I believe you are refolv'd to publifh it with your poem, and therefore defire to know, whether I may make any alterations, upon fuppofition that I think it neceflary. Your notes pleafe me extremely. Your detail of particulars is made very judicioufly, and the file is concife and elegant. You will fee by the date of this letter, that it will be impossible for me to finish roy intended poem within the time you mention. And therefore, if you have any thought of giving it to your Donaides, you muit defer the publication of that poem a while longer. I would not have you fend the printed copy to Mr Frafer, till you have received mine, or at least heard from me again, which fhall be as foon as I have got his packet, and perus'd it. My friends have made me pro Jamque tuas linquunt, formofa Lutetia, mife to attempt a Tragedy, this fum turres, Pierides. There is no fault in your meaning; but the expreffion is equivocal and ambiguous. There are frequent illufions in this poem, to paffages in Ovid and Virgil. When a thought or expreffion of theirs is handfomely incorporated with your own, I think it is a beauty; but will not fome readers tax you of Plagiarism for transcribing whole lines from these authors, and inferting them without alteration? fuch as 1. 39, 40, 156, and 7, 163, and 5 and 7 almost; 208, 199, 229, 30, 31, 32? But perhaps the Mufes may be allow'd to make free with thefe poets, and boldly borrow what themfelves have infpired. I wrote to Mr Frafer, immediately upon the receipt of your firft letter; but he has not yet fent me your manufcript. However, he promises to fend it, and fays," He will leave "it to my difcretion to do with the harangues as I think fit.” mer, but of that more afterwards. I have written only one copy of verfes fince I left Scotland. I offer my humble fervices to Meffrs Maclaurin and Trumbull. Menzies, Gillan, Preston, Cree, Ruddiman, found horribly in verfe. I beg leave to fay, that I am difpleafed with this line, Leta et Preftona, eo meridiante. fine was very well receiv'd by a very woman who is the fubject of it. I have finish'd the first Act of my Tragedy. I have wrote feveral letters to Mr Hill, upon a very odd fubject, but under a feign'd name: And Prefton's houfe was glad when he and have receiv'd his anfwers-this din'd there. I don't think you need to make your poem a register of all the taverns that Sir William frequented it is a minute affectation of exactnefs, that poetry abhors. The line is, befides, ill connected with what goes immediately before, while D. and R. take their turns,and Prefton's houfe was glad. Might you not fupply its place with fomething in praife of Mr Ruddiman? He deferves to have more faid of him: and I believe you will be easily able to exchange the line I complain of, for a better. Hora dum decima įmminente, David Currentes Cyathos fugat, benignus. This thought is truly comical, if view'd in its just light; and therefore I think improper in a poem of this nature, which thould maintain a ferious air throughout. What would you think of that man who fhould dance a jig at the funeral of the perfon he mourn'd for? And is it not fomething unseasonable, in a poem that laments the death of a learn'd, and good man, to mention that his furviving friend, about ten o'clock at night, us'd to chace the goblet about, that he might neither be fhut out of his houfe, nor go without his due quantity of liquor? My tranflation does not difplease me; for I found no difficulty in reading the verfcs that I meddled with and your original fuggefted to me all that I have added. Your lines are neat, elegant, and well turn'd. I am extremely pleafed, that my poem to Mira was to your liking. It Y by the way. Mr Malcolm's cenfures of my poem are all very juft, especially that I wrote about avarice and zeal. that against my own common sense, to pleafe fome people, who, I believe, have not enough to find out my blunder. I am very forry to fee my name at the head of thefe verfes but there is no help for it now a curfe on that whole paragraph-the poem is entire, and tolerable, without it. The printer too, has fpoilt me another line by his inaccurate pointing: Nor ends the bounty here by him beflow'd. As it ftands thus the verfé is wretched, and the latter half of it almost unneceffary. I wrote it thus: Nor ends the bounty here ;—by him beftow'd, Learning's rich flores, &c. This alters the meaning, and fhows that the latter part of the line belongs to the one following. Well! all must be charged to the poor author's account.-One reader in a thoufand fcarce fees a beauty; while nine hundred and ninety-nine have the eyes of an eagle to discern a fault. I never took any degree at Edinburgh, nor ever asked for any: when your Society bestows that honour upon me, I will return them my thanks in a letter addreffed to the whole body. The duke goes to London this day; but when we follow, is not yet certain. Ι am glad to hear that your brother is provided for it is difficult to find a right fettlement here, for the number of expectants is incredible. Our country pours forth her 2 annual annual (warms, unceasing, inexhaustible. Good Lord! what strange, unfeemly creatures they are too! I have feen three and twenty of my own acquaintances, who, I believe, will not be provided for thefe three and twenty years. But all the poor fervice that I can do fhall never be wanting. I cannot show myself thankful to Heaven a better way. I am, Dear Sir, Your moft Humble Servant, Dec. 29. 1725. DAVID MALLOCH M'Liefh is fchool-mafter at Tay mouth; fo his letter fays. A good new year to your family. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FASHIONABLE AMBITION OF THIS LIVING IN STYLE. FROM PASQUIN'S LIFE OF LORD BARRÝMOKE, HIS phrafe, though in common ufe among all ranks of people, is not generally understood; as the various fituations of the ftylish, make them differ materially in their various ways of obtaining local preeminence over their neighbours. The DUCHESS thinks, that living in Style confifts in breakfasting at three o'clock in the afternoon, dining at eight, playing at Faro till four in the morning, fupping at five, and going to her dormitory at fix to have a bidet in warm weather, and green peas in January-in making a half curtly at the creed, and a whole curtly to a fcoundrel: In wearing a fix months pad, tacitly reflective on her Lord's powers-and emptying a fhewglafs at GRAY's to dazzle rarat gentility!-in giving fifty pounds to an exotic Capon, for a pit ticket, and treating the claims of a parental actor of Britain with fcorn-to feem ignorant of the Mofaic law, and lifp to accomplish fingularity-to laugh when the fhould weep, and weep when the fhould be merry-to leave her cards of compliment with her Intimates, yet with half of them extinguished in the fame inftant to name the community with difrefpect, and think the facrament a bore! The DUKE imagines he does things in figle, by paying all debts of honor, and few honorable debts--by being liberal in a public fubfcription to a perfon he never faw, and harsh and uncomplying to a private fupplicant by leaving his vis a vis near the door of a courtezan, that he may have the credit of an intrigue with a meretricious biped-in ufing an optical glafs for perfonal infpection, though he could ascertain the horizon without any-in counteracting Nature and Virtue in all his prejudices-in calculating the lives in the red book, and watching the importation of figurantes from the continentin afferting that a man of fashion is an animal privileged above retribution, and amenable only to himself now and for evermore-in making ethics and phyfics destroy each other in confpicuously entering the theatre when the performance is nearly con cluded-in walking arm in arm with afneering jockey-in doubting if the Magi were conjurors, and burning long letters without reading their contents. The gay PEERLING, who is barely entitled to the honors and immunities of manhood, thinks that doing things in ftyle is raifing immenfe fum's on poft obit bonds, at the moderate premium of forty per cent:-in queering the parfon at his father's table, and thumbing his maiden aunt's prayer-book at the article of matrimony-in being infolent and noify as a lobby tout, at the play-houfe, when he has fome roaring bullies at his elbow, but meek and daftardly when alone!-in extending the do |