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STORIES OF
second opera, "Polly/* 1792, for "Adieu! adieu! all hope of bliss."
Burns's excellent "Ye Banks and Braes o' bonnie Doon" was one of his happiest efforts. In a letter to Thomson in 1794 he says, "There is an air called' The Caledonian Hunt's delight/ to which I wrote a song that you will find in Johnson. 'Ye Banks and Braes o' bonnie Doon/ might, I think, find a place among your hundred, as Lear says of his knights. Do you know the history of the air? It is curious enough. A good many years ago Mr. James Miller, W. S. in your good town, a gentleman whom possibly you know, was in company with our friend Clarke; and talking of Scottish music, Miller expressed an ardent desire to be able to compose a Scots' air. Mr. Clarke, probably by way of joke, told him to keep to the black keys of the harpsichord, and preserve some kind of rhythm, and he would infallibly compose a Scots' air. Certain it is that in a few days Mr. Miller produced the rudiments of an air, which Mr. Clarke, with some touches and corrections, fashioned into the tunc in ques-tion. Ritson, you know, has the same story of the black keys; but this account which I have just given you Mr. Clarke informed me of sev-eral years ago. Now, to show you how difficult
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