. I am prodigiously hurried with my own matters, else I would have requested a perusal of all Mylne's poetic performances, and would have offered his friends my assistance, in either selecting or correcting what would be proper for the press. What it is that occupies me so much, and perhaps a little oppresses my present spirits, shall fill up a paragraph in some future letter. In the meantime, allow me to close this epistle with a few lines done by a friend of mine. I give you them, that, as you have seen the original, you may guess whether one or two alterations I have ventured to make in them be any real improvement. VOL. III. 'Like the fair plant that from our touch withdraws, Shrink, mildly fearful, even from applause, Be all a mother's fondest hope can dream, B Straight as the foxglove, ere her bells disclose, That all shall long to know the worth they guess; R. B. TO THE REV. P. CARFRAE. [ELLISLAND, March 1789 ?] REV. SIR-I do not recollect that I have ever felt a severer pang of shame, than on looking at the date of your obliging letter which accompanied Mr Mylne's poem. I am much to blame: the honour Mr Mylne has done me, greatly enhanced in its value by the endearing, though melancholy circumstance of its being the last production of his Muse, deserved a better return. I have, as you hint, thought of sending a copy of the poem to some periodical publication; but, on second thoughts, I am afraid that in the present case it would be an improper step. My success, perhaps as much accidental as merited, has brought an inundation of nonsense under the name of Scottish poetry. Subscription-bills for Scottish poems have so dunned, and daily do dun the public, that the very name is in danger of contempt. For these reasons, if publishing any of Mr Mylne's poems in a magazine, &c., be at all prudent, in my opinion it certainly should not be a Scottish poem. The profits of the labours of a man of genius arc, I hope, as honourable as any profits whatever; and Mr Mylne's relations are most justly entitled to that honest harvest which fate has denied himself to reap. But let the friends of Mr Mylne's fame (among whom I crave the honour of ranking myself) always keep in eye his respectability as a man and as a poet, and take no measure that, before the world knows anything about him, would risk his name and character being classed with the fools of the times. I have, sir, some experience of publishing; and the way in which I would proceed with Mr Mylne's poems is this: I will publish, in two or three English and Scottish public papers, any one of his English poems which should, by private judges, be thought the most excellent, and mention it at the same time as one of the productions of a Lothian farmer of respectable character, lately deceased, whose poems his friends had it in idea to publish soon 1 These beautiful lines, we have reason to believe, are the production of the lady to whom this letter is addressed.'-CURrie. by subscription, for the sake of his numerous family; not in pity to that family, but in justice to what his friends think the poetic merits of the deceased; and to secure, in the most effectual manner, to those tender connections, whose right it is, the pecuniary reward of those merits. R. B.1 TO MR PETER HILL, BOOKSELLER, EDINBURGH. [ELLISLAND, March 1789?] MY DEAR HILL-I shall say nothing to your mad present-you have so long and often been of important service to me, and I suppose you mean to go on conferring obligations until I shall not be able to lift up my face before you. In the meantime, as Sir Roger de Coverley, because it happened to be a cold day in which he made his will, ordered his servants greatcoats for mourning; so, because I have been this week plagued with an indigestion, I have sent you by the carrier a fine old ewe-milk cheese. Indigestion is the devil-nay, 'tis the devil and all. It besets a man in every one of his senses. I lose my appetite at the sight of successful knavery, and sicken to loathing at the noise and nonsense of self-important folly. When the hollow-hearted wretch takes me by the hand, the feeling spoils my dinner; the proud man's wine so offends my palate, that it chokes me in the gullet; and the pulvilised, feathered, pert coxcomb is so disgustful in my nostril, that my stomach turns. If ever you have any of these disagreeable sensations, let me prescribe for you patience and a bit of my cheese. I know that you are no niggard of your good things among your friends, and some of them are in much need of a slice. There, in my eye, is our friend Smellie-a man positively of the first abilities and greatest strength of mind, as well as one of the best hearts and keenest wits that I have ever met with; when you see him—as, alas! he too is smarting at the pinch of distressful circumstances, aggravated by the sneer of contumelious greatness-a bit of my cheese alone will not cure him; but if you add a tankard of brown stout, and superadd a magnum of right Oporto, you will see his sorrows vanish like the morning mist before the summer sun. Candlish, the earliest friend, except my only brother, that I have on earth, and one of the worthiest fellows that ever any man called by the name of friend, if a luncheon of my best cheese would help 1 Poems, consisting of Miscellaneous Pieces and Two Tragedies, by the late Mr Mylne of Lochell,' are advertised by Mr Creech as published in July 1790. 