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spondence fix'd wi' Heav'n Is sure a noble anchor. Adieu, dear amiable youth! Your heart can ne'er be wanting! May prudence, fortitude, and truth Erect your brow undaunting. In ploughman phrase, God send you speed Still daily to grow wiser; And may ye better reck the rede [heed the advice] Than ever did th' adviser! The general level of the rhyming letters of Burns is astonishingly high. They bear, as such compositions should, the impression of free spontaneity, and indeed often read like sheer improvisations. Yet they are sprinkled with admirable stanzas of natural description, shrewd criticism, delightful humor, and are pervaded by a delicate tactfulness possible only to a man with a genius for friendship. They are usually written in the favorite six-line stanza, the meter that flowed most easily from his pen, and in language are the richest vernacular. His ambition to be "literary" seldom brings in its jarring notes here, and indeed at times he seems to avenge himself on this besetting sin by a very individual jocoseness toward the mythological figures that intrude into his more serious efforts. His Muse is the special victim. Instead of the conventional draped figure she becomes a "tapetless, ramfeezl'd hizzie," "saft at best an' something lazy;" she is a "thowless jad;" or she is dethroned altogether: "We'll cry nae jads frae heathen hills To help or roose us, [inspire] But browster wives an' whisky stills-- [brewer] They are the Muses!" Again the tone is one of affectionate familiarity: Leeze me on rhyme! It's aye a treasure, [Blessings on] My chief, amaist my only pleasure; [almost] At hame, a-fiel', at wark or leisure, The Muse, poor hizzie, Tho' rough an' raploch be her measure, [homespun] She's seldom lazy. Haud to the Muse, my dainty Davie: The warl' may play you monie a shavie, [ill turn] But for the Muse, she'll never leave ye, Tho' e'er sae puir; [so poor] Na, even tho' limpin wi' the spavie [spavin] Frae door to door! Once more, half scolding, half flattering: Ye glaikit, gleesome, dainty damies, [gidd
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