the study, rehearsing on the stage, musing in the lace-seller’s shop, strolling through the Palais, turning over the new books at Billaine’s, dusting your ruffles among the old volumes on the sunny stalls. Would that, through the ages, we could hear you after supper, merry with Boileau, and with Racine,—not yet a traitor,—laughing over Chapelain, combining to gird at him in an epigram, or mocking at Cotin, or talking your favourite philosophy, mindful of Descartes. Surely of all the wits none was ever so good a man, none ever made life so rich with humour and friendship. XIX. _To Robert Burns_. SIR,—Among men of Genius, and especially among Poets, there are some to whom we turn with a peculiar and unfeigned affection; there are others whom we admire rather than love. By some we are won with our will, by others conquered against our desire. It has been your peculiar fortune to capture the hearts of a whole people—a people not usually prone to praise, but devoted with a personal and patriotic loyalty to you and to your reputation. In you every Scot who _is_ a Scot sees, admires, and compliments Himself, his ideal self—independent, fond of whisky, fonder of the lassies; you are the true representative of him and of his nation. Next year will be the hundredth since the press of Kilmarnock brought to light its solitary masterpiece, your Poems; and next year, therefore, methinks, the revenue will receive a welcome accession from the abundance of whisky drunk in your honour. It is a cruel thing for any of your countrymen to feel that, where all the rest love, he can only admire; where all the rest are idolators, he may not bend the knee; but stands apart and beats upon his breast, observing, not adoring—a critic. Yet to some of us—petty souls, perhaps, and envious—that loud indiscriminating praise of “Robbie Burns” (for so they style you in their Change-house familiarity) has long been ungrateful; and, among the treasures of your songs, we venture to select and even to reject. So it must be! We cannot all love Haggis, nor “painch, tripe, and thairm,” and all those rural dainties which you celebrate as “warm-reekin, rich!” “Rather too rich,” as the Young Lady said on an occasion recorded by Sam Weller. Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware That jaups in luggies; But, if ye wish her gratefu’ prayer, Gie her a Haggis!