steps
for a private marriage. Her parents got the hint; and not only forbade
me her company and their house, but, on my rumoured West Indian
voyage, got a warrant to put me in jail, till I should find security
in my about-to-be paternal relation. You know my lucky reverse of
fortune. On my _eclatant_ return to Mauchline, I was made very welcome
to visit my girl. The usual consequences began to betray her; and, as
I was at that time laid up a cripple in Edinburgh, she was turned,
literally turned out of doors, and I wrote to a friend to shelter her
till my return, when our marriage was declared. Her happiness or
misery were in my hands, and who could trifle with such a deposit?

I can easily fancy a more agreeable companion for my journey of life;
but, upon my honour, I have never seen the individual instance.

Circumstanced as I am, I could never have got a female partner for
life, who could have entered into my favourite studies, relished my
favourite authors, &c., without probably entailing on me at the same
time expensive living, fantastic caprice, perhaps apish affectation,
with all the other blessed boarding-school acquirements, which
(_pardonnez moi, Madame_,) are sometimes to be found among females of
the upper ranks, but almost universally pervade the misses of the
would-be gentry.

I like your way in your church-yard lucubrations. Thoughts that are
the spontaneous result of accidental situations, either respecting
health, place, or company, have often a strength, and always an
originality, that would in vain be looked for in fancied circumstances
and studied paragraphs. For me, I have often thought of keeping a
letter, in progression by me, to send you when the sheet was written
out. Now I talk of sheets, I must tell you, my reason for writing to
you on paper of this kind is my pruriency of writing to you at large.
A page of post is on such a dissocial, narrow-minded scale, that I
cannot abide it; and double letters, at least in my miscellaneous
revery manner, are a monstrous tax in a close correspondence.

R. B.

* * * * *

CXXXII.

TO MRS. DUNLOP.

[Mrs. Miller, of Dalswinton, was a lady of beauty and talent: she
wrote verses with skill and taste. Her maiden name was Jean Lindsay.]

_Ellisland, 16th August, 1788._

I am in a fine disposition, my honoured friend, to send you an elegiac
epistle; and want only genius to make it quite Shenstonian:--

"Why