Oh! it's I that am the captain of a tidy little ship, Of a ship that goes a-sailing on the pond, And my ship it keeps a-turning all around and all about, But when I'm a little older I shall find the secret out How to send my vessel sailing on beyond! I never gave them a poem that needed any explanation. I picture Macdonald painfully explaining the _Elegy_.... "Yes, children, the phrase 'incense-breathing morn' means...." I'm gravelled; I haven't the faintest notion of what the phrase means. Gray annoys me; he is far too perfect for me. I fancy that he rewrote each line about a score of times in his mania for the correct word. Gray is Milton with a dictionary. I once read that Stevenson studied the dictionary often, used to spend a rainy day reading the thing, and his prose does give me the impression that he cared more for how he said a thing than for the thing itself. I think George Douglas a greater writer; indeed I should call him the greatest novelist Scotland has produced. His style is inevitable; his whole attention seems to be riveted on the matter of his story, and his arresting phrases seem to come from him naturally and thoughtlessly. When you read of Gourlay's agony in Barbie market on the day that his son's disgrace is known to everyone, you see the great hulk of a man, you hear his great breaths ... you are one of the villagers who peep at him fearfully. Every word is inevitable; the picture is perfect. I should be surprised if anyone told me that Douglas altered a single word after he had written it. When I want to feel humble I take up _The House with the Green Shutters_. I have read it a score of times, and I hope to read it a score of times again. VII. Margaret looked up from the novelette she was reading. "Are the aristocracy really like what they are in this story?" she asked. "I don't know," I replied; "I'm not acquainted with the aristocracy, but I should say that they aren't like the aristocracy in that yarn. You see, Margaret, I happen to know some of the men who write these novelettes. Murray is a don at them; he'll turn one out between breakfast and dinner. To the best of my knowledge Murray has never dined in any restaurant more expensive than an A.B.C. shop ... and his characters always dine at the Ritz." "But have you never met anybody with a title?" "I once collided with a man at the British Museum door," I said. "He was a Scot.... I know that because neither of us apologised; we merely jerked out 'Oh!' I am almost sure that the man was Sir J. M. Barrie. And I shook hands with two dukes and three lords at a university dinner, but they possibly have forgotten the incident." No. I don't know the aristocracy well.