instance of your patronage and friendship. As to the faults you detected in the piece, they are truly there one of them, the hit at the lawyer and priest I shall cut out; as to the falling off in the catastrophe, for the reason you justly adduce it cannot easily be remedied. Your approbation, Sir, has given me such additional spirits to persevere in this species of poetic composition, that I am already revolving two or three stories in my fancy. If I can bring these floating ideas to bear any kind of embodied form, it will give me an additional opportunity of assuring you how much I have the honour to be, &c. R. B. [That no one welcomed the appearance of the farfamed Tam o' Shanter with a livelier sense of its merits than the late Lord Woodhouslee, the following letter will testify: "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 another syllable, would not have been sufficient to have transmitted your name down to pos terity 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 have done honour to Matthew Prior; but when you describe the infernal orgies of the witches' sabbath, and the hellish scenery in which they are exhibited, you display a power of imagination, that Shakspeare 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, That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses; And by some devilish cantrip slight, 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 gray 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, than the four lines which succeed, which, though good in themselves, yet as they derive all their merit from the satire they contain, are here rather misplaced among the circumstances of pure horrour. The initiation of the young witch is most happily described — the effect of her charms exhibited in the dance on Satan himself-the apostrophe 'Ah little thought thy reverend graunie!' -the transport of Tam, who forgets his situation, and enters completely into the spirit of the scene, are all features of high merit, in this excellent composition. The only fault it possesses is, that the winding up, or conclusion of the story, is not commensurate to the interest which is excited by the descriptive and characteristic painting of the preceding parts.-The preparation is fine, but the result is not adequate. But for this perhaps you have a good apology-you stick to the popular tale. "And now that I have got out my mind, and feel a little relieved of the weight of that debt I owed you, let me end this desultory scroll by an advice :-You have proved your talent for a species of composition, in which but a very few of our own poets have succeeded -Go on-write more tales in the same style-you will eclipse Prior and La Fontaine; for, with equal wit, equal power of numbers, and equal naïveté of expression, you have a bolder and more vigorous imagination." Through the kindness of my friend P. F. Tytler, the historian of Scotland, I am enabled to fill up the chasm in the poem to his grandfather, page 70, vol. iii. "But why of that epocha make such a fuss, That gave us the Hanover stem; If bringing them over was lucky for us, Why Dr. Currie omitted these lines we have not been told they seem harmless enough, and the royal stock to which they refer would have smiled at them. ED.] WHEN I tell you, Madam, that by a fall, not from my horse, but with my horse, I have been a cripple some time, and that this is the first day my arm and hand have been able to serve me in writing; you will allow that it is too good an apology for my seemingly ungrateful silence. amo now getting better, and am able to rhyme a little, which implies some tolerable ease; as I cannot think that the most poetic genius is able to compose on the rack. I I do not remember if ever I mentioned to you my having an idea of composing an elegy on the late Miss Burnet, of Monboddo. I had the honour of being pretty well acquainted with her, and have seldom felt so much at the loss of an acquaintance, as when I heard that so amiable and accomplished a piece of God's work 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. (See the Elegy page 201, vol. iii.) I have proceeded no further. Your kind letter, with your kind remembrance 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. He is now seventeen months old, has the small-pox and measles over, has cut several teeth, and never had a grain of doctor's 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 VOL. VII. L R. B. |