No More Learning

In my next I will suggest to your consideration a few songs which may
have escaped your hurried notice. In the meantime allow me to
congratulate you now, as a brother of the quill. You have committed
your character and fame, which will now be tried, for ages to come, by
the illustrious jury of the SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF TASTE--all
whom poesy can please or music charm.

Being a bard of nature, I have some pretensions to second sight; and I
am warranted by the spirit to foretell and affirm, that your
great-grand-child will hold up your volumes, and say, with honest
pride, "This so much admired selection was the work of my ancestor! "

R. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 228: Miss Rutherford, of Fernilee in Selkirkshire, by marriage
Mrs. Patrick Cockburn, of Ormiston. She died in 1794, at an advanced
age. ]

* * * * *




CCLXII.


TO MR. THOMSON.

[Stephen Clarke, whose name is at this strange note, was a musician
and composer; he was a clever man, and had a high opinion of his own
powers. ]

_August_, 1793.

MY DEAR THOMSON,

I hold the pen for our friend Clarke, who at present is studying the
music of the spheres at my elbow.
The Georgium Sidus he thinks is
rather out of tune; so, until he rectify that matter, he cannot stoop
to terrestrial affairs.

He sends you six of the _rondeau_ subjects, and if more are wanted, he
says you shall have them.

* * * * *

Confound your long stairs!

S. CLARKE.

* * * * *




CCLXIII.


TO MR. THOMSON.

["Phillis the Fair" endured much at the hands of both Burns and
Clarke. The young lady had reason to complain, when the poet
volunteered to sing the imaginary love of that fantastic fiddler. ]

_August_, 1793.

Your objection, my dear Sir, to the passages in my song of "Logan
Water," is right in one instance; but it is difficult to mend it: if I
can, I will. The other passage you object to does not appear in the
same light to me.

I have tried my hand on "Robin Adair," and, you will probably think,
with little success; but it is such a cursed, cramp, out-of-the-way
measure, that I despair of doing anything better to it.

While larks with little wing. [229]

So much for namby-pamby.