R. B.[132]
[132] With the Poet's request the Magistiates of Dumfries very handsomely complied. He was induced to make the request through the persuasions of Mr. James Gray and Mr. Thomas White, Masters of the Grammar School, Dumfries whose memories are still green on the banks of the Nith.—CUNNINGHAM.
CXCIX.—To MRS. DUNLOP.[133]
DUMFRIES,
3lst January 1796.
These many months you have been two packets in my debt—what sin of ignorance I have committed against so highly valued a friend I am utterly at a loss to guess. Alas! Madam, ill can I afford, at this time, to be deprived of any of the small remnant of my pleasures. I have lately drunk deep of the cup of affliction. The autumn robbed me of my only daughter and darling child, and that at a distance too, and so rapidly, as to put it out of my power to pay the last duties to her. [133a] I had scarcely begun to recover from that shock, when I became myself the victim of a most severe rheumatic fever, and long the die spun doubtful; until after many weeks of a sick bed, it seems to have turned up life, and I am beginning to crawl across my room, and once indeed have been before my own door in the street.
R. B.
[133] Cunningham says—"It seems all but certain that Mrs. Dunlop regarded the Poet with some little displeasure during the evening of his days."
[133a]This child died at Mauchline.
CC.—To MR. JAMES JOHNSON.
DUMFRIES,