, in order to pay the poet a visit. The
latter felt his dignity a little touched by the want of the necessary
pomp and circumstance with which the minister presumed to approach his
domicile; but after the ice of ceremony had in some degree been broken,
and their intellects had come in contact, the poet became interested,
and a friendly feeling was established between them. Several interviews
took place, and the poet presented his good friend and namesake, the
minister of Reay, with a copy of the subscription edition of the
'Odyssey' in five volumes quarto."

A grandson of the Reay minister, a Mr. James Campbell of Edinburgh, gave
a description to Mr. Carruthers of a snuff-box which the poet had
presented to the Rev. Mr. Pope. A series of letters to the _Northern
Ensign_, in April, 1883, brought out the information that a Wick
gentleman, Mr. Duncan, had in his possession two volumes of de Vertot's
_History of the Roman Republic_, bearing an inscription to the effect
that they had been presented by the poet of Twickenham to his northern
namesake.

It has been suggested that the poet and the minister were distant
blood-relations. Mr. Campbell, alluded to above, said that "the two
Popes claimed kin." In any case, the friendship of the two men, one
living on the shores of the wild Pentland Firth, in sight of the
Orkneys, and the other not far "from streaming London's central roar,"
is pleasant to think of. In 1737, Pope wrote the lines--

"Loud as the wolves on Orca's stormy steep
Howl to the roarings of the northern deep,"

adding, in a note, that he refers to "the farthest northern promontory
of Scotland, opposite to the Orcades." Perhaps his mind reverted to the
burly incumbent of Reay as he penned the note.

ROB DONN.

The little township of Reay is less famous for the Rev. Mr. Pope's
incumbency than for the fact of Rob Donn, the satirical Gaelic bard,
being a native of the district. The author of the _Dunciad_ is the
greatest satirist in British Literature; Rob Donn is supreme among
Gaelic bards for the sharpness of his tongue and his clever way of
showing up his contemporaries to ridicule. He was in the habit of giving
praise to people in order to make his satire more biting. Praise on his
tongue was compared to oil on the edge of a razor: the cut was all the
deeper. Rob, although a master of language, was unable to read or write,
so that though he "lisped in numbers"--he began to compose at the age of