LETTER TO MR ROBERT CHAMBERS. 49 



wliich. I mentioned to you when in Edinburgh, It is 

 by no means a very polished composition, but the writer 

 was evidently in earnest ; and in the closing stanzas there 

 is an energy and power, united to much simplicity, which 

 he must have owed rather to his excited feelings as a 

 Scotchman and a Jacobite, than to his art as a poet. It 

 has struck me as a curious fact, and one which I do not 

 remember to have seen noticed, that almost all our 

 modern Jacobites are staunch Whigs. Burns was a re- 

 presentative of the. class, and I think I see from the 

 verses of the poor Jacobite Psalmist, that had he flour- 

 ished ninety years later he would have been a Whig 

 too. 



' Oblige me by accepting the accompanying volume. 

 It contains, as you will find, a good many heavy pieces, 

 and abounds in all the faults incident to juvenile pro- 

 ductions, and to those of the imperfectly taught ; but 

 you may here and there meet in it with something to 

 amuse you. I have heard of an immensely rich trader, 

 who used to say he had more trouble in making his first 

 thousand pounds than in making all the rest. I have 

 experienced something similar to this in my attempts to 

 acquire the art of the writer. But I have not jet suc- 

 ceeded in making my first thousand. My forthcoming 

 volume, which I trust I shall be able to send you in a 

 few weeks, will, I hope, better deserve your perusal. 

 And yet I am aware it has its heavy pieces too, 

 dangerous looking sloughs of dissertation, in which I well 

 nigh lost myself, and in which I shall run no small risk 

 of losing my readers. One who sits down to write for 

 the public at a distance of two hundred miles from the 

 capital, has to labour under sad disadvantages in his 

 attempts to catch the tone which chances to be the 

 popular one at the time, more especially if, instead of 



VOL. II. 4 



