ngs for Johnson, since I had the pleasure
of seeing you; and I have finished one piece, in the way of Pope's
"Moral Epistles;" but, from your silence, I have everything to fear,
so I have only sent you two melancholy things, which I tremble lest
they should too well suit the tone of your present feelings.

In a fortnight I move, bag and baggage, to Nithsdale; till then, my
direction is at this place; after that period, it will be at
Ellisland, near Dumfries. It would extremely oblige me, were it but
half a line, to let me know how you are, and where you are. Can I be
indifferent to the fate of a man to whom I owe so much? A man whom I
not only esteem, but venerate.

My warmest good wishes and most respectful compliments to Mrs.
Blacklock, and Miss Johnston, if she is with you.

I cannot conclude without telling you that I am more and more pleased
with the step I took respecting "my Jean." Two things, from my happy
experience, I set down as apothegms in life. A wife's head is
immaterial, compared with her heart; and--"Virtue's (for wisdom what
poet pretends to it?) ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths
are peace."

Adieu!

R. B.

[Here follow "The Mother's Lament for the Loss of her Son," and the
song beginning "The lazy mist hangs from the brow of the hill."]

* * * * *

CXLII.

TO MRS. DUNLOP.

[The "Auld lang syne," which Burns here introduces to Mrs. Dunlop as a
strain of the olden time, is as surely his own as Tam-o-Shanter.]

_Ellisland, 17th December, 1788._

MY DEAR HONOURED FRIEND,

Yours, dated Edinburgh, which I have just read, makes me very unhappy.
"Almost blind and wholly deaf," are melancholy news of human nature;
but when told of a much-loved and honoured friend, they carry misery
in the sound. Goodness on your part, and gratitude on mine, began a
tie which has gradually entwisted itself among the dearest chords of
my bosom, and I tremble at the omens of your late and present ailing
habit and shattered health. You miscalculate matters widely, when you
forbid my waiting on you, lest it should hurt my worldly concerns. My
small scale of farming is exceedingly more simple and easy than what
you have lately seen at Moreham Mains. But, be that as it may, the
heart of the man and the fancy of the poet are the two grand
considerations for which I live: if miry ridges and dirty dunghills
are to engross the best part of the functions of my soul im