hope Brown does not put them punctually in his journal--If he does I must sit on the cutty-stool all next winter. We went to Kirk Alloway--"a Prophet is no Prophet in his own Country"--We went to the Cottage and took some Whisky. I wrote a sonnet for the mere sake of writing some lines under the roof--they are so bad I cannot transcribe them--The Man at the Cottage was a great Bore with his Anecdotes--I hate the rascal--his Life consists in fuz, fuzzy, fuzziest--He drinks glasses five for the Quarter and twelve for the hour--he is a mahogany-faced old Jackass who knew Burns--He ought to have been kicked for having spoken to him. He calls himself "a curious old Bitch"--but he is a flat old dog--I should like to employ Caliph Vathek to kick him. O the flummery of a birthplace! Cant! Cant! Cant! It is enough to give a spirit the guts-ache--Many a true word, they say, is spoken in jest--this may be because his gab hindered my sublimity: the flat dog made me write a flat sonnet. My dear Reynolds--I cannot write about scenery and visitings--Fancy is indeed less than a present palpable reality, but it is greater than remembrance--you would lift your eyes from Homer only to see close before you the real Isle of Tenedos--you would rather read Homer afterwards than remember yourself--One song of Burns's is of more worth to you than all I could think for a whole year in his native country. His Misery is a dead weight upon the nimbleness of one's quill--I tried to forget it--to drink Toddy without any Care--to write a merry sonnet--it won't do--he talked with Bitches--he drank with Blackguards, he was miserable--We can see horribly clear, in the works of such a Man his whole life, as if we were God's spies.--What were his addresses to Jean in the latter part of his life? I should not speak so to you--yet why not--you are not in the same case--you are in the right path, and you shall not be deceived. I have spoken to you against Marriage, but it was general--the Prospect in those matters has been to me so blank, that I have not been unwilling to die--I would not now, for I have inducements to Life--I must see my little Nephews in America, and I must see you marry your lovely Wife. My sensations are sometimes deadened for weeks together--but believe me I have more than once yearned for the time of your happiness to come, as much as I could for myself after the lips of Juliet.--From the tenor of my occasional rodomontade in chit-chat, you might have been deceived concerning me in these points--upon my soul, I have been getting more and more close to you, every day, ever since I knew you, and now one of the first pleasures I look to is your happy Marriage--the more, since I have felt the pleasure of loving a sister in Law. I did not think it possible to become so much attached in so short a time--Things like these, and they are real, have made me resolve to have a care of my health--you must be as careful.