two after
dinner, to keep off the infernal spasms which since last
winter have attacked me with such violence, as if all
the imps that used to plague poor Caliban were washing,
wringing, and ironing the unshapely but useful bag which
Sir John Sinclair treats with such distinction--my
stomach, in short. Now, as I have much to do of my own,
I fear I can hardly be of use to you in the present
case, which I am very sorry for, as I like the subject,
and would be pleased to give my own opinion respecting
the Jacobitism of the editor, which, like my own, has a
good spice of affectation in it, mingled with some not
unnatural feelings of respect for a cause which, though
indefensible in common sense and ordinary policy, has a
great deal of high-spirited Quixotry about it.

"Can you not borrow from your briefs and criticism a
couple of days to look about you here? I dare not ask
Mrs. Jeffrey till next year, when my hand will be out of
the mortar-tub; and at present my only spare bed was
till of late but accessible by the feudal accommodation
of a drawbridge made of two deals, and still requires
the clue of Ariadne.... I am like one of Miss
Edgeworth's heroines, master of all things in
miniature--a little hill, and a little glen, and a
little horse-pond of a loch, and a little river, I was
going to call it,--the Tweed; but I remember the
minister was mobbed by his parishioners for terming it,
in his statistical report, an inconsiderable stream. So
pray do come and see me, and if I can stead you, or
pleasure you, in the course of the winter, you shall
command me."--Cockburn's _Life of Jeffrey_, vol. i p.
417.]]

It was while struggling with such languor, on one lovely evening of
this autumn, that he composed the following beautiful verses. They
mark the very spot of their birth,--namely, the then naked height
overhanging the northern side of the Cauldshiels Loch, from which
Melrose Abbey to the eastward, and the hills of Ettrick and Yarrow to
the west, are now visible over a wide range of rich woodland,