Madam,--... When you talk of correspondence and friendship to me, you do me too much honour; but, as I shall soon be at my wonted leisure and rural occupation, if any remark on what I have read or seen, or any new rhyme that I may twist, be worth the while ... you shall have it with all my heart and soul. It requires no common exertion of good sense and philosophy in persons of elevated rank to keep a friendship properly alive with one much their inferior. Externals, things wholly extraneous of the man, steal upon the hearts and judgments of almost, if not altogether, all mankind; nor do I know more than one instance of a man who fully regards all the world as a stage and all the men and women merely players, and who (the dancing-school bow excepted) only values these players, the _dramatis personae_ who build cities and who rear hedges, who govern provinces or superintend flocks, _merely as they act their parts_. For the honour of Ayrshire this man is Professor Dugald Stewart of Catrine. To him I might perhaps add another instance, a Popish bishop, Geddes of Edinburgh.... I ever could ill endure those ... beasts of prey who foul the hallowed ground of religion with their nocturnal prowlings; and if the prosecution against my worthy friend, Dr. McGill, goes on, I shall keep no measure with the savages, but fly at them with the _faucons_ of ridicule, or run them down with the bloodhounds of satire as lawful game wherever I start them. I expect to leave Edinburgh in eight or ten days, and shall certainly do myself the honour of calling at Dunlop House as I return to Ayrshire.--I have the honour to be, Madam, your obliged humble Servant, ROBERT BURNS. * * * * LXVI.--To MR. JAMES HOY,[55] GORDON CASTLE. Edinburg, 6_th November_ 1787. Dear Sir,--I would have wrote you immediately on receipt of your kind letter, but a mixed impulse of gratitude and esteem whispered to me that I ought to send you something by way of return. When a poet owes anything, particularly when he is indebted for good offices, the payment that usually recurs to him--the only coin, indeed, in which he is probably conversant--is rhyme. Johnson sends the books by the fly, as directed, and begs me to inclose his most grateful thanks: my return I intended should have been one or two poetic bagatelles which the world have not seen, or, perhaps, for obvious seasons, cannot see. These I shall send you before I leave Edinburgh. They may make you laugh a little, which, on the whole, is no bad way of spending one's precious hours and still more precious breath. At any rate, they will be, though a small, yet a very sincere mark of my respectful esteem for a gentleman whose farther acquaintance I should look upon as a peculiar obligation.