I am much obliged to you for fitting me with an air suitable to the stanza I formerly sent you, and though it answers the words as well as ever tune did any, yet I am doubtful that the verses will not do to sing at all, owing to the repetition of the same two lines at the hinder-end of every stanza,* which two lines being repeated twice (to the music) will be intolerably insipid. However, I will give you the whole of it, so that you may judge.
*The Author refers to the Refrain at the end of the verses in the " Dirge" on Burns' Funeral, No.4.—Ed.