the top of the first page, because I have ever observed, that when
once people have fairly set out they know not where to stop. Now that
my first sentence is concluded, I have nothing to do but to pray
heaven to help me on to another. Shall I write you on Politics or
Religion, two master subjects for your sayers of nothing. Of the first
I dare say by this time you are nearly surfeited: and for the last,
whatever they may talk of it, who make it a kind of company concern, I
never could endure it beyond a soliloquy. I might write you on
farming, on building, or marketing, but my poor distracted mind is so
torn, so jaded, so racked and bediveled with the task of the
superlative damned to make _one guinea do the business of three_, that
I detest, abhor, and swoon at the very word business, though no less
than four letters of my very short sirname are in it.

Well, to make the matter short, I shall betake myself to a subject
ever fruitful of themes; a subject the turtle-feast of the sons of
Satan, and the delicious secret sugar-plum of the babes of grace--a
subject sparkling with all the jewels that wit can find in the mines
of genius: and pregnant with all the stores of learning from Moses and
Confucius to Franklin and Priestley--in short, may it please your
Lordship, I intend to write * * *

[_Here the Poet inserted a song which can only be sung at times when
the punch-bowl has done its duty and wild wit is set free._]

If at any time you expect a field-day in your town, a day when Dukes,
Earls, and Knights pay their court to weavers, tailors, and cobblers,
I should like to know of it two or three days beforehand. It is not
that I care three skips of a cur dog for the politics, but I should
like to see such an exhibition of human nature. If you meet with that
worthy old veteran in religion and good-fellowship, Mr. Jeffrey, or
any of his amiable family, I beg you will give them my best
compliments.

R. B.

* * * * *

CLXXX.

TO SIR JOHN SINCLAIR.

[Of the Monkland Book-Club alluded to in this letter, the clergyman
had omitted all mention in his account of the Parish of Dunscore,
published in Sir John Sinclair's work: some of the books which the
poet introduced were stigmatized as vain and frivolous.]

1790.

SIR,

The following circumstance has, I believe, been committed in the
statistical account, transmitted to you of the parish of Dunscore, in
Nithsdale. I beg leave