Chapter XXII: January 1795

I fear for my songs; however a few may please, yet originality is a coy feature in composition, and in a multiplicity of efforts in the same style, disappears altogether. For these three thousand years we poetic folks have been describing the spring, for instance; and, as the spring continues the same, there must soon be a sameness in the imagery, etc., of these said rhyming folks.

A great critic, Aikin on Songs, says that love and wine are the exclusive themes for song-writing. The following is on neither subject, and consequently is no song; but will be allowed, I think, to be two or three pretty good prose thoughts, inverted into rhyme.

FOR A' THAT AND A' THAT.
Is there for honest poverty, (etc.)

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