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the song Queen Mary's Lamentation. Why may not I sing in the person of her great-great-great grandson*?

Any skill I have in country business you may truly command. Situation, soil, customs of counries may vary from each other, but farmer 4tten

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*Our poet took this advice. The whole of this beautiful song, as it was afterwards finished, is below.

THE CHEVALIER'S LAMENT.

The small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning,

The murmuring streamlet winds clear thro' the

vale;

The hawthorn trees blow in the dews of the morn

ing,

And wild scattered cowslips bedeck the green dale:

But what can give pleasure, or what can seem

fair,

While the lingering moments are numbered by care?

No flowers gaily springing, nor birds sweetly singing,

Can sooth the sad bosom of joyless despair.

The deed that I dared could it merit their malice,
A king and a father to place on his throne?
His right are these hills, and his right are these val-
leys,

Where the wild beasts find shelter, but I can find

none.

But 'tis not my sufferings thus wretched, forlorn, My brave gallant friends, 'tis your ruin I mourn ; Your deeds proved so loyal, in hot bloody trial, Alas! can I make you no sweeter return!

E.

tion is a good farmer in every place. I beg to

hear from you soon.

best compliments.

Mrs. Cleghorn joins me in

I am, in the most comprehensive sense of the

word, your very sincere friend,

ROBERT CLEGHORN.

Madam,

No. XLV.

To Mrs. DUNLOP.

Mauchline, 28th April, 1788. Your powers of reprehension must be great indeed, as I assure you they made my heart ache with penitential pangs, even though I was really not guilty. As I commence farmer at Whitsunday, you will easily guess I must be pretty busy; but that is not all. As I got the offer of the excise business without solicitation; and as it costs. me only six months attendance for instructions, to entitle me to a commission; which commission lies. by me, and at any future period, on my simple pe tition, can be resumed; I thought five and thirty pounds a year was no bad dernier resort for a poor poet, if fortune in her jade tricks should kick him down from the little eminence to which she has lately helped him up.

For this reason, I am at present attending these instructions, to have them completed before Whitsunday. Still, madam, I prepared with the sincerest pleasure to meet you at the Mount, and came to my brother's on Saturday night, to set out on Sunday; but for some nights preceding I had slept in an apartinent, where the force of the winds and rains was only mitigated by being sif ted through numberless apertures in the windows, walls, &c. In consequence I was on Sunday, Monday, and part of Tuesday unable to stir out of bed, with all the miserable effects of a violent cold.

You see, madam, the truth of the French maxim, Le vrai n'est pas toujours le vrai-semblable; your last was so full of expostulation, and was something so like the language of an offended friend, that I began to tremble for a correspondence, which I had with grateful pleasure set down as one of the greatest enjoyments of my future life.

Your books have delighted me: Virgil, Dryden, and Tasso, were all equally strangers to me but of this more at large in my next.

No. XLVI.

From the REVEREND JOHN SKINNER.

Dear sir,

Linshart, 28th April, 1788. 1 received your last with the curious present you have favoured me with, and would have made proper acknowledgments before now, but that I have been necessarily engaged in matters of a different complexion. And now that I have got a little respite, I make use of it to thank you for this valuable instance of your good-will, and to assure you that, with the sincere heart of a true Scotsman, I highly esteem both the gift and the giver: as a small testimony of which I have here. with sent you for your amusement (and in a form which I hope you will excuse for saving postage) the two songs I wrote about to you already. Charming Nanty is the real production of genius in a ploughman of twenty years of age at the time of its appearing, with no more education than what he picked up at an old farmer-grandfather's fireside, though now, by the strength of natural parts, he is clerk to a thriving bleachfield in the neighbourhood. And I doubt not but you will find

in it simplicity and delicacy, with some turns of humour, that will please one of your taste; at least it pleased me when I first saw it, if that can be any recommendation to it. The other is entirely descriptive of my own sentiments, and you may make use of one or both as you shall see good".

* CHARMING NANCY.

A song by a Buchan Ploughman.

Tune-" Humours of Glen."

Some sing of sweet Mally, some sing of fair Nelly, And some call sweet Susie the cause of their

pain :

Some love to be jolly, some love melancholy,

And some love to sing of the Humours of Glen. But my only faney is my pretty Nancy,

In venting my passion I'll strive to be plain, I'll ask no more treasure, I'll seek no more plea

sure,

But thee, my dear Nancy, gin thou wert my ain.

Her beauty delights me, her kindness invites me, Her pleasant behaviour is free from all stain, Therefore, my sweet jewel, O do not prove cruel, Consent, my dear Nancy, and come be my ain: Her carriage is comely, her language is homely, Her dress is quite decent when ta'en in the main ;

She's blooming in feature, she's handsome in stature;

My charming, dear Nancy, O wert thou my ain.

Like Phoebus adorning the fair ruddy morning, Her bright eyes are sparkling, her brows are se

rene,

Her yellow locks shining, in beauty combining, My charming, sweet Nancy, wilt thou be my ain?

You will oblige me by presenting my respects to your host, Mr. Cruikshank, who has given such high approbation to my poor Latinity; you may

The whole of her face is with maidenly graces

Array'd like the gowans, that grow in yon glen; She's well shap'd and slender, true hearted and tender,

My charming, sweet Nancy, O wert thou my ain!

I'll seek thro' the nation for some habitation,

To shelter my jewel from cold, snow, and rain, With songs to my deary, I'll keep her aye cheery, My charming, sweet Nancy, gin thou wert my ain.

I'll work at my calling to furnish thy dwelling, With ev'ry thing needful thy life to sustain ; Thou shalt not sit single, but by a clear ingle, I'll marrow thee, Nancy, when thou art my ain.

I'll make true affeetion the constant direction

Of loving my Naney while life doth remain: Tho' youth will be wasting, true love shall be lasting,

My charming, sweet Nancy, gin thou wert my

ain.

But what if my Naney should alter her fancy,
To favour another be forward and fain?

I will not compel her, but plainly I'll tell her, Begone, thou false Naney, thou'se ne'er be my ain.

THE OLD MAN'S SONG.

Tune-" Dumbarton's Drums."

By the REVEREND J. SKINNER.

O why should old age so much wound us? O,
There is nothing in't all to confound us, O;
For how happy now am I,

With my old wife sitting by,

And our bairns and our oys all around us, O.

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