chains in their flight, or is this the native character of man which will remain after the establishment of freedom? Tell me, you who have looked through Nature, and know all her various mazes, how long the impressions made by living under an absolute government remain on the mind, and whether the abject debasement of the lowest class, or the overbearing insolence of the very softest of the upper ones, is most disgusting. For my own part, I believe I should like an Italian lazzeretto better than a French gentleman, as pity is a feeling more congenial to my soul than indignation, which frivolity and arrogance united must unavoidably create, whereas the greatest worldly bliss I have ever tasted has lain in the admiration, esteem, and reverence inspired by a truly amiable generous mind, at once noble and tender. Where great talents are joined with interesting weaknesses and amusing whimsical varieties, sometimes even little faults themselves season the compound perfectly to my taste; such it has sometimes been my happiness to meet or think I had met; for if the illusion lasts, it is the same thing to me in this world, and I dare say will be set right some way or other so as not to vex me in the next. Such I have believed some of my relations, and some such I have fancied my friends, even in the dark evening of my life. If I am wrong, may Heaven and they have goodness to protract the error as long as my existence! Forgive me, Dr. Sir, if in one instance I presume to chalk out even your path; in every other the powers of your own mind will naturally point to what will please me far beyond the farthest suggestion of my own fancy. Yet I will freely own this one is now become perhaps more important than all the rest put together. So, pray don't neglect your que, though I don't even know. how to spell it, and should I ever inadvertently forfeit the VOL. I.-18 place I now flatter myself by your permission with holding in your registers, don't let me discover my misfortune, since I should feel it an irretrievably great one, the very suspicion of which would distress me more than many of those disasters the world pity most. It must be some months hence before I can give you good news of Mrs. H. I expect much sooner to have yours of Mrs. Burns. May they be happy as your fondest wish. I have this moment accounts of the death of a worthy old woman, one who, I think, liked me as much as any thing on earth, and attended me inlying of 13 children. She was my grandfather's servant, my brother's infant keeper, and my tenant's wife, aged 94 or 95. My spirits are this moment laid with her in the grave, where I bless God she is at rest, for her only son, a batchelor, who has brought up and been a father to three familys of her grandchildren, and dedicate his very life to her, is thought in a consumption. of I thought to tell you of a humble poetess who came from Ecclesfechan to be my chamber-maid on the merit of her attempting what seemed beyond her line in the way writing or thinking. I parted with her to my daughter, thinking a child's maid, if she was fit for it, a better place than I had to offer. She was glad to go to Loudoun, because she heard you lived near it, and, as she told me, hoped to see you. Her outside promises nothing; her mind only bursts forth on paper, of which I send you a specimen in her own hand. She is industrious, and seems good-temper'd and discreet, but betrays no one indication that I could discover of ever having opened a book or tagged a rhyme; so that I hope she will not be less happy for having tryed it. Adieu. Your books go to-night to Wilson, who says he can always get them sent you easily. I take another sheet to tell you I have sent your "Faery Queene " with the other volumes to Kilmarnock. I had it so long by me I was half unwilling to quit sight of it, though alas! it was become invisible to my optics, but yet it was the memorial of another poet as well as its author, and I regretted I had not scratched the margins as I read it, but I was not then so well acquainted with the owner as to assume that liberty with his property. Tell me what you think of Jenny Little's "Looking-Glass." The occasion. on which she wrot it was to convince a young lady who doubted the authenticity of her having wrot something else she had shewed her, and asked her to write on a given subject. She said she had never done so, but, since she wished it, would try if she would give her one. She told her she had that forenoon broke a glass she was vext about, and bid her celebrate it. She did so, and a gentleman asked her on the same footing to make the acrostic on his name. These are play, not genius, and I fear you will say, like mistress like maid; and if you do, I'm even afraid the maid will have most reason to be offended with the proverb. She made another in the character of a lover on a girl she called Calista, drest in her grandmother's crimson plaid, which gave the hint for some lines and a sketch of a landskip, with which I put off an idle half-hour, and which I send you to shew you how ladies put off a rainy morning doing they don't know what, and doing it they don't know how, and then exposing the folly to those they wish most their friends as I do now. All I shall say in my own vindication is that Scripture commands us to do as we would be done by, and I literally obey when I write and assure you of the sincere esteem and regard with which I am, Dr. Sir, your obliged and obedient humble servt., and, truth bids me add, ever gratefully your friend, FRAN. A. DUNLOP. Next month is August. Last August brought me four letters from the best correspondent and one of the most admired as well as esteemed men of my acquaintance. Ought I ever to hope any other month of my life shall dare pretend to rival August, 1788? I wish the Scots Bard would try what might be done in honour of the '89 which he ushered in so respectably with a New Year's gift that Swift's Stella or his own might have been vain of, especially if they had been three score like your humble servt. Are you not grateful for all this clean paper from me? I grudge it." (1) Think long, Scotticism for eagerly desire, with a touch of hopelessness. (2) See infra, p. 278. Burns's of the 7th had been received. (3) Mrs. Vans Agnew, Mrs. Dunlop's fourth daughter, who lived long abroad. (4) Janet Little (1759-1813), "the Scottish milkmaid" poetess, was placed in charge of the dairy at Loudoun Castle, the residence of the Henris. She published a volume of poems in 1792, became the wife of John Richmond, a labourer at Loudoun Castle. (5) The postscript was written in the centre of a quarto page, with blank or "clean" spaces on all sides of it. The month of July 1789 has hitherto seemed almost a blank month in Burns's correspondence. The only letter of his dated in this month that has been published is that of the 31st to Mr. Graham of Fintry. We are able to present the two which follow of the 7th and 17th-from the Lochryan MSS. To his ordinary heavy labours the poet at this time had added the negotiations about his appointment to the Excise division in the midst of which he lived, and the studies which, under Mr. Graham's direction, he pursued in order to fit himself for his new duties. Ad. Mrs. DUNLOP of Dunlop, ELLISLAND July 7th, 1789. Yours of the 27th June, which came to hand yesternight, has given me more pain than any letter, one excepted, that I ever received. How could you, my ever-honored, dear Madam, ask me, whether I had given up your correspondence, and how you had offended me? Offended me! Your conduct to me, Madam, ever since I was honored with your notice, has been equally amiable as uncommon; and your Correspondence has been one of the most supreme of my sublunary enjoyments. As I mentioned to you in a letter you will by this time have received, I have since I was at Dunlop been rather hurried and out of spirits; and some parts of your late conduct has laid me under peculiar embarrassments. You had alarmed me lest that instead of the friend of your confidence, I was descending to be the creature of your bounty; for though you bestowed, not in the manner of serving me, but as if oblidging yourself; yet for the soul of me I could not help feeling something of the humiliating oppression of impotent gratitude. July 8th. I have been interrupted by the arrival of my aged Parent and my brother; and as he will convey this as far as Mauchline I shall finish my letter, though I cannot make it quite |