OF ROBERT BURNS; WITH AN ACCOUNT OF HIS LIFE, AND A CRITICISM ON HIS WRITINGS. TO WHICH ARE PREFIXED, SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE CHARACTER AND CONDITION OF THE SCOTTISH PEASANTRY. IN FOUR VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: PRINTED FOR GALE & FENNER, LONDON; 4300 ADVERTISEMENT. It is impossible to dismiss this Volume T of the Correspondence of our Bard, without some anxiety as to the reception it may meet with. The experiment we are making has not often been tried; perhaps on no occasion has so large a portion of the recent and unpremeditated effusions of a man of genius been committed to the press. Of the following letters of Burns, a considerable number were transmitted for publication, by the individuals to whom they are addressed; but very few have been printed entire. It will easily be believed, that, in a series of letters, written without the least view to publication, various passages were found unfit for the press, from different considerations. It will also be readily supposed, that our Poet, writing nearly at the same time, and under the same feelings to different individuals, would sometimes fall into the same train of sentiment and forms of expression. To avoid, therefore, the tediousness of such repetitions, it has been found necessary to mutilate many of the individual letters, and sometimes to exscind parts of great delicacy-the unbridled effusions of panegyric and regard. But though many of the letters are printed from originals furnished by the persons to whom they were addressed, others are printed from first draughts, or sketches, found among the papers of our Bard. Though in general no man committed his thoughts to his correspondents with less consideration or effort than Burns, yet it appears that in some instances he was dissatisfied with his first essays, and wrote out his communications in a fairer character, or perhaps in more studied language. In the chaos of his manuscripts, some of the original sketches were found: and as these sketches, though less perfect, are fairly to be considered as the offspring of his mind, where they have seemed in themselves worthy of a place in this volume, we have not hesitated to insert them, though they may not always correspond exactly with the letters transmitted, which have been lost or withheld. Our author appears at one time to have formed an intention of making a collection of his letters for the amusement of a friend. Accordingly he copied an inconsiderable number of them into a book, which he presented to Robert Riddel of Glenriddel, Esq. Among these |