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HEY FOR A LASS WI' A TOCHER.

Tune-" BALINAMONA ORA."

AWA wi' your witchcraft o' beauty's alarms,
The slender bit beauty you grasp in your arms:
O, gie me the lass that has acres o' charms,
O, gie me the lass wi' the weel-stockit farms.

CHORUS.

Then hey for a lass wi' a tocher, then hey for a lass wi' a tocher,

Then hey for a lass wi' a tocher; the nice yellow guineas for me.

Your beauty's a flower, in the morning that blows,
And withers the faster, the faster it
grows;
But the rapturous charm o' the bonnie green

knowes,

Ilk spring they're new deckit wi' bonnie white yowes.

Then hey, &c.

And e'en when this beauty your bosom has blest, The brightest o' beauty may cloy, when possest; But the sweet yellow darlings wi' Geordie imprest, The langer ye hae them—the mair they're carest. Then hey, &c.

If

If this will do, you have now four of my Irish engagement. In my by-past songs, I dislike one thing; the name Chloris-I meant it as the fictitious name of a certain lady: but, on second thoughts, it is a high incongruity to have a Greek appellation to a Scottish pastoral ballad.-Of this, and some things else, in my next: I have more amendments to propose.-What you once mentioned of flaxen locks" is just: they cannot enter into an elegant description of beauty. Of this also again-God bless you!*

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No. LXXXIV.

MR. THOMSON to MR. BURNS.

YOUR Hey for a lass wi' a tocher, is a

most excellent song, and with you the subject is something new indeed. It is the first time I have seen you debasing the god of soft desire, into an amateur of acres and guineas.

I am

* Our Poet never explained what name he would have substituted for Chloris.

Note by Mr. Thomson.

I am happy to find you approve of my pro posed octavo edition. Allan has designed and etched about twenty plates, and I am to have my choice of them for that work. Independently of the Hogarthian humour with which they abound, they exhibit the character and costume of the Scottish peasantry with inimitable felicity. In this respect, he himself says, they will far exceed the aquatinta plates he did for the Gentle Shepherd, because in the etching he sees clearly what he is doing, but not so with the aquatinta, which he could not manage to his mind.

The Dutch boors of Ostade are scarcely more characteristic and natural than the Scottish figures in those etchings.

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No. LXXXV.

MR. BURNS to MR. THOMSON.

April, 1796.

ALAS, my dear Thomson, I fear it will be some time ere I tune my lyre again! "By Babel streams I have sat and wept," almost ever since I wrote you last: I have only known existence by the pressure of the heavy hand of sickness, and have counted time by the repercussions of pain! Rheumatism, cold, and fever have formed to me a terrible combination. I close my eyes in misery, and open them without hope. I look on the vernal day, and say, with

poor Fergusson

"Say wherefore has an all-indulgent Heaven Light to the comfortless and wretched given?"

This will be delivered to you by a Mrs. Hyslop, landlady of the Globe Tavern here, which for these many years has been my howff, and

where

where our friend Clarke and I have had many a merry squeeze. I am highly delighted with Mr. Allan's etchings. Woo'd and married and a', is admirable! The grouping is beyond all praise. The expression of the figures, conformable to the story in the ballad, is absolutely faultless perfection. I next admire, Turnim-spike. What I like least is, Jenny said to Jocky. Besides the female being in her appearance ***** if you take her stooping into the account, she is at least two inches taller than her lover. Poor Cleghorn! I sincerely sympathize with him! Happy I am to think that he yet has a wellgrounded hope of health and enjoyment in this world.

subject!

As for me but that is a *****

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