202 TRANSACTIONS. 
enthusiastic, but as he has a large family and his circumstances com- 
paratively moderate, I am not sure that it would be right to make any 
call on his purse. Alexander Houston, Esq. of Clerkington, M.P. for 
Glasgow in the last Parliament, has shewn me more obliging and useful 
attention than any other great man in this country, but though his 
subscription will not be wanting if applied for, yet, I suppose he would 
not like to solicit subscriptions. I have thought it right to mention these 
gentlemen to you that Mr Duncan may judge how far it will be proper 
to apply to any of them. A Mr Richardson, merchant in North Shiels, 
once left a letter for me at the King’s Arms, Dumfries, inclosing some 
poems of hisown. As I had many communications of that kind from 
people I knew nothing of, I never thought of taking any notice of them. 
I happened lately, however, to meet an English clergyman who is inti- 
mately acquainted with Mr Richardson, who spoke in high terms both 
of his talents and worth, and that he had risen from a low beginning to 
considerable eminence and success in life. I may likewise mention to 
you that he is a leading member of a Marygold Society in North Shiels. 
I should think him a person very likely to interest himself in promoting 
the subscription. 
GILBERT Burns. 
And George Thomson, Edinburgh, the correspondent of Burns, 
wrote to Mr Syme of Ryedale of date 10th May following :— 
Edinburgh, 10th May, 1814. 
lt gives me the greatest pleasure to find that there is now a cer- 
tainty of a monument being erected to the memory of the greatest poet 
our country has produced. May I request that you will put down my 
name for five guineas ? 
T cannot help feeling some anxiety that a design should be obtained 
worthy of the illustrious dead, and honourable to those who take charge 
of it. This will depend entirely on the artist to whom you apply, and 
’tis of the utmost importance, therefore, to fix upon one who is decidedly 
eminent for invention, knowledge, and classical taste, and to be guided 
entirely by him. For if gentlemen get various designs and then exercise 
their own judgment upon them, the chance of their chusing the worst is 
much greater than that they would chuse the best ; for this obvious 
reason—that there is no art or science in which our countrymen are so 
utterly ignorant as that of architecture or sculpture. The fine arts do 
not make a part of the studies either of our men of fortune or of those 
educated for the liberal professions. And if they acquire a smattering 
of knowledge after they leave the University, it is generally so superficial 
that it only serves to give them pretensions and to mislead them. Even 
those who live by the profession of architecture in Scotland are notori- 
ously uneducated and ignorant, and since the recent death of the truly 
ingenious Mr Stark, I do not know one of our countrymen who deserves 
aoe yp 
