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APPENDIX (c) TO VOLUME I.
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C. (PAGES 50, 51, 54, AND 57.)
LETTERS TO BRYANTON AND CONTARINE.
I. TO ROBERT BRYANTON.
This letter, to which I have alluded at p. 50, is dated Edinburgh,
Sept. 26, 1753; and is addressed to .Robert Bryauton, Esq. at Bally- mahon, Ireland:
"Mr DEAR BOB,
"How many good excuses (and you know I was over good at an
" excuse) might I call up to vindicate my past shameful silence 1 I might tell "how I wrote a long letter on my first coming hither, and seem vastly angry at my "not receiving an answer; I might allege that business (with business you know I " was always pestered) had never given me time to finger a pen;—but I suppress " these and twenty more equally plausible, and as easily invented, since they '' might be attended with a slight inconvenience of being known to be lies. Let "me then speak truth : an hereditary indolence (I have it from the mother's side) "has hitherto prevented my writing to you, and still prevents my writing at least "twenty-five letters more, due to my friends in Ireland. No turnspit dog gets up "into his wheel with more reluctance than I sit down to write : yet no dog ever "loved the roast meat he turns better than I do him I now address. Yet what "shall I say now I'm entered? Shall I tire you with a description of this "unfruitful country, where I must lead you over their hills all brown with heath, " or their vallies scarce able to feed a rabbit ? Man alone seems to be the only " creature who has arrived to the natural size in this poor soil.—Every part of the " country presents the same dismal landscape. No grove nor brook, lend their "music to cheer the stranger, or make the inhabitants forget their poverty : yet "with all these disadvantages, enough to call him down to humility, a Scotchman "is one of the proudest things alive.—The poor have pride ever ready to relieve "them :—if mankind should happen to despise them, they are masters of their " own admiration; and that they can plentifully bestow upon themselves,
"From their pride and poverty, as I take it, results one advantage this country
'' enjoys, namely, the gentlemen here are much bettor bred than amongst us. No such " characters here as our fox-hunters j and they have expressed great surprise when 'I informed them, that some men in Ireland of 1000?. a year spend their whole ' lives in running after a hare, drinking to be drunk, and getting every girl that ' will let them with child : and truly, if such a being, equipped in his hunting ' dress, came among a circle of Scotch gentry, they would behold him with the ' same astonishment that a countryman would King Q-eorge on horseback.
"The men here have generally high cheek-bones, and are lean and swarthy, fond
"of action, dancing in particular. Though now I mention dancing, let me say "something of their balls which are very frequent here. When a stranger enters "the dancing-hall, he sees one end of the room taken up with the ladies, who sit |
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