Autograph letter in verse signed : Edinburgh, to Andrew Gibb, 1793 [January] 29.

Asking Gibb for money; saying "Since I left Auchinleck last I never had time / to write you a letter in Prose or in rhyme / I've so with deep study bamboozled my head / That today I cant tell what I yesterday read. / Newspapers & Logic I dayly confound, / in short I beleive that my haead's running round / My Pocket's near empty, my heart is quite full / I scare know a B from the foot of a Bull. / Then send me the Rino as fast as you can / For time gallops quickly, & life's but a span / My Coat's out at elbows, my eggs are all gone / and for Spirits to chear me alas! I have none / He who lately was merry, jovially mellow, / Is forced to sit down a sad sorrowful fellow;" continuing in rhyme about persons at Auchinleck; concluding "Take care of my Gun, of the Goose, of the Gander / This is all that I write now / Boswell Alexander;" adding, in a postscript "Yet one thing more I still wish & desire / when you've read this mad letter you'll throw't in the fire / Send the cash by the Post, sealed up in a letter / I think this conveyance is quicker & better."