rfect as there is any need to be. I think I have travelled with
donkeys all my life; and the experience of this book could be nothing
new to me. But if ever I knew a real donkey, I believe it is yourself.
You are so eager to think well of everybody else (except when you are
angry on account of some third person) that I do not believe you have
ever left yourself time to think properly of yourself. You never
understand when other people are unworthy, nor when you yourself are
worthy in the highest degree. Oblige us all by having a guid conceit o'
yoursel and despising in the future the whole crowd, including your
affectionate nephew,

R. L. S.

TO EDMUND GOSSE

This letter is contemporary with the much-debated Cornhill essay _On
some Aspects of Burns_, afterwards published in _Familiar Studies of
Men and Books_. "Meredith's story" is probably the _Tragic
Comedians_.

_Swanston, July 24, 1879._

MY DEAR GOSSE,--I have greatly enjoyed your article, which seems to me
handsome in tone, and written like a fine old English gentleman. But is
there not a hitch in the sentence at foot of page 153? I get lost in it.

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