lads sing and lasses laugh, we turn our discourse on
verse, and still our speech is song. Poetry had then a
charm for us, which has since been sobered down. I can
now meditate without the fever of enthusiasm upon me;
yet age to youth owes all or most of its happiest
aspirations, and contents itself with purifying and
completing the conceptions of early years.

"We are both a little older and a little graver than we
were some twenty years ago, when we walked in glory and
joy on the side of old Queensberry. My wife is much the
same in look as when you saw her in Edinburgh--at least
so she seems to me, though five boys and a girl might
admonish me of change--of loss of bloom, and abatement
of activity. My oldest boy resolves to be a soldier; he
is a clever scholar, and his head has been turned by
Caesar. My second and third boys are in Christ's School,
and are distinguished in their classes; they climb to
the head, and keep their places. The other three are at
their mother's knee at home, and have a strong capacity
for mirth and mischief.

"I have not destroyed my Scottish poem. I mean to
remodel it, and infuse into it something more of the
spark of living life. But my pen has of late strayed
into the regions of prose. Poetry is too much its own
reward; and one cannot always write for a barren smile,
and a thriftless clap on the back. We must live; and
the white bread and the brown can only be obtained by
gross payment. There is no poet and a wife and six
children fed now like the prophet Elijah--they are more
likely to be devoured by critics, than fed by ravens. I
cannot hope that Heaven will feed me and mine while I
sing. So farewell to song for a season.

"My brother's[41] want of success has surprised me too.
He had a fair share of talent; and, had he cultivated
his powers with care, and given himself fair play, his
fate would have been different. But he sees nature
rather through a curious medium than with the tasteful
eye of poetry, and must please himself with the praise
of those who love singular and curious things. I have
said nothing all this while of Mrs Hogg, though I might
have said much, for we hear her household prudence and
her good taste often commended. She comes, too, from my
own dear cou