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Letter to Mrs Riddel-Low SPIRITS,

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SONG ON THE REFORMING LEADERS-Here's a Health to them that's awa',
Letter to Mrs Dunlop, 6TH DEC.-MELANCHOLY REFLECTIONS ON THE
DEATH OF FRIENDS HIS DAUGHTER QUOTATIONS,

BURNS'S POLITICS ADVERTED TO BY THE EXCISE BOARD,

Letter to R. Graham, Esq., ON BEING INFORMED AGAINST,

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LIFE AND WORKS
ROBERT BURNS
ELLISLAND

JUNE 1788-DECEMBER 1791-(CONTINUED).

MONG the gentlemen of Nithsdale by whom Burns had been kindly received, was Mr M'Murdo, chamberlain to the Duke of Queensberry. This gentleman, with a fine young family, which included some blooming daughters, resided in the ducal mansion of Drumlanrig, a few miles from the poet's farm; and he had there entertained our bard with the most distinguished kindness.

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TO JOHN M'MURDO, ESQ.

ELLISLAND, 9th Jan. 1789.

SIR-A poet and a beggar are in so many points of view alike, that one might take them for the same individual character under different designations; were it not that, though, with a trifling poetic licence, poets may be styled beggars, yet the converse of the proposition does not hold, that every beggar is a poet. In one particular, however, they remarkably agree: if you help either the one or the other to a mug of ale or the picking of a bone, they will very willingly repay you with a song. This occurs to me at present (as I have just despatched a well-lined rib of J. Kilpatrick's

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