Auld age ne'er mind a fig,
The last o't, the warst o't,
Is only for to beg!"

Again, in the letter last referred to occurs the passage--"I am a strict
economist, not indeed for the sake of the money, but one of the
principal parts in my composition is a kind of pride, and I scorn to
fear the face of any man living. Above everything I abhor as hell the
idea of sneaking into a corner to avoid a dun." This is metrically
rendered, in May 1786, in the following lines:--

"To catch dame Fortune's golden smile,
Assiduous wait upon her,
And gather gear by every wile
That's justified by honour:--
Not for to hide it in a hedge,
Nor for a train attendant,
But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent."

It would be easy to multiply examples: he is jostled in his letters by
market-men before he is "hog-shouthered and jundied" by them in his
verse; and the legends of Alloway Kirk are narrated in a letter to Grose
before the immortal tale of Tam o'Shanter is woven for _The Antiquities
of Scotland_.

There is nothing morbid or narrow in Burns's letters. They are frank and
healthy. You can spend a day over them, and feel at the end of it as if
you had been wandering at large through the freedom of nature. They seem
to have been written in the open air. The first condition necessary to