me of our
ancient ballads, which show them to be the work of a masterly hand:
and it has often given me many a heart-ache to reflect that such
glorious old bards--bards who very probably owed all their talents to
native genius, yet have described the exploits of heroes, the pangs of
disappointment, and the meltings of love, with such fine strokes of
nature--that their very names (O how mortifying to a bard's vanity!)
are now "buried among the wreck of things which were."

O ye illustrious names unknown! who could feel so strongly and
describe so well: the last, the meanest of the muses' train--one who,
though far inferior to your flights, yet eyes your path, and with
trembling wing would sometimes soar after you--a poor rustic bard
unknown, pays this sympathetic pang to your memory! Some of you tell
us, with all the charms of verse, that you have been unfortunate in
the world--unfortunate in love: he, too, has felt the loss of his
little fortune, the loss of friends, and, worse than all, the loss of
the woman he adored. Like you, all his consolation was his muse: she
taught him in rustic measures to complain. Happy could he have done it
with your strength of imagination and flow of verse! May the turf lie
lightly on your bones! and may you now enjoy that solace and rest
which this world rarely gives to the heart tuned to all the feelings
of poesy and love!

* * * * *

_September._

The following fragment is done something in imitation of the manner of
a noble old Scottish piece, called M'Millan's Peggy, and sings to the
tune of Galla Water.--My Montgomery's Peggy was my deity for six or
eight months. She had been bred (though, as the world says, without
any just pretence for it) in a style of life rather elegant; but, as
Vanbrugh says in one of his comedies, my "d----d star found me out"
there too: for though I began the affair merely in a _gaitie de
coeur_, or, to tell the truth, which will scarcely be believed, a
vanity of showing my parts in courtship, particularly my abilities at
a _billet-doux_, which I always piqued myself upon, made me lay siege
to her; and when, as I always do in my foolish gallantries, I had
fettered myself into a very warm affection for her, she told me one
day, in a flag of truce, that her fortress had been for some time
before the rightful property of another; but, with the greatest
friendship and politeness, she offered me every allegiance except
actual