kind you have sent me, is admirable, and will be an universal favorite. Your verses for Rothemurche are so sweetly pastoral, and your serenade to Chloris, for, Deil tak the wars, so passionately tender, that I have sung myself into raptures with them. Your song for, My lodging is on the cold ground, is likewise a diamond of the first water; I am quite dazzled and delighted by it. Some of your Chlorises I suppose have flaxen hair, from your partiality for this colour; else we differ about it; for I should scarcely conceive a woman to be a beauty, on reading that she had lint-white locks! Farewell thou stream that winding flows, I think excellent, but it is much too serious to come after Nancy at least it would seem an uncongruity to provide the same air with merry Scottish and melancholy English verses! The more that the two sets of verses resemble each other in their general character, the better. Those you have manufactured for, Dainty Davie, will answer charmingly. I am happy to find you have begun your anecdotes : I care not how long they be, for it is impossible that any thing from your pen can be tedious. Let me beseech not to use ceremony in telling me when you wish to present any of your friends with the songs: the next carrier will bring you three copies, and you are as welcome to twenty as to a pinch of snuff. you No. No. LXIV. MR. BURNS TO MR. THOMSON. 19th November, 1794. You see, my dear Sir, what a punctual correspondent I am; though indeed you may thank yourself for the tedium of my letters, as you have so flattered me on my horsemanship with my favorite hobby, and have praised the grace of his ambling so much, that I am scarcely ever off his back. For instance, this morning, though a keen blowing frost, in my walk before breakfast, I finished my duet which you were pleased to praise so much. Whether I have uniformly succeeded, I will not say; but here it is for you, though it is not an hour old. Tune Tune-" THE Sow's TAIL." HE. O Philly, happy be that day SHE. O Willy, ay I bless the grove Where first I own'd my maiden love, Whilst thou didst pledge the powers above To be my ain dear Willy. HE. As songsters of the early year And charming is my Philly. SHE. As on the brier the budding rose Still richer breathes and fairer blows, So in my tender bosom grows The love I bear my Willy. HE. HE. The milder sun and bluer sky, SHE. The little swallow's wanton wing, HE. The bee that thro' the sunny hour SHE. The woodbine in the dewy weet Is nocht sae fragrant or sae sweet As is a kiss o' Willy. HE. Let fortune's wheel at random rin, And fools may tyne, and knaves may win; My thoughts are a' bound up in ane, And that's my ain dear Philly. SHE. SHE. What's a' the joys that gowd can gie? I care na wealth a single flie; And that's my ain dear Willy. Tell me honestly how you like it; and point out whatever you think faulty. I am much pleased with your idea of singing our songs in alternate stanzas, and regret that you did not hint it to me sooner. In those that remain, I shall have it in my eye. I remember your objections to the name, Philly; but it is the common abbreviation of Phillis. Sally, the only other name that suits, has to my ear, a vulgarity about it, which unfits it for any thing except burlesque. The legion of Scottish poetasters of the day, whom your brother editor, Mr. Ritson, ranks with me, as my coevals, have always mistaken vulgarity for simplicity: whereas, simplicity is as much eloignée from vulgarity, on the one hand, as from affected point and puerile conceit, on the other. I agree with you as to the air, Craigie-burn-wood, that |
