TO MISS DAVIES.

MADAM-I understand my very worthy neighbour, Mr Riddel, has informed you that I have made you the subject of some verses. There is something so provoking in the idea of being the burden of a ballad, that I do not think Job or Moses, though such patterns of patience and meekness, could have resisted the curiosity to know what that ballad was; so my worthy friend has done me a mischief, which I daresay he never intended, and reduced me to the unfortunate alternative of leaving your curiosity ungratified, or else disgusting you with foolish verses, the unfinished production of a random moment, and never meant to have met your ear. I have heard or read somewhere of a gentleman who had some genius, much eccentricity, and very considerable dexterity with his pencil. In the accidental group of life into which one is thrown, wherever this gentleman met with a character in a more than ordinary degree congenial to his heart, he used to steal a sketch of the face; merely, he said, as a nota bene, to point out the agreeable recollection to his memory. What this gentleman's pencil was to him, my Muse is to me; and the verses I do myself the honour to send you, are a memento exactly of the same kind that he indulged in.

It may be more owing to the fastidiousness of my caprice than the delicacy of my taste, but I am so often tired, disgusted, and hurt with the insipidity, affectation, and pride of mankind, that when I meet with a person after my own heart,' I positively feel what an orthodox Protestant would call a species of idolatry, which acts on my fancy like inspiration; and I can no more desist rhyming on the impulse, than an Eolian harp can refuse its tones to the streaming air. A distich or two would be the consequence, though the object which hit my fancy were gray-bearded age; but where my theme is youth and beauty, a young lady whose personal charms, wit, and sentiment, are equally striking and unaffected-by Heavens! though I had lived threescore years a married man, and threescore years before I was a married man, my imagination would hallow the very idea: and I am truly sorry that the enclosed stanzas have done such poor justice to such a subject. R. B.

LOVELY DAVIES.

TUNE-Miss Muir.

O how shall I, unskilfu', try

The poet's occupation,

The tunefu' powers, in happy hours,
That whisper inspiration?

Even they maun dare an effort mair
Than aught they ever gave us,

Ere they rehearse, in equal verse,
The charms o' lovely Davies.

Each eye it cheers, when she appears,
Like Phoebus in the morning,

When past the shower, and every flower
The garden is adorning.

As the wretch looks o'er Siberia's shore,
When winter-bound the wave is;
Sae droops our heart when we maun part
Frae charming, lovely Davies.

Her smile's a gift, frae 'boon the lift,
That maks us mair than princes;
A sceptered hand, a king's command,
Is in her darting glances:

The man in arms, 'gainst female charms,
Even he her willing slave is;

He hugs his chain, and owns the reign
Of conquering, lovely Davies.

My Muse to dream of such a theme,
Her feeble powers surrender;
The eagle's gaze alone surveys
The sun's meridian splendour:
I wad in vain essay the strain,
The deed to daring brave is;
I'll drop the lyre, and mute admire
The charms o' lovely Davies.

Burns afterwards canonised the lady still more effectively in a briefer but more sentimental ditty, which had the good-fortune to be conceived in connection with one of the most tenderly beautiful of our national airs.

THE BONNY WEE THING.

TUNE-Bonny wee Thing.

Bonny wee thing, cannie wee thing,
Lovely wee thing, wert thou mine,
I wad wear thee in my bosom,
Lest my jewel I should tine!
Wishfully I look and languish

In that bonny face o' thine;
And my heart it stounds wi' anguish,
Lest my wee thing be na mine.
Wit and grace, and love and beauty,
In ae constellation shine;

To adore thee is my duty,

Goddess o' this soul o' mine!
Bonny wee thing, cannie wee thing,
Lovely wee thing, wert thou mine,

I wad wear thee in my bosom,
Lest my jewel I should tine!

'One day, while Burns was at Moffat'-thus writes Allan Cunningham-'the charming, lovely Davies rode past, accompanied by a lady tall and portly: on a friend asking the poet, why God made one lady so large, and Miss Davies so little, he replied in the words of the epigram:'

Ask why God made the gem so small,

And why so huge the granite?

Because God meant mankind should set
The higher value on it.

'No one,' adds Allan, 'has apologised so handsomely for scrimpet stature.'

TO MISS DAVIES.

It is impossible, madam, that the generous warmth and angelic purity of your youthful mind can have any idea of that moral disease under which I unhappily must rank as the chief of sinners : I mean a torpitude of the moral powers, that may be called a lethargy of conscience. In vain Remorse rears her horrent crest, and rouses all her snakes: beneath the deadly fixed eye and leaden hand of Indolence, their wildest ire is charmed into the torpor of the bat, slumbering out the rigours of winter in the chink of a ruined wall. Nothing less, madam, could have made me so long neglect your obliging commands. Indeed, I had one apology-the bagatelle was not worth presenting. Besides, so strongly am I interested in Miss Davies's fate and welfare in the serious business of life, amid its chances and changes, that to make her the subject of a silly ballad is downright mockery of these ardent feelings; 'tis like an impertinent jest to a dying friend.

