My wife joins me in
compliments
to Mrs.
Robert Forst
I have found my book a very profitable business, and with the profits
of it I have begun life pretty decently. Should fortune not favour me
in farming, as I have no great faith in her fickle ladyship, I have
provided myself in another resource, which however some folks may
affect to despise it, is still a comfortable shift in the day of
misfortune. In the heyday of my fame, a gentleman whose name at least
I dare say you know, as his estate lies somewhere near Dundee, Mr.
Graham, of Fintray, one of the commissioners of Excise, offered me the
commission of an Excise officer. I thought it prudent to accept the
offer; and accordingly I took my instructions, and have my commission
by me. Whether I may ever do duty, or be a penny the better for it, is
what I do not know; but I have the comfortable assurance, that come
whatever ill fate will, I can, on my simple petition to the
Excise-board, get into employ.
We have lost poor uncle Robert this winter. He has long been very
weak, and with very little alteration on him, he expired 3d Jan.
His son William has been with me this winter, and goes in May to be an
apprentice to a mason. His other son, the eldest, John, comes to me I
expect in summer. They are both remarkably stout young fellows, and
promise to do well. His only daughter, Fanny, has been with me ever
since her father's death, and I purpose keeping her in my family till
she be quite woman grown, and fit for service. She is one of the
cleverest girls, and has one of the most amiable dispositions I have
ever seen.
All friends in this country and Ayrshire are well. Remember me to all
friends in the north.
My wife joins me in compliments to Mrs. B. and
family.
I am ever, my dear Cousin,
Yours, sincerely,
R. B.
* * * * *
CLI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The beautiful lines with which this letter concludes, I have reason
to believe were the production of the lady to whom the epistle is
addressed. ]
_Ellisland, 4th March, 1789. _
Here am I, my honoured friend, returned safe from the capital. To a
man, who has a home, however humble or remote--if that home is like
mine, the scene of domestic comfort--the bustle of Edinburgh will soon
be a business of sickening disgust.
"Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate you! "
When I must skulk into a corner, lest the rattling equipage of some
gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to
exclaim--"What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some
state of pre-existence, that he is ushered into this state of being
with the sceptre of rule, and the key of riches in his puny fist, and
I am kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of
pride? " I have read somewhere of a monarch (in Spain I think it was),
who was so out of humour with the Ptolemean system of astronomy, that
he said had he been of the CREATOR'S council, he could have
saved him a great deal of labour and absurdity. I will not defend this
blasphemous speech; but often, as I have glided with humble stealth
through the pomp of Princes' street, it has suggested itself to me, as
an improvement on the present human figure, that a man in proportion
to his own conceit of his consequence in the world, could have pushed
out the longitude of his common size, as a snail pushes out his horns,
or, as we draw out a perspective.
