“I saw some sheets of your Burns, which I have no doubt will supersede all former lives. I conceive his over-estimation of the genius of such men as Lapraik to have been excited, so far as it was real, by the similarity of taste betwixt himself and these rhymers, however inferior the latter might be in powers, and partly perhaps to have been of the nature of the caresses which a celebrated beauty is often seen to bestow upon girls far inferior in beauty to herself, and whom ‘she loves the better therefore.’
“Love to Sophia. I hope the moustaches” (Major Scott’s) “rise in Walter’s good graces. This will accompany a new edition of the Tales, greatly improved, for Mr. Littlejohn’s kind acceptance.
“Greatly do I enjoy the prospect of meeting the
| 26 | LIFE OF J. G. LOCKHART. |
“I swear by the Duke’s fortune in politics and war, and take no small credit to myself for having been at the Rising in the North Countrye—the great Northern Rebellion, as I heard some Whigs term it.1 God tend the King, preserve his health, and I think all will go well.—Yours affectionately,
“I think curious light might be thrown on Burns’s life from some of his fragments of songs, which he threw off like sparkles from a flint when anything struck him. Thus, when he was finishing his house at Ellisland, he set off with the line of a happy and contented man—
‘I ha’e a house o’ my
ain,’ |
