Newspapers / The North-Carolina Star (Raleigh, … / May 11, 1809, edition 1 / Page 1
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J . - - ' .... - . . . . - . ...-.. - , ' , v A ' V" A 'J ' ' : ,' . ' i . , . . ... . il- "-, 4 V '. . . rh. : ct t' " y ' t V ' .Voi.. I. RALEIGH, MAY 11, 1 809. No."28. irn vno r; ..t- JU1L 4 Published evet Thuksdat, . at Tho mas HlHOEBSOir, JUJT. TOR (ELF fc CoAT THE 'vrrzR end or Fatettetille-Steeet, near Casso's corner Price Three Dollars per anncm, pat able hal? tearlt in advance. Single Paper 10 Cents. AD VERTISEMEjYTS. Taxes. The Inhabitants of this city we desired to settle with the Subscriber their State, Countr, -snd Pariah taxe for the year i08, without delay. He is also authorised to collect forty Shillinjrs from each of those who have, with out Licences, retailed Spirits by the nmall measure. WILUAM SCOTT, Dtpuh, Sheriff. Raleigh, May 11A, 18U9. WANTED IMVEDIATEI.Y, A Journeyman l!attery OVE from the Northward, who is a good Workman would be preferred, and will meet with penuous Vaes. RICHARD R. HEADING. Nash county, April 20, 1809. Universii 7- THE annual txamlnution of the Students of tlie I'ni versity of North-Carolina will commence on the '2'21 w June next. The committee of visitation appointed to ttena tne examination will be composed ot the following I rustees, vm s Mesrs. William Gaston, John Moore, . Arch'd D. Muiphcy, Israel Pickens, ,a Walter A Ives, Benjamin Smith, ' T' John D. Hawkins, Jeremiah Slade, and William Hawkins, William Williams. As the ueccssity of a due attendance on the part of the committee must te obvious to evcrr member, una as tli- duties they have to perform devolve on each class onh once in five years, the loard of Trustees hope thut a pro per reg-ani to tat welture ot the Institution will uiducc every gentleman to attend with punctuality. GAVIN ALVES, Sce'rv. - Hillsboroaph, April 51, 1809. Raleigh Academy. THE smi-Mimui Examination of the Sjuidcnts of this Institution will commence on Tuesday the 30th ol JVfav, and will continue three days. The evenings ol each day will be occupied by the Speeches ot the ywuiu orators, and by Theatrical performances. It is expected tnat two ptays wui oe extnbited. '. The next Session will commence on the 12th of June It is desired ot those who intend to enter for that sessioi 'to attend, early, that the classes may be iidvar.t;igeou&! r WILLIAM WHITE, Sec'ry. April 24, 1809, . All Persons T NUEBTED to the Subscriber are informed that tli ,JL payment of their accounts is extremely desirable, am the immediate setuement ot tnem indispensablv ni tfu J ay. . CALVIN JONES. Raleigh May 4, 1809. Bank of Newbern, "RALEIGII OFFICE. T' HE President and Directors havini; established ' X' Office of Discount in the Citv of Kaleiirh. under tin Agencyf the Subscriber, notice is hereby given that tin business of it will be transacted under the follow inif Rules 1. Bills,, Bonds and Notes made negociable at the B.'ink rt Ncwbem arid payable at its Omce in HaleiRh, ut within sixty days, in which two solvent individuals sha! be boutKl, will be discounted at the rate of 6 per cent. pe. annum.!t 2. TJree days of grace will be allowed and interest ta ken thwtibr. 3. AH paper to le offered for Discount will be expected to be lett w ith the Agent on ednesday betore 10 o clock A.M. and the Discount will be declared and payment made at o'clock, Y. M. SI1EHWUOU HWW OOU March 30, 1809. Apent. Deserted, ""Crom mv company of Artillerists, on the nip;ht of the JL 19th inst. JOHN HINSON and WILLIAM COX liinson is a native of North-Carolina, live feet six indie and one half high, twenty two vears of age, has blue i yes. ll;t hair, fair complexion, by occupation a Currmgt Miker. William Cox, is a Virginian, six feet high, t wen ty six years ot age, has blue eve..?, liKut hair, ruduy con plexion, by occupation a Hatter Fifty Dollars reward vill be p;ud for securing the above Deserters in any goal una mioFniation given to nie, or it delivered to any com missioned officer in the army of the United States, the whole of the expences paid indt pendent of the reward. ADDKIJSON B. ARMISTKAD, Cv.pt. lit Heginieni U. S. .h 'illcihts, (Commanding. Ssv.mnah, March 2'. BIOGRAPHY. SKrim or Til F. ,. I.I IT. OF ROBERT BURXS, SCOTCH POUT, Tllli CILENBATl.D la i. letter from himself to Dr. Moore, author of ZWiicco, ; lul Tvuvrh in Frame n:t Jhitt,; and father of the l.".e General Sir .k.hn Nioore, whu fell at the -jiittle of t'oi-unna. MAt ciiLlXE gd .ivgvH, 17&7- SIR For some mouths past I have been rambling over the country, but I am now con fined with some liiijjtring complaints, origina ting, as I take it, in the stomach. T divert my spirits a little in this miserable fog of ennui, I have taken a whim to give you a history of mvsrU. My name has made some Utile noise in this -country ; you have done me the ho nour to interest yourself very warmly in my behalf ; and I think a faithful account of what character of a