Dear Sir,

LETTER LXV.

TO GEORGE THOMSON, ESQ., EDINBURGH.

Laggan, September 15, 1802.

Your last letter found me in the very altitudes of rural occupation. What use have I not made of these fine days! I have been in the court every morning, seeing the sun rise; and at the river side every evening an hour after its setting. Potatoes rich in purple bloom, large as melons, and numerous as dew-drops, how shall I leave you! Lint, whose azure bells I meant this day to scatter;-mildly fragrant hay, on whose half-finished stack the labourers dance to tunes, how shall I forsake you! ! But, above all, sweet, smiling children, who move round me like obedient satellites, and exercise all your little ingenuity to attract me, how shall I frown repulsive, issue forth the cruel mandate that forbids playing before the window, and leave you only the sad alternative of imprisonment in the nursery, or banishment beyond the burn! Here, alas, must I sit immured, and instead of your animating gambols, see only opposed the poppies in the flower-pots, nodding their heavy heads with sympathetic dulness; or the convolvolus looking still bluer than myself, and emulous of my curiously involved periods; while carnations, whose endeavours at display seem checked by the ungenial clime and declining season, warn me against a public exhibition under similar disadvantages. Now you must have

patience with this prelusive flourish, and consider it merely as a trial of the instrument which is just about to play a lesson of your own setting.

I confess that Ossian in the hands of his translators sometimes swells into tumidity; but then Ossian was mortal, and Homer is allowed sometimes to nod. I like the style and character of "Morduth," as a warlike poem, better than most of his warlike poems. Tell me how I have executed the version. There is a certain style of poetry adapted to a certain style of landscape, as well as to a particular turn of mind. The inhabitant of a level and cultivated country, who dwells amidst a smiling landscape, where all is regular and tranquil, supposing the principles of taste to exist in his mind, will find them modified by the scenes around him. His soul will be soothed and softened into the love of order and elegance. When brought to admire the rugged grandeur of solitary mountainous wilds, abrupt precipices, dashing torrents, expansive lakes, and echoing caverns, he will try to be pleased, and partly succeed. But the repulsive ruggedness, the cheerless gloom, the bleak aspect of desolation, will affect his regulated spirit and cultivated feelings, in a far different manner from what they would a native, possessing originally the very same principles of taste. To him the deep-toned blast that sweeps resistless down the mountains, sounds a welcome prelude to the storm that exalts while it agitates his mind. The dun solitude of the heathy waste, the steep acclivity of the pathless rock, and the darksome recesses of the narrow wooded glen, have to him peculiar attractions. He views them as scenes distinguished by the exploits,

and hallowed by the songs of his ancestors, the favourite haunts of the hunter, the hero, and the bard. It is needless to add, that each finds a strain of music and poetry congenial to those feelings excited by his situation, and endeared by his habits.

At different periods of my life, and under various circumstances, I have been very differently affected by the same objects. I believe I might very early, in some degree, affect the wonderful and wild; for I liked thunder exceedingly, and one of the strongest wishes I remember, when standing on the banks of Lake Ontario, viewing the passage of innumerable wild fowl to the upper lakes, was to mount on the wings of a swan, to explore the depth of the luxuriant forests on their banks. When I came a few years after to Scotland, Ossian obtained a complete ascendancy over my imagination to a much greater degree than ever he has done since. Thus determined to like the Highlands, a most unexpected occurrence carried me, in my nineteenth year, to reside there, and that in Abertarffe, the most beautiful place in it; yet it is not easy to say how much I was repelled and disappointed. In vain I tried to raise my mind to the tone of sublimity. The rocky divisions that rose with so much majesty in description seemed like enormous prison walls confining caitiffs in the narrow glens; those, too, seemed the dreary abodes of solitude and silence. These feelings, however, I did not even whisper to the rushes, but in the meanwhile was busied in all the little arts of self-deception. I made myself believe that I admired a bold projection of rock; but, on reflection, discovered it was the fantastic tufts of flowers growing

out of the crevices that had attracted me. I tried to think that a dark morass looked cheerful when the summer sun shone on it, but I soon found that the silken tufts of cannach waving in the gale, and the groups of rhoit which perfumed it were the charms that engaged my fancy. Thus I went on with more industry than success trying to create a taste suitable to my dwelling, like Satan, when he said, "Hail, horrors, hail," &c.; but I could not with him add, "one who brings a mind not to be changed by place or time," as the sequel will show.

Four years after (in 1777), I went from the Highlands on a visit to my friends in the south, and thought myself in duty bound to talk rapturously of Alpine scenery, the only affectation with which I can charge myself. Yet my heart did so warm to Stirlingshire, and my mind expanded in those Elysian fields, where everything wore the aspect of tranquil cheerfulness. I discovered that, however my fancy might be delighted with particular spots, the general aspect of things within the girdle of the Grampians was not congenial to me; and then the wild mountaineers, whose language I did not understand, and to whose character, of consequence, I was a stranger! But, like the potent Prince to whom I just now compared myself, I had nothing for it but to return to the place from whence I came, where it was my fate to be planted and naturalized. There my activity of mind and love of knowledge were confined to very narrow limits indeed; but, like water whose channel is impeded, they took a different course. Whatever appeared to me a subject of laudable curiosity, I had

seized and appropriated. New objects, perfectly compatible with my new duties, appeared, and I pursued these with proportionate eagerness. The language, the customs, the peculiar tone of sentiment and manners of the people, the maxims, traditions, music, and poetry of the country I made my own with all possible expedition. I learnt them in the fields, the garden, and the nursery, in such a manner as rather to promote than interrupt my necessary avocations. And then I spoke of plants, from the fir on the top of Craigellachie to the house-leek on the cottage wall. What a scene did this open to me! What an interest did it create in a country walled in from the world; where the language, customs, and traditions have remained for so many ages unimproved and undepraved—the native region of heroic, musical, and poetical enthusiasm ;

"There was need to purge my visual orb,

For I had much to see.'

I felt like a gifted seer, from whose eyes the unseen powers had suddenly removed the veil of separation, while solemn visions of renowned heroes, departed bards, and the fair of other times pass in airy groups before him.

I am sure you are saying by this time that if I had much to see, you have had rather too much to hear. But stay a little. In 1793, I again went southwards, and began to look for the beautiful country I had formerly traversed with so much pleasure. It was gone; I saw nothing round me but tame flat nature, and formal frigid art. The people were such a set of new sprung, insulated beings, so uninteresting; and for the mobility, bless them, they were so ungraceful