by him re-dedicated to
the memory of Robert Fergusson,
as the gift of one Edinburgh
lad to another.

In spacing this inscription I would detach the names of Fergusson and
Burns, but leave mine in the text.

Or would that look like sham modesty, and is it better to bring out the
three Roberts?

TO SIDNEY COLVIN

_Vailima, May 18th, 1894._

MY DEAR COLVIN,--Your proposals for the Edinburgh Edition are entirely
to my mind. About the _Amateur Emigrant_, it shall go to you by this
mail well slashed. If you like to slash some more on your own account, I
give you permission. 'Tis not a great work; but since it goes to make up
the two first volumes as proposed, I presume it has not been written in
vain.[76]--_Miscellanies_. I see with some alarm the proposal to print
_Juvenilia_; does it not seem to you taking myself a little too much as
Grandfather William? I am certainly not so young as I once was--a lady
took occasion to remind me of the fact no later agone than last night.
"Why don't you leave that to the young men, Mr. Stevenson?" said
she--but when I remember that I felt indignant at even John Ruskin when
he did something of the kind I really feel myself blush from head to
heel. If you want to make up the first volume, there are a good many
works which I took the trouble to prepare for publication and which have
never been republished. In addition to _Roads_ and _Dancing Children_,
referred to by you, there is _An Autumn Effect_ in the Portfolio, and a
paper on Fontainebleau--_Forest Notes_ is the name of it--in Cornhill. I
have no objection to any of these being edited, say with a scythe, and
reproduced. But I heartily abominate and reject the idea of reprinting
_The Pentland Rising_. For God's sake let me get buried first.

_Tales and Fantasies._ Vols. I. and II. have my hearty approval. But I
think III. and IV. had better be crammed into one as you suggest. I will
reprint none of the stories mentioned. They are below the mark. Well, I
dare say the beastly _Body-Snatcher_ has merit, and I am unjust to it
from my recollections of the Pall Mall. But the other two won't do. For
vols. V. and VI., now changed into IV. and V., I propose the common
title of _South Sea Yarns_. There! These are all my differences of
opinion. I agree with every detail of your arrangement, and, as you see,
my objections have turned principally on the question of hawking unripe
fruit. I dare say it is all pretty green, bu