can ever efface. My imagination
had fondly flattered myself with a wish, I dare not say it ever
reached a hope, that possibly I might one day call you mine. I had
formed the most delightful images, and my fancy fondly brooded over
them; but now I am wretched for the loss of what I really had no right
to expect. I must now think no more of you as a mistress; still I
presume to ask to be admitted as a friend. As such I wish to be
allowed to wait on you, and as I expect to remove in a few days a
little further off, and you, I suppose, will perhaps soon leave this
place, I wish to see or hear from you soon; and if an expression
should perhaps escape me, rather too warm for friendship, I hope you
will pardon it in, my dear Miss--(pardon me the dear expression for
once) * * * *

R. B

* * * * *

VIII.

TO ROBERT RIDDEL, ESQ.

OF GLENRIDDEL

[These memoranda throw much light on the early days of Burns, and on
the history of his mind and compositions. Robert Riddel, of the
Friars-Carse, to whom these fragments were sent, was a good man as
well as a distinguished antiquary.]

MY DEAR SIR,

On rummaging over some old papers I lighted on a MS. of my early
years, in which I had determined to write myself out; as I was placed
by fortune among a class of men to whom my ideas would have been
nonsense. I had meant that the book should have lain by me, in the
fond hope that some time or other, even after I was no more, my
thoughts would fall into the hands of somebody capable of appreciating
their value. It sets off thus:--

"OBSERVATIONS, HINTS, SONGS, SCRAPS OF POETRY, &c., by
ROBERT BURNESS: a man who had little art in making money, and
still less in keeping it; but was, however, a man of some sense, a
great deal of honesty, and unbounded good-will to every creature,
rational and irrational.--As he was but little indebted to scholastic
education, and bred at a plough-tail, his performances must be
strongly tinctured with his unpolished, rustic way of life; but as I
believe they are really his own, it may be some entertainment to a
curious observer of human nature to see how a ploughman thinks, and
feels, under the pressure of love, ambition, anxiety, grief, with the
like cares and passions, which, however diversified by the modes and
manners of life, operate pretty much alike, I believe, on all the
species."

"There are numbers in the world who do not want sense to
mak