ry.

However, either it is not quite properly bored in the holes, or else
we have not the art of blowing it rightly; for we can make little of
it. If Mr. Allan chooses, I will send him a sight of mine, as I look
on myself to be a kind of brother-brush with him. "Pride in poets is
nae sin;" and I will say it, that I look on Mr. Allan and Mr. Burns to
be the only genuine and real painters of Scottish costume in the
world.

R. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 273: Song CCXXXVII.]

* * * * *

CCCVII.

TO PETER MILLER, JUN., ESQ.,

OF DALSWINTON.

[In a conversation with James Perry, editor of the Morning Chronicle,
Mr. Miller, who was then member for the Dumfries boroughs, kindly
represented the poverty of the poet and the increasing number of his
family: Perry at once offered fifty pounds a year for any
contributions he might choose to make to his newspaper: the reasons
for his refusal are stated in this letter.]

_Dumfries, Nov. 1794._

DEAR SIR,

Your offer is indeed truly generous, and most sincerely do I thank you
for it; but in my present situation, I find that I dare not accept it.
You well know my political sentiments; and were I an insular
individual, unconnected with a wife and a family of children, with the
most fervid enthusiasm I would have volunteered my services: I then
could and would have despised all consequences that might have ensued.

My prospect in the Excise is something; at least it is, encumbered as
I am with the welfare, the very existence, of near half-a-score of
helpless individuals, what I dare not sport with.

In the mean time, they are most welcome to my Ode; only, let them
insert it as a thing they have met with by accident and unknown to
me.--Nay, if Mr. Perry, whose honour, after your character of him, I
cannot doubt; if he will give me an address and channel by which
anything will come safe from those spies with which he may be certain
that his correspondence is beset, I will now and then send him any
bagatelle that I may write. In the present hurry of Europe, nothing
but news and politics will be regarded; but against the days of peace,
which Heaven send soon, my little assistance may perhaps fill up an
idle column of a newspaper. I have long had it in my head to try my
hand in the way of little prose essays, which I propose sending into
the world though the medium of some newspaper; and should these be
worth his while, to these Mr. Per