SKETCH OF C. J. FOX. How wisdom and folly meet, mix, and unite; How virtue and vice blend their black and their white; How genius, th' illustrious father of fiction, Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction I sing if these mortals, the critics, should bustle, I care not not I. let the critics go whistle. But now for a patron, whose name and whose glory, At once may illustrate and honour my story. Thou first of our orators, first of our wits; Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits; With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so strong, No man with the half of 'em e'er went far wrong; With passions so potent, and fancies so bright, Good L―d, what is man! for as simple he Do but try to develope his hooks and his crooks; With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil, All in all he's a problem must puzzle the devil. On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labours, That like the old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours: Mankind are his show-box-a friend, would you know him? Pull the string, ruling passion, the picture will show him. What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system, One trifling particular, truth, should have miss'd him; For, spite of his fine theoretic positions, Some sort all our qualities each to its tribe, And think human nature they truly describe; Have you found this, or t'other? there's more in the wind, As by one drunken fellow his comrades you'll find. No. CXVII. TO MR. CUNNINGHAM. MY DEAR SIR, Ellisland, 4th May, 1789. YOUR duty free favour of the 26th April I received two days ago: I will not say I perused it with pleasure; that is the cold compliment of ceremony; I perused it, Sir, with delicious satisfaction.-In short, it is such a letter, that not you, nor your friend, but the legisla ture, by express proviso in their postage laws, should frank. A letter informed with the soul of friendship, is such an honour to human nature, that they should order it free ingress and encouragement and mark of distinction to suegress to and from their bags, and mails, as an per-eminent virtue. I have just put the last hand to a little poem which I think will be something to your taste. One morning lately as I was out pretty early the burst of a shot from a neighbouring planin the fields sowing some grass seeds, I heard tation, and presently a poor little wounded hare came crippling by me. You will guess my indignation at the inhuman fellow who could them have young ones. shoot a bare at this season, when they all of Indeed there is something in that business of destroying, for our do not injure us materially, which I could never sport, individuals in the animal creation that reconcile to my ideas of virtue. (See Poetry.) Let me know how you like my poem. I am doubtful whether it would not be an improvement to keep out the last stanza but one altogether. C of man. C. is a glorious production of the author You, he, and the noble Colonel of the F are, to me, "Dear as the ruddy drops which warm my breast." I have a good mind to make verses on you all, to the tune of "three good fellows ayont the glen." No. CXVIII. Tax poem, in the preceding letter, had also been sent by our hard to Dr. Gregory for his criticism. The following is that gentleman's reply. DEAR SIR, FROM DR. GREGORY. Edinburgh, 2d June, 1789. I TAKE the first leisure hour I could command, to thank you for your letter, and the copy of verses enclosed in it. As there is real poetie you merit, I mean both fancy, and tenderness, and some happy expressions, in them, I think they well deserve that you should revise them carefully and polish them to the utmost. This I am sure you can do if you please, for have great command both of expression and of rhymes: and you may judge from the two last pieces of Mrs. Hunter's poetry, that I gave you, how much correctness and high polish enhance the value of such compositions. As you desire it, I shall, with great freedom, give you my most rigorous criticisms on your verses. I wish you would give me another edition of them, much amended, and I will send it to Mrs. Hunter, who, I am sure, will have much pleasure in reading it. Pray, give me likewise for myself, and her too, a copy (as much amended as you please) of the Water Fowl on Loch Turit. The Wounded Hare is a pretty good subject; but the measure, or stanza, you have chosen for it, is not a good one; it does not flow well and the rhyme of the fourth line is almost lost by its distance from the first; and the two interposed, close rhymes. If I were you, I would put it into a different stanza yet. Stanza 1.