He had a little room at the top of the house which looked over the town to Milverston mere, where the immortal poem was commenced. I remember he began it on a wet evening, and it opened dismally, with a storm; he had me up there with my plain sewing to listen to the first stanzas; and he consulted me about one or two difficult rhymes: he was not sure whether “horror” and “morrow” were correct. I thought not; and, his birthday falling three days after, I presented him with a rhyming dictionary. Subsequently, the poem made rapid progress. Cousin John had just gone up to London to study law, and my father wished Davie to be articled to Mr. Briggs, the solicitor at Milverston. This did not chime in with his taste at all; he stated that it was his wish to follow the profession of letters. We did not quite understand this at the time. Cousin Jack said it meant that he wanted to be the idle gentleman. I had my doubts on the matter. Davie brought my mother over to his way of thinking. “I shall be very poor, but very happy, mother,” he used to say; “if you put me to anything else, I shall be miserable and do no good.” So Davie got his own way; and, as a preparation for his profession of letters, he stayed at home and finished “Bernardo Caspiato.” It was a splendid work. I have wept over it often. The heroine having been executed for witchcraft, her lover, Bernardo, devotes his life to avenge her; and, after committing a catalogue of murders, ends by disappearing mysteriously in a flash of blue lightning to rejoin her in heaven. My mother objected to the morality of the conclusion; but she acknowledged herself, at the same time, ignorant of the laws and licence of poetry. With this great work, and some minor pieces of equal if not superior merit, my brother Davie went up to London on foot, with ten pounds in his pocket, and seventeen years of experience on his head. Cousin Jack had taken comfortable lodgings for him at a small baker’s shop, kept by a widow woman with a daughter named Lucy. The dear lad wrote us word that he was quite suited, and that, after a few days to look about him, he should carry his immortal poem to a publisher. His hopes were sanguine; his visions of fame magnificent. To our surprise and grief, Bernardo Caspiato was declined with thanks. Nobody was inclined to publish it unless the author would bear all the expenses. Davie would not suffer my father to do this--he would earn money for himself. We wondered how he could do it; but Cousin Jack lent him a hand, and somebody who had something to do with a newspaper bought his minor pieces. He lived, at all events, by his own exertions. At this time, Lucy began to figure in letters to me marked “private.” It would be impossible to give the whole story as therein developed, but I will epitomise it as afterwards heard from his own lips.