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charbydis of Jacobite sympathies. Take a specimen from what follows the conversation between Flora and the old king.

The Monarch still to honour's dictates true,
Nor mean revenge, nor cruel purpose knew ;
But long misled by faction's treacherous art,
As yet he reigned not in the general heart :
"To fury's gripe resigned the imperial sword,
Nor heard when pity's gentle voice implor'd,
Nor knew, exalted on a distant throne,
How delegated power made misery groan.

Now, is not all this true? What Whig can add to it, or what Tory detract from it. But to return to a more harmonious subject..

I am quite pleased with this last volume of songs which proves, that your stores are by no means exhausted; but you have kept the best to the last. I was glad to see from Burns,

"Bonny was yon rosy brier."

t is a song I delight in. That other

charming song, too, free from the odious chorus about Menie's hawk e'e, which used to disfigure and degrade it. There is a verse in it inimitably descriptive.

"The shepherd steeks his faulding slap,
"And owre the muirlands whistles shill;
"With wild, unequal, wand'ring stap,
"I meet him on the dewy hill.”

No mortal could draw this picture seated in a room. One must have wandered over real moors, and met real shepherds, with their cold abstracted aspect, and long unequal steps. How unlike the Arcadian shepherds who have gone through so many hands, that it is like following the house that Jack built to trace them to their origin.

Erskine's "Lone Vale," is truly what Burns called it. Sir Gilbert Elliot's song to the air of " Barbara Allan," is delightful. We have no ballad of equal pathos and simplicity of our own age. Where can it have been all this time,

never to have been sung or admired? The "Ewie wi' the crooked horn," is inimitable. It has, however, a prototype in the Gaelic language, being a Strathspey song on the same subject, full of wild untranslateable humour. The poet tells you, for instance, that his crooked ewie moved with great force and dignity over the broad flags; and that with the very breath of her nostrils, she would throw a frog over on its back: -that every spring, in the first days of the season, she had twin lambs as large as calves, and as fat as butter, with many particulars equally astonishing, and meant to caricature the marvellous. Peter Pindar's songs are all faultless elegance, but they do not come near the heart. One reads and admires, but does not wish to read again. His humour so amuses us, that we never wish to meet him in any other province.-Only think of hearing a tender tale from Parquin.

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Boswell's Country Laird" is incomparable. I wonder you do not try to get more numerous songs from him. Here comes breakfast; I must, therefore, once more tell you that I am yours, &c.

LETTER VIII.

DEAR SIR,

Bristol Wells, Dec. 29. 1802.

I RECEIVED both your letters, and sincerely condole with you on the delay of the book of books, well knowing that you will have little rest till that enemy of my peace is once fairly launched.

I hasten to discuss your critical objections: But first hear me excuse what I cannot deny-my inaccuracy, and defect in subsequent correction. Of the Journal I shall only say, that it was hastily

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snatched out of my hands, and fifty blundering copies taken of it before I had even leisurely read it over. The other smaller poems, though none of them the production of leisure, you will own to be pretty correct. As for the Highlanders, part of which was in fact written last winter, you must have yourself observed, that it has more force and less accuracy than any thing else.

Thus, then, I account for the production of more advanced years, written under deep depression, appearing to have more vigour and less polish than the last.

That elasticity of mind, upon which my friends compliment me, always rises most under distress and difficulty. When my mind is depressed by sorrow, it often assumes a high tone of enthusiasm: I retire within myself: The world vanishes from before me; and, under these circumstances, composition of the most

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