to make you distinguish between the work of the poet and that of the
rhymester, I should have thought by this time you would have known a
little more about the nature of poetry. Personification is a figure
of speech in constant use by all poets."

"Ow ay! but there's true and there's fause personification; an' it's
no ilka poet 'at kens the differ. Ow, I ken! ye'll be doon upo' me
wi' yer Byron,"--Fergus shook his head as at a false impeachment,
but Donal went on--"but even a poet canna mak lees poetry. An' a
man 'at in ane o' his gran'est verses cud haiver aboot the birth o'
a yoong airthquack!--losh! to think o' 't growin' an auld
airthquack!--haith, to me it's no up till a deuk-quack!--sic a poet
micht weel, I grant ye, be he ever sic a guid poet whan he tuik heed
to what he said, he micht weel, I say, blether nonsense aboot the
sea warrin' again' the rocks, an' sic stuff."

"But don't you see them?" said Fergus, pointing to a great billow
that fell back at the moment, and lay churning in the gulf beneath
them. "Are they not in fact wasting the rocks away by slow degrees?"

"What comes o' yer seemile than, anent the vainity o' their
endeevour? But that's no what I'm carin' aboot. What I mainteen
is, 'at though they div weir awa' the rocks, that's nae mair their
design nor it's the design o' a yewky owse to kill the tree whan he
rubs hit's skin an' his ain aff thegither."

"Tut! nobody ever means, when he personifies the powers of nature,
that they know what they are about."

"The mair necessar' till attreebute till them naething but their
rale design."

"If they don't know what they are about, how can you be so foolish
as talk of their design?"

"Ilka thing has a design,--an' gien it dinna ken't itsel', that's
jist whaur yer true an' lawfu' personification comes in. There's no
rizon 'at a poet sudna attreebute till a thing as a conscious design
that which lies at the verra heart o' 'ts bein', the design for
which it's there. That an' no ither sud determine the
personification ye gie a thing--for that's the trowth o' the thing.
Eh, man, Fergus! the jaws is fechtin' wi' nae rocks. They're jist
at their pairt in a gran' cleansin' hermony. They're at their
hoosemaid's wark, day an' nicht, to haud the warl' clean, an' gran'
an' bonnie they sing at it. Gien I was you, I wadna tell fowk any
sic nonsense as yon; I wad tell them 'at ilk ane 'at disna dee his
wark i' the warl', an' dee 't the richt g