"Can you not borrow from your briefs and criticism a couple of days to look about you here? I dare not ask Mrs. Jeffrey till next year, when my hand will be out of the mortar-tub; and at present my only spare bed was till of late but accessible by the feudal accommodation of a drawbridge made of two deals, and still requires the clue of Ariadne.... I am like one of Miss Edgeworth's heroines, master of all things in miniature--a little hill, and a little glen, and a little horse-pond of a loch, and a little river, I was going to call it,--the Tweed; but I remember the minister was mobbed by his parishioners for terming it, in his statistical report, an inconsiderable stream. So pray do come and see me, and if I can stead you, or pleasure you, in the course of the winter, you shall command me."--Cockburn's _Life of Jeffrey_, vol. i p. 417.]] It was while struggling with such languor, on one lovely evening of this autumn, that he composed the following beautiful verses. They mark the very spot of their birth,--namely, the then naked height overhanging the northern side of the Cauldshiels Loch, from which Melrose Abbey to the eastward, and the hills of Ettrick and Yarrow to the west, are now visible over a wide range of rich woodland,--all the work of the poet's hand:-- {p.177} "The sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill, In Ettrick's vale, is sinking sweet; The westland wind is hush and still-- The lake lies sleeping at my feet. Yet not the landscape to mine eye Bears those bright hues that once it bore; Though evening, with her richest dye, Flames o'er the hills of Ettrick's shore. "With listless look along the plain I see Tweed's silver current glide, And coldly mark the holy fane Of Melrose rise in ruin'd pride. The quiet lake, the balmy air, The hill, the stream, the tower, the tree,-- Are they still such as once they were, Or is the dreary change in me? "Alas! the warp'd and broken board, How can it bear the painter's dye! The harp of strain'd and tuneless chord, How to the minstrel's skill reply! To aching eyes each landscape lowers, To feverish pulse each gale blows chill; And Araby's or Eden's bowers Were barren as this moorland hill." He again alludes to his illness in a letter to Mr. Morritt:-- TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., ROKEBY. ABBOTSFORD, August 11, 1817.