Chapters VIII. and IX. of Meredith's story are very good, I think. But who wrote the review of my book? Whoever he was, he cannot write; he is humane, but a duffer; I could weep when I think of him; for surely to be virtuous and incompetent is a hard lot. I should prefer to be a bold pirate, the gay sailor-boy of immorality, and a publisher at once. My mind is extinct; my appetite is expiring; I have fallen altogether into a hollow-eyed, yawning way of life, like the parties in Burne Jones's pictures.... Talking of Burns. (Is this not sad, Weg? I use the term of reproach not because I am angry with you this time, but because I am angry with myself and desire to give pain.) Talking, I say, of Robert Burns, the inspired poet is a very gay subject for study. I made a kind of chronological table of his various loves and lusts, and have been comparatively speechless ever since. I am sorry to say it, but there was something in him of the vulgar, bagmanlike, professional seducer.--Oblige me by taking down and reading, for the hundredth time, I hope, his _Twa Dogs_ and his _Address to the Unco Guid_. I am only a Scotchman, after all, you see; and when I have beaten Burns, I am driven at once, by my parental feelings, to console him with a sugar-plum. But hang me if I know anything I like so well as the _Twa Dogs_. Even a common Englishman may have a glimpse, as it were from Pisgah, of its extraordinary merits. "_English, The_:--a dull people, incapable of comprehending the Scottish tongue. Their history is so intimately connected with that of Scotland, that we must refer our readers to that heading. Their literature is principally the work of venal Scots."--Stevenson's _Handy Cyclopædia_. Glescow: Blaikie & Bannock. Remember me in suitable fashion to Mrs. Gosse, the offspring, and the cat.--And believe me ever yours, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. TO SIDNEY COLVIN _Rembrandt_ refers to an article in the Edinburgh Review. "Bummkopf" was Stevenson's name for the typical pedant, German or other, who cannot clear his edifice of its scaffolding, nor set forth the results of research without intruding on the reader all its processes, evidences, and supports. _Burns_ is the aforesaid Cornhill essay: not the rejected Encyclopædia article. _17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh [July 28, 1879]._