MY DEAR COLVIN,--I am just in the middle of your _Rembrandt_. The taste for Bummkopf and his works is agreeably dissembled so far as I have gone; and the reins have never for an instant been thrown upon the neck of that wooden Pegasus; he only perks up a learned snout from a footnote in the cellarage of a paragraph; just, in short, where he ought to be, to inspire confidence in a wicked and adulterous generation. But, mind you, Bummkopf is not human; he is Dagon the fish god, and down he will come, sprawling on his belly or his behind, with his hands broken from his helpless carcase, and his head rolling oft into a corner. Up will rise on the other side, sane, pleasurable, human knowledge: a thing of beauty and a joy, etc. I'm three parts through _Burns_; long, dry, unsympathetic, but sound and, I think, in its dry way, interesting. Next I shall finish the story, and then perhaps Thoreau. Meredith has been staying with Morley, has been cracking me up, he writes, to that literary Robespierre; and he (the L. R.) is about, it is believed, to write to me on a literary scheme. Is it Keats, hope you? My heart leaps at the thought.--Yours ever, R. L. S. TO EDMUND GOSSE With reference to the "term of reproach," it must be explained that Mr. Gosse, who now signs with only one initial, used in these days to sign with two, E. W. G. The nickname Weg was fastened on him by Stevenson, partly under a false impression as to the order of these initials, partly in friendly derision of a passing fit of lameness, which called up the memory of Silas Wegg, the immortal literary gentleman "_with_ a wooden leg" of _Our Mutual Friend_. _17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh [July 29, 1879]._ MY DEAR GOSSE,--Yours was delicious; you are a young person of wit; one of the last of them; wit being quite out of date, and humour confined to the Scotch Church and the _Spectator_ in unconscious survival. You will probably be glad to hear that I am up again in the world; I have breathed again, and had a frolic on the strength of it. The frolic was yesterday, Sawbath; the scene, the Royal Hotel, Bathgate; I went there with a humorous friend to lunch. The maid soon showed herself a lass of character. She was looking out of window. On being asked what she was after, "I'm lookin' for my lad," says she. "Is that him?" "Weel, I've been lookin' for him a' my life, and I've never seen him yet," was the response. I wrote her some verses in the vernacular; she read them. "They're no bad for a beginner," said she. The landlord's daughter, Miss Stewart, was present in oil colour; so I wrote her a declaration in verse, and sent it by the handmaid. She (Miss S.) was present on the stair to witness our departure, in a warm, suffused condition. Damn it, Gosse, you needn't suppose that you're the only poet in the world.