]
MY DEAR HILL,
I shall say nothing to your mad present--you have so long and often
been of important service to me, and I suppose you mean to go on
conferring obligations until I shall not be able to lift up my face
before you.
MY DEAR HILL,
I shall say nothing to your mad present--you have so long and often
been of important service to me, and I suppose you mean to go on
conferring obligations until I shall not be able to lift up my face
before you.
Robert Forst
Who
would not praise thee for these thy gifts in thy goodness to the sons
of men! " It needed not your fine taste to admire them. I declare, one
day I had the honour of dining at Mr. Baillie's, I was almost in the
predicament of the children of Israel, when they could not look on
Moses' face for the glory that shone in it when he descended from
Mount Sinai.
I did once write a poetic address from the Falls of Bruar to his Grace
of Athole, when I was in the Highlands. When you return to Scotland,
let me know, and I will send such of my pieces as please myself best.
I return to Mauchline in about ten days.
My compliments to Mr. Purdon. I am in truth, but at present in haste,
Yours,--R. B.
* * * * *
CXXVII.
TO MR. PETER HILL.
[Peter Hill was a bookseller in Edinburgh: David Ramsay, printer of
the Evening Courant: William Dunbar, an advocate, and president of a
club of Edinburgh wits; and Alexander Cunningham, a jeweller, who
loved mirth and wine.
]
MY DEAR HILL,
I shall say nothing to your mad present--you have so long and often
been of important service to me, and I suppose you mean to go on
conferring obligations until I shall not be able to lift up my face
before you. In the mean time, as Sir Roger de Coverley, because it
happened to be a cold day in which he made his will, ordered his
servants great coats for mourning, so, because I have been this week
plagued with an indigestion, I have sent you by the carrier a fine old
ewe-milk cheese.
Indigestion is the devil: nay, 'tis the devil and all. It besets a man
in every one of his senses. I lose my appetite at the sight of
successful knavery, and sicken to loathing at the noise and nonsense
of self-important folly. When the hollow-hearted wretch takes me by
the hand, the feeling spoils my dinner: the proud man's wine so
offends my palate that it chokes me in the gullet; and the
_pulvilised_, feathered, pert coxcomb is so disgustful in my nostril
that my stomach turns.
If ever you have any of these disagreeable sensations, let me
prescribe for you patience; and a bit of my cheese. I know that you
are no niggard of your good things among your friends, and some of
them are in much need of a slice. There, in my eye is our friend
Smellie; a man positively of the first abilities and greatest strength
of mind, as well as one of the best hearts and keenest wits that I
have ever met with; when you see him, as, alas! he too is smarting at
the pinch of distressful circumstances, aggravated by the sneer of
contumelious greatness--a bit of my cheese alone will not cure him,
but if you add a tankard of brown stout, and superadd a magnum of
right Oporto, you will see his sorrows vanish like the morning mist
before the summer sun.
Candlish, the earliest friend, except my only brother, that I have on
earth, and one of the worthiest fellows that ever any man called by
the name of friend, if a luncheon of my cheese would help to rid him
of some of his super-abundant modesty, you would do well to give it
him.
David,[184] with his _Courant_, comes, too, across my recollection, and
I beg you will help him largely from the said ewe-milk cheese, to
enable him to digest those bedaubing paragraphs with which he is
eternally larding the lean characters of certain great men in a
certain great town. I grant you the periods are very well turned; so,
a fresh egg is a very good thing, but when thrown at a man in a
pillory, it does not at all improve his figure, not to mention the
irreparable loss of the egg.
My facetious friend Dunbar I would wish also to be a partaker: not to
digest his spleen, for that he laughs off, but to digest his last
night's wine at the last field-day of the Crochallan corps. [185]
Among our common friends I must not forget one of the dearest of
them--Cunningham. The brutality, insolence, and selfishness of a world
unworthy of having such a fellow as he is in it, I know sticks in his
stomach, and if you can help him to anything that will make him a
little easier on that score, it will be very obliging.
would not praise thee for these thy gifts in thy goodness to the sons
of men! " It needed not your fine taste to admire them. I declare, one
day I had the honour of dining at Mr. Baillie's, I was almost in the
predicament of the children of Israel, when they could not look on
Moses' face for the glory that shone in it when he descended from
Mount Sinai.
I did once write a poetic address from the Falls of Bruar to his Grace
of Athole, when I was in the Highlands. When you return to Scotland,
let me know, and I will send such of my pieces as please myself best.
I return to Mauchline in about ten days.
My compliments to Mr. Purdon. I am in truth, but at present in haste,
Yours,--R. B.
* * * * *
CXXVII.
TO MR. PETER HILL.
[Peter Hill was a bookseller in Edinburgh: David Ramsay, printer of
the Evening Courant: William Dunbar, an advocate, and president of a
club of Edinburgh wits; and Alexander Cunningham, a jeweller, who
loved mirth and wine.
]
MY DEAR HILL,
I shall say nothing to your mad present--you have so long and often
been of important service to me, and I suppose you mean to go on
conferring obligations until I shall not be able to lift up my face
before you. In the mean time, as Sir Roger de Coverley, because it
happened to be a cold day in which he made his will, ordered his
servants great coats for mourning, so, because I have been this week
plagued with an indigestion, I have sent you by the carrier a fine old
ewe-milk cheese.
Indigestion is the devil: nay, 'tis the devil and all. It besets a man
in every one of his senses. I lose my appetite at the sight of
successful knavery, and sicken to loathing at the noise and nonsense
of self-important folly. When the hollow-hearted wretch takes me by
the hand, the feeling spoils my dinner: the proud man's wine so
offends my palate that it chokes me in the gullet; and the
_pulvilised_, feathered, pert coxcomb is so disgustful in my nostril
that my stomach turns.
If ever you have any of these disagreeable sensations, let me
prescribe for you patience; and a bit of my cheese. I know that you
are no niggard of your good things among your friends, and some of
them are in much need of a slice. There, in my eye is our friend
Smellie; a man positively of the first abilities and greatest strength
of mind, as well as one of the best hearts and keenest wits that I
have ever met with; when you see him, as, alas! he too is smarting at
the pinch of distressful circumstances, aggravated by the sneer of
contumelious greatness--a bit of my cheese alone will not cure him,
but if you add a tankard of brown stout, and superadd a magnum of
right Oporto, you will see his sorrows vanish like the morning mist
before the summer sun.
Candlish, the earliest friend, except my only brother, that I have on
earth, and one of the worthiest fellows that ever any man called by
the name of friend, if a luncheon of my cheese would help to rid him
of some of his super-abundant modesty, you would do well to give it
him.
David,[184] with his _Courant_, comes, too, across my recollection, and
I beg you will help him largely from the said ewe-milk cheese, to
enable him to digest those bedaubing paragraphs with which he is
eternally larding the lean characters of certain great men in a
certain great town. I grant you the periods are very well turned; so,
a fresh egg is a very good thing, but when thrown at a man in a
pillory, it does not at all improve his figure, not to mention the
irreparable loss of the egg.
My facetious friend Dunbar I would wish also to be a partaker: not to
digest his spleen, for that he laughs off, but to digest his last
night's wine at the last field-day of the Crochallan corps. [185]
Among our common friends I must not forget one of the dearest of
them--Cunningham. The brutality, insolence, and selfishness of a world
unworthy of having such a fellow as he is in it, I know sticks in his
stomach, and if you can help him to anything that will make him a
little easier on that score, it will be very obliging.
