No More Learning

As I am got in the way of quotations, I shall give you another from
the same piece, peculiarly, alas! too peculiarly apposite, my dear
Madam, to your present frame of mind:

"Who so unworthy but may proudly deck him
With his fair-weather virtue, that exults
Glad o'er the summer main! the tempest comes,
The rough winds rage aloud; when from the helm,
This virtue shrinks, and in a corner lies
Lamenting--Heavens! if privileged from trial,
How cheap a thing were virtue? "

I do not remember to have heard you mention Thomson's dramas. I pick
up favourite quotations, and store them in my mind as ready armour,
offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence.
Of these is one, a very favourite one, from his "Alfred:"

"Attach thee firmly to the virtuous deeds
And offices of life; to life itself,
With all its vain and transient joys, sit loose. "

Probably I have quoted some of these to you formerly, as indeed when I
write from the heart, I am apt to be guilty of such repetitions. The
compass of the heart, in the musical style of expression, is much more
bounded than that of the imagination; so the notes of the former are
extremely apt to run into one another; but in return for the paucity
of its compass, its few notes are much more sweet. I must still give
you another quotation, which I am almost sure I have given you before,
but I cannot resist the temptation. The subject is religion--speaking
of its importance to mankind, the author says,

"'Tis this, my friend, that streaks our morning bright. "

I see you are in for double postage, so I shall e'en scribble out
t'other sheet. We, in this country here, have many alarms of the
reforming, or rather the republican spirit, of your part of the
kingdom. Indeed we are a good deal in commotion ourselves. For me, I
am a placeman, you know; a very humble one indeed, Heaven knows, but
still so much as to gag me.
What my private sentiments are, you will
find out without an interpreter.

* * * * *

I have taken up the subject, and the other day, for a pretty actress's
benefit night, I wrote an address, which I will give on the other
page, called "The rights of woman:"

"While Europe's eye is fixed on mighty things. "

I shall have the honour of receiving your criticisms in person at
Dunlop.

R. B.

* * * * *




CCXLIII.


TO R. GRAHAM, ESQ. ,

FINTRAY.

[Graham stood by the bard in the hour of peril recorded in this
letter: and the Board of Excise had the generosity to permit him to
eat its "bitter bread" for the remainder of his life. ]

_December, 1792. _

SIR,

I have been surprised, confounded, and distracted by Mr. Mitchell, the
collector, telling me that he has received an order from your Board to
inquire into my political conduct, and blaming me as a person
disaffected to government.

Sir, you are a husband--and a father. --You know what you would feel,
to see the much-loved wife of your bosom, and your helpless, prattling
little ones, turned adrift into the world, degraded and disgraced from
a situation in which they had been respectable and respected, and left
almost without the necessary support of a miserable existence. Alas,
Sir!