him and them
both.' I laughed, and so would you too, at the way in which this
execration is introduced. The said Hogg is a strange being, but of
great, though uncouth, powers. I think very highly of him, as a
poet; but he, and half of these Scotch and Lake troubadours, are
spoilt by living in little circles and petty societies. London and
the world is the only place to take the conceit out of a man--in
the milling phrase. Scott, he says, is gone to the Orkneys in a
gale of wind;--during which wind, he affirms, the said Scott, 'he
is sure, is not at his ease,--to say the best of it.' Lord, Lord,
if these homekeeping minstrels had crossed your Atlantic or my
Mediterranean, and tasted a little open boating in a white
squall--or a gale in 'the Gut'--or the 'Bay of Biscay,' with no
gale at all--how it would enliven and introduce them to a few of
the sensations!--to say nothing of an illicit amour or two upon
shore, in the way of essay upon the Passions, beginning with simple
adultery, and compounding it as they went along.

"I have forwarded your letter to Murray,--by the way, you had
addressed it to Miller. Pray write to me, and say what art thou
doing? 'Not finished!'--Oons! how is this?--these 'flaws and
starts' must be 'authorised by your grandam,' and are unbecoming of
any other author. I was sorry to hear of your discrepancy with the
* *s, or rather your abjuration of agreement. I don't want to be
impertinent, or buffoon on a serious subject, and am therefore at a
loss what to say.

"I hope nothing will induce you to abate from the proper price of
your poem, as long as there is a prospect of getting it. For my own
part, I have _seriously_ and _not whiningly_, (for that is not my
way--at least, it used not to be,) neither hopes, nor prospects,
and scarcely even wishes. I am, in some respects, happy, but not in
a manner that can or ought to last,--but enough of that. The worst
of it is, I feel quite enervated and indifferent. I really do not
know, if Jupiter were to offer me my choice of the contents of his
benevolent cask, what I would pick out of it. If I was born, as the
nurses say, with a 'silver spoon in my mouth,' it has stuck in my
throat, and spoiled my palate, so that nothing put into it is
swallowed with much relish,--unless it be ca