o the Excise. I stay in the west about three
weeks, and then return to Edinburgh, for six weeks' instructions:
afterwards, for I get employ instantly, I go _ou il plait a
Dieu_,--_et mon Roi._ I have chosen this, my dear friend, after mature
deliberation. The question is not at what door of fortune's palace
shall we enter in; but what doors does she open to us? I was not
likely to get anything to do. I wanted _un but_, which is a dangerous,
an unhappy situation. I got this without any hanging on, or mortifying
solicitation; it is immediate bread, and though poor in comparison of
the last eighteen months of my existence, 'tis luxury in comparison
of all my preceding life: besides, the commissioners are some of them
my acquaintances, and all of them my firm friends.

R. B.

* * * * *

CXVI.

TO MRS. DUNLOP.

[The Tasso, with the perusal of which Mrs. Dunlop indulged the poet,
was not the line version of Fairfax, but the translation of Hoole--a
far inferior performance.]

_Mauchline, 28th April, 1788._

MADAM,

Your powers of reprehension must be great indeed, as I assure you they
made my heart ache with penitential pangs, even though I was really
not guilty. As I commence farmer at Whit-Sunday, you will easily guess
I must be pretty busy; but that is not all. As I got the offer of the
Excise business without solicitation, and as it costs me only six
months' attendance for instructions, to entitle me to a
commission--which commission lies by me, and at any future period, on
my simple petition, ca be resumed--I thought five-and-thirty pounds
a-year was no bad _dernier ressort_ for a poor poet, if fortune in her
jade tricks should kick him down from the little eminence to which she
has lately helped him up.

For this reason, I am at present attending these instructions, to have
them completed before Whit-sunday. Still, Madam, I prepared with the
sincerest pleasure to meet you at the Mount, and came to my brother's
on Saturday night, to set out on Sunday; but for some nights preceding
I had slept in an apartment, where the force of the winds and rains
was only mitigated by being sifted through numberless apertures in the
windows, walls, &c. In consequence I was on Sunday, Monday, and part
of Tuesday, unable to stir out of bed, with all the miserable effects
of a violent cold.

You see, Madam, the truth of the French maxim, _le vrai n'est pas
toujours le vraisemblable_; you