Lug in my meaning by degrees;
I'm sure to hear my Henley cavil;
And grovelling prostrate on my knees,
Devote his body to the seas,
His correspondence to the devil!

Impromptu poem.

I'm going to Shandon Hydropathic _cum parentibus_. Write here. I heard
from Lang. Ferrier prayeth to be remembered; he means to write, likes
his Tourgenieff greatly. Also likes my _What was on the Slate_, which,
under a new title, yet unfound, and with a new and, on the whole,
kindly _denouement_, is going to shoot up and become a star....

I see I must write some more to you about my Monastery. I am a weak
brother in verse. You ask me to re-write things that I have already
managed just to write with the skin of my teeth. If I don't re-write
them, it's because I don't see how to write them better, not because I
don't think they should be. But, curiously enough, you condemn two of my
favourite passages, one of which is J. W. Ferrier's favourite of the
whole. Here I shall think it's you who are wrong. You see, I did not try
to make good verse, but to say what I wanted as well as verse would let
me. I don't like the rhyme "ear" and "hear." But the couplet, "My
undissuaded heart I hear Whisper courage in my ear," is exactly what I
want for the thought, and to me seems very energetic as speech, if not
as verse. Would "daring" be better than "courage"? _Je me le demande._
No, it would be ambiguous, as though I had used it licentiously for
"daringly," and that would cloak the sense.

In short, your suggestions have broken the heart of the scald. He
doesn't agree with them all; and those he does agree with, the spirit
indeed is willing, but the d----d flesh cannot, cannot, cannot, see its
way to profit by. I think I'll lay it by for nine years, like Horace. I
think the well of Castaly's run out. No more the Muses round my pillow
haunt. I am fallen once more to the mere proser. God bless you.

R. L. S.

TO MISS JANE BALFOUR

This correspondent, the long-lived spinster among the Balfour sisters
(died 1907, aged 91) and the well-beloved "auntie" of a numerous clan
of nephews and nieces, is the subject of the set of verses, _Auntie's
Skirts_, in the _Child's Garden_. She had been reading _Travels with
a Donkey_ on its publication.

[_Swanston, June 1879._]

MY DEAR AUNTIE,--If you could only think a little less of me and others,
and a great deal more of your delightful self, you would be as nearly
pe