HONOURED MADAM,--Your kind letter welcomed me, yesternight, to Ayrshire. I am, indeed, seriously angry with you at the quantum of your luckpenny; but, vexed and hurt as I was, I could not help laughing very heartily at the noble lord's apology for the missed napkin. I would write you from Nithsdale, and give you my direction there, but I have scarce an opportunity of calling at a post-office once in a fortnight. I am six miles from Dumfries, am scarcely ever in it myself, and, as yet, have little acquaintance in the neighbourhood. Besides, I am now very busy on my farm, building a dwelling-house; as at present I am almost an evangelical man in Nithsdale, for I have scarce "where to lay my head." There are some passages in your last that brought tears in my eyes. "The heart knoweth its own sorrows, and a stranger intermeddleth not therewith." The repository of these "sorrows of the heart" is a kind of _sanctum sanctorum_: and'tis only a chosen friend, and that, too, at particular, sacred times, who dares enter into them:-- Heaven oft tears the bosom-chords That nature finest strung. You will excuse this quotation for the sake of the author. Instead of entering on this subject farther, I shall transcribe you a few lines I wrote in a hermitage, belonging to a gentleman in my Nithsdale neighbourhood. They are almost the only favour the muses have conferred on me in that country.[86] Since I am in the way of transcribing, the following were the production of yesterday as I jogged through the wild hills of New Cumnock. I intend inserting them, or something like them, in an epistle I am going to write to the gentleman on whose friendship my Excise hopes depend, Mr. Graham of Fintray, one of the worthiest and most accomplished gentlemen, not only of this country, but, I will dare to say it, of this age. The following are just the first crude thoughts "unhousel'd, unanointed, unanneal'd:"[87]-- Here the muse left me. I am astonished at what you tell me of Anthony's writing me. I never received it. Poor fellow I you vex me much by telling me that he is unfortunate. I shall be in Ayrshire ten days from this date. I have just room for an old Roman FAREWELL. R. B. [Footnote 86: Lines written in Friar's Carse Hermitage.] [Footnote 87: First Epistle to Robert Graham.] * * * * * * * C.--To MRS. DUNLOP. ELLISLAND, 16_th August_ 1788. I am in a fine disposition, my honoured friend, to send you an elegiac epistle; and want only genius to make it quite Shenstonian:-- Why droops my heart with fancied woes forlorn? Why sinks my soul beneath each wintry sky?