2 Mr Hill had sent the poet a present of books. to rid him of some of his superabundant modesty, you would do well to give it him. David,' with his Courant, comes, too, across my recollection, and I beg you will help him largely from the said ewe-milk cheese, to enable him to digest those damned bedaubing paragraphs with which he is eternally larding the lean characters of certain great men in a certain great town. I grant you the periods are very well turned; so, a fresh egg is a very good thing; but when thrown at a man in a pillory, it does not at all improve his figure, not to mention the irreparable loss of the egg. My facetious friend Dunbar I would wish also to be a partaker; not to digest his spleen, for that he laughs off, but to digest his last night's wine at the last field-day of the Crochallan corps.2 Among our common friends I must not forget one of the dearest of them-Cunningham. The brutality, insolence, and selfishness of a world unworthy of having such a fellow as he is in it, I know sticks in his stomach, and if you can help him to anything that will make him a little easier on that score, it will be very obliging. As to honest John Somerville, he is such a contented, happy man, that I know not what can annoy him, except, perhaps, he may not have got the better of a parcel of modest anecdotes which a certain poet gave him one night at supper the last time the said poet was in town. Though I have mentioned so many men of law, I shall have nothing to do with them professionally-the faculty are beyond my prescription. As to their clients, that is another thing-God knows, they have much to digest! The clergy I pass by: their profundity of erudition and their liberality of sentiment, their total want of pride and their detestation of hypocrisy, are so proverbially notorious, as to place them far, far above either my praise or censure. I was going to mention a man of worth, whom I have the honour to call friend-the Laird of Craigdarroch; but I have spoken to the landlord of the King's-Arms Inn here to have at the next county meeting a large ewe-milk cheese on the table, for the benefit of the Dumfriesshire Whigs, to enable them to digest the Duke of Queensberry's late political conduct. I have just this moment an opportunity of a private hand to Edinburgh, as perhaps you would not digest double postage. So God bless you! ' Mr David Ramsay, printer of the Edinburgh Evening Courant. 2 A club of choice spirits, already frequently alluded to. 3 Mr Alexander Cunningham. R. B. TO DR MOORE. ELLISLAND, 23d March 1789. SIR-The gentleman who will deliver this is a Mr Nielson, a worthy clergyman in my neighbourhood,' and a very particular acquaintance of mine. As I have troubled him with this packet, I must turn him over to your goodness, to recompense him for it in a way in which he much needs your assistance, and where you can effectually serve him. Mr Nielson is on his way for France, to wait on his Grace of Queensberry, on some little business of a good deal of importance to him; and he wishes for your instructions respecting the most eligible mode of travelling, &c., for him when he has crossed the Channel. I should not have dared to take this liberty with you, but that I am told, by those who have the honour of your personal acquaintance, that to be a poor honest Scotchman is a letter of recommendation to you, and that to have it in your power to serve such a character gives you much pleasure. The enclosed Ode is a compliment to the memory of the late Mrs Oswald of Auchencruive. You probably knew her personally, an honour of which I cannot boast; but I spent my early years in her neighbourhood, and among her servants and tenants. I know that she was detested with the most heartfelt cordiality. However, in the particular part of her conduct which roused my poetic wrath, she was much less blamable. In January last, on my road to Ayrshire, I had put up at Bailie Whigham's, in Sanquhar, the only tolerable inn in the place. The frost was keen, and the grim evening and howling wind were ushering in a night of snow and drift. My horse and I were both much fatigued with the labours of the day, and just as my friend the bailie and I were bidding defiance to the storm, over a smoking bowl, in wheels the funeral pageantry of the late great Mrs Oswald, and poor I am forced to brave all the horrors of the tempestuous night, and jade my horse-my young favourite horse, whom I had just christened Pegasus-twelve miles further on, through the wildest moors and hills of Ayrshire, to New Cumnock, the next inn. The powers of poesy and prose sink under me when I would describe what I felt. Suffice it to say, that when a good fire at New Cumnock had so far recovered my frozen sinews, I sat down and wrote the enclosed Ode. I was at Edinburgh lately, and settled finally with Mr Creech; and I must own that at last he has been amicable and fair with R. B. me. 1 The Rev. Edward Nielson, minister of Kirkbean, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. |