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careless hand, is apparent from another letter to Cleghorn, dated 21st August, 1795.[1]
"Inclosed you have Clarke's 'Gaffer Gray.' I have not time to copy it, so when you have taken a copy for yourself please return me the original. I need not caution you against giving copies to any other person. 'Peggy Ramsay' I shall expect to find in 'Gaffer Gray's' company when he returns to Dumfries."
His own dispassionate opinion of these jeux d'esprit will be found in detached notes scattered through his correspondence, but a sufficient idea of the inner workings of his mind when the shadow of death was upon him can be gathered from his letter to Thomson of 18th May, 1796:—
"When your Publication is finished I intend publishing a collection, on a cheap plan, of all the songs I have written for you—the Museum, &c.—at least, of all the songs of which I wish to be called the author. I do not propose this so much in the way of emolument, as to do justice to my Muse, lest I should be blamed for trash I never saw, or be defrauded by other claimants of what is justly my own."
Two months afterwards the grave closed over him, and he left his papers, as he left himself, in naked honesty to the world, without a shred of canting deceit or unctuous pretence to conceal the flaws of that defaced image which is the common heritage of humanity. When "curst necessity" compelled him to implore the loan of five pounds, we have it on the authority of Professor Wilson that "a miscreant, aware of his poverty, made him an offer of fifty pounds for a collection"—this self-same manuscript collection—" which he repelled with horror." How, then, did it come to pass that the "horror" was re-enacted over his grave?
- ↑ See also "Edinburgh Commonplace Book," 1787.
