to his father; and none to either his sisters or his mother. A maternal
uncle, Samuel Brown, is favoured with one--if, indeed, the old man was
not scandalised with it--and there are two to James Armour, mason in
Mauchline, his somewhat stony-hearted father-in-law.

Burns's letters exhibit quite as much variety of mood--seldom, of
course, so picturesquely conveyed--as his poems. He is, in promiscuous
alternation, refined, gross, sentimental, serious, humorous, indignant,
repentant, dignified, vulgar, tender, manly, sceptical, reverential,
rakish, pathetic, sympathetic, satirical, playful, pitiably self-abased,
mysteriously self-exalted. His letters are confessions and revelations.
They are as sincerely and spontaneously autobiographical of his inner
life as the sacred lyrics of David the Hebrew. They were indited with as
much free fearless abandonment. The advice he gave to young Andrew to
keep something to himsel', not to be told even to a bosom crony, was a
maxim of worldly prudence which he himself did not practice. He did not
"reck his own rede." And, though that habit of unguarded expression
brought upon him the wrath and revenge of the Philistines, and kept him
in material poverty all his days, yet, prompted as it always was by
sincerity, and nearly always by absolute truth, it has made the manhood
of to-day richer, stronger, and nobler. The world to-day has all the
more the courage of its opinions that Burns exercised as a right the
freedom of sincere and enlightened speech--and suffered for his bravery.

The subjects of his letters are numerous, and, to a pretty large extent,
of much the same sort as the subjects of his poems. Often, indeed, you
have the anticipation of an image or a sentiment which his poetry has
made familiar. You have a glimpse of green buds which afterwards unfold
into fragrance and colour. This is an interesting connection, of which
one or two examples may be given. So early as 1781 he wrote to Alison