renounce every creature comfort, as my friend
Jedediah calls it. As for dinner and so forth, I care little
about it--but toast and water, and three glasses of wine,
sound like hard laws to me. However, to parody the
lamentation of Hassan, the camel-driver,

"The lily health outvies the grape's bright ray,
And life is dearer than the usquebae--"

so I shall be amenable to discipline. But in my own secret
mind I suspect the state of my bowels more than anything
else. I take enough of exercise and enough of rest; but
unluckily they are like a Lapland year, divided as one night
and one day. In the vacation I never sit down; in the
session-time I seldom rise up. But all this must be better
arranged in future; and I trust I shall live to weary out
all your kindness.

I am obliged to break off hastily. I trust I shall be able
to get over the Fell in the end of summer, which {p.153}
will rejoice me much, for the sound of the woods of Rokeby
is lovely in mine ear. Ever yours,

Walter SCOTT.

TO MRS. MACLEAN CLEPHANE, OF TORLOISK, MULL.

EDINBURGH, 23d March, 1817.

MY DEAR Mrs. AND MISS CLEPHANE,--Here comes to let you know
you had nearly seen the last sight of me, unless I had come
to visit you on my red beam like one of Fingal's heroes,
which, Ossianic as you are, I trow you would readily
dispense with. The cause was a cramp in my stomach, which,
after various painful visits, as if it had been sent by
Prospero, and had mistaken me for Caliban, at length chose
to conclude by setting fire to its lodging, like the
Frenchmen as they retreated through Russia, and placed me in
as proper a state of inflammation as if I had had the whole
Spafields committee in my unfortunate stomach. Then bleeding
and blistering was the word; and they bled and blistered
till they left me neither skin nor blood. However, they beat
off the foul fiend, and I am bound to praise the bridge
which carried me over. I am still very totterish, and very
giddy, kept to panada, or rather to porridge, for I spurned
at all foreign slops, and adhered to our ancient oatmeal
manufacture.[60] But I have no apprehension of any return of
the serious part of the malady, and I am now re