. 1789.
My dear Sir,—The hurry of a farmer in this particular season, and the indolence of a poet at all seasons, will, I hope, plead my excuse for neglecting so long to answer your obliging letter of the 5th August.
... When I received your letter I was transcribing for The Star my letter to the magistrates of the Canongate of Edinburgh, begging their permission to place a tombstone over poor Fergusson. [112a].] Poor Fergusson! if there be a life beyond the grave, which I trust there is; and if there be a good God presiding over all nature, which I am sure there is, thou art now enjoying existence in a glorious world where worth of heart alone is distinction in the man; where riches, deprived of their pleasure-purchasing powers, return to their native sordid matter; where titles and honours are the disregarded reveries of an idle dream; and where that heavy virtue, which is the negative consequence of steady dulness, and those thoughtless though often destructive follies, which are the unavoidable aberrations of frail human nature, will be thrown into equal oblivion as if they had never been!
R. B.
[112a]:] A young Scottish poet of undoubted ability who perished miserably in Edinburgh at the age of twenty-four. He was the senior of Burns, who greatly admired and mourned him, by about eight year
CXXXV.—To HIS BROTHER, WILLIAM BURNS, SADDLER, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.
ELLISLAND, 14
th Aug
. 1789.