* * * * * CLXII.--TO THE REV. G. BAIRD. ELLISLAND, 1791. Reverend Sir,--Why did you, my dear Sir, write to me in such a hesitating style on the business of poor Bruce?[119] Don't I know, and have I not felt, the many ills, the peculiar ills, that poetic flesh is heir to? You shall have your choice of all the unpublished poems[120] I have; and had your letter had my direction so as to have reached me sooner (it only came to my hand this moment) I should have directly put you out of suspense on the subject. I only ask, that some prefatory advertisement in the book, as well as the subscription bills, may bear, that the publication is solely for the benefit of Bruce's mother. I would not put it in the power of ignorance to surmise, or malice to insinuate, that I clubbed a share in the work from mercenary motives. Nor need you give me credit for any remarkable generosity in my part of the business. I have such a host of peccadilloes, failings, follies, and backslidings (anybody but myself might perhaps give some of them a worse appellation), that by way of some balance, however trifling, in the account, I am fain to do any good that occurs in my very limited power to a fellow-creature, just for the selfish purpose of clearing a little the vista of retrospection. R. B. [Footnote 119: Michael Bruce, a young poet of Kinross-Shire.] [Footnote 120: _Tam o' Shanter_ included! It was refused!!] * * * * * CLXIII.--TO MR. CUNNINGHAM, WRITER, EDINBURGH. ELLISLAND, 2_th March_ 1791. If the foregoing piece be worth your strictures, let me have them. For my own part, a thing I have just composed always appears through a double portion of that partial medium in which an author will ever view his own works. I believe, in general, novelty has something in it that inebriates the fancy, and not unfrequently dissipates and fumes away like other intoxication, and leaves the poor patient, as usual, with an aching heart. A striking instance of this might be adduced, in the revolution of many a hymeneal honeymoon. But lest I sink into stupid prose, and so sacrilegiously intrude on the office of my parish priest, I shall fill up the page in my own way, and give you another song of my late composition, which will appear perhaps in Johnson's work, as well as the former. You must know a beautiful Jacobite air, _There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame_. When political combustion ceases to be the object of princes and patriots, it then, you know, becomes the lawful prey of historians and poets. By yon castle wa' at the close of the day, I heard a man sing, tho' his head it was grey; And as he was singing, the tears fast down came-- There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame.