Your obliged and grateful humble servant,
R. B.
CLIX.
TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.
[Honest Jamie Thomson, who shot the hare because she browsed with her companions on his father’s “wheat-braird,” had no idea he was pulling down such a burst of indignation on his head as this letter with the poem which it enclosed expresses.]
Ellisland, 4th May, 1789.
My dear Sir,
Your duty-free favour 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 honour 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.