CXXX.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[The lines on the Hermitage were presented by the poet to several of his friends, and Mrs. Dunlop was among the number.]
Mauchline, August 2, 1788.
Honoured Madam,
Your kind letter welcomed me, yesternight, to Ayrshire. I am, indeed, seriously angry with you at the quantum of your luckpenny; but, vexed and hurt as I was, I could not help laughing very heartily at the noble lord’s apology for the missed napkin.
I would write you from Nithsdale, and give you my direction there, but I have scarce an opportunity of calling at a post-office once in a fortnight. I am six miles from Dumfries, am scarcely ever in it myself, and, as yet, have little acquaintance in the neighbourhood. Besides, I am now very busy on my farm, building a dwelling-house; as at present I am almost an evangelical man in Nithsdale, for I have scarce “where to lay my head.”
There are some passages in your last that brought tears in my eyes. “The heart knoweth its own sorrows, and a stranger intermeddleth not therewith.” The repository of these “sorrows of the heart” is a kind of sanctum sanctorum: and ’tis only a chosen friend, and that, too, at particular sacred times, who dares enter into them:—
“Heaven oft tears the bosom-chords
That nature finest strung.”
You will excuse this quotation for the sake of the author. Instead of entering on this subject farther, I shall transcribe you a few lines I wrote in a hermitage, belonging to a gentleman in my Nithsdale neighbourhood. They are almost the only favours the muses have conferred on me in that country:—