man I arn,and how I came by that character, may perhaps amuse pU( in au idle mom?nt, I will jivcyou an honest nnrra . tive,.though I know it will be eften at my own . txpe'nce ; for I assure you, Sir, I have,' like ' ? . -. : ' - - Soloimn, whose character, rxcepting in the trifling affair of witdom, I sometimes think I resemble. I have. I sav. like him turned mu eyes to behold madnest and folly and like him too, frequently shaken hands WM their intox icating friendship. After you have perused these pages, should you think hem trining and impertinent, I only beer leave to tell you, that the poor author wrote them under some twiching qualms of conscience, arising fromU suspicion that he was doing what he ought not to do j a predicament he has more than once been in before. I hare not the most distant pretentions to assume that character which the pye-coated guardians of escutcheons call, a Gentleman. VV hen at hdinburg last winter, I cot acquaint ed in the herald's office, and looking thro' that granary ol honours, I there found almost eve ry name of the kingdom ; but for me, " My ancient but ignoble blood Has crept through scoundrel ever since the Hood." Gules, Purpure, Argent, Stc. quite disowned me. My father was of the north of Scotland,the son of a farmer, and was thrown by early mis fortunes on the world at larpe ; where, after many years wanderings and sojournings, he picked up a pretty large quantity of observa tion and experience, to which I am indebted for most of my little pretensions to wisdom..... I have met with few who understood men, their manners, and their rvays, equal to him ; lut stubborn ungainly integrity, and headlong ungovernable irrascibility, are disqualifying cir eum!unces , consequently I was born a very podr man's son. For the first six or seven years of my life, my father was gardener to a wor thy gentlemen of small estate in the neighbor hood ot Ayr. Had he continued m that sta tion 1 must have marched off to be oneof the lit tle underlings about a farmhouse ; but it was his dearest wish and prayer to have it in his power to keep his children under his own eye, till thcycould discern between good and evil; so with the assistance of his generous master, mv father ventured on a small farm on his es tate. At those years I was by no means a fa vourite with any body. I was a good deal no ted f.r a retentive memory,astubbourn sturdy something in my disposition, ad an entuusi- astic ideot piety I say ideal piety, because I was then but a child. Though it cost the schoolmaster some thrashings, I made an ex cellent English scholar ; and by the time I was ten or eleven years ofge, I was a critic m substantives, verbs or participles. In my in fant and boyish days too, I owed much to an old woman who resided in the familvremarkablc for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales, and songs concerning devils, gho9ts, fairies, brownies, witches, war locks, spunkies, kelpies, elfcandles,dead-lights, wraiths, appai'itions, cantraips, giants, inchant ed towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry ; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look out in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical than I am in such matters, yet it often takes an ef fort of philosophy to shake off these idle ter rors. The earliest composition that I recol lect taking pleasure in, was The Vision of Mir za, and a hymn of Addison's, beginning, How are thy Servants blest, 0 Lord I particularly remember one hall-stanza which was music to my boyish ear : " i'or though on dreadful whirls we hun'jj " High on the broken wave.... I met with these pieces in Masorts English Collection, one of mv school-books. The two first books I ever read in private, and which give mc more pleasure than any two books I i:er read since, were, The Life of Hannibal, and The History of Sir William Wallace. Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn.that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bag-pipe, and wish myself tall cnouc-h to be a soldier, while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest. Polemical divinity about this time was putting the country half mad, and I, ambitious of shining in conversation parties on Sundays between sermons, at funerals, &cc. used a few years afterwards to puzzle Calvinism with so much heat and indiscretion, that I raised a hue and cry of heresy about me, which has not ceased to this hour.? My vicinity to1 Ayr was of some advan tage to me. My social disposition, when not checked by some modification of spited pride, was like our catechism definition of infinitude, without bounds or limits. I formed several connexions with other younkers who possessed superiout. advantages ; the youngling actors who were busy ia the rehearsal , of parts in which they were shortly to appear on the stage of life, where alas, I was destined to drudge behind the scenes. It is not commonly at this green iige, that our young