So hard is thy lot, poor scurrilous sot, Thy poetry brings thee to shame; So high to aspire, thou’rt thrust in the mire, And laugh’d at by all for the same. CHAPTER XXVII. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”--HAMLET. [Sidenote: THE GUDEWIFE OF MINITARF.] I had passed the three first milestones after leaving Forres, when the clouds began to lour on every side of me, as if earth and sky were coming together, and the rain to descend in torrents. The great forest of Darnaway looked shaggy and brown through the haze, as if greeting the heavens with a scowl as angry as their own; and a low, long wreath of vapour went creeping over the higher lands to the left, like a huge snake. On the right, the _locale_ of Shakspere’s witch scene, half moor half bog, with the old ruinous castle of Inshoch standing sentry over it, seemed ever and anon to lessen its area as the heavily-laden clouds broke over its farther edge like waves of the sea; and the intervening morass--black and dismal at all times--grew still blacker and more dismal with every fitful thickening of the haze and the rain. And then, how the furze waved to the wind, and the few scattered trees groaned and creaked! The thunder and the witches were alone wanting. I passed on, and the storm gradually sank. The evening, however, was dark and damp, and more melancholy than even the day, and I was thoroughly wet, and somewhat fatigued to boot. I could not, however, help turning a little out of my way to pause for a few minutes amid the ruins of the old farmhouse of Minitarf, just as I had paused in the middle of the storm to fill my mind with the sublimities of the Harmoor, and do homage to the genius of Shakspere. But why at Minitarf? Who is not acquainted with the legend of the “Heath near Forres”--who knows anything of the history of the Farm-house? Both stories, however, are characteristic of the very different ages to which they belong; and the moral of the humbler story is at once the more general in its application, and the more obvious of the two.