byres, and barns, and stackyards,
and merry-makins at winter ingles, and courtship aneath trees, and at
the gable-end of farm houses, 'tween lads and lasses as laigh in life as
the servants in her father's ha'. That's the puzzle, and that's the
praise. But ae word explains a'--Genius--Genius, wull a' the
metafhizzians in the warld ever expound that mysterious monosyllable.--
_Nov, 1826._

HAZLITT

_Shepherd._. He had a curious power that Hazlitt, as he was ca'd, o'
simulatin' sowl. You could hae taen your Bible oath sometimes, when you
were readin him, that he had a sowl--a human sowl--a sowl to be saved--
but then, heaven preserve us! in the verra middle aiblins o' a
paragraph, he grew transformed afore your verra face into something
bestial,--you heard a grunt that made ye grue, and there was an ill
smell in the room, as frae a pluff o' sulphur.--_April, 1827._

WORDSWORTH

_Shepherd._ Wordsworth tells the world, in ane of his prefaces, that he
is a water-drinker--and its weel seen on him.--There was a sair want of
speerit through the haill o' yon lang "Excursion." If he had just made
the paragraphs about ae half shorter, and at the end of every ane taen a
caulker, like ony ither man engaged in geyan sair and heavy wark, think
na ye that his "Excursion" would hae been far less fatiguesome?--_April,
1827._

_North._ I confess that the "Excursion" is the worst poem, of any
character, in the English language. It contains about two hundred
sonorous lines, some of which appear to be fine, even in the sense, as
well as sound. The remaining seven thousand three hundred are quite
ineffectual. Then, what labour the builder of that lofty rhyme must have
undergone! It is, in its own way, a small tower of Babel, and all built
by a single man.--_Sept., 1825._

COLERIDGE

_North._ James, you don't know S.T. Coleridge--do you? He writes but
indifferent books, begging his pardon: witness his "Friend," his "Lay
Sermons," and, latterly, his "Aids to Reflection"; but he becomes
inspired by the sound of his own silver voice, and pours out wisdom like
a sea. Had he a domestic Gurney, he might publish a Moral Essay, or a
Theological Discourse, or a Metaphysical Disquisition, or a Political
Harangue, every morning throughout the year during his lifetime.

_Tickler._ Mr. Coleridge does not seem to be aware that he cannot write
a book, but opines that he absolutely has written several, and set many
questions at rest. There's a want