of an acquaintance, as when I heard that so amiable and accomplished a piece of God's works was no more. I have as yet gone no farther than the following fragment, of which please let me have your opinion. You know that elegy is a subject so much exhausted, that any new idea on the business is not to be expected: 'tis well if we can place an old idea in a new light. How far I have succeeded as to this last, you will judge from what follows (Here follows the Elegy, &c. as in page 323, adding this verse) The parent's heart that nestled fond in thee, your kind remem Your kind letter, with brance of your godson, came safe. This last, Madam, is scarcely what my pride can bear. As to the little fellow, he is, partiality apart, the finest boy I have of a long time seen. is now seventeen months old, has the small-pox and measles over, has cut several teeth, and yet He never had a grain of doctors' drugs in his bowels. I am truly happy to hear that the "little floweret" is blooming so fresh and fair, and that the "mother-plant" is rather recovering her drooping head. Soon and well may her "cruel wounds" be healed! I have written thus far with a good deal of difficulty. When I get a little abler, you shall hear farther from, Madam, yours, &c. No. No. CVIII. TO LADY W. M. CONSTABLE. Acknowledging a present of a valuable Snuffbox, with a fine picture of MARY Queen of SCOTS on the Lid. MY LADY, NOTHING less than the unlucky accident of having lately broken my right arm, could have prevented me, the moment I received your ladyship's elegant present by Mrs. Miller, from returning you my warmest and most grateful acknowledgments. I assure your ladyship I shall set it apart: the symbols of religion shall only be more sacred. In the moment of poetic composition, the box shall be my inspiring genius. When I would breathe the comprehensive wish of benevolence for the happiness of others, I shall recollect your ladyship; when I would interest my fancy in the distresses incident to humanity, I shall remember the unfortunate Mary. No. CV. From A. F. TYTLER, Esq. Edinburgh, 12th March, 1791. DEAR SIR, MR. HILL yesterday put into my hands a sheet of Grose's Antiquities, containing a poem of yours, entitled, Tam o'Shanter, a tale. The very high pleasure I have received from the perusal of this admirable piece, I feel, demands the warmest acknowledgments. Hill tells me he is to send off a packet for you this day; I cannot resist, therefore, putting on paper what I must have told you in person, had I met with you after the recent perusal of your tale, which is, that I feel I owe you a debt, which, if undischarged, would reproach me with ingratitude. I have seldom in my life tasted of higher enjoyment from any work of genius, than I have received from this composition; and I am much mistaken, if this poem alone, had you never written written another syllable, would not have been sufficient to have transmitted your name down to posterity with high reputation. In the introductory part, where you paint the character of your hero, and exhibit him at the alehouse ingle, with his tippling cronies, you have delineated nature with a humour and naïveté that would do honour to Matthew Prior; but when you describe the unfortunate orgies of the witches' sabbath, and the hellish scenery in which they are exhibited, you display a power of imagination that Shakespeare himself could not have exceeded. I know not that I have ever met with a picture of more horrible fancy than the following: "Coffins stood round like open presses, Each in his cauld hand held a light." But when I came to the succeeding lines, my blood ran cold within me: "A knife a father's throat had mangled, The grey hairs yet stack to the heft," And here, after the two following lines, "Wi' mair o' horrible and awfu'," &c. the descriptive part might perhaps have been better closed, |