g-shell for melancholy, and, as for merriment, a
witty humour will turn anything to account. My head is sometimes in
such a whirl in considering the million likings and antipathies of our
moments, that I can get into no settled strain in my letters. My wig!
Burns and sentimentality coming across you and Frank Floodgate in the
office. Oh, Scenery, that thou shouldst be crushed between two puns!
As for them, I venture the rascalliest in the Scotch region. I hope
Brown does not put them in his journal: if he does, I must sit on the
cutty-stool all next winter. We went to Kirk Alloway. 'A prophet is
no prophet in his own country.' We went to the Cottage and took some
whisky. I wrote a sonnet for the mere sake of writing some lines under
the roof: they are so bad I cannot transcribe them. The man at the
cottage was a great bore with his anecdotes. I hate the rascal. His
life consists in fuzy, fuzzy, fuzziest. He drinks glasses, five for
the quarter, and twelve for the hour; he is a mahogany-faced old
jackass who knew Burns: he ought to have been kicked for having spoken
to him. He calls himself 'a curious old bitch', but he is a flat
old dog. I should like to employ Caliph Vathek to kick him. Oh, the
flummery of a birthplace! Cant! cant! cant! It is enough to give
a spirit the guts-ache. Many a true word, they say, is spoken in
jest--this may be because his gab hindered my sublimity: the flat dog
made me write a flat sonnet. My dear Reynolds, I cannot write about
scenery and visitings. Fancy is indeed less than a present palpable
reality, but it is greater than remembrance. You would lift your eyes
from Homer only to see close before you the real Isle of Tenedos. You
would rather read Homer afterwards than remember yourself. One song
of Burns's is of more worth to you than all I could think for a whole
year in his native country. His misery is a dead weight upon the
nimbleness of one's quill; I tried to forget it--to drink toddy
without any care--to write a merry sonnet--it won't do--he talked, he
drank with blackguards; he was miserable. We can see horribly clear,
in the works of such a man, his whole life, as if we were God's
spies....

TO RICHARD WOODHOUSE

_The poetic character_

Hampstead, 27 _Oct_. 1818.

MY DEAR WOODHOUSE,

Your letter gave me great satisfaction, more on account of its
friendliness than any relish of that matter in it which is accounted
so acceptable in the _genus irritabile_. The best an