Gracious Heaven! why this disparity between our wishes and our powers? Why is the most generous wish to make others blest impotent and ineffectual, as the idle breeze that crosses the pathless desert? In my walks of life I have met with a few people to whom how gladly would I have said: 'Go! be happy! I know that your hearts have been wounded by the scorn of the proud, whom accident has placed above you-or, worse still, in whose hands are perhaps placed many of the comforts of your life. But there! ascend that rock, Independence, and look justly down on their littleness of soul. Make the worthless tremble under your indignation, and the foolish sink before your contempt; and largely impart that happiness to others which, I am certain, will give yourselves so much pleasure to bestow.'

Why, dear madam, must I wake from this delightful reverie, and find it all a dream? Why, amid my generous enthusiasm, must I find myself poor and powerless, incapable of wiping one tear from

the eye of Pity, or of adding one comfort to the friend I love? Out upon the world! say I, that its affairs are administered so ill! They talk of reform; good Heaven! what a reform would I make among the sons, and even the daughters, of men! Down immediately should go fools from the high places where misbegotten Chance has perked them up, and through life should they skulk, ever haunted by their native insignificance, as the body marches accompanied by its shadow. As for a much more formidable class, the knaves, am at a loss what to do with them: had I a world, there should not be a knave in it.

But the hand that could give, I would liberally fill; and I would pour delight on the heart that could kindly forgive, and generously love.

Still the inequalities of life are, among men, comparatively tolerable-but there is a delicacy, a tenderness, accompanying every view in which we can place lovely woman, that are grated and shocked at the rude, capricious distinctions of Fortune. Woman is the blood-royal of life: let there be slight degrees of precedency among them-but let them be ALL sacred. Whether this last sentiment be right or wrong, I am not accountable: it is an original component feature of my mind. R. B.

Allan Cunningham relates the romantic subsequent history of Miss Davies, from the information of a nephew of the lady. A Captain Delany made himself acceptable to her by sympathising in her pursuits, and writing verses on her, calling her his Stella, an ominous name, which might have brought the memory of Swift's unhappy mistress to her mind. An offer of marriage was made and accepted: but Delany's circumstances were urged as an obstacle delays ensued: a coldness on the lover's part followed: his regiment was called abroad, he went with it: she heard from him once and no more, and was left to mourn the change of affectionto droop and die. He perished in battle, or by a foreign climate, soon after the death of the young lady, of whose love he was so unworthy.

"The following verses on this unfortunate attachment, form part of a poem found among her papers at her death: she takes Delany's portrait from her bosom, presses it to her lips, and says:—

"Next to thyself, 'tis all on earth,

Thy Stella dear doth hold;

The glass is clouded with my breath,

And as my bosom cold:

That bosom which so oft has glowed

With love and friendship's name,

Where you the seed of love first sowed,
That kindled into flame.

ET. 33.] WHIMSICAL LETTER TO CHARLES SHARPE, OF HODDAM. 193

You there neglected let it burn,

It seized the vital part,
And left my bosom as an urn,

To hold a broken heart;

I once had thought I should have been
A tender, happy wife,

And passed my future days serene,

With thee, my James, through life."'

Amongst the gentry of Dumfriesshire, was one possessed of accomplishments akin to those of Burns-Charles Sharpe, of Hoddam, an excellent violinist, and a composer of both music and verse. I am not aware of the publication of any specimen of Mr Sharpe's poetry; but his son, Mr Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, printed a few years ago an air to the song of The Ewe-milking's Bonnie, which the Laird of Hoddam was believed to have produced upon the stock and horn when only eight years of age; and it certainly is a pleasing example of melody of the Scottish character, and perfectly original. Burns, having heard an air of Mr Sharpe's composition, adopted the whimsical idea of addressing him under a fictitious signature, in the character of a vagrant fiddler:

TO CHARLES SHARPE, ESQ., OF HODDAM,

ENCLOSING A BALLAD.

You

It is true, sir, you are a gentleman of rank and fortune, and I an a poor devil-you are a feather in the cap of Society, and I am a very hobnail in his shoes; yet I have the honour to belong to the same family with you, and on that score I now address you. will perhaps suspect that I am going to claim affinity with the ancient and honourable house of Kirkpatrick. No, no, sir: I cannot indeed be properly said to belong to any house, or even any province or kingdom; as my mother, who for many years was spouse to a marching-regiment, gave me into this bad world, aboard the packet-boat, somewhere between Donaghadee and Portpatrick. By our common family, I mean, sir, the family of the Muses. I am a fiddler and a poet: and you, I am told, play an exquisite violin, and have a standard taste in the belles-lettres. The other day, a brother-catgut gave me a charming Scots air of your composition. If I was pleased with the tune, I was in raptures with the title you have given it; and, taking up the idea, I have spun it into the three stanzas enclosed. Will you allow me, sir, to present you them, as the dearest offering that a misbegotten son of Poverty and Rhyme has to give! I have a longing to take you by the hand, and unburden my heart by saying: 'Sir, I honour you as a man who supports the dignity of human nature, amid an age when