Last summer we had Davie at home for a month, and during that time occurred the grand incremation of Bernardo Caspiato. I shall ever regard it as a most cruel sacrifice, and Cousin Jack, who instigated it, as an illiterate character. Davie brought it forth one evening when we three were together, and read parts of it aloud: Jack unfeelingly remarked that it was not like good wine, it did not improve with keeping; that, like fruit plucked immaturely, it was green and tasteless; it had not acquired mellowness and flavor, and if stored up for another twenty years it would not taste better. Davie half coincided with him; but I did not; so grandly majestic as was the march of the lines, so delicate and true the rhymes, so thrilling the noble catastrophe. It exasperated me to see Jack, first yawn to the full extent of his jaws, then snatch the manuscript from Davie, and toss it up to the ceiling, retreating afterwards in feigned fear lest he should be crushed by its leaden fall. An ignoble fate was thine,--immortal Bernardo! Convicted of the respectable sin of dulness--which none pardon--thou wert condemned to be burnt! Davie did not act with undue precipitation; Jack urged an immediate execution, but the poet took a week to consider of it, and many a pang it cost him. Those who have written immortal poems and destroyed them will appreciate his feelings; none else can. Let anybody of experience call to mind the last time he has read through the letters from his first love, just before she was married to somebody else; or the letters from that particular old friend, which it is of no use to keep because he is dead, or you have quarrelled beyond hope of reconciliation, and then some faint idea will be conceived of the poet’s sensations at this immolation of his first love, his particular friend, and his pet child--all in one. It was the summer-season, and warm,--I found it very warm; there was no fire in the grate, and the match-box on the writing-table was empty. Jack supplied the want eagerly from his smoking apparatus, and Bernardo Caspiato shrank into a pinch of tinder. I wept. “There!” said poor Davie, with a profound sigh, “it took two years to write and two seconds to destroy--just like an eternal friendship, an undying affection, or anything of that kind which half a dozen indiscreet words are at any time enough to annihilate!” “Have a cigar, old boy; never mind moralising,” said Jack, to whom a cigar would be consolation for the death of his grandmother; “have a cigar; the business can’t be helped.” “Poor Bernardo!” said Davie, as feelingly as if he spoke of a brother, “poor Bernardo! He gave me many an hour’s delightful occupation. I feel as if I had lost a friend to whom I had been in the habit of confiding my sentimental vagaries. I’m not sure that it was right to burn him.”