'What is the _profound Dreamer_ (so I was accustomed to call him when we travelled together in 1584)--what is our Corydon of Haddington about? I know he cannot be idle; has he not brought forth or perfected anything yet, after so many decades of years? _Tempus Atla veniet tua quo spoliabitur arbos._ Let me know if our old friend Wallace has at last become the father of books and bairns? Menalcas of Cupar on the Eden is, I hear, constant; and I hope he will prove vigilant in discharging all the duties of a pastor, and not mutable in his friendships, as too many discover themselves to be in these cloudy days. Salute him in my name; as also Damoetas of Elie, and our friend Dykes, with such others as you know to "hold the beginning of their confidence and the rejoicing of their hope firm to the end." ... We old men daily grow children again, and are ever and anon turning our eyes and thoughts back on our cradles. We praise the past days because we can take little pleasure in the present. Suffer me then to dote; for I am now become pleased with old age, although I have lived so long as to see some things which I could wish never to have seen. I try daily to learn something new, and thus to prevent my old age from becoming listless and inert. I am always doing, or at least attempting to do, something in those studies to which I devoted myself in the younger part of my life. Accept this long epistle from a talkative old man. _Loqui senibus res est gratissima_, says your favourite Palingenius, the very mention of whose name gives me new life; for the _regeneration_ forms almost the sole topic of my meditations, and in this do I exercise myself that I may have my conversation in heaven.' How keenly Melville felt the cruelty of the Government in driving himself and his nephew into exile appears in another part of the same letter:-- 'What crime have you committed? What has the monarch now to dread? Does not the primate sit in triumph--_traxitque sub astra furorem_? What is there, then, to hinder you, and me also (now approaching my seventieth year, and consequently _emeritus_), from breathing our native air, and, as a reward of our toils, being received into the Prytaneum, to spend the remainder of our lives, without seeking to share the honours and affluence which we do not envy the pretended bishops? We have not been a dishonour to the kingdom, and we are allied to the royal family. [Melville claimed a consanguinity for his family with the Stuarts through their common extraction from John of Gaunt.] But let envy do its worst; no prison, no exile, shall prevent us from confidently expecting the kingdom of heaven.'