-The execrations in the first two lines are strong or coarse; but they may pass. "Murder-aiming" is a bad compound epithet, and not very intelligible. "Blood-stained," in stanza iii. line 4, has the same fault: Bleeding bosom is infinitely better. You have accustomed yourself to such epithets, and have no notion how stiff and quaint they appear to others, and how incongruous with poetic fancy, and tender sentiments. Suppose Pope had written, "Why that blood-stained bosom gored," how would you have liked it? Form is neither a poetic, nor a dignified, nor a plain, cominon word: it is a mere sportsman's word; unsuitable to pathetic or serious poetry. 66 Mangled" is a coarse word. "Innocent," in this sense, is a nursery word; but both may There was a ridiculous slip of the pen, "Feeling" (I suppose) for "Fellow," in the title of your copy of verses; but even fellow would be wrong: it is but a colloquial and vulgar word, unsuitable to your sentiments. "Shot" is improper too.-On seeing a person (or a sportsman) wound a hare; it is needless to add with what weapon; but if you think otherwise, you should say, with a fowling-piece. Let me see you when you come to town, and I will show you some more of Mrs. Hunter's poems.⚫ Ellisland, May, 26, 1789. I SEND you by John Glover, carrier, the above account for Mr. Turnbull, as I suppose you know his address. It is I would fain offer, my dear Sir, a word of sympathy with your misfortunes; but it is a tender string, and I know not how to touch it. easy to flourish a set of high-flown sentiments on the subject that would give great satisfaction to a breast quite at ease; but as ONE observes, who was very seldom mistaken in the theory of life, "The heart knoweth its own sorrows, and a stranger intermeddleth not therewith." have experienced in life, I have ever laid this Among some distressful emergencies that I down as my foundation of comfort-That he he who has lived the life of an honest man, has by no means lived in vain! With success, SIR, every wish for your welfare and future Ellisland, May 30, 1789. I HAD intended to have troubled you with a long letter, but at present the delightful sensations of an omnipotent toothach so engross all my inner man, as to put it out of my power even to write nonsense.-However, as in duty bound, I approach my bookseller with an offering in my hand-a few poetic clinches and a song:- -To expect any other kind of offering from the RHYMING TRIBE, would be to know them much less than you do. I do not pretend that there is much merit in these morceaux, but I have two reasons for sending them; primo, they are mostly ill-natured, so are in unison with my present feelings, while fifty troops of infernal spirits are driving post from ear to ear along my jaw-bones; and secondly, they are so short, that you cannot leave off in the middle, and hurt my pride in the idea that you found any work of mine too heavy to get through. I have a request to beg of you, and I not only beg of you, but conjure you-by all your wishes and by all your hopes, that the muse have thrown him quite a-back. In a letter which he wrote soon after, he says, " Dr. G- is a good man, but he crucifies me."-And again, "I believe in the iron justice of Dr. G- ; but like the devils, I be lieve and tremble." However, he profited by these criticisms, as the reader will find, by comparing this first edition of the poem, with that published after It must be admitted, that this criticism is not more distinguished by its good sense, than by its freedom from ceremony. It is impossible not to smile at the manner in which the poet may be supposed to have received it In fact it appears, as the sailors say, towards. will spare the satiric wink in the moment of" Lo, children are God's heritage," &c. in your foibles; that she will warble the song of which last Mrs. Burns, who, by the bye, has a rapture round your hymeneal couch; and that glorious "wood-note wild" at either old song she will shed on your turf the honest tear of or psalmody, joins me with the pathos of Hanelegiac gratitude! grant my request as speedily del's Messiah. as possible.-Send me by the very first fly or coach for this place, three copies of the last edition of my poems; which place to my account. Now, may the good things of prose, and the good things of verse, come among thy hands until they be filled with the good things of this afe! prayeth DEAR SIR, ROBT. BURNS. No. CXXL TO MR. MAULEY, OF DUMBARTON. No. CXXII. TO MR. ROBERT AINSLIE. MY DEAR FRIEND, I AM perfectly ashamed of myself when 1 look at the date of your last. It is not that I forget the friend of my heart and the companion of my peregrinations; but I have been condemned to drudgery beyond sufferance, though not, thank God, beyond redemption. I have had a collection of poems by a lady put into my hands to prepare them for the press; which horrid task, with sowing my corn with my own hand, a parcel of masons, wrights, plaisterers, &c. to attend to, roaming on business through Ayrshire-all this was against me, and the very first