No More Learning

With every sentiment of grateful respect,

I have the honour to be,

Madam,

Your obliged and grateful humble servant,

R. B.

* * * * *




CLIX.


TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.

[Honest Jamie Thomson, who shot the hare because she browsed with her
companions on his father's "wheat-braird," had no idea he was pulling
down such a burst of indignation on his head as this letter with the
poem which it enclosed expresses. ]

_Ellisland, 4th May, 1789. _

MY DEAR SIR,

Your _duty-free_ favour of the 26th April I received two days ago; I
will not say I perused it with pleasure; that is the cold compliment
of ceremony; I perused it, Sir, with delicious satisfaction;--in
short, it is such a letter, that not you, nor your friend, but the
legislature, by express proviso in their postage laws, should frank.

A letter informed with the soul of friendship is such an honour to
human nature, that they should order it free ingress and egress to and
from their bags and mails, as an encouragement and mark of distinction
to supereminent virtue.

I have just put the last hand to a little poem which I think will be
something to your taste. One morning lately, as I was out pretty early
in the fields, sowing some grass seeds, I heard the burst of a shot
from a neighbouring plantation, and presently a poor little wounded
hare came crippling by me. You will guess my indignation at the
inhuman fellow who could shoot a hare at this season, when all of them
have young ones. Indeed there is something in that business of
destroying for our sport individuals in the animal creation that do
not injure us materially, which I could never reconcile to my ideas of
virtue.

Inhuman man! curse on thy barb'rous art,
And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye!
May never pity soothe thee with a sigh,
Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart!
&c. &c.

Let me know how you like my poem. I am doubtful whether it would not
be an improvement to keep out the last stanza but one altogether.

Cruikshank is a glorious production of the author of man. You, he, and
the noble Colonel of the Crochallan Fencibles are to me

"Dear as the ruddy drops which warm my heart"

I have a good mind to make verses on you all, to the tune of "_Three
guid fellows ayont the glen. _"

R. B.

* * * * *




CLX.


TO MR. SAMUEL BROWN.

[Samuel Brown was brother to the poet's mother: he seems to have been
a joyous sort of person, who loved a joke, and understood double
meanings. ]

_Mossgiel, 4th May, 1789. _

DEAR UNCLE,

This, I hope, will find you and your conjugal yoke-fellow in your good
old way; I am impatient to know if the Ailsa fowling be commenced for
this season yet, as I want three or four stones of feathers, and I
hope you will bespeak them for me. It would be a vain attempt for me
to enumerate the various transactions I have been engaged in since I
saw you last, but this know,--I am engaged in a _smuggling trade_, and
God knows if ever any poor man experienced better returns, two for
one, but as freight and delivery have turned out so dear, I am
thinking of taking out a license and beginning in fair trade.