such he was, was long blind ere
he died, during which time his highest enjoyment was to sit down and
cry, while my mother would sing the simple old song of "the Life and
Age of Man."

It is this way of thinking; it is these melancholy truths, that make
religion so precious to the poor, miserable children of men.--If it is
a mere phantom, existing only in the heated imagination of enthusiasm,

"What truth on earth so precious as a lie."

My idle reasonings sometimes make me a little sceptical, but the
necessities of my heart always give the cold philosophisings the lie.
Who looks for the heart weaned from earth; the soul affianced to her
God; the correspondent devout thanksgiving, constant as the
vicissitudes of even and morn; who thinks to meet with these in the
court, the palace, in the glare of public life? No: to find them in
their precious importance and divine efficacy, we must search among
the obscure recesses of disappointment, affliction, poverty, and
distress.

I am sure, dear Madam, you are now more than pleased with the length
of my letters. I return to Ayrshire middle of next week: and it
quickens my pace to think that there will be a letter from you waiting
me there. I must be here again very soon for my harvest.

R. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 187: See Song LII.]

* * * * *

CXXXIII.

TO MR. BEUGO,

ENGRAVER, EDINBURGH.

[Mr. Beugo was at well-known engraver in Edinburgh: he engraved
Nasmyth's portrait of Burns, for Creech's first edition of his Poems;
and as he could draw a little, he improved, as he called it, the
engraving from sittings of the poet, and made it a little more like,
and a little less poetic.]

_Ellisland, 9th Sept. 1788._

MY DEAR SIR,

There is not in Edinburgh above the number of the graces whose letters
would have given me so much pleasure as yours of the 3d instant, which
only reached me yesternight.

I am here on the farm, busy with my harvest; but for all that most
pleasurable part of life called SOCIAL COMMUNICATION, I am
here at the very elbow of existence. The only things that are to be
found in this country, in any degree of perfection, are stupidity and
canting. Prose they only know in graces, prayers, &c., and the value
of these they estimate as they do their plaiding webs--by the ell! As
for the muses, they have as much an idea of a rhinoceros as of a poet.
For my old capricious but good-natured huzzy of a muse