dreadful article was of itself too much for 4th June, 1789. THOUGH I am not without my fears respecting my fate at that grand, universal inquest of right and wrong, commonly called The Last Day, yet I trust there is one sin, which that arch-vagabond, Satan, who, I understand, is to be king's evidence, cannot throw in my teeth -I mean ingratitude. There is a certain pret-me. ty large quantum of kindness for which I re- 13th. I have not had a moment to spare from main, and from inability, fear, must remain incessant toil since the 8th. Life, my dear Sir, your debtor; but though unable to repay the is a serious matter. You know by experience debt, I assure you, Sir, I shall ever warmly re- that a man's individual self is a good deal, but member the obligation. It gives me the sin- believe me, a wife and family of children, whencerest pleasure to hear by my old acquaintance, ever you have the honour to be a husband and Mr. Kennedy, that you are, in immortal Allan's a father, will shew you that your present most language, "Hale and weel, and living;" and anxious hours of solicitude are spent on trifles. that your charming family are well, and promis- The welfare of those who are very dear to us, ing to be an amiable and respectable addition to whose only support, hope and stay we are—this, the company of performers, whom the Great to a generous mind, is another sort of more imManager of the Drama of Man is bringing into portant object of care than any concerns whataction for the succeeding age ever which centre merely in the individual. On With respect to my welfare, a subject in the other hand, let no young, unmarried, rakewhich you once warmly and effectively interest-helly dog among you, make a song of his preed yourself, I am here in my old way, holding tended liberty and freedom from care. If the my plough, marking the growth of my corn, or relations we stand in to king, country, kindred, the health of my dairy; and at times saunter- and friends, be any thing but the visionary faning by the delightful windings of the Nith, on cies of dreaming metaphysicians; if religion, the margin of which I have built my humble virtue, maguanimity, generosity, humanity and domicile, praying for seasonable weather, or justice be aught but empty sounds; then the holding an intrigue with the Muses; the only man who may be said to live only for others, gypseys with whom I have now any intercourse. for the beloved, honourable female whose tender As I am entered into the holy state of matrimo- faithful embrace endears life, and for the helpny, I trust my face is turned completely Zion-less little innocents who are to be the men and ward; and as it is a rule with all honest fel-women, the worshippers of his God, the subows, to repeat no grievances, I hope that the jects of his king, and the support, nay the very ittle poetic licences of former days, will of vital existence of his COUNTRY, in the ensuing course fall under the oblivious influence of some age;-compare such a man with any fellow good-natured statute of celestial proscription, whatever, who, whether he bustle and push in In my family devotion, which, like a good pres-business among labourers, clerks, statesmen ; or byterian, 1 occasionally give to my household whether he roar and rant, and drink and sing folks, I am extremely fond of the psalm, "Let in taverns a fellow over whose grave no one not the errors of my youth," &c. and that other, will breathe a single heigh-ho, except from the cobweb-tie of what is called good fellowship-|you from every proper attention to the study who has no view nor aim but what terminates and practice of husbandry, in which I underin himself—if there be any grovelling earthborn stand you are very learned, and which I fancy wretch of our species, a renegado to common you will choose to adhere to as a wife, while sense, who would fain believe that the noble | poetry amuses you from time to time as a miscreature, man, is no better than a sort of fun-tress. The former, like a prudent wife, must gus, generated out of nothing, nobody knows not show ill humour, although you retain a how, and soon dissipating in nothing, nobody sneaking kindness to this agreeable gipsy, and knows where; such a stupid beast, such a pay her occasional visits, which in no manner crawling reptile might balance the foregoing alienates your heart from your lawful spouse, but unexaggerated comparison, but no one else tends on the contrary to promote her interest. would have the patience. I desired Mr. Cadell to write to Mr. Creech to send you a copy of Zeluco. This perform Forgive me, my dear Sir, for this long silence. To make you amends, I shall send you soon,ance has had great success here, but I shall be and more encouraging still, without any postage, glad to have your opinion of it, because I know one or two rhymes of my