gentry have a just sense of the immense distance between them and their ragged play-fellows. It takes a few dashes into the world, to give the young gre ii man that proper, decent, unnoticing disregard for the poor, insignificant stupid devils,, the mechanics and peasantry around him, who were perhaps born in the same village. My voung superiours never insulted the cloutery appearance of my plough-boy carcase, the two extremes of which were, often exposed to all the inclemencies of all the seasons. They would give me stray volumes of books; among them, even then, I could pick upborne obser vations, and one, whose heart I am sure not even the Munny Begum scenes have tainted, helped me to a little French. Parting with these my young friends and benefactors, as they occasionally went off for the East or West Indies, was often to me a sore affliction, but I was soon called to more serious evils. My father's generous master died ; the farm prov ed a ruinous bargain ; and to clench the mis fortune, we fell into the hands of a factor, who sat for the picture I have drawn of one in my TaU of Tiva Z)og. My lather was advanced in lite wi'-nhe married; 1 was the eldest ol seven children, and he, worn out by early hard ships, was unfit for labour. My father's spirit was soon irritated, but not easily broken. 1 here was a freedom in his lease in two years more, and to weather these two vears we re trenched our expences. We lived very poor ly ; I was a dexterous ploughman for my age ; and the next e1d.es. to me was a brother (Gil bert) who could drive the plough very well, and help me to thrash the corn. A novel wri ttr might perhaps have viewed these scenes with some satisfaction, but so did not I ; my indignation yet boils at the recollection of the ....1 factor s insolent threatening letters, which used to set us all in tears. This kind of life.. ..the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the unceasing moil of a galley- slave, brought me to my sixteenth year ; a little before which period I first committed the tin of Rhyme. You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together as part ners in the labj-urs of harvest. -In my fifteenth autumn, my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. My scarcity of bngli&h denies mc the power ot doing her jus tice in that language, but you know the Scot tish idiom ; she was a bonnie sweet sonsie lass. In short, she altogether unwittingly to herself. initiated me in that delicious passion, which in 6pite ot acid disappointment, gin-horse pru dence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below : How she caught the contagion 1 cannot tell ; you medical people talk much ot intection trom breathing the same air, the touch, 8cc. but I never said I loved her In deed I did not know myself whv I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when return ing from our labours ; why the tones of her voice made mv heart-strings thrill like an jtolian harp ; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweet ly : and it was her f avourite reel to which I at tempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine that 1 could make verses like printed ones, com posed by men who had Greek and Latin ; but my girl sung a song which was said to be com posed by a small country laird's son, on one of his father s maids, with whom he was in love ; and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he ; for excepting that he could smear sheep, and cast peats, his father living in the Moorlands, he had no more scholar craft than myself. Thus with me began love and poetry which at times have been my only, and till within the last twelve months, have been my highest enjoyment. My father struggled on till he reached the freedom in his lease, when he entered on a larger farm, about ten miles farther in the country. The nature of the bar gain he made, was such as to throw a littie ready money into his hands at the commence ment of his lease, otherwise the affair would have been impracticable. For four years we lived comfortably here, but a difference com mencing between him and his landlord as to terms, after three years tossing and whirling in the vortex of litigation, my father was just saved from the horrors of a gaol by a consump tion, which, after two years promises, kindly stepped in, and carried him away, to where the wicked cease from troubling, and where thewea ry are at rest ! It is during the time that we lived on this farm, that my Uttle story is most eventful.' I was, at the beginning of this period, perhaps, the most ungainly auk ward boy in the parish no solitaire was less acquainted with the ways of the world. -What I knew of ancietjt story ' .' , 1 -., '.