I sing: If these mortals, the critics, should bustle, go whistle. But now for a patron, whose name and whose glory, At once may illustrate and honor my story. Thou first of our orators, first of our wits; Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits; With knowledge so vast, and with judgment so strong, No man with the half of 'em e'er went far wrong; With passions so potent, and fancies so bright, No man with the half of 'em e'er went quite right; A sorry, poor misbegot son of the muses, For using thy name offers fifty excuses. Good L-d, what is man! for as simple he looks, Do but try to develop his hooks and his crooks; With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil, All in all he's a problem must puzzle the devil. On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labours, That, like th' old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours : Mankind are his show-box-a friend, would you know him? Pull the string, ruling passion, the picture will shew him. What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system, One trifling particular, truth, should have miss'd him ; For, in spite of his fine theoretic positions, Mankind is a science defies definitions. Some sort all our qualities each to its tribe, And think human nature they truly describe; Have you found this, or t'other? there's more in the wind, As by one drunken fellow his comrades you'll find. On the 20th current I hope to have the honor of assuring you, in person, how sincerely I am No. No. LXXVI. To MR. CUNNINGHAM. Ellisland, 4th May, 1788. MY DEAR SIR, YOUR OUR duty-free favor of the 26th April I received two days ago; I will not say I perused it with pleasure; that is the cold compliment of ceremony; I perused it, Sir, with delicious satisfaction;-in short, it is such a letter, that not you, nor your friend, but the legislature, by express proviso in their postage laws, should frank. A letter informed with the soul of friendship is such an honor to human nature, that they should order it free ingress and egress to and from their bags and mails, as an encouragement and mark of distinction to supereminent virtue. I have just put the last hand to a little poem, which I think will be something to your taste. One fellow who could One morning lately, as I was out pretty early ́in the fields, sowing some grass seeds, I heard the burst of a shot from a neighbouring plantation, and presently a poor little wounded hare came crippling by me. You will guess my indignation at the inhuman shoot a hare at this season, them have young ones. Indeed there is something in that business of destroying for our sport individuals in the animal creation that do not injure us materially, which I could never reconcile to my ideas of virtue. when they all of On seeing a Fellow wound a Hare with a Shot, April, 1789. INHUMAN man! curse on thy barb'rous art, Go live, poor wanderer of the wood and field, No more the thickening brakes or verdant plains, To thee a home, or food, or pastime yield. Seek, mangled innocent, some wonted form, Perhaps Perhaps a mother's anguish adds its woe; Oft as by winding Nith, I, musing, wait I'll miss thee sporting o'er the dewy lawn, And curse the ruthless wretch, and mourn thy hapless fate. Let me know how you like my poem. I am doubtful whether it would not be an improvement to keep out the last stanza but one altogether. C― is a glorious production of the author of man. You, he, and the noble Colonel of the are to me CF "Dear as the ruddy drops which warm my breast." I have a good mind to make verses on you all, to the tune of "Three guid fellows ayont the glen." No. |