later manufacture. you are above saying what you do not think. DEAR SIR, No. CXXIIL FROM DR. MOORE. Clifford Street, 10th June, 1789. I THANK you for the different communica. tions you have made me of your occasional productions in manuscript, all of which have merit, and some of them merit of a different kind from what appears in the poems you have published. You ought carefully to preserve all your occasional productions, to correct and improve them at your leisure and when you can select as many of these as will make a volume, publish it either at Edinburgh or London, by subscription: On such an occasion, it may be in my power, as it is very much in my inclination, to be of service to you. If I were to offer an opinion, it would be, that in your future productions you should abandon the Scottish stanza and dialect, and adopt the measure and language of modern English poetry. The stanza which you use in imitation of Christ Kirk on the Green, with the tiresome repitition of " that day," is fatiguing to English ears, and I should think not very agreeable to Scottish. Monday Evening. I have just heard give a sermon. He is a man famous for his benevolence, and I revere him; but from such ideas of my Creator, All the fine satire and humour of your Holy good Lord deliver me! Religion, my honoured Fair is lost on the English; yet, without more friend, is surely a simple business, as it equally trouble to yourself, you could have conveyed the concerns the ignorant and the learned, the poor whole to them. The same is true of some of and the rich. That there is an incomprehensiyour other poems. In your Epistle to J. S- -, bly great Being, to whom I owe my existence, the stanzas from that beginning with this line, and that he must be intimately acquainted with "This life, so far's I understand," to that which the operations and progress of the internal maends with, "Short while it grieves," are easy, chinery, and consequent outward deportment of flowing, gaily philosophical, and of Horatian ele- this creature which he has made; these are, I gance the language is English, with a few Scot-think, self-evident propositions. That there is tish words, and some of those so harmonious, a real and eternal distinction between virtue and as to add to the beauty for what poet would not prefer gloaming to twilight. I imagine, that by carefully keeping, and occasionally polishing and correcting those verses, which the muse dictates, you will, within a year or two, have another volume as large as the first, ready for the press; and this, without diverting vice, and consequently that I am an accountable creature; that from the seeming nature of the human mind, as well as from the evident imperfection, nay, positive injustice, in the administration of affairs, both in the natural and moral worlds, there must be a retributive scene of existence beyond the grave; must, I think be allowed by every one who will give himself a moment's reflection. I will go farther, and affirm, that from the sublimity, excellence, and purity of his doctrine and precepts, unparalleled by all the aggregated wisdom and learning of many preceding ages, though, to appearance, he himself was the obscurest and most illiterate of our species; therefore, Jesus Christ was from God. Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others, this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, this is my measure of iniquity. What think you, Madam, of my creed? I trust that I have said nothing that will lessen me in the eye of one, whose good opinion I value almost next to the approbation of my own mind. SIR, No. CXXV. FROM MISS J. L. Loudon-House, 12th July, 1789. THOUGH I have not the happiness of being personally acquainted with you, yet amongst the number of those who have read and admired your publications, may I be permitted to trouble you with this. You must know, Sir, I am somewhat in love with the Muses, though I cannot boast of any favours they have deigned to confer upon me as yet; my situation in life has been very much against ine as to that. 1 have spent some years in and about Ecclefechan (where my parents reside), in the station of a servant, and am now come to Loudon-House, at present possessed by Mrs. H: she is daughter to Mrs. Dunlop, of Dunlop, whom I understand you are particularly acquainted with. As I had the pleasure of perusing your poems, I felt a partiality for the author, which I should not have experienced had you been in more dignified station. I wrote a few verses of address to you, which I did not then think of ever presenting but as fortune seems to have favoured me in this, by bringing me into a family by whom you are well known and much esteemed, and where perhaps I may have an opportunity of seeing you; I shall, in hopes of future friendship, take the liberty to transcribe them. your |