-,'. was gathered from Salmon t and Guthrie gco graphical grammars ; and the ideas I had form-, ed of modern manners, oflluratufe and critic cim, I tfot from the Spectator, These, with Pope a Workt some plays of Shakespeare Titll and Dickson on Agriculture, the Panthezn Locke Essay on the Human Underttandinrt Stackhousc's History of the Bible, JutUcps British Uardener Director Bay le n Lectures, Allan Ramsay's Works, Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, A Select Collection of English Songs, and Harvey's Meditations, had, formed the whole of my reading. The col lection of Songs was my vade mecumi I poured over them, driving my cart, or walking to la bour, song by song, vers by Verse carefully noting the true, tender, or sublime, from affec tation and fustian. I am convinced I owe to this practice, much of my critic-craft such as it is. In my seventeenth year, to give my matw ners a brush, I went to a country dancing school... ...My father had an unaccountable an tipathy against these meetings, and my going was what to this moment I repent, in opposi tion to his wishes. My fathci , as I said be fore, was subject to strong passions t from that instance of disobedience in me, he took a sort of dislike to me, which I believe was one cause of the dissipation which marked my succeed ing years. I say dissipation, comparatively with the strictness and sobriety, and regularity of Presbyterian country life : for though 'the will-o-wisp meteors of thoughtless whim, wer,e almost the sole lights ol my path, yet early in grained pietyaiid virtue, kept me for several years afterwards witHin the line of innocence, ' i he great misfortune of my life was to want an aim. 1 had telt early seme stimnirs of am bition, but they were the blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of his cavf, I saw my father's situation entailed Ota me per petual labour. The only two openings by which I could enter the temple of fortune, wa$ the gate of niggardly economy, or the path of little chicaning bargain-making. The first so contracted an aperture I never could squeeze tnvself into it the last I always hat edthere was contamination in the very, en trance ( lhus abandoned of aim or view. id. life, with a strpng appetite for sociability, aj well from native- hilarity, as from a pride of observation and remark ; a constitutional rath lancholy or hypochondriasm that made me A? solitude add to these incenlives to social life 1 mf reputation for bookish knowledge,) certain - $JM& I wild logicical talent, and a strength of thought, something like the rudiments of good-sense, and it wilt not seem surprising that I was ge nerally a welcome guest where I visited," or any great wonder that always where two or three met together, there was I among them. But far beyoud ail other impulses of my hearty was un penchant a P adorable moitiee du genre humaine. My heart was completely tindef, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other ; and as in every other warfare in this world, my fortune was various ; sometimes I was received with favour, and sometimes I was mortified with a repulse. At the plough, "' scythe or. reap-hook, I feared no competitor, and thus I set absolute want at defiance ; and, as I never cared farther for my labour than, while I was in actual exercise, I spent the e venings in the way after my own heart. A country lad seldom carries on a love adventure without an assistant confidant, I possessed curiosity, zeal, and intrepid dexterity, that re, commended me as' a proper second on these occasions, & I dare say, I telt as much pleasure in being in the secret of hajf the loves of the parish of Tarbolton, as ever did statesman in knowing the intrigues of half the courts of Eu rope. The very gpose-feather in my hand, seems to know instinctively the well-worn path of my imagination, the favourite theme of my song; and is with difficulty restrained from giv? ing you a couple of paragraphs on the love adventured of my compters, the humble in mates of the farm-house and cottagt: but the. grave sons of science, ambition, or avarice, ' baptize these things by the name of Follies, To the sons and daughters of labour and po- verty they are matters of the most serious' na-i ture ; to them the ardent hope, the stolen in, terview, the tender farewell, are the, greatest and most delicious parts of their enjoyments, Another circumstance in my Jife which, made some alteration in my mind and mant ners, was, that I spent my nineteenth ummetx on a smuggling, coast, a good distance from, home, at a noted school, to learn mtnsuratiqp,. surveying, dialling, &c. in, which J' mad j ft pretty good pr?gr;ss. But I made a greater progress in the knowledge of mankind. contraband trade was at that time very suc cessful, and it sometimes happened tft' me. to fall in with those wb? carriedit on, iSertes of swaggering riot and .roaring dissipation were till this time new to vaet bp' I was no ' enemy to social life. Here, though I learnt tQ , fill my glass, audjto mix without 'par n
The North-Carolina Star (Raleigh, N.C.)
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May 11, 1809, edition 1
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