BLIOTHE ECA BODLEIANA No. CXXXII. To MRS. DUNLOP. Annan Water Foot, 22d August, 1792. Do not blame me for it, Madam-my own conscience, hacknied and weather-beaten as it is, in watching and reproving my vagaries, follies, indolence, &c. has continued to blame and punish me sufficiently. * Do you think it possible, my dear and honoured friend, that I could be so lost to gratitude for many favours; to esteem for much worth, and to the honest, kind, pleasurable tie of, now old acquaintance, and I hope and am sure of progressive increasing friendship-as, for a single day, not to think of you to ask the Fates what they are doing and about to do with my much loved-friend and her wide scattered connexions, and to beg of them to be as kind to you and yours as they possibly can? A propos! Apropos (though how it is apropos, I have not leisure to explain) Do you know that I am almost in love with an acquaintance of yours? -Almost! said I-I am in love, souse! over head and ears, deep as the most unfathomable abyss of the boundless ocean; but the word Love, owing to the intermingledoms of the good and the bad, the pure and the impure, in this world, being rather an equivocal term for expressing one's sentiments and sensations, I must do justice to the sacred purity of my attachment. Know, then, that the heart-struck awe; the distant humble approach; the delight we should have in gazing upon and listening to a Messenger of Heaven, appearing in all the unspotted purity of his celestial home, among the coarse, polluted, far inferior sons of men, to deliver to them tidings that make their hearts swim in joy, and their imaginations soar in transport-such, so delighting and so pure, were the emotions of my soul on meeting the other day with Miss L- B-, your neighbour, at M. Mr. B. with his two daughters, accompanied by Mr. H. of G. passing through Dumfries a few days ago, on their way to England, did me the honour of calling on me; on which I took my horse, (though God knows I could ill spare the time) and accompanied them fourteen or fifteen miles, and dined and spent the day day with them. 'Twas about nine, I think when I left them, and, riding home, I composed the following ballad, of which you will probably think you have a dear bargain, as it will cost you another groat of postage. You must know that there is an old ballad beginning with So I parodied it as follows, which is literally the first copy, "unanointed, unanneal'd," as Hamlet says. See vol. iv. p. 15. So much for ballads. I regret that you are gone to the east country, as I am to be in Ayrshire in about a fortnight. This world of ours, notwithstanding it has many good things in it, yet it has ever had this curse, that two or three people, who would be the happier the oftener they met together, are almost without exception, always so placed as never to meet but once or twice a-year, which, considering the few years of a man's life, is a very great" evil under the sun," which I do not recollect that Solomon has mentioned in his catalogue of the miseries of man. I hope and believe that there is a state of existence beyond the grave, where the worthy of this life will renew their former intimacies, with this endearing addition, that, 66 we meet to part no more!" tion. "Tell us, ye dead! Will none of you in pity disclose the secret A thousand times have I made this apostrophe to the departed sons of men, but not one of them has ever thought fit to answer the ques"O that some courteous ghost would blab it out!" but it cannot be; you and I, my friend, must make the experiment by ourselves, and for ourselves. However, I am so convinced that an unshaken faith in the doctrines of religion is not only necessary, by making us better men, but also by making us happier men, that I shall take every care that your little godson, and every little creature that shall call me father, shall be taught them. So ends this heterogeneous letter, written at this wild place of the world, in the intervals of my labour of discharging a vessel of rum from Antigua. VOL. II. Ꭰ Ꭰ No. CXXXIII. To MR. CUNNINGHAM. Dumfries, 10th September, 1792. No! I will not attempt an apology.Amid all my hurry of business, grinding the faces of the publican and the sinner on the merciless wheels of the Excise; making ballads, and then drinking, and singing them; and, over and above all, the correcting the presswork of two different publications, still, still I might have stolen five minutes to dedicate to one of the first of my friends and fellow-creatures. I might have done, as I do at present, snatched an hour near witching time of night," and scrawled a page or two. I might have congratulated my friend on his marriage; or I might have thanked the Caledonian archers for the honour they have done me, (though to do myself justice, I intended to have done both in rhyme, else I had done both long ere 66 now.) |