28 Maria Riddell, the Friend of Burns. 



after I had satisfied my curiosity by going down one of 

 the shafts. This you will say was a crazy scheme — 

 assailing the Gnomes in their subterranean abodes ! — 

 indeed there has never been before but one instance of a 

 female hazarding herself thither." 



The letter of introduction from Burns to Smellie had 

 apparently been presented by Maria Riddell on January 

 29th, 1792,32 and on March 7th she writes to Smellie sub- 

 mitting some of her " humble sketches of Natural History 

 for his perusal, and asking him to have fifty or one hundred 

 copies of them printed for distribution among her friends. 

 He was delighted with the " minute observation, accurate 

 description, and excellent composition " of her " ingenious 

 and judicious work," and on his advice five hundred copies 

 were printed and published in May, lygz.'^ Smellie 's cor- 

 respondence with Maria Riddell gives one the impression 

 that she may have been somewhat of a flirt, or at anyrate 

 that he (though a man of over fifty at the time) was ready 

 to amuse himiself with a flirtatious correspondence with her. 

 " Why did you grapple with a soldier?" he writes on March 

 27th, 1792. " Mr. Riddell I ever will revere, though not 

 so much as yourself must do ; but if I could have had the 

 happiness of having the company of a lady so well qualified 

 to assist me in my favourite study, we two should have 

 made a couple of figures in the literary world I"^^ The 

 correspondence of Mrs. Maria Riddell and William Smellie 

 is interesting to a student of Burns as containing more than 

 one reference to the Poet, and it is clear that Smellie formed 

 a high opinion of Mrs Maria Riddell 's abilities. On October 

 1 6th, 1792, she wrote to Smellie from Woodley Park'^s ^j^^^^ 

 her little girl had " got through the small-pox A\yth a very 

 slight eruption attended by a most trifling degree of fever." 



32 Memoirs of the Life, VTiitings, and Correspondence of 

 William Smellie, vol. ii. (1811), by Robert Kerr, p. 359. 

 35 See footnote 14 and Appendix A. 



34 Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Correspondence of 

 WUliani Smellie, vol. ii. (1811), by Robert Kerr, p. 363. 



35 Tom. cit., p. 367. 



